the law of contraction & the transpersonal planet revolution

A new dream has quietly breached the edge of our atmosphere as Neptune has entered Aries for the first time since 1861, and Pluto is resettling into Aquarius. Together, they're shifting the scaffolding of perception and the rules of engagement with reality are evolving. Neptune’s transit in 1861-1875 coincided with the American Civil War, a vortex for social, cultural, and existential upheaval. Similarly, Pluto ingressed Aquarius in November 2024 after doing its retrograde dance back and forth to prepare us over the last two years. The last time Pluto was in Aquarius was from 1778-1798 during the American, French, and Industrial revolutions as well as the Age of Enlightenment. Having these two transits collide and thinking about the combined context of their last transits gives us a lot to chew on and makes sense for the current state of the world, we’re living through what will someday be a historical hotspot (and I mean, we've been living in it).

Later this year we have the final transpersonal planet, Uranus, making its entrance into Gemini on July 7th. Uranus was last here 1942-1949 during the United States’ involvement in World War II and also coincided with communication and technological advances. While Uranus is a massive piece to it all, let’s hone in on Neptune and Pluto as they are the most astrologically relevant to April, May, and June of 2025. As usual, we’ll be swinging back and forth through the macro (the collective whole of these planetary cycles) and the micro (how these cycles are working in our personal lives for the next few months) for this article. 

Let’s reflect. 

Rulership of Neptune: a look at history

Looking at Mars as the new ruler of Neptune tells us a lot about the kind of reality we’re stepping into for the next 14-15 years until Neptune leaves Aries in 2038-2039. Since 2011, Neptune has been answering to Jupiter as its ruler leaving the door wide open with possibilities and options, amplifying Neptune’s natural capacity to transcend to higher states of awareness but also its tendency to create a complex mess of confusion, projection, and fantasy. Neptune is about a 5th dimensional awareness that moves beyond the bounds of societal understanding of space and time, when Neptune is in Jupiter’s realm, it achieves this awareness through themes of learning, global influence, and expansion (that “more, more, more” quality). 

During this transit we’ve seen things like: 

• A rise in modern spiritual practices as well as spiritual bypassing and psychosis. 

• The illusions of influencer culture which began with Neptune in Aquarius but completely unfurled during transit Neptune in Pisces and the new platforms that came with it (instagram, tik tok, twitch, snapchat, pinterest, etc.)

• The remake, reinvention, and resurfacing of nostalgic time periods, fashion trends, movies, sounds, aesthetics, tastes– to a detriment at times!! For example: do we really need another live action Disney movie? and should tradwife culture from the 50’s be romanticized like this in 2025? 

• Immense knowledge leading to advanced mental and physical health awareness, alternative healing, medicine, and therapeutic language all as useful tools and as misused weapons. This includes many people’s first pandemic and with it, controversial responses, mental health struggles due to social isolation, and the transcendence of many societal constructs.

All of these things highlight Neptune’s relation to awareness, this is key to understanding how this planet functions. When tracking Neptune cycles, you’ll notice that each transit finds a way to awaken humanity to a previously veiled reality. Its capacity for awareness invokes either truth or avoidance and ultimately allows the collective an opportunity to work this all out for itself through cycle repetition. It’s hard to neatly name the exact motif of this Neptune cycle but from these transit examples, we know that we’ve been given the awareness of new knowledge, language, beliefs, and possibilities (all very Jupiterian) that have allowed us to heal something and integrate the past. This is easy to see with typical Piscean modalities like therapeutic language or the rise of new age spirituality but if we were to apply Neptune’s integration process to influencer culture for example, we can see just how abstract and deep Neptune really is. 

Applied Astrology: Under the influence

Over the last 15 years, we’ve been seeing each other's real lives through our screens and particularly on these post-2010 social media platforms. This has opened up a new reality in which regular people are heard, elevated, and put in the position to influence lives, beliefs, purchases, opinions, and more. Neptune in Aquarius kickstarted the transition from exclusive celebrity audiences to now lending the common person an audience as long as they know how to create resonant, viral content and capitalize off of it. Neptune in Pisces has taken that concept and created a world of projection and illusions through our screens and it’s not even all bad! This transit has connected people to communities, explored untapped creativity, allowed for the discovery of thought leaders, comedians, artists, and experts from backgrounds that don’t typically get their own soapbox. 

However, if Neptune requires a process of integration and awareness, it makes sense that this kind of culture has a hidden underbelly of unrealistic expectations, misinformation, and highly curated or idealized lifestyles– it’s been a gaping wound to contend with. Neptune’s fantasies can seduce us into a painful process of inauthenticity and whether you are the influencer or the influenced, this has been a key theme in the Neptune in Pisces integration process. Many have become aware of this over the years and have had to confront the comparison trap and shut down the parasocial sirens that may persuade us to believe xyz about ourselves and the world. It has all sparked big conversations around consumption, ethics, and whether or not we can truly believe what we see with our eyes. 

