by Robert Wilkinson
Neptune goes stationary retrograde at 3 Aries at 2:34 pm PDT, 10:34 am BST July 4. Major sea changes are in store for all of us!
When any of the planets go stationary retrograde, it marks a “forward station” in the orbit of that planet and the part it symbolizes in our personality (lower triad) or Spiritual Body (Upper Triad). The Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, and Mars are mainly associated with our personality, while Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are mainly associated with our connection with society and our larger aspirations and duties.
The outer “Invisible Quartet,” Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and TransPluto, show us the Transpersonal realms of existence. (While Uranus is occasionally very faintly observable, for all practical purposes it’s invisible to most.) Uranus individualizes us, and Neptune helps us move and groove within collective consciousness. Pluto shows us what must be purified to the core so we may know our Divine Power of eternal regeneration, and TransPluto shows us how to redeem growth after decay, and new life after a period of death or dormancy.
Any of these outermost planets going stationary retrograde indicates a threshold state in the Transpersonal energy field. Since we’re dealing here with Neptune going retrograde, and Neptune symbolizes collective consciousness and all it likes, supposes, and wonders about, we now enter a time when the collective atmosphere now reviews parts of what it explored and dreamed into manifestation since it last went direct at 28 Pisces in December 2024.
The Sabian Symbol for Neptune’s Station
Neptune represents what is “in fashion” in the collective. Different cultures and subcultures interpret this global pulse in different ways. This retrograde station is a high water mark, a crest of forward movement requiring us to review the shadow span from now through December when it goes stationary direct at 30 Pisces. We then move forward across the shadow zone one last time through April 23, 2026 when it leaves the shadow zone and enters 4 Aries.
The Sabian Symbol for the 3rd degree of Aries is “A cameo profile of a man in the outline of his country.” In the Astrology of Personality, where Rudhyar uses the original Dr. Jones' class notes on the symbols, Rudhyar says this is a degree of “the individual self as an avatar of greater collective reality; as participant in the larger scheme of society or life.”
In the Astrological Mandala, he states this degree involves "The sustaining power of the Whole, as the individual identifies himself with its life.” He goes on to say that “having become objectively aware of his nature and his basic humanity, the individualizing person finds power and inner security in realizing his essential identity with the section of the universe in which he operates.” He offers that this is a “participation mystique” between our individual consciousness and the Universal Consciousness.
He states this symbol is a phase where if we can identify ourselves with a larger complex of life activities, we can become “an agent through whom the Whole may express itself in an act of creative resonance and outpouring,” in other words, an “avatar.” This provides us an opportunity to become an ideal of a form of “transpersonal life and consciousness totally consecrated to and directed by a divine Power,” the Archetypal Self.
So by our willingness to participate in a “greater life,” we can become a manifestation of some collective need, vision, ideal, or yearning, and overcome any lurking sense of isolation, alienation, or feeling some form of the meaninglessness of life. We are told it falls in the span of “Realization,” and it’s the third degree of the actional level of the scene of Desire in the Act of Differentiation.
According to Dr. Jones, creator of the Sabian Symbols, this degree is a “breadth of participation in everyday affairs,” where we “epitomize (our) tradition and culture.” He states this symbol is one of “both an impersonal self-dedication to broader community interests and a highly personal dramatization of the self as a focus for group actuality.”
He offers us the keyword of EXPLOITATION. He states that when operating in a positive manner, this is a degree of our “capacity for giving full play to every ramification of the reality (we) have created for (ourselves)."
The Review
So our review of and within the collective field these next 5 months involves us flowing with the tide of growth into a larger life and become the answer to some collective need, ideal, or function as we see the appearance of “avatars,” new leaders on a social and global level. As this is the degree where the Venus made Her Inferior conjunction with the Sun while retrograde in late April, no doubt what’s coming was activated then and will accelerate in 2026 when Neptune, Saturn, and the inner planets all transit 3 Aries.
Here we could get “feeling glimpses” of a potential for a greater participation in life where we can impersonally dedicate ourselves to “broader community interests” and some group actualization. This will kick open new doors to new visions of self and society, and offers us all a chance to break through to a new dimension of awareness, function, and effectiveness after a period of a delay which will serve to set up what Saturn crystallizes in 2026.
We now get to feel the encoding of the new Aries collective ideal as collectively we review what’s been changing in the atmosphere the past several months. By late October Neptune will re-enter Pisces and go stationary direct at 30 Pisces, setting the dream we’ve been dreaming into motion at the end of the Neptune in Pisces era. This will be the last look back at Neptune in Pisces, but with our current Aries reference point, we should find more clarity and less delusion than the Neptune in Pisces era has brought us.
