Spirits awaken with Neptune in Aries. Let’s gather in the parlor and confer with them, shall we?
Neptune in Aries: Spirits Awakened
Picture this: a velvet-draped parlor flickers with candlelight. Women gather in bustles and brocade, hands clasped in séance circles as they summon wisdom from beyond the veil.
It’s 1861. Soothsayer Neptune has just moved out of Pisces and into Aries. Beneath the ruffled cuffs and whispered prayers, a revolution is brewing.
Fast forward to March 30, 2025—and then again on January 26, 2026. Neptune is circling back to Aries for its first, 13-year transit since 1875, revving up a strange juxtaposition of energies.
Neptune is empathetic, boundless and compassionate. Aries is aggressive, trailblazing and radical. What on earth will this transit bring for the world?
Since this cycle hasn’t happened in 164 years, we have to stretch our imaginations—and look to past historical trends—for clues.
The Civil War began within 2 days of Neptune’s move into Aries
Neptune last spun into Aries on April 14, 1861. That was literally two days after the U.S. Civil War began with the Battle of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. The hazy blue planet remained in Aries, the sign of the warrior, until 1875, through abolitionism and the Reconstructionist Era. It was a time of both disruption and of rapid social change.
The 1861 to 1875 period also dovetailed with Spiritualism and the suffrage movement in America. While husbands debated politics in the public sphere, women gathered in their parlors to convene with mediums.
In spaces cloaked in lace curtains and candlelit shadows, suffragists conjured radical visions for societal transformation. Mary Todd Lincoln, First Lady married to Abe, held recorded séances in the Red Room of the White House.
The double exposure photo by William H. Mumler that caused a scandal: Mary Todd Lincoln with the “ghost” of her husband, Abraham Lincoln
Neptune in Aries Trailblazer: Victoria Woodhull—Seances to Stock Market (1870)
Suffragist leader Victoria Woodhull was another avowed Spiritualist. In 1872, she became the first woman to run for U.S. president, nominated by the Equal Rights Party. A free love advocate, clairvoyant and abolitionist, (Virgo/Libra cusp), Woodhull was also Wall Street’s first female stock broker when she and her sister Tennessee Clafin (Scorpio) opened their brokerage in 1870.
How did this happen? The sister act was backed by the wealthy railroad and shipping tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt, a Gemini, who had a keen interest in Spiritualism. So impressed was Vanderbilt with the women’s mediumship abilities that he financially underwrote their Wall Street firm, Woodhull, Claflin & Company, and provided them with stock tips to help make it an instant success.
Victoria Woodhull, Source: Wikimedia Commons
The sensational brokerage funded the sisters’ weekly newspaper (also the first-ever to be published by women), Woodhull & Clafin Weekly. Not only did the paper discuss topics like sex education and suffrage, it also funded Victoria’s campaign when she became the first woman to run for president of the United States.
Said Woodhull: “We went unto Wall Street, not particularly because I wanted to be a broker…but because I wanted to plant the Flag of women’s rebellion in the center of the continent.”
Yes, queen!
Said Woodhull: “We went unto Wall Street, not particularly because I wanted to be a broker…but because I wanted to plant the Flag of women’s rebellion in the center of the continent.”
Ophi, of The AstroTwins, at the New York Stock Exchange in March 2025 for Women’s History Month
Woodhull’s quote especially resonated for us because, in March 2025, Ophi joined a group of women founders and financial executives at the New York Stock Exchange in celebration of Women’s History Month. (Little did Ophi know, she was also representing for the Spiritualists and mediums of yore!)
Co-sponsored by Bank of America and the NYSE, the event included a walk through the trading floor and a celebratory all-women group climbing the podium to ring the day’s closing bell for the stock market.
While the experience was thrilling, it wasn’t until Ophi picked up the book She-Wolves: The Untold History of Women on Wall Street, that she remembered just how historically profound it was. The few women who worked on Wall Street between the late 1950s and 1980s endured jaw-dropping sexism, wage gaps and rampant discrimination.
Woodhull’s brokerage notwithstanding, men had run the Stock Exchange since its 1792 inception. Women’s presence on the trading floor was anything but welcomed. Now, as progress rolls back and Neptune in Aries stirs us to fight, Ophi’s trek across the trading room feels like a battle march on behalf of women’s progress. (And if it takes another Spiritualist movement to preserve that, so mote it be!)
“You must learn to command both the podium and the purse strings. Speak with unshakable authority, organize with military precision, and never underestimate the force of economic power. Learn the law, master the vote, build your own institutions if they will not seat you at their tables. And above all, you must learn to be utterly ungovernable when your freedom is on the line.”
—Victoria Woodhull, ever ready to stir revolution with velvet glove and steel fist
Harriet Tubman: Neptune in Aries ‘underground’ warrior
In an adjacent fight for freedom, many of Harriet Tubman’s greatest victories took place during Neptune in Aries. In 1863, she became the first woman to lead troops into war, liberating 700 enslaved Africans.
While Tubman was not a Spiritualist, there are many reports of her being guided by prophetic visions that came to her during epileptic seizures she suffered throughout her life.
Here’s one common thread: When Neptune was last in Aries, a clandestine sisterhood laid groundwork for suffrage and social reform. Now, 165 years later, the threat of doxxing and deportation—along with repressive rollbacks around gender rights—could find many activists retreating to the privacy of parlors to regroup and strategize.
Harriet Tubman, Source: Wikipedia
A transcendent form of activism returns to the parlor
An ideological civil war seems to be brewing, even if the weapons are bots rather than bayonets. But, in Neptune’s illusory style, there isn’t yet a clear strategy for how to fight back. With Neptune in Aries (2026-2039), that could change—fast.
In the surreal swirl of chaos, a transcendent form of activism could be back on the parlor-room table. Spiritualist practices like witchcraft, astrology and Tarot already surged into the mainstream during Trump’s turbulent first term starting in 2017.
With the mind-boggling acceleration of AI, our interactions with agents mimic a modern-day séance. We type questions into a search window and responses come with the alacrity of a sentient being, much like a high-speed Ouija board spelling out answers from the beyond.
We asked ours to answer a question as if it were Victoria Woodhull: How can modern women fight for their rights? Seconds later, this answer from ChatGPT: Ah, my dear compatriot, modern women must master the sacred arts of disruption and reinvention.
No, it’s not groundbreaking advice. But who knows where this conversation could go with a few more prompts? People are already turning to Chat GPT as their therapists, so why not their spiritual guides and the generals of an activist army?
We’re at the beginning of Neptune’s 13-year dance in Aries, and power is already percolating in the margins of the “parlors.” Whether that’s a Zoom room, a Tarot circle, or an encrypted group chat, these liminal spaces may become places where conversations ebb between the mystical and the political.
Much like the Spiritualists and suffragettes before us, we may be casting both spells and ballots in order to protect our rights.
This article was first published on The AstroTwins’ Substack.
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