This is a story about the most awesome astrology pattern of 2025/26, the conjunction between Saturn and Neptune. It’s not a sad story, but it is a story about sorrow. And grief. Disappointment too. In fact, Saturn/Neptune is the story of all the despair, anguish, or heartache that comes of painful life events.
The moral of the story, and the lesson of this Saturn/Neptune moment in history, is how to navigate spiritual dilemmas like these in surprising ways.
Why are Saturn/Neptune times painful?
Astrology academic, Liz Greene, a distinguished writer and Jungian analyst, believes the Saturn/Neptune dilemma to be one of life’s most fundamental conflicts. Why is this?
The answer lies in the radical incompatibility between the essential energies of Saturn and Neptune.
The Neptune archetype brings awareness of the sacred. We notice synchronicities, dreams, and symbols. We merge with others and feel their pain. We become tender and sensitive and compassionate. Our hearts break and soar in connection with something larger than ourselves.
Saturn instead demands a reality check. Grow up, face facts, accept limits, work hard to make something of yourself, respond with resilience, responsibility, and effort to your life crises, and keep going until you die.
Astrology legend, Richard Tarnas, explains the coming together of these wildly different energies as a painful clash between our ideals, hopes, and sensitivities, and the harsh facts of the real world.
Without knowing what this brings up for you right now, let’s explore the kind of experiences typical of Saturn/Neptune this year and next.
Dark Nights of the Soul
Saturn/Neptune often expresses as a circumstance that triggers a painful crisis of faith.
We’ve all had life experiences like these. Those times ‘When Things Fall Apart,’ as described by Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron. Or the ‘dark night of the soul’ of the Spanish mystic John of the Cross.
Familiar feelings that accompany these dark nights can include grief, sorrow, vulnerability, weakness, hyper-sensitivity, confusion, delusion, disillusionment, helplessness, hopelessness, fear, and anxiety.
None of this is comfortable, and we can become lost in the dilemma of trying to find a solution.
“You feel alone, in the jaws of fate, your veneer of security or perfection or certainty stripped away. Conditioned to do, to act, to find a way out, your inner hero flails at your fate. You are judged for your distress, by a culture that demands you conquer your battles. By a culture that exhorts positivity and disdains tears. Worse still, this critical voice becomes internalised as self-blame.”
For some it proves preferable to shut down or escape from such a spiritual crisis than to feel so helpless.
Collective Grief
Beyond our personal experiences, mass mourning can also feature in a Saturn/Neptune era like this. The death of Princess Diana is an example of a past Saturn/Neptune era, as is the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy.
The starving children of Gaza evoke a collective grief for many of us today. As does the irreversible tragedy of species loss that is happening on our watch, (see David Attenborough’s farewell documentary ‘Ocean’.)
Whatever the source of the suffering we wrestle with, the greatest despair is feeling forsaken by what might have prevented this tragedy. Why we ask, did this have to happen?
Healing for Saturn/Neptune
The best response to a Saturn/Neptune test, is not the heroic impulse to cure or fix reality. At least to begin with. It’s about finding a spiritual path to be with it.
Learning how to accept the pain of what has happened can be an enormous challenge. As can accepting loss as normal and necessary. No-one has perfect answers to this dilemma.
It is with respect for your own life experience and inner wisdom that I offer some Saturn/Neptune strategies that mentors have taught me.
