Among the many radical astrological shifts coming in the next few years, perhaps the rarest and most important is that all three outer planets — Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto — will change signs within a few months. Taken individually, each sign change refers to a prominent shift in consciousness. Taken all together, we can scarcely imagine the scope of what is occurring, and it may take decades before we can look back and cognize the broader changes taking place.

Adding more depth and intrigue is that as these planets ingress into their new territories they will be aligned at important geometrical degrees. These particular alignments are referred to as "aspects of flow," meaning that the energies these planets represent are in harmony with each other rather than in conflict.

To throw in one more impressive factor, when Neptune re-enters Aries in 2026 it will be accompanied by Saturn, the two planets meeting at 0º Aries. This is a highly symbolic point as it is the first degree of the zodiac, corresponding with the Spring Equinox, the moment that represents the fate of the world for the year.

We are looking at an astounding confluence of astrological change and alignment within a very short time. This is both frightening and exciting to contemplate, and like all periods of major consciousness shift, such as the fall of Old Egypt, the European Renaissance, and the world wars of the 1900s, the birth of a new world entails some extent of destruction. The good news is that, due to the harmonized alignments of 2024-2028, we are looking at a more graceful and less destructive process that has a real potential to result in a more unified world.

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Uranus in Gemini: July 2025 - May 2033

Uranus symbolizes our yearnings for freedom and new creative life, and is also a trickster planet that will throw sudden disruptions into our path to completely alter our direction. It is the planet we link with revolutions and rebellions, sudden insights and disruptive technologies. Uranus pairs well with the airy sign of Gemini, given that both symbols emphasize intellect and social contact. During transits of Uranus in Gemini we tend to encounter revolutionary ideas, technological innovations that connect people, and the emergence of brilliant creative minds into the culture.

Gemini is the sign occupied by Uranus in the natal chart of the United States, which means that this ingress corresponds with the country's Uranus Return. Like all planetary returns, this symbolizes both disintegration and creative regeneration, a kind of death/rebirth process where the experiences of the previous cycle are sloughed off as a new cycle emerges.

Uranus Return periods have not been easy for the United States. Surveying every Uranus Return that has occurred within the lifetime of the U.S., we see they align with the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II. But as always with astrology, we must not jump to immediate conclusions that the same symbol will always yield the same result. In 2025, Uranus will enter Gemini at harmonized alignments to Saturn, Neptune, and Pluto, which may well provide enough stability to prevent such a destructive outcome.

Uranus in Gemini periods have also featured great technological inventions, particularly in the realms of communications and transportation (two key features of Gemini). The 1770s brought us the Watt steam engine, which propelled the steamboat industry. The 1860s saw the telegraph and the transcontinental railroad come into great prominence across the U.S. The 1940s was the peak of the age of radio, and in 1947 the transistor was invented at Bell Telephone Labs, enabling just about every communications device we today take for granted.

Neptune in Aries: April 2025 - March 2039

The last time Neptune entered Aries was on April 13th, 1861, just one day after the start of the Civil War. The United States was being threatened with "dissolution" — a preeminently Neptunian word that flowed from the pens of the day's leaders, including Lincoln, Lee, and Frederick Douglass. Neptune rules idealistic vision, Aries rules war. The Civil War was a time where the idealistic vision of the United States was being decided on the battlefield — either a vision of caste supremacy, or one of democracy.

It is worth noting again that even though this ingress of Neptune into Aries occurred with Uranus in Gemini, as will happen again in 2025, it does not expressly mean we are heading again into war. Indeed, in April of 1861 there was tremendous tension being wrought between Saturn, Uranus, and Mars (a very similar pattern was occurring on Jan 6, 2021). By contrast, the planetary energies of 2025 are far more harmonized.

More recently, as Neptune has transited Pisces, a sign where its power is greatly amplified, we have experienced many unfortunate Neptunian themes: delusional ideologies, grave deceptions, global disease, and mass death. These terrible events have generated a great deal of pent up need for clarity, moral courage, and higher purpose that will drive the events of Neptune in Aries. New spiritual leaders, some of them martyrs, will arise. New visions for the future of the world will be articulated, and renewed battles for clarity and truth will be fought in the media.

