The Spiritual Social

Tag: spirituality

  • Navigating the Saturn-Neptune Conjunction: Insights for 2025 & 2026

    A Google Gemini generated image showcasing the Gods Saturn/Cronos (left) and Neptune/Poseidon (right)

    I have been trying to finish this article for a while now, but I find myself so depleted of energy that what I set out to do when the day begins, becomes undetermined by night-time. I find myself going from one extreme of energy to another: either completely drained and bed-ridden, as the weight of the world suddenly crushes upon me, or filled with energy but having to move through so many tiny obstacles that by the time I resolve them all, I am depleted of energy again. As a consequence, my usually prolific creative output has been low and inconsistent, and maintaining my passion for work has been a great problem. I feel both a sense of dread and an upsurge of excitement for the future.

    I’m sharing this with you now because what I am experiencing is the felt reality of the great Saturn and Neptune conjunction, and I want to focus in this article on this specific cosmic energy. The reason this planetary configuration is affecting me to my core, is because I was born with a Sun in Pisces at 29 degrees (the anaretic, misfortune degree) in my 5th house (the seat of pleasure, divinity and passion) and a Jupiter in Aries at 4 degrees in the 6th house (the house of service work and daily routines). Therefore, the Saturn and Neptune movement through the final degrees of Pisces and the first degrees of Aries throughout 2025 and the Spring of 2026, is nestled right in between my Sun (energy and vitality) and my Jupiter (faith and growth), stunting them both. To say, that I am perceiving life as some form of prison of solitude is a minor understatement at the moment, and is conducive to a number of ailments I find hard to cope with. By writing about this experience, I reach out through the divide and feel less alone, less abandoned and sick.

    The timeline

    More broadly speaking, August 2025 is a very special month, marked by the retrograde movement of 4 planets (Saturn, Neptune, Pluto, including crowd-favorite Mercury, due to a retrograde through Leo) and more importantly it features the great conjunction between Saturn and Neptune, currently in the creative sign of Aries, moving around 0 and 1 degrees of this sign. Some astrologers would disagree in relation to the perfect conjunction of these two celestial spheres; some argue that only if two planets touch the same degree are they in perfect alignment, while others consider anything between 5 degrees of closeness a conjunction. Disenting voices judge the conjunction by the presence of planets in one specific astrological sign. I am of the latter group, and as such I want to bring out the importance of the month of August 2025, and then February and March 2026 for the great Saturn-Neptune meet up.

    What is a conjunction? A conjunction is defined by Heather Roan Robbins as: “Anytime two celestial bodies conjunct – meaning they dance close together – they first work together and blend meaning and purpose, then begin a new cycle in their relationship”.

    A Google Gemini generated image depicting the planets Saturn (left) and Neptune (right)

    The present conjunction sees the blending of the energies of two of the least rational signs of the zodiac and involving the least compatible planets of our solar system, and this brings with it overt conflict and internal pain. The fact that the flowing, mystical and illusory energy of Neptune is meeting none other than that of the pragmatic, disciplined and separatist Saturn, is a symptom of tension, but what makes the conjunction so hard to bear is having to wake up daily to feelings of despair, pessimism and despondency (after all, Neptunian or Saturnian folk are not known in astrology for their cheery optimism).

    In the battle of the giants, one wants to dissolve limits and merge with emotion (Neptune), while the other wants crystal clarity and harsh boundaries (Saturn); one wants to fight & win (Aries) while the other forgives and is letting go (Pisces). All the best and worst qualities of these 2 zodiac signs and these two planets are currently emerging into the collective in confusing and chaotic ways, guided as they are by rebel-rousing motor of Pluto in Aquarius. Pluto is stealthily working to change society through shocking moments of pain and outrage that amplify our collective awareness. None of these energies is tender or loving.

    With the first movement of Saturn into Pisces in March of 2023, a temporal cycle was activated which embraced the loose movements of Saturn and Neptune through the last sign of the zodiac (Pisces) and the first sign of the zodiac (Aries), alongside Jupiter’s (for a brief period in 2023), Chiron in Aries and the North Node /South Node axis crossing through Aries and Libra in 2023-2024, and now through Pisces and Virgo. The preparatory ground was therefore created for their almost perfect encounter in the month of March 2025, when Saturn in Pisces was at 24 degrees just as Neptune in Pisces at 29 degrees was ready to switch into Aries.

    Following on from that brief tete-a-tete, we are now spectating their full-blown tango as the first two weeks of August 2025 sees Saturn at 1 degrees of Aries with Neptune overlapping. From the 17th of August onwards, and due to its annual retrograde, Saturn wil begin to slide back into 0 degree Aries and then officially back into Pisces on the 2nd of September. Saturn will stay in Pisces until just short of Valentine’s Day, on the 15th of February of 2026.

    This means that whatever concerns and themes you are riddled with in July and August of 2025, they will make a comeback in full-force (as the planets will be direct) in the last two weeks of February and throughout most of March of 2026. As a sidenote, I will turn 39 under this auspicious sky on the 20th of March of 2026 and God help me, I hope to survive this transit since Saturn can bring illness conducive to death and my health has been in shambles under this conjunction, so far. The conjunction can also bring a sense of victimhood and delusions of contempt based on being of service to society but never been valued for it, so keep your victimising tendencies in check.

