Change Is Afoot

2026 is the year of change. And whilst the current moment has been feeling somewhat stagnant, when The Gods step into gear, things will start to feel very different.

We are in the midst of a dynamic week and the conversations The Gods are having may feel quite intense, so I thought it wise to write about it, so that we might navigate what transpires with a new perspective. It may not help to soften the experiences we have, but it might help us to make sense of them and to frame them in a bigger picture that eases things when we are able to reflect.

So what's happening this week?

As I write this on Monday, Venus, our God of relationships, of beauty, and of that which we value, is mere moments away from meeting Pluto, Lord of the underworld, of power, and what's hidden in the depths. Pluto stands at 3 degrees of Aquarius, forcing all those that wish to pass into Aquarius, to face parts of themselves they haven't been ready to face. But Pluto doesn't care if you're ready.

And Venus is just the first God to pass. By the 20th The Sun will also have entered Aquarius with Mercury close on His heels and preparing to enter His heart to be reborn as an evening star. Mercury meets Pluto on Thursday and The Sun follows on Friday. Mars joins them in Aquarius on the 23rd and meets Pluto on the 27th whilst at the same time Venus and Mercury come together for an intimate conversation. There is a great deal of emphasis on Aquarius and the house in which that falls for you - read for your rising sign below.

To learn more about Aquarius and the flavour of this season of The Sun read this blog post.

The other big news, and by big I mean gargantuan, is that Neptune is leaving Pisces for the final time in our lifetimes to begin a new journey around the wheel on the 26th. This is a week of magnitude. Change is afoot, ready, or not.

So that's the technical stuff.

But what does it all mean to us?

What could this week bring?

The Guardian at the Threshold

Picture a doorway. On the other side, you can see something that looks like freedom - clearer air, more space to breathe, closer to what you actually want. But standing in the threshold is a figure who won't move aside. He looks at you with eyes that see straight through every story you've been telling yourself. Not with all that baggage, he says. Not whilst you're still pretending.

This is where Venus stands this week - our Goddess of love, of worth, of what we value - face to face with Pluto at the edge of Aquarius. And Pluto, Lord of what's hidden in the depths, has one question: What's real?

He doesn't care if you're ready to answer. He doesn't care if the truth is inconvenient. He reveals what's been buried - about your worth, about what you actually want, about where you've been giving your power away and where you've been afraid to claim it. The relationship you've been clinging to that stopped nourishing you months ago. The dream you abandoned because someone said it wasn't practical. The truth you've been too scared to speak.

But here's what makes this week different: Venus isn't alone in this encounter. There's a queue forming behind her.

By the 20th, The Sun Himself enters Aquarius - and the Sun is your purpose, your vitality, the core of who you came here to be. He too must face Pluto's question. Are you aligned with what you're meant to be doing, or are you performing a life someone else wrote for you?

Mercury follows, after entering The Sun's heart to be reborn. What you couldn't articulate, what you've been struggling to name - suddenly the words come. The conversation shifts. You see it differently. Clarity arrives.

Then Mars, sword drawn. The action you've been avoiding becomes unavoidable. The fight you didn't want to have finds you anyway.

Each of them - love, purpose, voice, will - passing through Pluto's threshold. Each forced to drop what's false to move forward.

You Are the Main Character

Yes, we'll see this play out in the world - secrets surfacing, power struggles, systems crumbling that pretended to be solid. But this life is always a personal journey first. You are the protagonist in your own story, and this week is asking:

What are you still carrying that isn't yours?

What truth have you been avoiding that wants to be lived?

We're in the final days of the lunar year, that strange liminal time before the Aquarius New Moon on the 17th - which arrives as a Solar Eclipse. Eclipses are portals. Endings and beginnings braided together. And this one ushers in the Year of the Fire Horse - wild, passionate, untameable energy that wants to gallop towards what's true.

You have a choice here, though it may not feel like it: work with what's being revealed, or resist and find the rug pulled out from under you. Pluto takes no prisoners. He's not interested in your timeline or your comfort. But He is interested in your freedom - the kind that comes from living aligned with what's real.

So when the truth surfaces this week - about your worth, your desires, your power, your voice - don't flinch. Don't pretend you didn't already know. Let the old stories fall away.

Make space for what wants to come.

When the Fog Lifts

And then there's Neptune.

On the 26th, Neptune leaves Pisces for the final time in our lifetimes. He's been there for about fourteen years. He's been the fog we got used to, the dream we stopped questioning, the confusion that felt almost comfortable because at least it was familiar.

Now that fog lifts. And here's what most won't tell you about Neptune: yes, He's yearning for higher meaning, for connection with something greater than this material realm. Yes, we feel confused, unmoored, lost when we're not embodying our spiritual selves. But Neptune isn't confusion - He's the call within toward cosmic unity, the divine consciousness that underlies everything, that reminds us we were never separate to begin with.