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· Good self-care – be gentle with yourself through rest, sleep, diet, exercise, limiting stress, practicing self-compassion · Inner work and spiritual practices – create a safe space in which to feel your feelings, write your dreams, see a therapist, explore and write about your transits, meditate, pray. · Allow yourself to feel low a part of each day, without self-criticism, and then when you feel able to, change gears – go for a walk in the sunshine, read an uplifting book · If you don’t know the why or what to do, simply rest. Allow any grief and depression to unfold. Be with not knowing until things start to come together over time. · Appreciate what you are going through as a spiritual test. When you feel a little stronger, notice your extraordinary inner resources; how you have the abilities you need. · Let go of dreams that can’t work, or an era that is over, and create a plan to slowly build that part of your dream which is doable. Commit. · Wake up from any delusion or self-deception about what’s happening. Only then can you go forward. · Tend to your daily tasks mindfully, as if they are sacred. Chop wood, carry water. · Feel your feelings, crying is nature’s way to cleanse the heart, be honest about the pain and difficulties so you might move through it. · In the bigger scheme, you are loved, perfect, just as you are. Feel into this connection with a deeper force in the universe that is caring of you, guiding you, soothing you. · Service work – your encounter with suffering may eventually inspire you to want to help others, even in a small way. Reap the psychological benefits of giving. |
“Sometimes sadness is appropriate. Not something to run from, not something to numb . . . just something to feel.”- Marianne Williamson
Making Soul from a Dark Night (a case study)
Recently, I experienced a dark night of the soul. I blamed myself for the death of an innocent. The hero in me couldn’t change what happened or make it okay.
But once I was brave enough, I created a ritual through which to face my feelings (instead of wishing them away). I sobbed my sorrow, accepted responsibility for what happened, made a sacrament of my regret to that which I’d hurt, and handed it over to something bigger than me.
Ritualising my grief was deeply upsetting and powerfully cathartic. In the end though, I felt reconnected with some larger reality that helped me find peace.
This turning within, coming down into the feelings and the body, the eventual connection with a sense of meaning, is what some call soul-making. This beautiful healing perspective is so helpful in dark times and will be explored more deeply in my next blog post.
The Astounding Astrology of Saturn/Neptune today
Saturn and Neptune now station together in our solar system for the first time since 1989/1990. Remarkably, they sit at the midpoint of a miraculous and rare triangular alignment between all four outer planets, not seen for hundreds of years.
Acute Saturn/Neptune energy has been building all year and is now magnified to its most intense level. All of us are feeling it. Especially those who have a birth chart planet around 2° of a cardinal sign, (either Aries, Cancer, Libra, or Capricorn).
The potential for change this vast planetary pattern speaks to cannot be overstated. A turning point is beginning to take shape. Or a doorway to a new era.
But there is a catch. We must first lean into powerful Saturn/Neptune energy and let it change us.
Saturn/Neptune Wisdom
As heroes on life’s journey, we try to conquer our challenges and save the day. But sometimes we can’t. The good, or the fair, or the kind outcome, is not what happens. Problems seem irresolvable. The hero despairs, and loses hope.
But what if there is another way to respond to spiritual dilemmas like these?
We’ve explored how the wisdom that can hold us through a hard time grows through deepening our connection with meaning. We’ve explored how this connection can be nourished by compassion, patience, feeling our feelings, and coming down into reality. These are soul making strategies, that will be examined more fully in the future.
In common with all Saturn/Neptune strategies is the call for an inner journey. So too are we asked to trust in the evolution of how things are, even if we can’t see a way forward. This takes both courage and humility.
Becoming the ‘Wise Elder’
The Saturn/Neptune archetype is a part of our psyche that is crucial to our wellbeing. I like to think of this part as my ‘Wise Elder.’ She knows bad things do happen, and she knows melancholy. She knows that what seems a good path can turn into a barren gully. Her wisdom about these realities can guide me through hard times.
To imagine a Wise Elder within you, look to The Hermit card in the tarot. The Hermit is shown on a journey through a dark night, cowled against the cold, walking one step at a time across the lonely heath, finding the way solely by the light of a hand-held lamp.
This power of the Wise Elder is part of our human potential, and now is its time.
The astonishing astrology of 2025/26 is the story of Saturn/Neptune magic and how it is key to changes that are coming. This more soulful way of living may be crucial this year, and whenever there is despair. For when heaven meets earth and earth meets heaven, a hope that transcends despair becomes possible.
Copyright © Deborah Muffet 2025
“Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.”- Frank Baum, author ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’.