    To recap, the baseline dates are: March 2025, July-August 2025 and February-March 2026. As a brief exercise, look back across the last two-to-three years of your life and see if any significant events took place during these months, as a way to foretell what areas of concern in your life will become activated next year in Spring again. For me, it’s my work and professional path, my relation to the public and my legacy, as the Sun’s transit throughout March and August is illuminating my 6th and 10th astrological houses. Whatever gets activated by the Saturn and Neptune conjunction will be set on fire by the Sun’s transit and next year promises to be pivotal since the final conjunction of Saturn and Neptune will be in a weird aspect to the Sun in Pisces loosely conjunct the North Node in Pisces.

    It may be that events are more intense and impactful the more planets and points you have in the signs of Aries and Pisces in your natal chart. If you have none in these signs, then consider any Libra and Virgo placements, as these are opposite signs of the zodiac wheel and the Shadow zones of Aries and Pisces.

    Personal Characteristics of the Saturn-Neptune Conjunction

    La Miseria (1886). Cristobal Rojas

    I’ll begin by sharing with you, some personal things I noticed in relation to this Saturnian and Neptunian energy, the cycle of which began to be felt from March of 2023, when Saturn went ingress in Pisces.

    Irrespective of the many problems this transit has brought into my life (the worst of all being my dad’s cancer diagnosis and subsequent death), I feel privileged enough that in my position as an astrologer I get to experience first-hand the effects of this once-in-a-lifetime astrological cycle. Some of the things I will describe below have been things I personally have been going through but also what I have noticed among my family members, work mates and clients.

    The biggest theme seems to be that of illness, an illness that can lead to positive changes in your life or to having epiphanies during victim-like, trance states. Being put into a position to suffer, however difficult, can be exactly the pathway forward in life. If you refuse to feel your pain you get stuck in a weird limbo until you bravely accept to feel all of your uncomfortable feelings. By undertaking an emotional ordeal you not only heal your heart and relieve some of the physical symptoms they may be causing in your body, but you also reconnect or (for some connect for the first time) with divinity, a sense of a higher being watching over you. Your suffering therefore has a purpose.

    In addition, I also noticed that things break down or are in need of fixing and repair, in a state of flow. Like a wave crashing onto the shore, a problem appears in your life needing resolve. One thing is resolved and another problem appears that requires immediate attention and effort, just like another wave crashing onto your life shore.

    There is also a pervasive feeling of needing to work to survive, but work is chaotic. You may not know exactly towards what specific goals to work towards or where to put effort into, mostly because you may be feeling like your work does not yield results or it gains you an sufficient income. Even worse, the circumstances that offer your work some structure are falling apart right before your eyes: a flood destroys your factory, the company that employs you is merging with another or goes bankrupt over-night, you can’t seem to fit your skills into any job description, your work becomes redundant due to updates and innovations, etc. Moreover, the work effort necessary to achieve a specific goal is disproportionate to the task at hand or the tools and the materials needed to accomplish it, because there are constant updates, repairs and improvements.

    To add to this, nothing is as it seems and you may be feeling like you are living under a perpetual state of dreaming, which often feels good like a sedative and other times it can quickly morph into your worst fears and transform your reality into a night-mare. If something initially looks terrifying or unappealing it is most likely a flash in the pan; while on the other hand, if something is appealing and beautiful it is most likely a mirage. Illusions of the mind abound and as such, mental health issues are on the rise. Waking up to reality can feel like taking a cold shower. What is a good opportunity can turn into something awful and what is a difficult path to walk on, can prove to be easier than imagined. It helps if you find courage to feel your fears and do what is right anyway.

    To add to this, we collectively experience a need for boundaries, for some form of control or regulation that establishes fairness. Individually, we may feel that only with discipline can we succeed in these uncertain times, but all of these tough desires seem to evaporate as soon as practical implementation begins. Schedules change throughout the day as people change their minds or fall in and out of conscious awareness, and the paradox is that the changes should be welcomed rather than resisted because the outcome will be much better for everyone involved. The part that requires some work is the one about needing to cope with the uncertainty and the delays caused by such readjustments, and here is where practicing flexibility becomes a way of life. Much like that old saying the reed that bends the wind cannot break, or something similar…

    Probably the worse side-effects of the Saturn-Neptune conjunction are the physical ailments that multiply when emotions are overwhelming. The body parts mostly affected are the skin, the feet, the eyes, the head, the circulatory and the nervous systems. In terms of astrological body archetypes, these are the organs and biological components traditionally under the rulership of the sign of Aries (the head especially) and Pisces (the feet).

    There are also frequent sleep disturbances and problems with drinking water and keeping hydrated: wanting so badly to sleep but having your sleep interrupted by other people’s activities (noise pollution especially and auditory hallucinations), then not being able to fall asleep because of all the things you are thinking of doing. Living within such altered mind states makes us more prone to consume narcotics to self-sedate and achieve relaxation at all costs, even at risk of dissociating from reality.

    This then creates a mixture of deep fear and excitement but one that is not conducive necessarily to sexual arousal. In terms of sex, there are mixed feelings about it: either too much or none at all; either complete disconnect from the sexual impulse and reverting all the energy into creative work, or being suddenly overwhelmed by horniness and not knowing what to do with it. Masturbation can prove difficult to complete in the absence of imagination. You may need the fantasy as well as the physical stimulation to reach an orgasm (with or without a partner).

