Although Saturn and Neptune will not officially conjoin until 2026, in mid-July they came within 15′ of arc which is a very tight conjunction and certainly well within the range of a powerful alignment.

Saturn is the planet of boundaries and rules and Neptune’s role is to blur those boundaries and dissolve those rules, but these two seemingly opposite forces can be harnessed for great reward. As an outer planet, Neptune brings transformative energy of creative inspiration and spiritual vision, and when paired with Saturn’s focus on goals and practical implementation, remarkable achievements can emerge. Neptune inspires compassion and empathy with a touch of self-sacrifice in order to help others, but Saturn can be rather cold in its practical approach to caring for others. Where Neptune inspires selflessness and sensitivity, Saturn encourages the setting of boundaries and focusing on the future rewards rather than a temporary fix.

Many of my readers  are sensitive souls who have been wounded and who seek to heal ourselves through helping others. This is a Neptunian experience, since Neptune bestows boundless compassion, sensitivity, and an empathy which causes us to experience the suffering of others as if it were our own. While these are beautiful qualities, without the boundaries and discipline of Saturn we become codependent and unable to be effective in either our own healing process or the process of others.

So in these times of oppression, when sensitive people are traumatized every day by images of starving children and deportations, channeling our empathy and compassion (Neptune) into practical means (Saturn) can be a challenge. It is tempting to scream into the echo chamber of our Facebook timelines and repost memes of tragedies, or attend protests that have no clear purpose but as a Saturn person myself (Saturn conjunct Sun, Mars in Capricorn) I find that frustrating. I need to DO something practical. I need to raise money for legal representation, or talk to people with whom I DON’T agree.  But the goalposts right now are constantly changing in this Neptunian environment, making this feel like a game of whack-a-mole.

With the structures of societal protection (Saturn) collapsing (Neptune), there is an opportunity to re-vision and recreate new structures that will better suit the New Order. This process can be slow and grueling, as Saturn processes often are, but the rebuilding can build something better from the ruins.

Saturn is moving away from Neptune very slowly this summer, and then the exact conjunction occurs in February 2026 marking the end of the Saturn/Neptune cycle which began in 1989 and the beginning of a new one.  The period of the last conjunction in 1988-1990 was marked by the end of the Cold War, the collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, and the reemergence of liberal democracies in the former Soviet Union. This time around all of the changes from this period are undergoing transition, beginning with the decline of the United States as the single global superpower.

We can’t stem the tide of the global changes any more than we can stop a volcano from erupting, but we can create a web of interconnected structures to protect and preserve the things and values which we hold dear. Under the Saturn/Neptune conjunction these structures need to be both strong (Saturn) and flexible (Neptune) to be effective.

Share this article...