The Larger Tides of the Collective Field
So we now begin to review all we’ve experienced since last December within that vast “feeling field” known as Neptune. This review will last through the beginning of December 2025, when Neptune will go stationary direct at 30 Pisces. At that point we will again trace the span between 30 Pisces to 3 Aries, and will know what we have left behind and what we’re moving into as we set sail into a new collective field of awareness by late April 2026.
Neptune in Aries “dreams into collective consciousness” all that was awakened by Uranus when it straddled the cusp of Pisces and Aries between May 2010 and February 2012. The first decan of Aries is ruled by Mars/Aries with an added dose of Mars, so remember to monitor Mars’ transits during the time Neptune (and Saturn) are in Aries.
Tying past and present together, Uranus first transited 28-30 Pisces between late March and late May 2010, mid-August to early November 2010, and January through early March 2011. Uranus first transited Aries late May to mid-August 2010, sitting at 1 Aries the entire time. It went back to Pisces through early March 2011 when it entered Aries again and got to 5 Aries in July when it went SRX. It then transits back to 1 Aries and then back to 5 Aries between July 2011 and April 2012 when it left its shadow zone. This is the time when those “chickens are coming home to roost.” That cycle of "expanded awakening" is now "being dreamed" into the collective field AND we'll collectively get a look back at the past 13-14 years.
Most recently, Jupiter expanded those early Aries themes of initiation, finding objectivity through humor, and the appearance of avatars and new leaders, when it occupied this zone in May 2022, again while retrograde October 2022, and again while direct in late December 2022 and January 2023. Whatever was awakened in those past is now going to echo back, since the stone thrown into the pond then will now ripple throughout collective consciousness.
When any of the outers go retrograde or direct, it shows as major “sea changes” in the global field. Neptune going retrograde will affect that part of our Hologram that interfaces with the collective field. Up to now, we’ve all been moving through the dreamscape wherever we have early Aries.
Other Factors in the Collective Field
So the tide has turned again! We’re now sailing back across familiar parts of the Aries ocean we’ve been navigating since Neptune entered Aries in late March 2025, making its first solid sextile to Pluto since 1994! Given that Uranus is about to enter Gemini in a few weeks for several months’ occupancy of the first 2 degrees of Gemini, we’ll continue to have favorable aspects between Saturn and Uranus, and Uranus and Neptune, all all with Pluto for the rest of this year and beyond. Given Neptune’s back in sextile to Pluto, it’s like we can expect a “return to harmony” in the spiritual field with Uranus in Gemini, Neptune in Aries, and Pluto in Aquarius making a double sextile/trine.
Because of the important aspects now in play, keep your focus on being present in the flow and be open to learning what you’ll need to be visited by “Santa Claus” in the Autumn, Winter, and Spring. We’ll see new ideals this Summer and new initiatives. The collective is about to become more impatient than they’ve been for years!
While Neptune’s effects are deep and vast, we also have new initiatives rapidly taking shape which are leading us to an emergence of a new way of expressing our individuality in 2025. In past year we had opportunities to develop our empathic connection to the collective field, “knowing” without using our mind. Now it’s time to prepare for action.
Now we review our sense of the new leadership qualities we need to find within. We’ve reached the end of our collective fogging, ambivalence and immersion in a collective watery field. Keep taking time occasionally to tune out the white noise of outer things and listen to the Voice of the Silence which can teach you the Wisdom you need.
We are in a time of powerful spiritual growth into our authentic power to take a new direction, become leaders, or in some way accept a new way of life within a new collective field. This station activates a new collective Neptunian theme related to the material-actional dimensions
All we build this year is serving the new era launched in December 2020 at the Grand Mutation in Aquarius. We have begun a new world with new visions, new ideals, and new ways of relating to and working with each other. We’ve ended a 200 year materialistic Earth era and begun a 200 year idealistic Air era.
Much has been set in motion which is leading us through powerful collective transformation these next few years. Because of Saturn and Neptune crossing between the end and the beginning of the zodiac, we’re approaching a time of tension between the old and then new. We are now looking back from the threshold of sign changes, a time of seeing the future before it becomes real, a zone where the past has met the future at “the edge of time.” We’re literally “moving between worlds” right now, with an entirely new landscape coming for us all by 2026.
So we’re at the end of the end at the dawning of a brand new world. As it was once famously sung, “If I don’t meet you no more in this world, then I'll meet you in the next one and don’t be late. Don’t be late!”
The tide has shifted. See you in the review!
Here's the original article on Neptune in Aries
© Copyright 2025 Robert Wilkinson
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