    And lastly, I noticed some changes to the process of manifestation. Once needs to imagine the path and the action in order to understand what the next logical steps are. If you wake up and feel listless and confused as to what to do with your day, rather than jumping outside and engaging in any form of activity just for the sake of it, sit back for a couple more minutes and imagine your next steps. As you prime your unconscious mind with a conscious dream-plan, actions and activities begin to emerge organically, as if you are moved by something unseen on the path to achieving your goals. It is a soft and yielding process of allowing your subconscious mind to guide you in the direction of manifesting some powerful desires rather than making logical plans and sticking to them with the discipline of a field marshal (hint: it’s not going to work).

    The more you try to impose control and restrictions to how you go about getting something (or someone), the less likely you are to actually see your desires become reality. Instead, adopt a Yeats-ian approach to living, something akin to what he wrote in his poem He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven: “I have spread my dreams at your feet / Tread softly for you are treading on my dreams”. Softly, slowly, messily, sensitively, build in flexible bursts of activity. And when you run out of energy (which may happen sooner than you think), rest and dream your next steps.

    Interruptions to your plans are also possible due to distortions of speech and thinking, such as believing dreams and fantasies are real, and witnessing as the boundary between the real and imagined is frequently broken and in need of rebuilding. To feel real, check with your body, the only solid thing you actually own in this world. Delusional socialization is prevalent under this energy so forming and maintaining new relationships will be excessively tricky. This is why solitude is fruitful and benefic for living under a Saturn and Neptune transit, because you can sense and hear your inner voice and intuition better when you are not distracted by another person’s energy.

    We are generally more sensitive to energy as this transit unfolds, and it’s crucial to be aware of and to interpret emotional cues from your body when interacting with other people. For example, if you bloat around a certain person, chances are you are being lied to; if your chest warms up as you feel drawn towards someone than that person is helping you in your spiritual development.

    Reflecting on the recent events of this summer, I think I can safely conclude that a tight Saturn-Neptune conjunction also has a lot to do with the creation of cults, since Saturn offers structure to religious rituals and beliefs, which fall under Neptune’s jurisdiction. However, and because Saturn is considered a malefic planet with a limiting energy, the cults which are created are giving religion a bad reputation, increasing the fears that many people have of believing in God or of practicing any form of organized religion. Saturn can indeed materialize what is divine and Neptunian, but it may also sully and dirty up the spiritual energy which Neptune unleashed into the collective, especially when Saturn is in an incompatible Fire or Water sign, like it is during the 2023-2027 era.

    To wrap up I would say that the best consequence of this transit has been gaining keen insights into the world beyond the veil, or the realm of ghosts and those departed. If you use the Saturn-Neptune conjunction to harvest the power of the increased sensitivity to hearing and to actively listen, you can develop a greater capacity to foresee. This increased capacity to divinate usually gets activated once you do something pragmatic or physical: like after a work-out, or after you clean up your house, and often after you eat something.

    Finally, and the least important but the most noticeable has been the fetishization of goods and a state of hypnotic and mindless consumerism provoked by them: from the Stanley Cup craze, to the long lines waiting to get a Crumbl Cookie, or the current trend of purchasing boxes of eco-wasteful Labubus, people are irrationally driven to consume as a replacement for purpose in their lives and a as a way to fill up the dread created within their souls by wave upon wave of disappointment, abandonment and chaos. Like a scared child clinging onto a beloved Teddy bear as his parents are fighting in the living room at night, we are collectively clinging to our ‘Labubus’ in an effort to find some comfort as we are overwhelmed by rising taxation, forced migrations, the threat of war and the lack of cessation of other world conflicts or being obliterated by the forces of nature.

    It’s fascinating to see how the Saturn-Neptune conjunction is happening simultaneously with the Solar 25 cycle, which had space scientists forecasting a decade ago, that 2024 and 2025 will be harsh-weather years due to our Sun’s activity reaching solar maximum. In a truly weird, scary and wonderful way, we are literally being shown the true meaning of the saying ‘as above, so below’, as the Sun’s boiling super-energy is manifested on Earth in our crazed, social tensions. We are faced with the uncertain dawn of a new era of evolution, so of course, many of us are freaking out.

    Views from Other Astrologers

    St. Elizabeth of Hungary’s Great Act of Renunciation, 1891. Philip Hermogenes Calderon (1833-1898). Oil on canvas; 60 1/4 x 84 inches (153.0 x 213.4 cm). Collection of Tate Britain, reference no. NO1573. Kindly released on the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported) licence. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

    To add some depth to this article and help you understand better the force of this transit, I thought of compiling some information I found in my astrological research. The month of August 2025 will usher in an opportunity that will help you finally see the path forward in your life, in that area that has been like an open wound since 2023. Whatever frustrated you and you had not clarity on, whatever you lost, will now be replaced and will provide an open doorway for you to pass onto the next level.

    However, to do so you’ll need to fulfill the requirements of the one Rudolf Steiner named “the guardian of the threshold“, a spiritual energy which can be manifested in your reality as: a difficult romance, a tough and new workplace, a qualification you have to study for and earn, a relocation to a foreign and unwelcoming land etc. You will nonetheless get a chance to begin anew, and effort will be needed to support your pioneering dreams.

