NOT SURPRISINGLY, GIVEN THE NATURE of the planet Neptune and the sign Pisces, it has taken astrologers 14 years (half a Saturn cycle, which always equates with a revelation) to comprehend just what we, as Earthlings, inherited through Neptune’s long pass through the Zodiac’s closing sign.
The equation was tricky. Pisces is an amorphic force field, not easily contained or defined—its energetic momentum is akin to a genie released from a bottle, which is to say unpredictable. The sign’s central puzzle is finding a way to channel and then ground the strong connection it has to the imagination (which can move in dozens of different directions simultaneously, without really landing anywhere concrete).
Pisces also expresses the unconscious contents of the collective—a storehouse filled with what a culture has forgotten or repressed. These abandoned contents can overwhelm our relationship to present time. As Neptune is equated with vision and worship, with the Pisces transit, we experienced an entire societal group replaying, reliving, and reimagining what was once—but is no more. This story is ancient when it comes to the machinations employed by politicians appealing to the shadow force of nationalism. But this tactic had extra oomph during the Neptune/Pisces transit. It became all-encompassing.
Because Neptune foments visions, longings, and obsessions, you can see how the Pisces transit figured poorly for progressive ideas or possibilities. Romanticizing the past took on religious connotations. And the vulnerability of falling prey to someone, like, say, a carnival-barking grifter—someone who could promise a reconstitution of that past—was impossible to avoid. Add to this the glut of low-info voters (fallout from the Pisces/Aquarius transit that shifted media into the realm of social networks) and, well, MAGA.
Angry that an eloquent Negro occupied the White House in 2008, the fledgling Tea Party finally congealed into a major conservative movement by the time 2010 arrived—just as Neptune was approaching the cusp between Aquarius and Pisces. The allure of what the good ole days were about—when minorities were held in check, women were wed and pregnant, and gays were unwed and still a sexual stigma—was too pressing to not engage with in 2011.
The Tea Party laid the foundation and stoked the perfect crucible for the MAGA stew to gurgle and boil. One of the more unsavory expressions of the sign Pisces is the lure of martyrdom. And MAGA martyrdom, over the years, has turned the GOP into a party of endless grievance. Regardless of the amount of political capital the party gained, nothing could ever correct—nothing could punish hard enough—the progress the world made as it lurched into the future.
Cultural changes are usually glacial, but the acceleration of liberal ideologies—while Neptune transited Aquarius—was doomed for blowback. Add to this the sign Pisces’s association with the erstwhile Christian Age—(the Age of Pisces)—that is also receding—and it’s easy to see why Christian nationalism had become inserted into our current mix of cray-cray nostalgia.
Astrologer Liz Greene once wrote that Piscean/Neptunian individuals often appear “flagrantly in love with his or her own misery.” When I first read this description, I flashed on Donald Trump, with his endless litany of complaints, grievances, and never-quelled ill will. Although he’s not a Piscean by birth, as a politician he has become the figurehead that plays out the sadomasochistic components of the Neptune through Pisces transit.
It’s a movement that not only takes pleasure in the suffering of those who oppose its values, but—more strangely—finds pride in its own suffering. MAGA supporters see personal hardship as a way to prove their loyalty to Trump and the cult. As the consequences of the “Big Beautiful Bill” begin to unfold, prepare to see this kind of self-inflicted harm pushed to even greater extremes.
One wonders what the tipping point might be. I’ll talk about this in my next swipe at trying to pin down the most amorphous of planetary transits.
Love,
• Is Astrology Making You Crazy?
• Charisma: What’s YOUR Quota?
• Can Science Prove or Disprove Astrology?
• Mark Zuckerberg: Trouble Child
• Nonsense & Malaise: Astrological Insights for Maneuvering the Hive