Overall, a Jupiter ruled Neptune has brought to mind words like: spread, reach, and growth. Jupiter, as a planet of power and authority, can positively advance or injuriously metastasize whatever it touches. Paired with Neptune’s hazy and illusory nature, we’ve learned some very valuable lessons around discernment. 

Mars: Neptune’s new ruler 

No one really knows what Neptune in Aries will bring. We can make an educated guess based on the last transit but Aries is inherently about novelty, beginnings, and introductions to things we have never seen before. However, observing a Mars ruled Neptune– which we have a more recent experience with through Neptune’s last transit in Scorpio (1955-1970)– can at least give us insight into how this transit might function even while there are key differences between these two faces of Mars. This is an incredibly relevant time period due to Saturn's transit through Aries in 1967-1969 as we have Saturn re-entering Aries in May 2025.

Neptune’s last transit through Scorpio saw:

• Color television becoming widely available ultimately changing society and the information that it has access to. 

• An increase in STDs, sexual awareness, content, and freedom– the birth control pill became available and laid the groundwork for the case of Roe v. Wade legalizing abortion nationwide in 1973 as Neptune ingressed Sagittarius. 

• The draft for the incredibly controversial war in Vietnam and the anti war movement that raged all over the US. This was the first televised, uncensored war bringing awareness to civilians and contributed to protests. 

• The ongoing cold war between the Soviet Union and the US that led to the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. 

• The Civil Rights act of 1964, The Voting Rights Act of 1965, and The Fair Housing Act of 1968 all outlawing discrimination based on race, religion, and gender all instigated by the Civil Rights movement beginning with Rosa Parks’ protest sparking desegregation efforts along with Martin Luther King Jr. and his “I Have a Dream” speech, march on Washington, letter from Birmingham, and his eventual assassination in 1968. 

So, what are the Martian qualities here when we sift out a Scorpio-specific perspective? War is both necessary: like in the case of desegregation and anti-discrimination movements and unnecessarily barbaric: in the case of forced participation in killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Neptune in a Martian sign has the capacity to draw awareness to tension, injustice, and the areas where we desire freedom the most and potentially overcome the cycle altogether, but it’s also a planet that hides, deceives, and feeds on fear or confusion. In a Martian sign especially, this can be deadly. 

If you’d like to dive deeper, here is an AAUP article on the parallels between the Vietnam war and the current genocide in Gaza entitled In the Shadow of Vietnam. Something that I found particularly Neptunian was when Professor Ferguson quotes Pakistani political scientist Eqbal Ahmad, “The war in Vietnam laid to rest the Third World’s illusions about the United States” (I’ve bolded “illusions” because it’s a Neptune buzzword) and goes on to say that “the image of the United States as guardian of the world and keeper of democracy would be blown to smithereens” not just for third world countries but for those living in America too. As new generations pour in nearly 50 years later, the youth in particular is existing without complete historical context and are now shocked and appalled to rediscover the contrasting narratives of the state of the world and the supposed “land of the free”.

These quotes encapsulate not only the power of Neptune’s awareness and its ability to change the (mental, emotional, spiritual, political, belief based, etc.) reality that an individual or a collective might live in– essentially bursting the pretty fantasy bubble– but also what I like to call “Neptunian Reenactment”. This is the idea that we find ourselves in another projection, another repetition of a pattern that Neptune wants us to relive hopefully as a means to defeat it. Variables and elements of the repeated pattern may change, but there is a core theme between Neptune transits, and we can already see this between the tip top beginning of the transit through Aries and the last Mars ruled Neptune transit in Scorpio. 

Now that we have quite a bit of context, let’s zoom in a bit on what these Neptune and Pluto transits are aspecting more immediately and how it might show up on a personal scale. As much concern there is around the present mundane (political, financial, earthly, material) atmosphere at the moment, we are no good within a revolution if we are not first attuned to ourselves. That is the core of any and all of my astrological work: transformation of the individual. 

The Saturn-Neptune conjunction & Mars-Pluto opposition

More immediately we’re dealing with this Mars-Pluto opposition. We’ve already had two exact oppositions over the course of the Mars retrograde cycle (on November 3rd 2024 and January 2nd 2025) and the final one hits this month on April 26th 2025. This is important for quite a few reasons but particularly because:

• As we’ve discussed, Mars is now the new ruler of Neptune and will be ruling a post retrograde Mercury and Venus in Aries towards the end of April and for the majority of May. Any major aspect that Mars makes can give us a lot of information about the function and the result of a transit. In this case, Mars-Pluto might show us what we are reenacting and what our reality looks like based on what we are becoming aware of as a result of Neptune in Aries. 

• This opposition has carried us through the Plutonian transition across two zodiacal axes. Since Pluto speaks to both the evolution and atrophy of society, this transition symbolizes one 15 year process completing itself and another 20 year process beginning.

