The Astrology of 2026 A Turning Point in History with Rick Levine

Greetings all, this is Rick Levine and I'm here to share with you a little bit of my outlook about 2026 and coming at this from an astrological perspective, looking a little bit about what was going on in the 1960s and then again in the 2012 to 2015 period and how that is relating to what seems to be unfolding in front of us recording this here at the beginning, at the middle of September of 2025 but looking forward to 2026 and beyond. We astrologers tend to look at patterns that are repeating patterns and these repeating patterns are the things that give us an idea of what's going on as we look backward into the past and then look at the present and project forward into the future. Most astrologers are looking at a few very specific events but when you put all these events together astrologically you realize that we are really living in quite an extraordinary period of time. For example, just starting with the Saturn-Neptune conjunction that here in September of 2025 is within a degree of orb but is now, because of the retrograde motion, is beginning to separate and looking forward we know that this is going to be a conjunction that will be exact around late February, February 20th of 2026 but it's less the fact that Saturn and Neptune will be conjoining because that happens about every 36 years but what doesn't happen every 36 years is the fact that Saturn and Neptune will be conjoining at zero degrees of Aries and of course there's many schools of astrology that use the Aries point, the zero degrees of Aries point, as a significant point that is actually mappable in a natal horoscope just like any other planet. You know, a circle or a cycle has no beginning and no end. It basically goes around and around and yet we astrologers use the vernal equinox in the northern hemisphere, the autumnal equinox in the southern hemisphere, as the starting point for every astrological cycle and we can look back in history at least 2,000 years or more and there are no other times when this Saturn-Neptune conjunction cycle began or had. It's almost like a new moon that every month when the moon catches up with the sun that sets the energy for the next complete cycle until the moon catches up with the sun again. Now Saturn takes about 36 years to catch up with Neptune, 29 and a half years to go around once and then a little bit of time because Neptune has moved onward in you know 28-29 years and so it's about 36 years for it to catch up. The fact that this in a way it's like a new moon but it's really a new Saturn with respect to Neptune that is occurring at the zero degree point which is like the starting point. Now Saturn being the planet of reality, of structure, of things the we see them in the three-dimensional world, Saturn being the limits of our five senses, Saturn being the keeper of that which we consider to be the status quo, Saturn being the laws that keep the three-dimensional world in mechanical operation including Newton's laws of motion and Kepler's laws of planetary motion. These are all Saturnian issues. Until we began to perceive energies out beyond Saturn it was always thought that Saturn was the limit. Saturn was the place that we could not go beyond without going out to the fixed sphere of planets or I'm sorry the fixed sphere of stars that literally did not move, at least they appeared not to move. We astrologers have assumed Saturn to be reality and Neptune to be fantasy. I love Rob Hand's little throwaway phase that we once thought that Saturn was reality and Neptune illusion but now we've begun to understand that Neptune is reality and Saturn is the illusion that there was a reality and this is like a shift of the way of thinking and it's so important for these times when there's a question about what is real, where we have intelligence that appears to be artificial, that we have news that appears to be factual yet fake and this is a big issue of our times and it's the first time that Saturn and Neptune are conjoining and I say that as a process because even though it won't be exact until February of 2026 the process is really already unfolding and the question is what is real? Who gets to define reality? Which reality construct will we accept as that which is in fact truth? The fact that this occurs at zero degrees of Aries itself is an extraordinary proposition but what's happening at the same time is that not only are Saturn and Neptune moving from Pisces into Aries relatively simultaneously so that Saturn moving a little faster than Neptune catches up to Neptune still while they're in that first degree of Aries, zero degrees of Aries, but at the same time we have Pluto in its 248 year cycle that has recently moved from Capricorn into Aquarius and so as this Saturn and Neptune conjunction begins to unfold and move away from zero degrees it will very quickly come into exact perfected sextiles with Pluto at just one degree of Aquarius and then we also have Uranus in its 84 year cycle having moved from Taurus where it's been for about seven years into Gemini, retrograde back into Taurus and then move forward into Gemini again. So we have this extraordinary process where this Saturn-Neptune conjunction is occurring at the midpoint of a Uranus-Pluto trine. Now the Uranus-Pluto cycle is a separate cycle from the Saturn-Neptune cycle and in fact we can take any pair of planets and look at them as an unfolding cycle with the faster planet catching up to the slower moving one like the lunar cycle of the Moon catching up to the Sun or the cycle of Jupiter catching up to Saturn every 20 years defining what we call the decade because it takes Jupiter 20 years. Jupiter is a 12-year cycle but then it takes it another eight years to catch up to Saturn as it's moving around so that Jupiter catches up with Saturn meaning it's like a new Jupiter, like a new Jupiter in relationship to Saturn in 1900, 1920, 1940, 1960, 1980, 2000, it was actually early 2001, 2020, 2040 and so on. This Jupiter-Saturn cycle, this conjunction-opposition cycle define what we call on our calendar the decades. But getting back to the cycle between Saturn and Neptune that is unfolding now as it reaches that zero degree point in Aries in February of 2026, separate from that we have Uranus making a trine with Pluto and the Uranus-Pluto cycle is a very different cycle and that