Photo by Krystle Merrow

Happy Aries season!

Aries, the first sign of the Zodiac, is a cardinal fire sign: Cardinal signs begin, and fire signs energize. This first month of the zodiacal year is about new beginnings, new energy, new opportunity, and doing it all first.  Aries is a newly lit match, ready to turn into any multitude of possibilities.

This year is a major, major, major year for Aries as a sign. At the end of March, Neptune moves out of Pisces, where it has been since 2012, and into Aries, where it will stay until 2038. This feels unfathomably far to me, but I guess that’s just as long as it’s been since 2012. Neptune was in its ruling sign in Pisces, so a move into Aries brings us out of that home territory. Neptune rules mystery, spirituality, consciousness, and dreams. In dysfunction Neptune can be escapist, and (as is Pisces) is associated with addiction of any kind. Under Pisces we saw a tremendous surge in the legalization of mind-altering substances, and pandemic lockdowns that saw a lot of people drinking and using drugs more than they normally would. I remember a New York Times article about a trend of people microdosing MDMA in their homes on weekday afternoons just for something to feel. This energy was extremely Neptunian, extremely Piscean.

Moving out of that and into Aries, we get the devotional energy of the gas giant occupying the identity-driven and competitive energy of the teeny baby ram. I think we’re going to see a tremendous rise in individualism, as well as the potential for hero-worship (frankly, as someone who reads a ton of science fiction, I would love a hero figure to emerge any minute now).

The journey of Aries doesn’t end with Neptune this year, though. For my first horoscopes of the year I shared how all the outer planets would be changing signs this year (following Pluto having already done so in November of last year). Saturn will also move into Aries this Spring, in May, joining Neptune and kicking off the Saturn-Neptune conjunction, one of the big astrological stories of 2025-26. These occur approximately every 36 years, so it’s the first time many people alive will be experiencing this as the last such conjunction happened in 1990. Saturn builds while Neptune dissolves, so this is the kind of astrology where our dreams meet our realities and vice versa.

All in all this points to a big year (and coming years) for Aries and all the Cardinal signs, and for anyone who has these signs at an important point in their charts. Given how many people that is, it’s a good example of the way that global transiting astrology (the state of the world) has effects on our own charts (our individual lives).

Dear readers, I wish we were in easier times. Our astrology describes the tumult and constant change we are facing. I want (us all) to experience joy, calm, ease, but I also need to experience and express anger at the world preventing those things. Ruled by Mars, Aries is a sign of anger and of immediate expression.  These horoscopes are related to anger, and how I might suggest you express it. You can read for your Mars sign as well.

These words by Aisha Sasha John help me when I need to let anger steam and erupt out of my body:

My anger is hope for my own righteousness.
I have to be angry to have any hope of being good.
For anything to mean I have to
Be angry, i.e., sad
I have to
Weep so I don’t
Die

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