A Few Years of Changes, Decades of Adjustments

3/9/2025

by David A. Wheatley

We are there at a period so many people in the Astrological world are commenting on. Neptune moving into Aries is one thing, and out of Pisces another, though it will later retrograde back into Pisces in the fall of this year and stretch this period of major change that it’s sharing with Saturn and Uranus out into a few years of changes followed by decades of adjustments. There’s a struggle associated with the Neptune shift from Pisces to Aries, and retrograde motion will deepen and extend it. This initial entry is a huge event, and we now have clues about some parts of it as to the impact here in the mundane world.

Neptune is a planet that embodies properties usually outside our daily consciousness. It’s not often that we have a Neptune experience over months or more and recognize it as such at the time. But we won’t have to wait to recognize these shifts, all of them piling up on each other. In fact, because of the transits of Mercury and Venus earlier in March and February, we get some conscious recognition of the themes Neptune and Saturn’s shifts are bringing. Neptune and Saturn in these two signs are very different and we are noticing it. We won't have to wait long to discover what Neptune is changing, but we will not fully know why for years.

Uranus enters Gemini in July, and in June, Jupiter enters Cancer. These large outer planets bring things that seem to happen to us more than changes instigated by us. It feels like things are happening to us and to our environment when the outer planets express their influences. We don’t believe we can do anything but adjust to them, we are not in control, but we look around for ways to take control. The inner planets, inside the orbit from Jupiter to the Sun, are very much involved in bringing events into our conscious lives where we think and feel the differences unfolding around us.

As I have noted in a prior writing, Mercury and Venus are doing a direct and retrograde motion transit in Pisces over transiting Neptune and Saturn from February into April. These two inner planets in transit, plus the Moon's North Nodes in Aries/Pisces going back and forth in their retrograde motions, provoke experiences in our daily lives. Mars is not involved up close with Neptune and Saturn as much as Venus and Mercury are. Mars is still very much involved with Pluto, which changed signs in recent months into Aquarius, where it will remain for a little less than a couple of decades. The distinction of Pluto leaving Capricorn and entering Aquarius is a shift from corporate style, top-down-CEO-Capricorn-directed government to a more Aquarian power distribution. You may not see where we are going yet, but that's because the existing structure of authority will be transformed completely to suit Pluto in Aquarius. Power will be taken away from a single authority and shared by multiple authorities, governors, and regional spokespeople more than a central government. Pluto moves slowly but in a big way.
We also have two eclipses in the month of March; see my previous post plus more below.

Neptune - Inspiration or Delusion

The transit of Neptune into Aries is taking place on April 1st, depending on your time zone. (April Fool’s Day for those with some appreciation of tempting cosmic humor.) If it was possible to isolate and view reality from Neptune’s point of view, life is the Fool of the Tarot deck, both the Fool at the beginning, the number zero card, and the Fool at the end, the 22nd card of the Major Arcana deck. The zero card Fool is blissfully ignorant of life because he is newly born and knows nothing by experience. True innocence. The number 22 card Fool, at the end of the journey, has experienced some of everything and is not attached to any of it; Neptune is both of these cards.
April Fool’s Day is an old tradition in different parts of the world for different reasons, but the joke or festival was originally about how we humans place importance upon certain days and then, once a year, escape our customs and values. When the New Year which had been celebrated at Easter, was changed to January, it retained the symbolic importance of a new start. It first begins as the rebirth of life, the rebirth of Osiris in ancient eastern Mediterranean cults. Birth is bringing an innocent into the world but in Osiris’s case he was reincarnating as himself, both Fools of the Tarot Major Arcana in one. In India, there was a celebration of life slightly preceding April 1st, in which people for a day stepped outside their caste and freely associated outside the usual structural restrictions of culture with colorful and unusual costumes. Stepping outside the usual rigidity of Time and Space, stepping outside Saturn’s structure of our lives.

