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In astrology, Neptune is our connection to dreaming and imagination, fantasy and possibility, oneness and transcendence. It is our pathway to the sacred. As its perceived path shifts into Neptune retrograde, we reconsider how we use the sacred in life—to escape or to create?
When is Neptune Retrograde?
Neptune begins its retrograde in the first sign of the zodiac, Aries on July 4, 2025. The planet will shift back into that last sign of the zodiac, Pisces on October 22, 2025, where it will complete the remainder of its retrograde.
What Does Neptune Retrograde Mean?
The outer planets—comprising Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto—move slowly due to their elongated orbits. When they finally transit into a different constellation, they bring vast change that defines entire generations and affects the collective reality.
An outer planet, Neptune spends approximately 14 years in each sign. When Neptune left Pisces and entered Aries for the first time in more than 150 years earlier this year, it brought a profound energetic shift. Yet, like all major changes, the transition into a new era does not happen overnight.
Neptune’s time in Aries is initially brief, punctuated by the planet’s retrograde motion that takes it back into Pisces, the sign of the zodiac it has been traversing since 2012. Neptune dances in between worlds throughout 2025, integrating past with future, simultaneously closing the old while opening to the new. This retrograde is an integral part of that dance that acts as a prelude to truly arriving in this new age in 2026. As Neptune dances between worlds, we do the same.
When a planet is moving in a perceived backward motion, it invites us inward. It tunes us into the whispered realizations and reflections that we miss when we focus our attention on the world around us. Retrogrades act as portals of reorientation. They offer the opportunity to revisit, reclaim, and realign with the truth of what we are creating and who we are becoming. Retrogrades are a pathway back to ourselves.
As Neptune retrogrades, we are drawn to focus inward. We are asked to consider the visions, dreams, and truths that exist within the quiet of our souls. Here we are supported in calling our focus back from wherever it may have drifted or strayed from our truth.
The Influence of Aries & Pisces on Neptune Retrograde
When in Aries, the first sign of the zodiac, Neptune’s focus shifts toward selfhood. Here we have an opportunity to clarify who we are and who we are becoming. Not only will this shape our upcoming 14-year chapter of Neptune in Aries, but in a larger sense, it will define how we show up to the larger Neptune cycle initiated earlier this year.
After Neptune retrograde slips back into Pisces, it constitutes the planet’s final moments of its current 165-year cycle. It is a time of closure, a final letting go, and a clearing of the individual and collective psyche prior to a new era commencing.
Neptune retrograde in Pisces reminds us of our illusion of separateness. It arrives so that we can relate to this planet and to ourselves with greater intention, discernment, and purpose. It also helps us land in life with greater presence, intention, and depth. It asks us to become aware of how we may have been avoiding or escaping reality and instead turn toward oneness with self and others.
Neptune in retrograde invites honesty and the dissolution of illusions. It helps us remember the thread of what is real beneath what is idealized. It explores which hopes, visions, and imaginings are true to us and which we are ready to release into the ethers.
During this time, existing illusions and confusions tend to arise, including fantasies that have kept us further from reality and further from ourselves. This is only so that we can observe and release them. Here we are invited to anchor sacredness into our humanity, our everyday existence, and our every interaction.
Your Horoscope for Neptune Retrograde
Neptune in retrograde is a profound release. It is a long, slow exhalation before we begin again. It is a space for realigning ourselves and regaining a sense of grounding in self before we initiate a new era. Our truths become more available when we align with our highest self. Journaling, sacred wish lists, and conscious imagining are helpful forms of creation during this time. Consider it a chance to to breathe soul into form and vision into reality.
Your horoscope can help you explore themes that align with the retrograde. Read for your rising sign.
Aries Rising
Neptune retrograde asks you to take a step back so that you can reorient from within. Consider this a space where you can discern your identity and future direction. Concepts related to who you are rearranging and reorienting themselves between who you believe yourself to be and who you would be if certain aspects of yourself stepped forward. When Neptune steps back into Pisces, much will release within the realm of your unconscious. Offer yourself silence, surrender, and trust. Much is moving beneath the surface.
