The Beginning of the End of the Madness: A Tale of Neptune in Aries
The transit that once ended Salem’s witch trials and ignited the Civil War is upon us again - what Neptune in Aries means for us now
There was a time that those of us of a certain vintage can remember when we could all hear each other better. When disagreement didn’t instantly mean danger and when politics wasn’t a blood-sport and “the other side” still felt like fellow citizens, not existential threats. We could argue, debate, roll our eyes, and still recognise that beneath the noise we were part of the same world, the same country, the same shared story.
And then…something shifted. A fog rolled in; a strange, subtle, creeping haze that blurred the boundaries between truth and feeling, fact and belief, reality and projection. We didn’t notice it at first, but over time, the world divided into tribes of emotion, each convinced their version of the story was the only one that mattered.
That fog was Neptune in Pisces.
Neptune is the planet of imagination, empathy, idealism, and illusion, and wherever Neptune goes, it dissolves boundaries; it melts the edges between people, ideas, and institutions. It can inspire unity or breed confusion, depending on whether we use its fog to dream or to delude.
Neptune moved into Pisces in 2011, towards the end of Obama’s first term, when the collective dream of progress started to splinter. When the planet of illusion moves through the sign least equipped to question it, belief drifts toward extremes, untethered from friction or consequence.
Remember KONY 2012, when millions of us were swept up overnight in a viral wave of emotion that outran context? That was a perfect early snapshot of the Piscean climate to come: moral urgency, emotional certainty, and reality-testing struggling to keep pace. From there, the pattern hardened into binary world-views - left versus right, culture wars, MAGA versus woke, masks and vaccine outrage and misinformation - where identity replaced inquiry and feeling stood in for truth.
Neptune in Pisces also created the conditions for the rise of Donald Trump, a figure who thrived not by clarifying reality, but by exploiting confusion, grievance, spectacle, and illusion as Neptune’s Piscean fog rolled back in. His rise into politics, his entire first and his second term, and the chaos he caused in between, all happened in the last fifteen years, while Neptune was in Pisces dissolving the center, amplifying the extremes, and splitting us not just politically, but psychologically, into two warring dreamworlds with almost no shared language left between them.
But the thing about fog is that it never lasts, and today - 26 January 2026 - Neptune moves out of Pisces at last and into Aries - from the last sign of the zodiac into the first, from the dream into action.
We are living through the end of a Neptunian cycle that began 160 years ago, around the time of the Civil War. The last time Neptune left Pisces for Aries, the United States had already spent years arguing over what was true, what was moral, and what kind of country it believed itself to be. By the time Neptune crossed this threshold in 1861, the nation was no longer divided by policy, but by reality itself.
In 1861, Neptune’s movement into Aries coincided with the Civil War, marking the moment when the illusion that the country could continue as it was finally collapsed, and belief was forced to meet consequence.
Now, in 2026, we step across that threshold once again.
This is the point where a society can no longer live inside the stories it has been telling itself. Where projection stops working. Where fog stops being sustainable. Where reality, quietly and without negotiation, reasserts itself.
The question for us now is not whether history repeats, but which illusions of our own time can no longer survive contact with reality.
Neptune hasn’t just turned a page - it has closed an era. And what happens next will not be decided by what we believe, but by what we choose to do as our ideals, at last, meet reality.
We don’t have to guess what comes next. We can look to the patterns of the past. This cycle has played out before, and history leaves us a trail of clues - what to expect, what to watch for, and what becomes possible when illusion gives way to consequence.
This writing leans on the wisdom of planetary pattern recognition. If you’d like to know more - and why I don’t believe in astrology - read all about it HERE
Salem and Neptune’s Piscean Witch Hunt
From 1684 to 1697, as Neptune moved through the realm of Pisces, the American colonies were gripped by a peculiar kind of terror. Neighbours accused neighbours of witchcraft. Children’s fits became evidence of something satanic. Spectral visions were treated as fact. Courts accepted testimony based on feelings, dreams, and suspicions. Authority figures acted not on proof, but on conviction. Entire communities became convinced that evil was living quietly among them, hidden in plain sight.
This was the world of the Salem witch trials, unfolding while Neptune traversed the Piscean sky.
Salem wasn’t an isolated event. It was the peak expression of a culture already primed for moral panic, religious absolutism, and fear of invisible enemies. The colonies had become psychologically organised around belief rather than evidence, conviction rather than reality.
And then, around 1697, something changed. Neptune moved out of Pisces and into Aries, and the witch trials stopped abruptly. Courts reversed their positions. Public apologies were issued. Restitution was made to the families of the accused. The hysteria that had consumed entire towns simply lost its grip.
The fear didn’t disappear - it grounded.