As I have described before, Jupiter is inside the orbit of Saturn, so while Jupiter brings expansion and development of higher ideals in the mind it is limited by the structures of Saturn, the usual limits of our psychology. Neptune is also a planet that brings expansion, but it is outside the orbit of Saturn and is beyond the limits of Saturn that Jupiter is restricted by. To our consciousness, a lot about Neptune is abstract because it connects to consciousness outside this solar system, our soul’s connection to a higher mind, as some people call it. But for a lot of us, interpreting the inspirations of this higher mind is not clear. Similar to dream interpretation, the reality of Neptune can only be grasped in our Earthly mind by symbols and by the effects or influences of this remote level of consciousness, by Neptune. You don’t see gravity, but you see what it does. The inspirations of Neptune are often misinterpreted as they are filtered through individual human psychology. What may have been intended as inspiration could also be bent into delusion. It depends on the psychological state of the person experiencing it.

It's difficult to talk about this period as one planet doing something; the combination of them is beyond comprehension in a simple description.

A Neptune-inspired opportunity to evolve as we have now is intended to bring more of Neptune down into daily consciousness and become part of our lives. But there are concepts we hold that get in the way of a clear perception. Neptune will be inspirational in positive and negative ways, but even the negative, though costly, will educate us. For some people, learning by bad choices is the only way to go, in keeping with their individual evolutionary needs. People can believe they hear an inner voice, but is it a higher voice? Or is it a voice from their psychology? Either way, Neptune is pulling all the strings to motivate our spirit. It is possible and it can be productive to follow an inspiration directly to fulfillment or take a detour because you misinterpreted it to accommodate your preferences. Following the inspiration always leads somewhere, to the mountain top or be filtered in our psychology, and like bad GPS, it takes us not to the utopia we imagined but to a dead end. Sometimes, you only know by trying.
In what is happening Astrologically, I have tried to stress for a year now that Neptune in Pisces is a fantastic sign to be in for the inspirational voice, but it arrives in our ear through our brain and through our psychology. It is bent by our desires, fears and hopes, by the limits of comprehension and subject to interpretation, by the agenda we may have been born with to pursue.

I’m reminded of the story of Saint Christopher, patron saint of travelers. He had the gift of knowing which road to take as a result of getting his directions wrong frequently until one day, he had traveled almost every road and, therefore, was a good advisor for anyone seeking direction. Neptune leaving Pisces to enter Aries means our inspirational sense of direction will change from the “anything goes” of Pisces. Neptune in Aries reduces the quantity and quality of inspiration, making it serve a shorter attention span in seeking satisfaction.

Neptune leaving Pisces will help make things clearer by introducing fewer choices. This isn’t about believing in what feels good, which is what fuels Fake News. In Aries, it’s about serving a more specific purpose with some immediacy; simplifying by necessity. Neptune in Aries is a very different character and this shift, technically beginning April 1st, will be such a shift that we are bewildered and can only get a handle on it spread out over time. It’s a disorienting shift because what we learn as it leaves Pisces is that the vision of the world and ourselves that we thought we had in hand is not the shape we believed it to be. The mists of Pisces are gone. The clarity of Aries will at first hit you in the face; it will be awkward, embarrassing, and disappointing.
30 degrees of Pisces is also zero degrees or the beginning of Aries. What makes it very real for us are the transits of Mercury and Venus in the weeks before and, in particular, for the full last week of March and the beginning of April. On March 3-4th , Mercury is conjunct Neptune at the tail end of Pisces. We got a peek inside the fog, to see something that we didn’t see before, a hint of new or clearer information. In February, Venus conjuncted Neptune and we had some clue of things then. It was the Trump tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China. Venus is all about negotiating, buying and selling things we value, and trade. The stock market didn’t like the news about these tariffs and dropped over 700 points at the close, though it was worse earlier in the day. With the Mercury transit in March comes the terms of tariffs: how much will be applied, and how much the retribution tariff will be. In April, because of retrograde motions, any policies or agreements will be triggered again, when both Venus and Mercury transit over Neptune again, but in Aries not Pisces. In Aries, the likely result is taking action with clear consequences and impacts. In Aries, there’s a more specific requirement than there was in the Piscean lack of order. In the Pisces laboratory, the result of an experiment is a reliable fact. But in Aries, instead of trying to find a definition, we have a more specific goal to use tools to achieve; we don't care so much about what is real or fact. We need more specific tools for a more specific purpose, and we need them now.