Taurus Rising
Invite space and silence into your life as you retreat into a sacred sanctuary of your own. Here you can reconnect with your voice, intuition, dreams, and intentions. When Neptune retrograde shifts back into Pisces, the tides turn and hold you within a space of healing related to themes of idealizing, belonging, and relational patterns. The revealing of these truths brings realignment in terms of your relationship to groupthink, friendships, community, and the collective.
Gemini Rising
This retrograde invites greater discernment between your own truth, dreams, and visions and those that have been adopted from group ideals. Create space between yourself and the voice of the collective. As Neptune shifts into Pisces, it holds the space for a profound release surrounding your direction, purpose, influence, and authority. It is an opportunity to see beyond illusion into truth and to harness this as you consider your contribution to the world and how you will ground your visions into action.
Cancer Rising
A powerful new decade—and era—begin for you in 2026. Here your dreams take tangible form and your calling grounds itself in reality. This retrograde arrives so you can pause and clarify what the next era will look like for you. It’s a space to release any visions that aren’t yours and tune into what is uniquely true to you. When Neptune shifts into Pisces, rest your outdated worldviews and lean into spaces of not knowing. Wisdom waits there.
Leo Rising
Neptune in retrograde invites a quietening of the mind. A surrender of existing beliefs, narratives, and worldviews to the sacred. Here you can connect to truths and perspectives that have been waiting within and are grounded in your own experience rather than what is taught or inherited. When Neptune shifts back into Pisces, the retrograde allows you to review those inherited illusions related to power. It is an opportunity to reconnect with what true empowerment, the kind that comes from within, looks and feels like.
Virgo Rising
Welcome to the underworld of your psyche. Here you are given the opportunity to review and release any entanglements related to fear, power, and control that were never yours. As Neptune retrogrades back into Pisces, the theme of partnerships and collaborations surface, bringing a clearing of relational patterns that includes idealizing and self-sacrifice. Intimacy, money, and love also ask for your highest truth, bringing awareness that enables you to step forward with unprecedented clarity.
Libra Rising
Neptune retrograde offers a mirror of what has previously been unseen—notably, relational dynamics, dreams projected onto others, and aspects of self lost in the name of compromising. This is all with the intention of reclaiming yourself in a new way. As Neptune in retrograde reenters the sacred waters of Pisces, it invites a restructuring of your everyday and brings awareness to where you have neglected yourself by allowing your dreams to drift without grounding.
Scorpio Rising
Neptune retrograde invites you to land in the present moment. To anchor into your body and restructure your life in a manner that’s aligned with the truths, dreams, and visions you hold for yourself. As the planet of mysticism shifts back into Pisces, it brings space to tend to illusions of perfectionism, quiet your inner critic, and find inspired, authentic, and pleasurable self expression.
Sagittarius Rising
Who have you been taught to be? What lies beneath that? What inspires you through its purpose and truth? And what still exists in you that is in opposition to that? Come back to belonging to yourself. Reclaim your authentic voice. As Neptune shifts into Pisces, you are brought greater release of illusions related to security, belonging, and familial expectations.
Capricorn Rising
Neptune retrograde invites deep soul searching and tracing patterns, narratives, beliefs and more back to their roots of origin. This is so that you can tend to the foundations of your being that informs everything in your life. After shifting into Pisces, Neptune’s backward spin allows it entry into the realm of your mind so that you can clear any noise, find your voice, and speak your own truth.
Aquarius Rising
Expect perceptions to shift, illusions to release, and a new way to rely on your mind to present itself. This retrograde arrives so you can clear any noise, realign your thoughts, and reclaim your knowing before beginning a powerful new chapter. When Neptune reenters Pisces, it offers a final release of old stories—conscious as well as unconscious—surrounding your worthiness, security, and finances.
Pisces Rising
Neptune retrograde brings medicine. It invites you to land in your body, take up your own space, and surrender to the beauty, worthiness, and value within this physical realm. It allows space to clear any blockages related to worthiness and finances so you can experience abundance in all forms. As Neptune in its seeming backward spin reenters your sign, turn any existing constructs related to identity and purpose over to the sacred. There is more of you desiring to emerge.
