A Liminal Year Comes to an End: Neptune's 165 Year Journey Closes

Neptune is the planet of transcendence. It is the second furthest planet from our Sun, moving through a 165 year orbit that began its current cycle in 1862. As this cycle closes out, we find ourselves living through a liminal moment. The year 2025 has stitched worlds together. Neptune has drifted back and forth across the twenty-ninth degree of Pisces, the final degree of the zodiac in the sign it rules, while briefly stepping into Aries, the beginning of a new zodiacal story. This movement is one of the reasons 2025 has felt so perplexing, dream-like with sudden changes coming in and out with a seeming lack of coherence to their connection. It has stirred instability in the collective unconscious not as punishment, but as a way of revealing what lies beneath our personal awareness so that we can be reintegrate these exiled parts back into the whole.

The world birthed through the industrial revolution is losing its form. Pisces dissolves, dismantles, and unravels the realities we assume are permanent, and with Saturn—the builder of structure—moving through Pisces at the same time, the dissolution becomes unmistakable. The structural supports of a global storyline have begun to collapse. The center no longer holds. The plot is no longer clear. And in the murky water we meet what arises within when we don't "know." Can we meet the fear of the unknown with unconditional love?

As painful and confusing as this unraveling has been, it is not without purpose. We are releasing a world we have outgrown, and preparing for the one to come.

Neptune governs the collective unconscious, the unseen realms, and the web of connection that binds all beings. Since entering Pisces in 2011, it has pulled into view everything we were unwilling to face. Femicide, global sex trafficking, governmental corruption, racism, bigotry, and the perils of religious extremism have all risen into mainstream awareness. These revelations shattered illusions and forced us to confront the shadow of our human story. Many experienced waves of disillusionment as the truths we preferred to ignore became impossible to deny. Saturn’s arrival in Pisces in March 2023 intensified this process, asking us to acknowledge what is broken and grieve what has been lost.

“We cannot create a new future by holding on to the emotions of the past.”
—Dr. Joe Dispenza

In evolutionary astrology, Neptune retrograde in Pisces signifies a return to the source field. It strips away fantasies that no longer match who we are and dissolves emotional debris that blocks growth. It confronts avoidance and spiritual bypassing. It reveals the dreams that have reached their natural end. And 2025, especially, exposed the fears that surface when we don't know where we're going.

When Neptune stations direct in its final degree, it signals that the review is complete. What needed to surface has surfaced. What needed to be released has been revealed. Now begins the slow forward movement into integration.

Neptune conceals and reveals life’s mysteries so that we may discover them ourselves. As we approach 2026 and Neptune prepares to reenter Aries, the fog begins to lift. The new story is not fully visible, but its shape is becoming visceral enough to sense. Those alive today are co-creators with the universal forces that shape the next era. Whatever sits on your heart—whatever feels profound, urgent, life-giving—is not random. It is your soul’s spark calling you to give form to a desire that exists not only for you, but for those who will recognize themselves through it.

As we close out the year, spend time with this inner calling. The Winter Solstice invites us into the dark, into mystery, into the fertile silence where Neptune’s gifts become audible. In stillness, the longings of the soul whisper their truth. The coming year asks us to take these dreams seriously. Saturn and Neptune will join forces at the Zero Point—zero degrees Aries—on a lunar eclipse, initiating a heart-centered future for us all.

Over the next six weeks, as Neptune completes its journey through Pisces, give yourself permission to grieve, to soften, to expand. Allow compassion for your personal and collective history to rise in the space where the old story once was. How would you tell the story differently if you told it through the voice of love? This transition widens the heart. It helps the soul see through eyes that understand unconditional love, recognizing that all of us—divine children stumbling toward growth—are learning as we go.

May this passage offer a healing salve as you return home to yourself and then courageous dream anew.

If you're looking for support to move through this threshold, I have a few events curated to support you happening at The Bridge in Kingston, NY.

12/20 - Pause | A Winter Solstice Celebration with Tea, Astrology, and Sound

1/11 - True North Calling | A New Year Cosmic Mini-Retreat