Neptune in the Final Degree of Pisces
3/7–3/30 and 10/23–1/26
So here we are getting our first taste of the final degree of the zodiac. The cycle ending now began in 1862 as the Civil War raged and the Union pushed back the first invasion of Confederate troops. Things looked bad at the beginning of the year. The Union forces lost battle after battle, mostly due to timid and ineffective generals who were too old fashioned about the savagery of war. The Confederacy felt certain of victory. They were about to remove Lincoln from the presidency.
But that year would see the capture of New Orleans, the Union army marching toward Richmond, and in fall at the battle of Antietam, the defeat of the Secessionists who had invaded the north fighting for the right to enslave people. The invaders had been capturing and sending into slavery down south any escaped enslaved people and even free Negros who had never been enslaved. The war would drag on into 1865 when regiments of black Union troops, Grant’s relentless and bloody advance, and Sherman’s industrial age level of destruction on his march to the sea, finally ended the war. Perhaps you recognize some of the themes we are currently experiencing, there are many more parallels.
If this were 1861 when Neptune was in late Pisces (what we’ve been experiencing the last couple of years) we’d be at war by now. Of course, in a sense, there is a civil war going on, but it’s not the old fashioned hot war. Technological precision is the new strategy, that and propaganda, voter suppression, economic manipulation, drones, asymmetrical warfare, and CIA KGB espionage and mind games.
This month we’ll see many of the themes that will come to a head 10/23 to 1/26/26 when Neptune returns to Pisces, especially 12/9 when Neptune is stationary direct. Saturn will be in 30 Pisces 5/13–26, 9/2 through 9/15 and in early 2026 we’ll have both Saturn and Neptune there until they both enter Aries and begin new cycles around the zodiac. We’re fortunate that Saturn and Neptune are not exact together in that degree this year.
Neptune will be in Aries until March 2029, Saturn until April 2028. These placements are likely to sharply contrast with what we’ve been experiencing during the first half of the 2020s. From the viewpoint of historians it may seem that the first half of the decade was a culmination and ending of 20th century culture while the second half will mark the true beginning of the new century and millennium.
Here’s what Dane Rudhyar wrote about this degree in his wonderful Astrological Mandala book:
“PHASE 360 (PISCES 30°): A MAJESTIC ROCK FORMATION RESEMBLING A FACE IS IDEALIZED BY A BOY WHO TAKES IT AS HIS IDEAL OF GREATNESS, AND AS HE GROWS UP, BEGINS TO LOOK LIKE IT.
“KEYNOTE: The power of clearly visualized ideals to mold the life of the visualizer.
“Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story “The Great Stone Face” is used here in an allegorical sense to show the capacity for self-transformation latent in man. This power can be developed through visualization, when the emotions and the will are poured into the visualized mental image. At the highest spiritual-cosmic level this is the power used by the God-like Beings at the close of a cosmic cycle in projecting the basic Formula (the Word) which will start a new universe. In a biological sense, it is the power latent in all seeds — the power to produce and guide the growth of the future plant. A most fitting symbol for the last phase of the cyclic process. Within the end of the cycle the seed of a new beginning exists in potency — unless the entire cycle has proven to be a failure.
“This is the last stage of the last scene of the great ritual play of cyclic transformations. It brings to us a realization of the power of archetypes as factors conditioning life processes. Thus we could use as a final Keyword: ARCHETYPALIZATION.
Trump, Musk, Thiel etc are archetypes personifying the conviction that the ending cycle was a failure. Yarvin denounces the Enlightenment. Dugin dismisses democracy as outdated while embracing an even more outdated feudalism armed with modern technology. Their condemnation of empathy and women’s rights, their willingness to reduce people to statistics and to replace them with AI and robots has more in common with the slave holders of the Civil War than it does with the modern world.
Remember this energy of archetypalization indicated by the final degree of Pisces is available to us all. Each of us in our own lives can find this adventure, this unique quality that we bring to life. Now is the time to get inspired, to use the imagination, to liberate ourselves by finding what we can contribute to a better future. We can find ways to do that every day. And if we do we will find synchronicity and other magic along the paths we take.
The image of the inspired boy perhaps indicates younger generations who will awaken from their PTSD freeze to fight for a vision of America that goes deeper than McKinley. The impulse that produced Anonymous (apparently they aren’t everywhere) may give us young geniuses who are already at work inventing and discovering ways to leap past the chaos rich old men are causing in our world. But we can each find a way to contribute to a fresh start for us all.
In Goldsmith’s The Zodiac by Degrees, which elaborated and sometimes adjusted the original symbols published by Jones, we find this degree associated with “being pushed to the edge of a moral abyss by negative passions,” “trying to police others into accepting our own limits (slave- drivers, sadists.” We’ve been seeing more of such tendencies lately. They are at the heart of the drive to create a global surveillance state.
Yet there are good things about this degree. Goldsmith’s symbol is a chain gang prisoner who realizes his shackles are loose. He escapes to sanctuary in a community in the mountains. We needn’t tighten the shackles on our own wrists for fear of what will happen next. According to Goldsmith this is also a degree of play, of innocence, of enjoying life and pursuing our dreams. By these means we may be surprised how much we can offer toward the revitalization of culture. If there was to be a renaissance what would you like your contribution to be? Unlike previous generations we have the histories of the world’s great countercultures to inspire us. Let’s get inspired.