    For example, here is how British astrologer Sue Tompkins in her book ‘Aspects in Astrology‘ describes the social landscape created by this great meeting of the gods of time and flow in the sky:

    Society was feeling guilty (…) Saturn-Neptune seems to describe poisoning and, more generally, lessons around purification and refinement (…) Sometimes the issue is paralysis and a psychological feeling of ‘caving in’ and not being able to cope (…) Typically, Saturn-Neptune people are frightened of loss of control and occassionally fate seems to ensure that they literally have to relinquish some form of control in order to learn lessons of some sort of non-attachment (…) With these contacts the father is not attached to the world in some way (…)

    The pattern of a missing or weak father figure, the ‘father’ who gets it wrong not because of what he does but of what he fails to do. A father who is not and doesn’t set himself up to be, the voice of authority (…) Guilt is very much a feeling that one might attribute to this combination (…) for the individual on some level often feels as if they are in debt for something and must continually be making reparation, paying a penance, often paying the father’s (or society’s) debts or avenging those that are indebted to him (…) Saturn-Neptune can be associated with renunciation (…) it is surely the combination of the ascetic. Indeed, the image in one’s mind is of a monk or a hermit (…)

    Saturn-Neptune would seek a simple and uncluttered life, free of any kind of opulence and excess (…) At best, this is the combination of the practical idealist, the person who has an awareness of their own limitations and the limitations of the given situation but nevertheless works to make some ideal a reality in the concrete world.

    (p. 240-243)

    Indeed, I can personally vouch for the theme of the sick father (due to the overlapping Saturn-Neptune link with my Pluto on the IC transit, I experienced my father’s passing away this year). In addition, it seems that emotional severity, financial hardships and the theme of sickness is also reported by the Astrology King:

    What you thought were safe and secure relationships, possessions, employment or general structures and patterns in your life may dissolve away, leaving you feeling anxious and depressed. In its higher manifestation, this transit allows you to make sacrifices and do without something to do good. You can help others or reach a particular goal. In the lower manifestation, a gift would be forced upon you to teach you a lesson about responsibility.

    Whatever the case, this is a severe phase of life, and you will tend to see the worst and not the best in everything. Pessimism can get out of control; therefore, it is essential to do your best to avoid it. Negativity must be avoided because Saturn can materialize Neptune’s illusions or delusions. It is essential to take care of your health; now is a good time for a general check-up with your doctor.

    Moreover, one of the astrologer’s I have been following for years and who taught me most of what I know in terms of relational astrology, the Bulgarian astrologer Lada Duncheva describes the Saturn-Neptune conjunction as a breaking down of illusions in one’s life and reminds us all of the fall of the ideology of communism when Saturn and Neptune met in Capricorn during the 1988-1990s era in Eastern Europe:

    When Saturn and Neptune are together- like now and in 2026, they tend to burst illusions, deceptions and long going schemes.
    Neptune in Pisces was able to operate for many years under the table, leading to many deceptions, underhanded games. Now Saturn nearing it- it is time to bear the consequences, to pay the karma, to reveal the deceptions.

    And finally, in an exhaustive exploration of the Saturn-Neptune conjunctions throughout history, the evolutionary astrologer Maurice Hernandez lays out some of the core themes of this epic transit and what it could manifest in the collective from next year, as both planets rejoin Aries:

    • A call for leadership, entrepreneurial or political. Fate can prompt a person to take the reins and step into positions of authority and command.
    • A boss or parental figure may go through a crisis, requiring care and adjustment. We may see those who once were in their prime exhibit tremendous vulnerability.
    • Accountability and ethical realignment. Unethical behavior may surface and prompt a person to take responsibility for possible misalignments. Conversely, the person with this transit prominently positioned may be the whistleblower, exposing unethical behavior.
    • The loss of meaning; losing the grip on what was once important or held in high esteem. Possibly experiencing a vacuum or emptiness until a new goal emerges.
    • A spiritual realization. Possibly the meeting of a spiritual teacher who will provide a new form of guidance or body of knowledge. Following the calling to lead a more spiritual life.
    • Adopting a new lifestyle and reinventing oneself in one shape or another. Depending on the house where the transit occurs, it may affect professional, relational, or academic matters.
    • Health vulnerabilities may affect adrenal function. Autoimmune reactions can engender inflammation in different parts of the body. This may be an opportune time to adjust our diet and get self-care support to sustain or increase vitality.

    With universal love,

    Lexi

  • Healing Through Chaos: Embracing Pluto’s Intensity

    Still from the movie 99 Moons

    June for me is a month of recovery. A recovery that is necessary in the wake of May’s energy. This is because last month’s energy was something beyond what I had experienced in a long time, and this confession doesn’t come lightly since I was born a Plutonic and I am used to unexpected and strong doses of life’s intensity. Due to my karmic Pluto in Scorpio Rx in the 1st house placement, life had demonstrated to me several times that this is going to be an incarnation of extremes, of symbolic deaths and rebirths, and having to understand some of the deepest emotions. However, sometimes a certain period comes along which simply turns up the Plutonic heat up a notch. Like a square aspect of transiting Pluto in Aquarius to my natal Pluto in Scorpio, during Taurus season, for example…

    For perspective, transiting Pluto in Aquarius is at the moment of my writing this article at 3’19 degrees in my 4th house; my IC (imum coeli or the bottom of the sky), the root of my chart is placed at 1’37 Aquarius. As a factual recap, the month of May of 2025 debuted with selling my small one-room flat and my moving into a 2-bedroom rented apartment in a safer part of Bucharest. A decision I didn’t easily make as I had to let go of the financial security of owning my place, but I gained the physical safety of knowing that at least, in this rental I will no longer be threatened with violent abuse by my neighbours, like I had been in my previous location.