cycle was at its new moon or actually new Uranus in relationship to Pluto because Uranus lined up with Pluto, there was a Uranus-Pluto conjunction, actually three of them in the mid-1960s. Most practicing astrologers know that what we refer to as the 60s was actually an artifact of a Uranus-Pluto conjunction, Uranus the planet of shock and surprise and revolution, Uranus sometimes referred to, as Rick Tarnas does, as a misnamed Prometheus bringing fire from the realm of the divine, the gods, into the earthly realm of humans, that Uranus related to technology and future and the invention of things, Uranus as in a way the lightning striking, when that clap of lightning happens there's a sudden release of tension of energy that is energizing and it's really important to understand that Uranus or Prometheus actually is how we create the future by breaking away from the boundaries, the illusion of boundaries of Saturn because Saturn's boundary, the finality of Saturn's boundary is death but we now know that death is really like a doorway from one room to another whereas it was thought for many, many centuries that death was finality and that there was a single boom at death and you either went to heaven or hell in the Judeo or in the Christian tradition but the fact of the matter is that we now understand that Saturn is a gateway and that at the moment of death there's a transition from physical to metaphysical or physical to non-physical dimensions and of course this is very well understood by the Egyptians and even the Tibetans, the concept of the bardo states, the whole idea of non-ordinary states of consciousness where we're not limited by linear time or three-dimensional reality, a place that we kind of visit when we do our dreaming and go into our dreaming cycles but the thing about Uranus is that it is the great awakener. Uranus as that lightning strikes, pam, at that moment the lights go on we can see everything and it's that eureka awakening cycle, a process and the thing about Uranus is that it is instantaneous. Now Pluto, as we know, is the planet that's associated with death but we have to be careful because this is not to be confused with death as end. Yes, it can be related to a physical death but Pluto is really the process of death and rebirth that occurs all the time. It's the process of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. The caterpillar dies but does it really die? No, it's merely transformed. Its form changes from one thing into something else as the caterpillar becomes the butterfly and so too we now understand Pluto as a sense of everything that's not on the surface. The work of James Hillman really kind of digs deep, The Dream and the Underworld being his book that I think is one of the best books to understand the nature of Pluto because Hillman really understands that Pluto is not about the hell realms of Christianity. It's about everything that's not on the surface. It's about the subconscious, the unconscious, the bardo states of what the Tibetans call the in-between states, the states that are neither life nor death. They're the process of something becoming something else and whenever I talk about Pluto in this way I'm always reminded of William Blake who wanted as his epitaph on his gravestone, he didn't get it, but he wanted on his gravestone William Blake born 1757 died many times since and Pluto is that process of letting go of what we thought was finality in order to be reformed or transformed or transmuted or metamorphosized into something that is at a higher level. So when Pluto was met by Uranus in 1964-5-6 in that middle 60s what happened was that the shock and the awakening largely fueled by social movements and by music and by entheogenic or psychedelic substances that acted as a catalyst to that period. There was a sense of expanding one's mind by shock, by surprise, by awakening that that really caused a transformation of culture itself and it's not lost on me that it was at the Uranus-Pluto conjunction in the mid-1960s that IBM came out with its first mass-produced business computer and that set the tone for what is still unfolding even today and I think also as we're looking at historical cycles it's interesting to note that there was a Uranus-Pluto conjunction in the mid-15th century in 1455, I think, give or take a year, which is right around the time that Gutenberg printed the first mass-produced book which was the Bible with the Gutenberg press and in a way that was at a Uranus-Pluto conjunction that set a larger cycle into being just like the IBM System 36 that came out in the mid-1960s at the Uranus-Pluto conjunction set in motion what is now manifesting at the Uranus-Pluto trine that is very very close within minutes of arc here in the autumn of 2025 but will become perfected for the first of five times in July of 2026 and then there will be five times between 2026, 2027, and 2028 and so what we need to understand is that what's unfolding right now, I say right now in 2025, is the pre-game dance to what will unfold as the Uranus-Pluto trine manifests over the next three years that's fed by the readjustment of what is real that is based upon the Saturn conjunct Neptune. Now I think of the relationship between Saturn and Neptune, I love Caroline Casey's statement that the imagination lays the tracks for the reality train to follow and I rephrase that by saying that Neptune is the scaffolding or framework, the invisible metaphysical framework, imagination, upon which Saturn creates three-dimensional structure and this is what's happening right now as we're facing ideas like artificial reality, I'm sorry artificial intelligence, or augmented reality, or confronting the ideas of extraterrestrial intelligence and it's important to understand that regardless of where this extraterrestrial intelligence comes from, any intelligence that does not have physical form is extraterrestrial, that it's outside of the realms of Saturn which is terrestrial, which is on Earth. So really what's going on now was seeded at the Uranus-Pluto conjunction in the mid-1960s when Saturn was opposed to that conjunction and that really grounded that energy but also brought something into the civilizations all around the world, whether it was you know on the streets of Chicago or in New York or in Mexico City or at the Sorbonne in Paris or in Indonesia or the Maoist Revolution