The confusion comes from the gap between that truth and how we're living down here on earth. Neptune transits are invitations to remember. To regain that sense of blissful unity, satisfaction, higher meaning that gets buried under bills and deadlines and the relentless noise of a world that's forgotten the sacred.

Neptune entering Aries is a beginning. For all of us. And with Saturn moving into Aries alongside Him, we're being offered something rare: the chance to blend the material with the transcendental. To take our inner truth and make it solid. To live an embodied life where spirit and matter aren't at war but working together.

This is enchantment with life itself. This is the magic that's always been available when we trust it's there. Neptune represents the spiritual drive - that pull in our psyches to merge with divine consciousness - as well as representing the divine itself. The unbroken field of self-aware consciousness beneath everything you can touch.

When Neptune was in Pisces, we could drift. We could dream without doing. We could escape.

In Aries, with Saturn? The dream demands to be lived. The vision asks to be made real. Your inner truth wants hands and feet.

So What Now?

This week isn't asking you to have it all figured out. It's asking you to be honest. To stand at the threshold and admit what you've been avoiding. To let Pluto show you what's been hidden. To free you.

The gods are restless. Change is coming whether you're ready or not.

But here's the gift: you get to decide how you meet it. Clinging to what's already dead, or walking through the doorway with only what's real in your hands.

The guardian is waiting. What will you leave behind?

Where Is Your Doorway?

The house where Aquarius falls in your chart is where this week's intensity concentrates - where Pluto stands guard, where the queue of planets is forming, where you're being asked to drop what's false and claim what's real.

Aries Rising - This is happening in your eleventh house. Your friendships, your community, your vision of the future. Who are you surrounding yourself with and why? What dream have you been too afraid to voice? The tribe you've been loyal to - does it still reflect who you're becoming, or who you used to be?

Taurus Rising - Your tenth house. Career, public reputation, the legacy you're building. Pluto asks: Are you climbing someone else's ladder? Is the success you're chasing actually yours, or an inheritance of expectations? What do you want to be known for when the performance ends?

Gemini Rising - The ninth house. Belief systems, higher learning, the search for meaning. What have you been taught to believe that you've never questioned? Where have you stopped exploring because the answers got uncomfortable? Your philosophy wants updating.

Cancer Rising - Eighth house. Shared resources, intimacy, transformation, power. Who holds power in your closest bonds and why? What are you still carrying that belongs to someone else? Where have you merged so completely you've forgotten where you end and they begin?

Leo Rising - Your seventh house. Partnerships, marriage, the mirror of relationship. What are you tolerating that's slowly killing something vital in you? Who are you performing for? The person across from you is showing you what you haven't wanted to see about yourself.

Virgo Rising - Sixth house. Daily rituals, health, service, work. Your body has been trying to tell you something. Your routine has calcified into a cage. Where are you serving from resentment rather than purpose? What needs to change in how you move through your days?

Libra Rising - The fifth house. Creativity, pleasure, romance, self-expression. When did you stop creating for the joy of it? When did pleasure become something you had to earn? What wants to be born through you that you've been too scared or too 'sensible' to allow?

Scorpio Rising - Fourth house. Home, family, roots, emotional foundation. The stories you inherited about who you're supposed to be - are they yours? What's buried in your foundations that's been making the walls crack? Where do you actually belong?

Sagittarius Rising - Your third house. Communication, learning, siblings, your immediate environment. How you think, how you speak, how you move through your neighbourhood. What truth have you been editing before it reaches your lips? Where has your curiosity died? What conversation needs to happen?

Capricorn Rising - Second house. Resources, values, self-worth, what you own and what owns you. Money, yes, but deeper than that - what do you actually value versus what you've been told to value? Where are you still trying to earn your worth instead of claiming it?

Aquarius Rising - First house. Your body, your identity, how you meet the world. This is the most personal - Pluto is asking you to shed every skin that isn't yours. Every persona, every performance. Who are you when no one's watching? That's who wants to emerge.

Pisces Rising - The twelfth house. The unconscious, what's hidden, your connection to the divine, isolation. What are you afraid to look at? What pattern keeps repeating because you won't turn around and face it? Your dreams are trying to tell you something. This week, listen.

Find your rising sign. That's where your doorway is. That's where Pluto stands guard. That's where the truth wants to surface.

If You Want to Go Deeper

This week is just the beginning. We're standing at the threshold of a year that will ask more of us - more honesty, more courage, more willingness to let the false fall away so the real can emerge.

If you want to understand how these themes are unfolding in your own chart - where your particular doorway is, what you're being asked to release, what wants to be born through you this year - I offer readings both in person at Essential Therapies Wellbeing Studio in Sidmouth, Devon, and on Zoom.

Sometimes we need someone to help us see what we've been too close to notice. To name what's been stirring beneath the surface. To confirm what we already know but haven't been ready to speak aloud.

You can book online with me here. Learn more about my readings here.