    Escaping into a safer neighbourhood was something coming for two years now and as difficult as it had been to decide on this move, I pushed myself into making it because of self-preservation. The heavy-heartedness, however, came along with me. Just as I was getting accustomed to this new place and thinking it was better that I was somehow closer to my parent’s place and could visit them more often, on the 8th of May my father died.

    In his book ‘Pluto and the Evolutionary Journey of the Soul/ Vol. 1’ Jeffrey Wolf Green describes Pluto’s transit through the 4th house in the following words :

    “…this process will serve as an excellent time to examine the impact of the individual’s early environmental situation as reflected through the parents, and for those who are parents, how they themselves have emotionally responded to their own children, family and spouse (…) It will now be necessary to change or eliminate all forms of emotional dependency and security that are linked to external situations. These dependencies and securities are in some way limiting further growth (…) This evolutionary time frame and experience can be very difficult because many people will feel as if the very foundations of their lives are being threatened and removed. Such an experience must occur so that the individual is more or less left with only his or her self to look at, to examine, and to depend on (…) For some people this process will be enforced through the loss of a job or career, a family member or someone close to them, emotional confrontations of an intense magnitude with family members or even the loss of the individual’s own life.” (p. 322-323).

    Dad was cremated on the 10th of May and I found myself walking back from the Crematorium into a straight line back into the new flat I had just shortly inhabited. I crawled into bed like a slug and rested there for the next hours, feeling numbed out of my mind. I couldn’t cry. My body held on to the pain. It was familiar. It was a family thing to hold onto pain. I was simply being loyal.

    What weighed heavily on my heart was the fact that on the morning of my father’s death, I visited grandpa’s grave – situated near my new place – and I placed a coin on top of it. I offered flowers and asked grandpa (my father’s father) to help my family out. Hours later, around midnight my mother called to tell me that dad had given up the ghost. I immediately thought of grandpa letting me know that he listened to my prayer…although I’m not sure, that was the resolution I had asked for, but I am in no position at this point in my life to have semantic arguments with ghosts. Grandpa helped. And this helping hand from beyond the veil lingers in my heart, as a life mystery left for me to unravel. I am not afraid of ghosts, but I am mortified of living a soulless life. So the problem I had to cope with now was: How do I continue to live on, when all I can feel is just how dead I am on the inside?

    Dad’s departure happened right in-between Romania’s presidential elections, a period of two weeks of tumult as the population was faced with a pro-West candidate and a pro-Russian candidate. To say that the air in Bucharest was electric during those days, was an understatement. As the pressures kept pilling up on me, around the 19th of May – and after the results of the elections proved to be hopeful and progressive rather than medieval and destructive, I realised just how completely chewed up my nervous system had been. My body has started uncontrollably shaking after I took my morning shower and my hands were clenching without the possibility of relaxing them quickly. Only with controlled breathing was I able to physically ‘unclench’ and relax my body in roughly 20 minutes (which felt like an eternity).

    In the final days of May, I was running from one doctor appointment to another to find some treatment for my nervous system’s temporary collapse and I was lucky enough to find the support I needed in a psychiatrist, neurologist and family doctor. The treatment my psychiatrist put me on helped smooth out my over-sensitivity to sounds and helped me feel more relaxed in my body. I somehow knew this wasn’t enough and that I had to do a bit more to get the pain through my body moving and to release it somehow. I started doing yoga and gentle stretches daily, while eating a consistent breakfast of porridge with honey and fruits and making sure I am drinking enough water each day.

    I took at least 10,000 steps, and installed a tracker app on my phone to keep me to it. Each day this tracker would gentle nudge me to ‘get moving’ and then reward me by saying ‘you are getting better’, which felt like the kindest thing I could hear all day and exactly the opposite of how I was feeling. At night I worked, since work keeps me stable and optimistic and then I would watch a movie projected on the blank wall of my bedroom to take my mind off things. I would cry in the most public and inappropriate places, always surrounded by strangers and never near my mother or sister, the last two remaining members of my close family. It’s sad to write this but my relationship to them is not at all close, to say the least. I try, nonetheless.

    In ‘The Book of Pluto: Finding Wisdom in Darkness with Astrology’, astrologer Steven Forrest reflects on what happens to the human psyche once Pluto pays a visit to the root of the root of the birth chart, the IC or Nadir:

    “Psychological insights, bravely won, must penetrate down into core assumptions about yourself, and then be expressed publicly.” (p.263). He goes on to add that with this transit : “Your navigational error, if you succumb to it, would be to live the life of a ghost, with your fire, intensity and vision removed from your biographical life while you went through the motions of existence. And regardlessof outward appearances, at the psychological level you would live the life of a hearthless, homeless person (…) With Pluto in the fourth house, you heal yourself by becoming conscious of your woundedness…for you it starts with realizing the extent to which your ability to find, recognize and claim ‘your people’ has been distorted.” (p. 83)

    Remarkably, the intensity I was doing my best to smooth out or diminish in my waking life, appeared once again projected through the movies that I gravitated towards in that month. One after the other, I saw four movies that were incredibly good but each in their own way, were also intense and haunting.