In March, there are two eclipses.

A total lunar eclipse on March 14th at 23 degrees of Virgo is visible in North and South America. The partial Solar Eclipse is on March 29th at 9 degrees of Aries.
The total lunar eclipse at 9 degrees of Aries is probably highly sensitive for anyone with any planet or asteroid at 9 degrees of Aries, Libra, Cancer, or Capricorn because both Mercury and Venus moved forward to this degree before turning retrograde, going back into Pisces, and then by mid-May they move direct and over 9 degrees of Aries again to complete this extended cycle over Neptune, Saturn and their transit into Aries.
The March 29th solar eclipse at 29 degrees of Pisces is on top of Neptune and Saturn and conjuncts the Moon’s North Nodes, a very potent point on the ecliptic of the Sun’s path as seen from Earth. The North Nodes help us understand our purpose, if not for life, then certainly in the moment we are in. The incredible pile of planets at the end of Pisces moving into Aries, with the Nodes moving from Aries back into Pisces, suggests we are going to learn defining truths whether we like them or not. We will learn over the weeks leading up to the beginning of April that we face a changing world we hardly recognize because it’s changed so much so quickly.
While we have much clearer knowledge and feelings about what we have learned (Mercury and Venus) we are consigned to live with the uncertainty (Moon’s Nodes retrograding back into Pisces). We will learn a lot in the last week of March leading up to the beginning of April. We will face a changing world we hardly recognize since the end of 2024. So much changes so quickly, though the indicators have been present for months.
Some Astrologers note how some of these transits historically coincide with wars and civil strife. I’m not convinced of this, but I am convinced that we are in a period of profound internal disorder, which for some people will only manifest externally. We are all more vulnerable to anything that adds to the feeling of not being in control. The growing disorder and confusion will continue to break up world order, from events manufactured by people and by forces of nature. We already have a major war, forcing long-standing changes in the Western world. We could have more wars, trade wars escalating to society-altering challenges. Aries is always ready for a fight, but even if it’s just in a hurry to get what it wants, Aries energy is not patient; it reacts and survives. Very different from Pisces energy, which allowed contradictions to coexist.

This is an unsettling time condensing huge change into a few months.

We're going to gain some clarity about things we believed to be true while both Saturn and Neptune were in Pisces, and likely were not what we thought they were. Heads will spin. What we learn will define life for years to come. The element of surprise isn’t a big factor with Neptune and Saturn moving into Aries; that will come later with Uranus moving into Gemini in July. We already see the writing all over the wall with Neptune’s big move, and the price we pay for it comes with Saturn’s move into Aries shortly after. Uranus comes along and reminds us that we are not in control. That isn’t all bad, though, because our belief in the control we thought we had created a mess. Uranus will innovate, but this is the kind of innovation that comes from fixing something broken.
As these major transits have moved into tighter moments, we have had weeks of the current US administration chopping up agencies, firing people, shutting down or slowing down government work, disemboweling intelligence agencies, threatening judges, and defying court orders. Issuing contradicting, barely informative reports of their results. Court challenges that will slow the process down. Creating vulnerabilities to domestic and foreign terrorists and hackers. On March 14th a government shutdown over the budget is to be faced.
While these things are occurring while both Saturn and Neptune are in Pisces, it's not going to be very long before we get a look at the new reality and, thus, in a short period of time, learn that humanity is not in control as it thought it was. The hidden agendas will be more clearly seen. In the chopping up of government and in the budget are many things hidden from the public, but we will see them all more clearly very soon. The accounting of what has been cut is vague, and some of the numbers are already seen to be obscured; the mists of Pisces make it hard to define what we are seeing. In April we will know a lot more, but the full accounting won’t be known for months. The changes (which is not a word people who lost their job would use) will have ripples for months all over the country and the world. People and their families are going to suffer. The alleged purpose, to make government more efficient, is one of those theories that in Pisces looks great, in the laboratory. But in the real world of Aries, when the mist is blown off, we see something that had been concealed in fog.
The money saved, as advertised, is a moving target; we don't have any way to know what the results will be. Making changes in a structured, complex government spontaneously by people outside the government who simply say, "Trust me," is asking for chaos. The expenses and losses coming out of this method will be evident later.