After Europe struggled through the Crimean War and its aftermath during the last transit of Neptune through Pisces, Madame Blavatsky, a Ukrainian, founded the Theosophical Society in 1875, at the culmination of Neptune in Aries. Theosophy was a new spiritual vision for a scientifically oriented age that incorporated all world religions, and continues to thrive today. Alongside the development of Theosophy was a popular rising of occult spiritualism, purporting to allow contact with "the other side," which spread like wildfire across America and England throughout the transit of Neptune in Aries.

Pluto in Aquarius: March 2023/July 2025 - January 2044

Major social innovations tend to occur while Pluto transits Aquarius. Given Pluto's slow movement through the zodiac, these innovations take time to build and become real for everyone. Sometimes the full impact of a revolutionary event, such as the signing of the Magna Carta or the English Reformation, is not realized until decades, even centuries, later.

Wealth and power that has been highly concentrated during Pluto's transit through Capricorn (such as 2008-2025) becomes more widely distributed as Pluto transits Aquarius. Adding to this dynamic is Uranus's entrance into Gemini in 2025, which will align at 120º, or trine, with Pluto, an alignment that is historically correlated with economic booms, distribution of new progressive technologies, and new forms of transportation and energy. We can imagine revolutionary technology like AI and nuclear fusion disrupting the status quo of concentrated power. We might also see the spiritual awakening of Neptune in Aries drive a sociopolitical revolution towards a more compassionate and inclusive global society.

Historical Correlates

The last time all three outer planets changed signs within a few months of each other was 1737, a year that falls at the height of what historians call The First Great Awakening. Uranus was at opposition to Neptune at the time, reflecting the religious rebellion against the rising tide of scientific, rational materialism. Pluto's trine to Neptune at the time fed tremendous emotional power to the religious cause, leading to a widespread and exuberant revival of Christianity in America as well as England. The shift in consciousness was a religious one, in reaction to a perceived lack of meaning and moral values. We can easily imagine, and correlate with the astrology, a reactionary humanitarian shift in the coming years.

Looking even further back, we see a similar pattern to the transits of 2025 in the years 1478-1479. This is significant for its relevance to the European Renaissance, centered in Florence, Italy. Florence was hit with an outbreak of plague during those years, a reoccurring danger that is thought to be a primary contributor to the conditions that gave rise to the Renaissance in the first place. It's also interesting to note that in 1533, as art, politics, and religion continued to be greatly transformed, Pluto entered Aquarius and Neptune entered Aries, an almost identical situation to the ingresses of 2025.

To put all of this into an even larger perspective, everything that is occurring this decade is part of the much larger transformation from the Pisces Age to the Aquarian Age. We reached the crux of the Pisces Age during the Renaissance, when the Spring Equinox came into alignment with the midpoint between the dual-fishes of the Pisces constellation — a transition from the "vertical fish" (religion, monarchy) to the "horizontal fish" (science, materialism, world discovery). This correlated with a profound shift in consciousness throughout the world, and here we are at the transition point between the end of Pisces and the beginning of Aquarius, once again synchronized with a rare outer planet dance.

The transition from Pisces to Aquarius is a transition from an age of illusory battles between good and evil into an age of humanity, when humans recognize that every good they have projected onto an image of God, along with every evil they have projected onto a perceived devil, is actually within every human being. Some have prophesied the Aquarian Age as a golden age, an assertion I believe is overblown. I think it will more likely be characterized as an age of sanity, where taking care of our social problems as humanitarians and Earth stewards will take precedence over everything else. To paraphrase the great environmentalist Rachel Carson, we will finally work to become masters of ourselves, rather than dominators over nature and each other. Every major astrological advent, such as those occurring this decade, is part of that broader context.

We are not meant for oblivion, nor rapture; we are meant to ground into the sober realism of our inherent humanity. But this is something we can do now, an act that brings medicine to a world buckling through cosmic gyrations. Every bit of work we do on ourselves is a gift given back to the collective. When good and evil, light and shadow, are re-incorporated into the human soul, the soul of civilization will flourish.

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