    First of all, I saw ‘Sex, lies and videotape’ after I listened to antiheroines‘ insightful analysis on YouTube, about the disappearance of horny movies and the important role of emotional intimacy in making films feel erotic. I just loved this movie and if I was previously a fan of James Spader’s and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s chemistry in ‘Secretary‘, the unlikely attraction which existed between him and Andi MacDowell in Stephen Soderbergh’s film was much more subtle and sexy somehow.

    Seeing as I was in a vulnerable state of chaotic sadness, physical pain and nervous irritation, I couldn’t believe that this movie made me feel something tender-hearted again. As if a whole new mindset was available to me, through psychological sensuality.

    Still from the movie ‘Sex, lies and videotapes’

    A couple of days later, the film player I used to watch the film above recommended another European movie called ’99 Moons’. This movie was filmed after the pandemic and had actors I had never seen before, so it was right up my alley. Heavily medicated, still broken-hearted but satisfied that I had completed my day’s work, I sat on my little couch to watch this movie which begins with one of the most random, brutal and unexpected sex scenes I had seen so far. I won’t get into details but I’ll just say it involved: a parking lot, a ski mask, something aggressively oral happening and two consenting adults, one of whom breaks down crying after their intense coupling. And it’s not whom you expect.

    The curious thing is that ’99 Moons’ is a love story and the characters grow on you with so much ease that you feel shattered when you watch the surprising ending to the movie. I loved it because you get to see a completely different gender dynamic between two heterosexual characters, than you get to see in other erotic-themed movies. And the sex scenes are not at all vanilla or missionary, rather the opposite as most of them are female-led and unique but they always add to the story and the sensual intimacy between two people who simply were burning for each other across the years. This movie made me feel like it was worth bringing back to life, a part of me that once felt excited about sex and sexual pleasure…a part I had buried in April of 2021.

    Just some nights into my treatment, and I was now continuously sad but I felt somehow horny as well, like the upper part of the body broke off from my lower region. I had to appreciate however that both systems, although apart, were trying to keep me alive and away from the darker thoughts…those thoughts I had of joining my relatives, of seeing my dad’s dead and peaceful face as flowers were thrown over him, thoughts which sounded a lot like: ‘What’s the fucking point in living anymore? He seems so calm, he no longer feels pain…I wish I could feel that’. The creeping feeling that everything was falling apart around me and I wanted to just stop breathing, so that maybe then the pressure will lift and my body will stop hurting so much in every little corner.

    It felt like Freud’s concepts of how Thanatos nourishes Eros, which I first became aware of in college, it was as if they were finally being integrated skin-deep within my physicality. It was Pluto’s energy creating this cellular revolution through the way in which I was interpreting the events that happened in May of 2025 and the stories I was watching and unsuccessfully trying to escape into. The only thing these movies did was to push back upon myself the duty to live in my body and to continue to live on, no matter how painful the experience of living would get.

    I remembered this feeling. It was kind of how I felt after watching a couple of years ago ‘Normal people’, just that that experience was devoid of the pain of thinking constantly in the background of my mind: “Dad is gone and I’m never going to be able to speak to him, and I knew that the last time I talked to him in January, after I argued with mom, that it would’ve been our last moment together, because I told him this and he just sadly starred at me…he didn’t say anything.”

    A part of me, the child-part felt guilty for abandoning dad, while the rational part of me was aware that it felt like the force of karma worked through me, as I had done to dad what he had done to me when I was small and sick: abandoned me.

    Armed with this sad mix of thoughts, I went to the cinema this time to watch an old Romanian movie with a curious title “Glissando”. A movie about a man obsessed with the portrait of a woman. Halfway through the movie, the plot dissolves into two streams, two alternate realities and the characters simply float into random and beautifully-shot sequences of events in their lives. It is a movie about love, memories and obsessions and it was gorgeous to behold and spoke volumes to me about taking it easy and just riding the wave of feelings produced by all the events of the month of May. I couldn’t control what was happening, but I could control my reactions to all these things. In that at least, I had some power left.

    Still from the movie ‘Glissando’

    I guess that the intensity of May was lived inside of my body between these two extremes of deep sadness – that I was trying my best to run away from – and into erotic creativity – a sensual healing I was hoping to find some sort of solace. It helped that May in Bucharest is incredibly fragrant, as all the roses and jasmine bushes blossom, and the linden trees unleash their aromas while the market boom with cherries and strawberries and honey melons. It gets warmer each night and clothes become looser and thinner and days become longer and slower.

    In the background of this, I was tuning in and out of consciousness repressing feelings of sadness, shame and guilt. I slept throughout the day and was awake at night. Nature was so beautiful while my inner world was at war with itself and this contrast struck me. As if by magic, when I noticed the contradiction, the world around me seem to calm me down.

    The last film I saw was also probably the most difficult to watch, due to the topic. I saw Denis Villeneuve’s “Incendies” on a random whim. I wasn’t even sure how I got to watch it… All I know is that since I moved into this new flat there have been some mysterious Middle-Eastern influences that I am still trying to shake off, which have been haunting me: from finding out that the previous tenants were Arabs, to randomly stumbling upon an Arabian perfume that I couldn’t stop thinking of, to listening to Habibi Spice on YouTube because his soothing voice helped with my nervous system regulation.