Last year, the USA came out of a Pluto return.

History buffs, you know this painting is not from 1776, it's from the war of 1812. The banner wording makes it relevant now.

Reflecting back to Pluto’s first passage at the nation's birth, when it left Capricorn in the early years of America's history, the US was finally established as independent from Britain in 1776. Britain was the oppressive Plutonic empire of the day, with a king issuing edicts against which Americans rebelled to form its democracy. Pluto then as now entered Aquarius, and it was in the 12 years after Pluto left Capricorn and spent years transiting Aquarius that the Constitution was crafted. This transit of Pluto is Aquarian, forming shared power in a democracy. We are once again facing breaking away from a king, but this time, it’s a challenge of our own making, and we will be forced to make changes to the Constitution because the laws as written centuries ago have been shown to be severely lacking. Once again, we have to redistribute power and reform democracy.
This second Pluto transit through Aquarius is just beginning for the USA, and the country will face similar patterns as it did following Pluto’s first transit through Aquarius. Those decades were not easy. They brought struggle and internal civil strife. The Founding Father and first President George Washington was offered the role of King in America but turned it down in deference to setting the young nation on the road to democracy, and we are doing it again. He guided the US into and through the Civil War and the fight for racial equality, which we still struggle with today. We will face more revisions. Some States will favor one set of issues and some States will prefer another in all social issues, as we did before. It is possible that instead of forming a union, Pluto in Aquarius this time further defines individuality and States wish to break away from the US government as the US once broke away from Britain’s empire. Time will tell, but we should be prepared for this possibility. Pluto will break down to dust that which refuses to transform and use the dust to make the new cement structures.

Among the issues stirred up in recent weeks is the assertion that Canada should become an American state whether it likes it or not.

Canada's natal chart. Astrodienst.

Canada’s natal chart indicates some of this is more serious than first thought. Saturn has been transiting over Canada’s natal South Node for a few months, now passing. But Both Neptune right now and soon Saturn are transiting over Canada’s natal Chiron at 26 plus degrees of Pisces in the 3rd house. Ultimately, this is a healing experience, and indeed, Canada’s reaction to being threatened by American annexation has been to pull together and realign its trade agreements with other nations, reducing a dependency on the USA. Eventually, both Saturn and Neptune will be conjuncting Canada’s natal 1st house Pluto. Saturn first, in the Spring of 2027, Neptune years later. The first transit from Saturn is not a happy one; it’s prefaced by Saturn’s transiting squares to the natal Sun, Moon, and Uranus in the 8th house in 2025-26. These are economically challenging surprise expenses, plans begun with great optimism during the summer of 2025, with Jupiter making a series of conjunctions in Cancer, that end up not delivering as much as was hoped. By late 2025 through ’26, Pluto will oppose Canada’s natal 8th house Mercury. These are things like the economic pressures Trump promised to bring, or a natural disaster hitting, requiring new agreements to balance the books. Economic pressures. Pluto works over the long term, so it will be something like a war or longer-term depression. Saturn conjunct natal Neptune is a time for reflection and answering doubts about identity. In a few years, it is followed by transiting Neptune conjuncting natal 4th house Neptune in 2030-31. This is a time of rebirth of national ideals, rediscovering the beauty of the home country.
There’s abundant scientific projection that by 2030 planetary changes related to climate have or are occurring. It’s possible that large shifts in population are happening, mostly from the south (USA) to the north (Canada) and national identities are being redefined.

Mexico’s natal chart shows a similar pattern.

Mexico's natal chart. Astrodienst.