Mars and Pluto in opposition is a surefire demolition, an open and unavoidable confrontation with things that need to die off before movement is even possible. This is what has been happening– the magnetic pull of Mars meeting Pluto, being pulled back again, then moving forward just to run into another standoff. The first opposition came right during the presidential election and I think that tells us a lot about the future as a result of this transit; while the sky is ever changing, Pluto produces a kind of permanence that we cannot come back from. Many are seeing their definition of family and support is changing permanently (Cancer-Capricorn) or are redefining their unique identity and communities in a lasting way (Leo-Aquarius). Retrogrades and what they’re really all about often elude us in the moment but are much easier to identify in hindsight. As such, this final Mars-Pluto meeting at the end of April may identify and confirm any suspicions you’ve had about the function of this Mars retrograde and what the last 9 or so months of your life have been for. 

This is a good time to ask yourself: What has permanently changed? What is it that will never be the same? As Neptune, Mercury, and Venus all move forward and answer back to the Mars-Pluto opposition, it’s clear that something new is evolving after this final confrontation with the things that must stay behind. To be clear: Mars opposing Pluto isn’t some once in a lifetime transit, it occurs approximately every 2 years and is a much needed maintenance process for Pluto. However, when aspects work in triplicates like this during a retrograde and during such a major planetary transition, they become important turning points. 

Piecing in how Mars-Pluto’s rulership of Neptune is relevant: 

As we’ve discussed, Neptune has a really big influence on how we interpret our reality both collectively and individually. It makes me think about films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or The Truman Show (both starring Jim Carrey who has Neptune on his Ascendant) and how there are classic Neptunian themes embedded into their plotlines. Whether it’s feeling such pain that you’re wanting to scrub a whole reality from your mind or the idea that your reality was never based in truth in the first place, this is kind of what a Neptunian transition looks like. An awakening. The bubble burst. One reality is ending and another is beginning as some new information presents itself, as a pivotal decision is made, as a result of a change in your environment or within your body, soul, or mind triggering a newfound awareness of what was previously distorted. 

When Neptune left Aquarius and ingressed Pisces in 2011, I moved from one state to another and it truly gave this feeling of moving from one reality with all of its various possibilities to another with very different possibilities. The world simultaneously contracted and opened up. This is what we are going through now but it is amplified as we are not only experiencing the ingress itself but the beginning of a whole new 165 year zodiacal cycle– a cycle that we are meant to start but will not live long enough to finish (say hello to your legacy). 

At the end of a Neptune transit and cycle, we may feel like we are losing something, no longer identifying with a particular belief. This is the process of disillusionment. The old dream starts to shatter so a new one can be formed. Neptune is about an ideal reality and calling but throughout the transit we must peel back the layers and learn the complete truth of the ideal before really committing to it… and this often comes with a lot of grief. Grieving what things were “supposed” to be or what you were “told” was going to happen. It’s a tough pill to swallow. Whatever is coming up for you now is seeding this new reality, you may feel as though you’ve already stepped into it after the shifts of eclipse season and the inner planet retrogrades or alternatively, you may be feeling lost! Which only means there is much more to the story. 

Saturn and Neptune are moving towards a conjunction and while the exact conjunction will not occur until 2026, we are well within the orb (15º is standard for outer planet contacts) that counts towards a Saturn-Neptune experience. There are many themes that we could explore with Saturn-Neptune but I want to talk about personal delays. 

You may notice that very often, before something new comes into your life– a new relationship or home or whatever– there is first an experience of physical or emotional contraction. Even when giving birth to a baby, the person giving birth experiences literal contractions through the shortening of the uterine muscles. Contraction is the process of something being smaller, cramped, decreased, shorter, tighter, etc. During this Saturn-Neptune conjunction in Aries, we can see clearly through the symbolism of Aries as the first sign that something new is being created. Before that though, we must first experience contraction through Saturn, where possibilities are shrinking down to one. Very often, Saturn does this by delaying a process, holding us in place, and it feels especially murky and confusing since Neptune is involved. 

If you are currently experiencing a massive delay somewhere this message is for you: Neptune is a cosmic womb but with Saturn’s conjunction, she must have the right conditions to give birth. Neptune gives birth to dreams through awareness but it also starves the ones that aren’t supported through that same awareness. Any delays you are experiencing indicate a recalibration, connecting you with new realities that you didn’t realize were even possible, and are actually paradoxically, making your timeline move faster. This conjunction is breaking patterns and sometimes a delay is the only way to buy you the time you need to have epiphanies and to make different choices.

Neptune in Aries can represent a loss of identity. When Neptune ingressed at the end of March we are individually and collectively faced with– “Who am I? Where am I going? What happens now?” but very often we don’t have to actively find these things, they are already long standing urges that exist within us or events that synchronize around us. These pauses give us a chance to recognize them. 

If it feels like everything’s contracting, it might be because something new is opening up. 

Much love!

Your friendly neighborhood astrologer, 

Katie