    And then Incendies came along and I watched it and my jaw dropped and it helped me release a lot, because I cried my heart out. A week after, as I was walking through one of the largest literature events in Bucharest, Bookfest 2025, I felt drawn to a French-Arab publishing house and then saw the book “Incendies” written by Wajdi Mouawad – full circle moment.

    Still from the movie ‘Incendies’

    There are some other fascinating things about this new place I moved into, such as finding out from my mother that the shopping complex right in front of my window used to be a communist bread store in which my grandma (my father’s mother) used to work in and that it had a kindergarten attached to it, where I had briefly been to as a child. So without consulting anyone and after months of searching, I had unconsciously placed myself in May of 2025 in front of an energetic zone imprinted with memories from the 80s, when I was a toddler, and dad and grandma were alive and bread was rationed and we lived under a different political regime.

    In that moment of realization, I suddenly felt immensely peaceful! I understood that although things aren’t working out as I would like them too, they are working out exactly how the planets are dictating, among which Pluto is the loudest since it has begun the process of changing my soul. I know that if I just stick with the wave of chaotic emotions, memories and symbols, I will eventually get a beautiful and shocking realization as to why things are happening how they are happening. Spirit will deliver meaning and all I need to do is ride the flow of feelings and intuition and pay attention to my environment.

    And when the healing realizations begun and I was feeling a combination of illuminating thoughts and the mood-regulating treatment working, peace returned and my curiosity sparked again. During a particular difficult night, as I was wresting in bed trying not to cry again, I stumbled upon this video which although it sounds cheesy to admit, did a magical spell on my capacity to let go of fighting the intensity and simply giving in to it and accepting it:

    I don’t know why I wrote this post, except that it felt cathartic to do it. I think it’s meant to be some symbolic and blow-by-blow account of how Pluto in Aquarius is influencing my inner world at the moment, as I’m struggling to make sense and interpret this energy. I’m hoping it may help someone at some point in time, who might find themselves in similar circumstances. As tough as a Pluto transit can be, especially in electrifying Aquarius, it can also offer rest, re-education and renewal. I think this article may also be a list of recommendations, because despite the sad which create the backbone of this article, the films & resources are pretty good and you may want to give them a try. Let me know what you uncover.

    With universal love,

    Lexi

  • Thank you

    The year is almost over and it’s been a very difficult one for me on an emotional level. My mental health has severely fluctuated following from a diagnosis with extreme anxiety and paroxysmic crises at the beginning of the year – for which I had to take medication for 3 months – to the news of my father’s bone cancer. I struggled to really do my work and enjoy creating like I used to, as I was overwhelmed by negative feelings and depression. My misophonia which began in 2023 when I moved into my new apartment that was besieged by loud noises and construction work for months on end, accentuated to the point where I could only exist if I wore headphones at all times throughout the day to feel calm and balanced. After 3 months I also ended my therapy and relationship to my therapist because I found out she was swindling me for money and kept saying ‘let’s be friends’ throughout our session, when I actually needed a trained professional to help me make sense of the deep pain I was feeling. I decided to take my healing into my own hands and go to the gym, take herbal supplements of Magnesium and Valerian and try to get a corporate job, to have a steady income at least and pay off my taxes. The plan was hard to sustain as I often struggled to work in the hectic corporate environments where people would play music or speak loudly over each other and trigger my misophonia. I tried 5 jobs and failed at all of them for various reasons but looking back the reasons where all me, and the pain I was experiencing and that I couldn’t control.

    As August came by and with it came extreme heat, I kind of gave up on everything and spent most of my days sleeping, going to the cinema or drinking beer to cool off, since film tickets and beer where under 5 euros and I was on a budget. Looking back on that period which contained the majestic Lion’s Gate Portal energy, I can clearly say I was a mess and felt horrible and I argued with my mom, but I kept it all to myself, like I always do, not wanting to bother anyone. I preferred showing my crew images with me at the local community pool than discussing openly my deep despair. From time to time, I would return to the tarot but all of these attempts I had at trying to ‘live normally’ while feeling like I was slowly dying inside gradually built up and made me just want to give up on tarot as well. An opportunity for another job came by in September (and I need to say just how grateful I am that Spirit kept offering second, third and fourth chances for work this year, to the point that I feel my eyes tearing up as I am writing this) and I took it. I needed the income and I thought that the job was interesting, only to discover a month into the job that the income I agreed upon when I signed the job contract was not reflected in my pay check and the stress from having been lied to and taken advantage of (yet again) just got to me and amplified my misophonia. I was working for the largest corporation in the world and I got pennies in return and I felt sick to the bone and decided to liberate myself. although with a heavy heart as I seemed to have been stacking up so many failures.

    One fated and beautiful moment during this job was when a person started talking to me in the lady’s bathroom about how she knew about The Spiritual Social and how much it helped her in the past. I thanked her but felt like I was slowly burying my work into oblivion, and she wanted me to know that I shouldn’t give up and told me to keep going and to take our meeting as a sign. We hugged and I guess she doesn’t know just how much that encounter meant to me and how it was part of the decision to keep working and uploading and posting again. That was the beautiful pearl hidden inside this harsh year: that occasionally, Spirit would send me a benefactor, a friend, a gentle life-line, a sign of a hopeful kind that reminded me to keep rolling with the punches and to not give up on everything.

