Matters of Conscience: Saturn conjunct Neptune

Synthesis between the private and the collective realms of existence.

Blue Studio cactus, now age 18. Photo by Eric Francis.

Private Conscience and Collective Involvement

Dear Friend and Reader:

We are now in a moment that would seem more significant if there were a discussion rippling throughout the internet, though astrology is still an esoteric art. It tends to be ignored by the kinds of hyper-rational people whose minds are not suited to the kind of pattern recognition that is essential to survival right now.

The current astrology is telling us a lot. The pressure is on. Two history-shaping conjunctions are forming, and everyone is feeling it somehow. For many there is a sense of overwhelm and exhaustion; a sense of meaninglessness. It’s also possible to rise to the occasion with some real excitement. It will help if you see the meaning, which always comes in context. You will feel better every time you admit that you don’t know when you don’t know.

And we all have the opportunity to share some of our energy with people who may need it more than we do. That means your time, your money, your goodwill, and your human concern. Do something: take care of someone. Feed the birds. Talk to the FedEx person for a minute and thank them for delivering your new whatever. And for reasons I’ll elaborate on another time, be friendly to cops.

Roman ruins beneath Notre Dame Plaza, Paris. Photo by Eric Francis.

Saturn, Neptune and The Aries Point

Our current point of focus is the first degree of Aries, which is a contact point between individual and collective experience. The Aries Point is an amplifier, and at times like these with intense Aries Point activity, there’s always this sense of the public sphere invading private space.

On Friday, Feb. 20 — in just three weeks — Saturn and Neptune will align in this degree for the first time in recorded history. (There was a near-miss in the summer of 2025.) The last Saturn-Neptune conjunction was in Capricorn, in 1989, associated with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The problem is that private space no longer exists. This, by the way, is the origin of all the public display of cruelty we are witnessing, which is rooted in lack of individual conscience leading to the collapse of the civic body. Hang out with that for a second and it will start to make sense.

This is because the concept of “private” no longer exists in our minds, and one’s conscience is only ever a private matter. And it has been invaded in every individual, making it nearly impossible for people to focus in any collective sense on what is right and wrong. This is the potentially challenging connection: individual private conscience transforms into the civic body; the public. No private conscience, no public can exist.

And where has private gone?

Think: your browser history being broadcast to every ISP involved in delivering a website or service, and who-TF-ever scanning your activity for “thought crimes”; cameras and microphones in every room of your house, and your car, and public transport, and on every street corner; GPS following you everywhere; apps like Messenger mapping out your entire network and everyone who is on it (much like what happens when you take your cell phone into a police station); license plate readers following you wherever you go; we are all reduced to data; and on and on.

You have committed no crime. Yet you are constantly made to feel like a criminal. The FBI put less effort into spying on mobsters and racketeers 20 years ago than is invested in you, little old you, today. You are reminded of your potential criminal status when you see goon squads executing a guy with an iPhone just like yours.

Display of prisoner mug shots, Auschwitz, 2007. Photo by Eric Francis.

The Issue is Your State of Mind

The issue is not the devices or the surveillance. The issue is the reinforcement of the state of mind wherein your inner being does not exist. You are, therefore, not a private person. Not a private person means there is no “you” in the sense you may have previously experienced it. And if you want to reclaim being a private person, that is, being you, you have some work to do.

In years past, I delineated the Aries Point as “the personal is political,” which in hindsight means two things. One is that the personal shall be made political, in the sense of a rapidly growing lack of individual privacy and individual rights. You know any social media post, text message, email or photo can suddenly be broadcast.

The other is that one’s personal awareness and involvement is a key to collective political and social power. I am not speaking as an action organizer. I am saying that if the public seems to lack power right now, that’s because individual space has been totally invaded; and most young people cannot see the problem because they never had the thing I’m talking about.

Montauk. Photo by Eric Francis.

Private Conscience Equals the Living Civic Body

First issue on this theme: You cannot be happy unless your sense of responsibility to society is fulfilled. This means some form of participation, whether with your neighbors, the local government, the volunteer fire department, pet rescue, the physical environment, Neighborhood Watch, or whatever. The key thing is that it’s about more than taking care of your immediate family. Civic body extends at least into the township (which is more important than the abstract notion of a country).

However, you cannot really do this effectively if there is no private you to get involved. And this is what digital technology in all of its forms invades — especially the matter of the private, deeply individual sense of right and wrong.

Note that this can find substitutes in the form of political and social doctrine. But this is like eating Cool Whip, Twix and margarine for breakfast. It’s all poison and no nutrition. Also, it carries with it the characteristic of not respecting private rights and private spaces, and also of aggression (even if that aggression is “passive” or less obvious).

When you have awareness of your actual, inner, private conscience, you will be called to participate in meaningful ways, and also to be respectful. That’s part of the problem; the way to evade participation is to make no effort to recover your sense of right and wrong. As you do so, you may feel the weight of all the decisions that you neglected or evaded.

It may feel heavy and challenging sorting out the difference between illusions and some discernible form of reality. Yes, these days that is hard work.

Pollionnay house at dusk. Photo by Danielle Voiron.

The First of the Two Conjunctions is Feb. 20

On Feb. 20 at 12:53 pm EST, Saturn and Neptune align in the first degree of Aries. This is the full activation of the personal-collective contact point. It is the re-establishment of a boundary system between personal and public. It’s likely to come with one fleeting opportunity; the conjunction is historic, but does not last long.

While this can be complex with energies as different as Saturn (a solid boundary) and Neptune (a permeable one), you have many possibilities for how you work this out. But the crucial thing is that you do.

As these weeks unfold, the pressure to focus your awareness on this one issue will continue to rise. We are going to be confronted by much more that is wrong, and the choice we have is whether to respond as if it is — which is a deeply personal response — or not to respond at all. Any struggle you feel to enter your inner private space is about overthrowing the colonial occupation by Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel.

This is not about what propaganda you believe, or what thought bubble you occupy (that would be Neptune). The matter is not your hard-line views (which few people even have; all the polarization you see is an illusion of the digital environment).

Rather, you have to do the work, the actual work, of determining for yourself what is right and what is not. That means not having to be told. Also implied is not being ruled by your prejudices; and knowing when you don’t know. And it means accounting for many different viewpoints before you dismiss them.

None of this is easy. Being human is not easy, but we have a special opportunity now. And Saturn-Neptune is not the only one. In the Starcast connected to the monthly horoscope, I’ll offer some clues to how this relates to the Chiron-Eris conjunction, which is also about individual awakening in the context of collective experience.

Faithfully,

Inner Space. Photo by Eric Francis.