in China, the entire planet just kind of reformed itself during that mid-60s period of time and there was an abrupt change in consciousness. Interestingly enough, the things that came into being there, especially in the West, as Uranus reached its opening square to Pluto, that was exact on and off I think seven times from 2012 to 2015 as Uranus moving through Aries was squaring Uranus in Capricorn. Is that right? Hold on a second. Yeah, Uranus in Aries was squaring Pluto in Capricorn, that's what I meant to say. And during that time, in that 2012 to 2015, the 20-teens, we saw a lot of the things that came into being during the 1960s, during the psychedelic years, that we saw those things, sex, drugs, rock and roll, civil rights, ecological issues, redistribution of power, rights of the wave of feminism that in the square in the 2012 to 2015 became legalization of gay marriage, the use of marijuana, first medically and then even recreationally, that these things were all harbingers back to issues from the mid-1960s that never really went away, they just went latent. So we saw a lot of those same struggles that were on the streets in the 60s in 2012 to 2015 by Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street, and again all over the world there was social unrest that was hard-angled, that was square energy. And although it feels very disruptive now, and it is, we are at a very, very dangerous tipping point because what we're seeing really is the preparation for what is around the corner. And what is around the corner is unknown. Any astrologer that says they know what's going to be from the Uranus trine Pluto doesn't know. We don't know because it depends upon what we're doing now and what we're doing over these weeks and months ahead as we get to the point of 2026 once that Uranus Pluto trine begins to set the energy, it's almost like a mixture of molten copper and tin, both of which in their native states are pliable. But when you melt tin and copper together and you form it into something, as it cools it becomes bronze. Bronze holds its shape. It's no longer malleable like copper was or like tin was. And when one understands the nature of these energies one begins to realize that by 2026, 27, 28, whatever it is we get we're going to be stuck with for a while. But what we get is being determined now and it's not a done deal. And I think that what we're seeing all around the planet is this clash of two ways of looking at things one based upon the three-dimensional world, the limits, the way things were, the history, the idea of making things as great as they were once in the past when in fact they weren't great at all. And that would be the Saturnian view of things on some level. And then on the other side we're looking at perhaps the Uranus Neptune Pluto, the outside of Saturn that is pushing us into an unknown future that is quite frightening because it involves something that doesn't feel human. It's artificial, it's technological, it's digital, it's ET. We don't know what this is and it can be very unsettling and very frightening. And of course one of the things that we sometimes forget about Neptune is that Neptune is the planet that has to do with the fear of the unknown. It's not just about beautiful ecstatic, you know, images of ecstasy and fantasies that are beautiful. It's also the fear of loss of structure, loss of safety and loss of what is real. And the same is true with Uranus and with with Pluto. And so what's happening is that we're getting this cultural yikes. I don't know what's around the corner. Let's hold on to what we know and make it the way it should have been when we look back. There's a concept that Freud introduced into depth psychology called infantile regression. And it basically says that when things get difficult, when things get complicated, the psyche goes back to someplace in the past where things were okay, even if they weren't okay. We remember the safety of childhood. We remember being taken care of by teachers, by parents, by the church, even if none of those were really taking care of us. And so the same phenomenon is unfolding all around us. Now we have to be careful here because Saturn has its relevance and its importance, as does Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. And it's not like we're going to go one or the other. What's really going on now, the question is, can we find ways to create dialogue so that we can move into the future with these two different energies that are actually communicating with one another, rather than being artificially divided by higher level structures in government and politics and churches and in institutions that know that as long as people are divided, then they won't be able to come together. And I think the challenge of these times is to find ways and to figure out ways to create dialogue so that, in fact, we can get to a place where we have a better chance of being human and being happy. Because ultimately, I don't care what your politics are. I don't care who you voted for. I don't care what you believe or don't believe. I think ultimately people want to be happy. And if we can figure out some ways to get beyond our individual imposed differences, and instead focus on what's similar, we'll have a way of getting through this very complicated and difficult time. And I think astrology becomes a fantastic metaphor for understanding the dance between Uranus and Pluto in their moment of trying over the next several years that we're already beginning to feel now, but we're so tied to the past that we're not able to open up yet and go there. And at the same time, the Saturn, Neptune, and Neptune in particular, at that middle point to that trine, is really feeding this energy. And I think that ultimately imagination does lay the tracks for the reality train to follow, that Neptune does. It is the scaffolding and the framework upon which we have to do the very, very real work, sometimes involving very difficult and complicated shadow work. But we have to do this work in order to move into the spaces that are ahead of us. And with that, I'm going to end by saying, think cosmically, because that's what we as astrologers do. But it does no good at all to think cosmically unless we apply it day by day into our individual lives. Think cosmically, act locally, be safe. I'm Rick Levine, and see you around the next bend.