    The last two months of 2024 have been quiet and slow but they have also been productive. I started writing articles here again, I became a Hermit and mostly spend time indoors, creating and I cannot say at all that I am not enjoying it! I am aware that it will take some time and perseverance to get back to the level of light, love and inspired dedication that I was at in 2021, but I had better astrological transits back then and less neurological damage. A part of me still wishes that none of this would have happened and that my dad would still be healthy and going to the cinema with mom, that my sister would still be talking to me, that my channel would unproblematically grow, that my income wouldn’t have halved itself and I that I would feel safe and happy in my new apartment, but I guess these things just had to happen. My recurrent breakdown this year was in some way fated. I’m usually very strong, so it was hard for me to make sense of what was going on. I still can’t say with clarity I have the answers…other than Pluto is on my IC and it feels…..like a cinema of inner horrors that wash over me like the waves of a sullen, forgotten sea.

    As I gradually gave up on things, I pulled into myself for some peace and safety and as a consequence I pushed some people away – not because I had problems with them, but because it hurt me if someone wanted to get closer to me, as I felt I couldn’t reciprocate in a loving and enthusiastic way. The merest sign of kindness, love and support I would receive would get me to sob uncontrollably and I would feel like my skin was burning; and I usually cry alone, I struggle to cry in front of other people and it takes a big hit to get me to do that. I think this is because in a year in which I needed the most to cry and to release the pain, I just couldn’t do it, something inside of me just froze off. It was a dry, emotionally heavy and anxious year. And yet I am still here, I made it through and I recommitted to my spiritual work because I am aware that no psychiatrist or medication can do me good for too long, especially when I can’t trust my therapist. I need to be brave to continue to live and to create. What I need is yoga, meaningful work through tarot and astrology and exploring my environment. What I need is friends, to paint, to walk, to drink water, to keep to a clean diet and to be of use to others, helping them within boundaries so that I can heal my heart as well in this process. What I need is to go to sleep surrounded by my three cats, my little family of survivors.

    On this final note, the highlight of my year has been meeting and adopting Noa, my little family’s tomcat. I met him in the Bellu cemetery, as I was having my lunch during my work break and suddenly about 8 cats were surrounding me begging for some crumbs; one of the cats was on the outside of the circle and all the other ones where pushing him and he didn’t seem able to fight them off as he was too weakened. When I saw this, I felt like he wouldn’t survive for much longer and he was such a beautiful cat underneath all that grime, so after I went back inside the corporate building I was working in and quit, I came out and took him in my arms and ordered an Uber to get us home so I could wash him. One woman who was doing the graveyard cleaning, started shouting at me and saying obscenities like “I should search for men and get fucked instead of caring for these awful cats” and after an exchange of tough replies I realised she is dead inside and that life was brutal to her and that I wouldn’t win this argument. I left her screaming and got inside the car and I started crying because Noa was almost asleep in my arms and he opposed no resistance. When the driver saw this, he switched the radio channel to one that played ‘In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleep’s tonight’ just to make us feel better after I told him I just adopted Noa and was verbally abused for it. He got us home safe and I gave him a generous tip. We were now a family of 4.

    Since I moved into the new apartment, I seem to be adopting a new cat each year, and while this has always been my dream (to adopt and nurture animals who have been neglected or mistreated and to honour Artemis, the Goddess presiding over my Sagittarius stellium), I am conscious of the fact that I am going to need a bigger place and maybe also a patch of grass to keep doing this work. My dream now is to purchase a small farmland somewhere in the centre of Romania, in the country-side and to plant vegetables and herbs and to raise chickens and ducks while I grow my cats and dogs’ family. And another dream would be to solidify my training as a psychologist by becoming a Jungian analyst; because the corporate world is not the right environment for me and I seem to be struggling to make an income from just tarot and astrology, since the pandemic ended. For this I will need time and money and will attempt in the next year to redirect these efforts by doing two jobs at the same time (I worked in a similar rhythm when I was writing my PhD and I think I still have it in me, to do it from next year). As Saturn will conjunct my Sun together with Neptune and the North Node in Pisces for my 38th birthday, I feel it is time to put in the hard work that will hopefully help me manifest a dream or to. I just hope that Romania remains a free country, in the sense that it will stay in the EU and that we won’t be politically wreaked by a right-wing, extremist president. In the absence of these things, it would be impossible for me to buy a farm or train as an analyst, as I will need to flee the country.

    But that’s just a bad dream for the time being and there is still so much hope that after some restrictions we can live in prosperity once more. I cling to such hopes, dearly. In the meantime, let’s come back to the present and to my thanking you from the bottom of my heart for still being here! I appreciate you so much and I find it humbling that you all find meaning in my work and words. If you are a follower to this blog, thank you especially and I promise you there will be a lot of cool articles coming up. I just felt like unburdening my heart in this post, so that I may leave some of the emotional baggage in 2024, where it belongs. I’m sorry to everyone I pushed away this year, and I hope that if by some weird twist of faith you will read this post, you will understand why I acted in this way. I just didn’t have the right words at the time being, as I was overwhelmed by emotions. Let’s see that 2025 will inspire better coping strategies in the minds of those of us dealing with grief and pain. For the time being, from me, Noa, Luna and Sol, we wish you a happy, safe and pleasant entry into the New Year and a happy New Moon in Capricorn!

    With universal love,

    Lexi