Attention shifted away from mystical threats and back toward the practical realities of land, survival, borders, politics, and conflict. The invisible enemy was replaced by real-world concerns that demanded real-world responses. A society consumed by spiritual paranoia was pulled back into material reality.
The fog lifted because the environment no longer supported the illusion. Neptune in Aries did not bring enlightenment, but a healthy dose of reality. And in that reality, the witch hysteria could no longer survive.
Slavery, Civil War and Neptune’s National Split
160 years later, from 1847 to 1861, Neptune once again moved through Pisces, and once again the United States entered a period where belief began to outrun reality.
The country did not simply disagree over policy. It divided into moral universes. The North and the South no longer argued over economics or governance, but over what was right, what was human, what was ordained by God, and what kind of nation America believed itself to be. Sermons, pamphlets, newspapers, and political speeches were saturated with moral certainty. Each side was convinced the other was not just wrong, but dangerous. Not misguided, but evil.
Facts mattered less than conviction. Institutions struggled to hold authority. Trust eroded. The national conversation became charged, emotional, absolute.
This was the era of “Bleeding Kansas,” of John Brown’s raid, of escalating tensions that felt at once inevitable and unreal - a country drifting toward something it could sense but could not yet see.
And then, in 1861, Neptune moved into Aries and the debate stopped being theoretical. The illusion that the country could continue to exist while holding two incompatible realities collapsed and what had been argued in churches, newspapers, and political halls for years was suddenly forced into the physical world. The moral and psychological split became a lived one.
Neptune in Aries did not cause the Civil War - it was other planets in other parts of the sky that brought the war signature - but it marked the moment when belief was forced to meet consequence, and when a nation could no longer live inside the stories it had been telling itself.
The fog did not lift because people agreed but because reality made the argument unavoidable.
The Modern Age of Delusion
Jump forward another 160 years, and we come to 2011, when Neptune once again began moving through Pisces, and once again society began organising itself around belief more than evidence.
This last fifteen years with Neptune in Pisces has been the era of MAGA versus woke. Of conspiracy thinking and moral panic on all sides. Of social media turning into a projection machine. Of institutions losing legitimacy. Of people living in parallel realities with almost no shared agreement about what is true.
Facts have mattered less than conviction. Identity has mattered more than dialogue. Politics has stopped being about policy and started being about emotion, tribe, and worldview. The other side hasn’t felt wrong - it has felt dangerous.
Donald Trump’s entire political rise unfolded inside this Piscean fog, and so did the cultural extremes, the online outrage cycles, the moral crusades, the spectacle, the grievance, the sense that we were living through something surreal and disorienting that nobody quite knew how to name.
For fifteen years, we have lived in a climate where projection was easy and reality-testing was hard, but right now, that era is ending. As Neptune moves into Aries for the next fifteen years, the fog we’ve been living in is becoming unsustainable.
Aries is not interested in what you believe, but what you do. Where Pisces allowed people to live inside stories, Aries forces those stories to meet consequence. Where Pisces dissolved edges, Aries hardens them. Where Pisces asked What do you feel is true? Aries asks What can you prove is real?
When Neptune leaves Pisces and enters Aries, history shows us that a society stops living inside belief systems and starts confronting what those beliefs have produced. Think embodiment, consequences and exposure.
In the 1600s, this looked like a sudden end to witch hysteria and a return to practical reality.
In the 1800s, it looked like the moral and psychological split of the country turning into physical reality.
And now, once again, we step into that same climate. This is not the part of the cycle where people argue less, but the part where argument stops being theoretical. It’s where rhetoric collides with outcomes, institutions are tested by action, not words, leaders are judged by what they do, not what they say and systems built on narrative begin to strain under reality.
The Pisces era allowed projection.
The Aries era removes the buffer.
This is why the world already feels sharper and more confrontational, even though Neptune has only just entered Aries. Political theatre is beginning to feel inadequate. Institutions are being tested by action, not words. Rhetoric is starting to meet real-world outcomes.
We are moving out of the age where narrative outran reality and into the age where reality outruns narrative. The fog years are over. Now begins the era where what survives is what can stand in reality.
And if you want a clue as to what comes next, not just this year, but across the next decade and beyond, the pattern in the sky is mapped out below:
Neptune into Aries, personally
Neptune entering Aries represents the end of a 15 year-long cycle not just for the world, and for systems, but for each of us personally.
If you think back to who you were around 2011, and who you’ve become in the fifteen years since - that cycle is ending. The energy that fuelled that persona and that chapter of your life is flickering out, and Neptune is offering a new wave of energy for you to ride for the next stretch.
Neptune in Pisces was where identities dissolved before new ones formed. Where old certainties melted and people outgrew old roles, careers, relationships, and belief systems without yet knowing what would replace them.
For some, it felt like grief without a clear cause.
For others, like drifting without a clear direction.
For many, like waiting for clarity that never quite arrived.
