Neptune Stations Retrograde

Neptune begins its retrograde while locked into an aspect pattern being referred to as “Barbault’s Basket”, named after French mundane astrologer Andre Barbault, who made predictions about the nature of this moment in history. The Basket involves an opposition between Jupiter at 4 degrees of Leo and Pluto at 4 degrees of Aquarius, each sextiling and trining Neptune at 4 degrees of Aries and Uranus at 4 degrees of Gemini. Chiron, sitting at Taurus’ 0 degree, is not to be overlooked in this equation, but that’s the topic for another post.

Barbault sought to establish July 2026 as the beginning of the end of a cycle of chaos, and while chaos might still be percolating (most of the bodies involved are outer planets - the shifts they augur are glacial), Neptune Rx, for its own part in the configuration, speaks to seeing a situation for what it is, and not for what we’d like it to be. The past six years of relentless stimulation, ever-mounting urgency, and increasing enshittification has left most of us TIRED. But there is a limit to what can be tolerated, even in the face of exhaustion. Breaking points are being hit, and Neptune Rx will speed along the process of disavowing the status-quo hard sell. The summer (northern hemisphere)/winter (southern hemisphere) is looking like a great time to reject being reduced to our value as consumers instead of as human beings, and getting back to Arian basics instead. How to meet this transit? It’s about being resourceful; about noticing cracks in rhetoric, false logic, and outright lies. It’s about extricating yourself from someone else’s dream so you can live your own! But, perhaps most empoweringly, this transit is less about what you choose to do in the face of delusion than what you choose *not* to do.