Along a similar timeline, transiting Saturn and Neptune in Aries will square Mexico’s natal 11th house Uranus beginning this Spring. This is trouble with bringing people together domestically and internationally in the conventional way. Mexico will be forced to innovate, and it will succeed. In a couple of years along a similar timeline approaching the Spring of 2027, Mexico will have difficult economic times for reasons mostly to do with itself, not foreign nations. Some difficulty nurturing people, feeding people, crop growth, probably climate-related, needing some adjustment and altering ways of life.

In the US chart, an extended karmic period of crisis, rebirth and new values

USA natal chart. Astrodienst.

Later into the summer of 2025 and for the following two years, transiting Saturn will be opposite natal Saturn in the US chart from the 4th to the 10th house. Everyone in the world will know these are hard times in the US, and everyone will know why: it’s self-inflicted. There will be confusion in two years when Neptune opposes natal Saturn. Both transiting Saturn and Neptune will square the US natal Venus, Sun and Jupiter in the next two years, in the 7th house. This clearly indicates restrictions, austerity and tensions at home and with foreign nations. Also beginning in about two years, and lasting for 2 or 3 more years right up to 2030, transiting Pluto will conjunct the US South Nodes in the 2nd house. This indicates an extended karmic period of economic crisis, crash, rebirth, and rediscovery of new values. Karmic periods are meant to reveal past mistakes.

The final climax in the cycle of retrograde Mars opposing Pluto occurs in late April

A very interesting transit happening now, at the same time as the Saturn/Neptune transit enters Aries, is with an ongoing retrograde Mars. It went retrograde late last October and entered into an opposition with transiting Pluto on election day 2024 in the USA.
It was Pluto’s last caper before leaving Capricorn at the tail end of the work it had done while in that sign for two decades. It is ironic that it was on the US election day and that the man who won has many Plutonic traits and the criminal characteristics of Mars opposite Pluto.
Pluto is the reformer but does it in a harsh way. For a people to learn about the virtues of a good legal system, it has to see crime. To learn about the costs of oppression, people have to be oppressed. (Some people know this already, maybe from another life experience, so some may not experience this.) Pluto brings darkness in order for us to bring light into the darkness and discover what the darkness is in us and what needs to be brought out where the light is.

Mars in opposition to Pluto does it in a crushing way, a rather primitive direct expression of anger in a grab for power. Because this opposition fell on election day 2024, I was expecting something criminal to take place. Maybe something criminal did take place and we learn of it in late April 2025 when Mars makes its final opposition to Pluto in this series of three transits. Mars went direct and crossed the same opposition to Pluto in January, but this time, Pluto was in Aquarius. This last opposition is with Pluto in Aquarius so any criminal activity could be with technology.
The change of sign is important; Pluto in Capricorn in November was the same old mob-style crime in the dark. Pluto in Aquarius is not individual Pluto, it’s group Pluto, affecting a group of people together who experience some of the darker aspects of Pluto’s lust for power. What Pluto does is use that power to destroy. The final climax is when Mars makes its final of the three oppositions in the retrograde transit in late April. At the same time in late April, transiting Mercury will sextile the transit of Pluto and trine the transit of Mars. This is good news about the completion of the Mars opposition to Pluto transit. The news could be related to the election last November when Mars first opposed Pluto. The good news favors the collective (Aquarius), not the individual (Pluto in Capricorn).

In late June 2025, Jupiter transits into Cancer, and in July, Uranus transits into Gemini. Over the summer, Jupiter makes a few very positive and hopeful conjunctions to US natal planets in the 7th house. This is excellent energy for expanding a positive relationship with foreign nations. Uranus entering Gemini remains in the US 6th house of work and health. Uranus brings boom and bust. In Taurus, where it’s been for a few years, Uranus has been somewhat tame, with few wild swings. In Gemini, Uranus is in an Air sign and unshackled. Fortunes will be made or lost between now and then; more positively after the summer.

Comments welcome.
David can also be reached at [email protected] for a personal astrological consultation.
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