That wasn’t you failing to get your life together.
That was the Neptune climate.
And now, something very different begins.
As Neptune moves into Aries, you may suddenly feel an urge to make decisions you’ve postponed for years, or to leave situations you’ve tolerated. To start things you’ve only dreamed about or to reclaim parts of yourself you slowly let blur away. You may feel a new impatience with your own hesitation. None of that’s random. That’s the shift.
Some people will feel this more immediately than others.
Those with an Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn Sun will feel this most directly. These are the signs Neptune will actively push on over the coming years. If you’re one of these signs, expect a gradual but undeniable reshaping of who you are, how you live, and what you are willing to accept. This is identity-level change.
Pisces and Virgo Suns will feel this as a release. A sense that a long, confusing period is finally ending. The pressure to feel, to carry, to dissolve, to empathise with everything eases. Life becomes simpler, clearer, more actionable.
Leo and Sagittarius Suns often feel inspired under this shift. They feel the fire and the desire to move, build, create, and step forward grows stronger.
Taurus, Gemini, Scorpio, and Aquarius Suns tend to feel this more internally at first - a quiet but growing restlessness that builds over the next few years before translating into visible change.
But everyone, regardless of sign, will feel the same underlying thing: A sense that the waiting is over and that the time for drifting is ending. That the dream phase of life is hardening into the part where you actually build the world you want to live in.
We are crossing out of the fog years and into the action years.
If you’re not sure of your Sun sign, or want to know specifically how this major shift will play out against your own unique natal chart, you can Ask Arion - an astrology website I was a part of building that uses your birth details and cutting edge AI technology so you can literally ask Arion any questions you have about your chart. It’s free to sign up, and when you do, simply ask Arion “How does Neptune moving into Aries play out in my own chart?”
If you’re interested to know the shape of what comes next specifically for you, according to the stars, click below:
The End of the Guru Era
Neptune rules spirituality, mysticism, faith, and our tendency to project meaning onto other people. In Pisces, this projection was at its strongest, so people searched for saviours, healers, teachers, and guides. We placed enormous faith in voices that felt comforting, inspiring, or transcendent. We wanted to believe - and often, we did - but Aries is not interested in who sounds enlightened.
Aries is interested in who is.
As Neptune moves into Aries, spiritual authority in all its forms will be quietly tested against reality. Not through scandal for the sake of drama, but through a simple, unavoidable question: Does this person live what they teach?
The era where charisma alone could carry someone a long way will begin to fade. No longer will vibe, aesthetic, and emotional projection be enough to carry someone. Gone are the days where mood, branding, or mystique are enough.
Neptune in Aries changes the metric, demanding embodiment, integrity, and proof. It says “Show me your life, show me your work, show me the consequence of what you say.” The influencers whose authority was built on projection will fade, and what rises in its place will be the practitioner, the builder, the person whose life is the proof.
This is why, over the coming years, you may see well-known spiritual figures exposed for hypocrisy, institutions built on image struggling to maintain credibility, people stepping away from gurus and turning inward instead, and a general shift from “follow me” spirituality to “stand in yourself” spirituality.
Neptune in Aries does not dissolve faith. It purifies it. It asks us to stop projecting divinity onto others and start embodying it ourselves. It calls time on the age of the guru and marks the beginning of the age of personal sovereignty.
This is not a time to look outward for who to follow.
It is a time to look inward for how to stand.
As Neptune moves into Aries, the invitation is deeply personal. We don’t need to become louder, bigger, or more certain, just more honest with ourselves about where we are out of alignment between what we believe and how we live.
This transit is not asking us to be perfect - just real. To bring our spirituality down out of the clouds and into our daily choices. To let our values show up in how we speak, how we work, how we love, and how we treat ourselves when no one is watching.
In so many ways, Neptune in Aries is calling us all out of our head knowledge and into our heart knowledge, and asking us to anchor in our own inner authority. Take small, courageous actions that align with what our hearts already understand and let our lives become the quiet proof of what we believe, rather than needing to announce it.
We can move through Neptune in Aries with grace, not by following the next voice that sounds enlightened, but by actually becoming a person that is a reflection of the deepest part of ourselves - the soul, and the heart.
My intention in my writing is to lessen the climate of fear around world events by offering clarity and cosmic context for what’s unfolding; to bring context to the chaos. I believe our highest calling right now is to anchor in the vibration of love & truth and call in a more beautiful world, and to do that, we must lean out of fear. I hope you read this with an open, uplifted heart.
This is so very grounding. Thank you. It shines a bright light on the responsibility we have - any of us who lead, coach, guide, teach, illuminate - to be sure we redirect/decline projections upon us to take on the role of guru. To be sure we are consciously illuminating the hearts, courage and wisdom of those we meet along the way as we live into our own paths.
Excellent!