February 2026: Living In Uncertain Times

Finding Ground When There Is None

We are living through uncertain times. You only need to look at the world around us to see this. This week alone has brought revelations in the mainstream media – information now spilling out about sinister activities that penetrate every sphere of power. The weather here in England is ominous. Forty days of rain with no sign of stopping. The land is sodden, flooding. The Sun rarely makes an appearance. War is on every horizon. Money is tight. Relationships are fractured. The world feels dark.

The astrology mirrors this. We're entering a tumultuous period with eclipse season now beginning. Saturn is about to shift into Aries after closing out His story in Pisces – moving from water to fire, from dissolution to initiation, from collective grief to individual will. Uranus is moving forward again. More shocking events that come from left field are inevitable as Uranus finishes His seven year journey in Taurus.

And Neptune – Neptune freshly arrived in Aries, God of the sea now clothed in Mars' domicile. I wrote about what this might mean for us here – Neptune in Aries: Awaken to Your Divinity. We should be getting fire and fog, spiritual warfare. Instead we're getting drowned. Forty days and forty nights. The land can't hold it. It's as if we're being asked to build an ark but haven't been given the blueprints.

Saturn in Pisces is dissolving the old structures. What we thought would hold us is waterlogged, collapsing under its own sodden weight. All those Piscean themes of endings, sacrifice, surrender – but with Saturn's insistence that we reckon with what's washing away. No bypassing. No spiritual platitudes. Just the hard, cold truth that the ground beneath our feet isn't solid anymore.

So what do we do in this in-between? In this waterlogged waiting period before the fire comes?

We only have control over ourselves and how we respond to what is happening outside of us. Safety and security has always been an illusion. The world has always been uncertain. Fragile. The ground has always had the potential to shake beneath our feet. To sink. We have always been powerless against the great tides – and yet we are sovereign within our own small kingdoms.

We need to foster our relationships and our connections. With ourselves and our inner world first and foremost. But also within our networks. We need to cultivate inner strength, and give ourselves the love we need to be the foundation to thrive in these uncertain times.

Yesterday Venus entered Her exaltation in Pisces. Though She is still hidden from sight - still close to the Sun - She cannot shine brightly yet. But She's gathering strength in the dark. She's learning to love quietly, to nourish gently, to know what She needs before the world asks. This is the work we do now, in the waterlogged waiting: tend to the inner foundation.

When Saturn enters Aries and merges with Neptune we have an opportunity to blend discipline with spiritual wisdom - Universal truth, Oneness. This is the alchemical marriage. Truth requires both the Neptunian capacity to see beyond the veil, and the Saturnian backbone to stand in what we find there. The capacity to know and to act in alignment with what we know with maturity and integrity.

In sympathy with Venus exalted - being Her best self, able to nurture what we need, know what we need - we learn to feel secure within ourselves. To fall back on what we know will help us feel present with what we can control.

The practical becomes sacred. Feed ourselves nourishing food. Cultivate good sleep. Connect with nature and be revitalised. Take our focus off what we can't control and remind us of what we can. These are our survival tools. Acts of self-governance when governance itself is crumbling.

What does this actually look like?

Since I had flu in the second week of January I've established a meditative practice of making myself a pot of chai every morning from scratch. This is what Venus exalted looks like in action - tending to myself with love and attention.

I pestle and mortar the spices first. Clove – warming the body, clearing congestion, bringing heat back to the surface. Nutmeg – calming, emotionally balancing. Lemongrass – a diuretic that helps eliminate toxins, eases digestive troubles, and calms the nervous system. Ginger – flushing damp, cold areas with warm blood, clearing respiratory congestion, opening the nasal passages. Black pepper – pungent, stimulating. Cardamom – the queen of spices, excellent for digestion, balancing all three doshas, reducing bloating and clearing the lungs. Cinnamon – helping to control blood sugar, warming the digestive system.

I smell each one as I carefully add them to the water. Being mindful. Grateful. Embracing the medicinal nature of what I'm creating. I bring it to the boil. Add black tea. Sweeten it with coconut sugar. Some milk. Magic and medicinal. Infused.

Then I drink it in the garden if I can. When the rain lets up for a moment. Beginning my day with attention. With nature's gifts. Bestowing love on myself and thanking The Universe as I do. Asking it to bless my drink. Bless me.

If you'd like to join me in my ritual find full instructions at the end of this post.

This is 'the work'. The quiet tending to ourselves when everything else feels out of control. It means going to bed at a reasonable hour instead of scrolling through the latest catastrophe on your phone. It means saying no to things that drain you. Protecting your energy like it's the most valuable thing you own, because it is. It means choosing one or two people you can be honest with about how you're really feeling, rather than performing fine-ness for everyone.

Small rituals that anchor you. This is the quiet work of tending to yourself when everything else feels out of control.

Venus exalted teaches us this: love is expressed through care. Through showing up for yourself with the same tenderness you'd offer someone you cherish.

When I was a child there was a book on my parents' bookshelf called Mysteries of the World. I was captivated by it. There was a section on Atlantis.

The myth comes to us through Plato, who wrote about it in his dialogues Timaeus and Critias. Atlantis was a vast and prosperous island - ruled by the sea God Poseidon and his mortal wife Cleito, ringed with concentric circles of land and water, a great palace at its centre. Initially it thrived under a strict moral code and enjoyed great wealth and power. But the rulers became corrupt. They sought conquest. They lost their way. And so The Gods destroyed them. The island sank beneath the sea.

Plato appears to have used the story as an allegory on the hubris of nations. Whether Atlantis was real or mythical almost doesn't matter (though I know what I believe). What does matter is the story. A kingdom that loses sight of the fundamental laws of the universe crumbles into the sea, its physical nature literally destroyed by its spiritual failings.

What I didn't know as a child was that this story is far from unique. Flood myths permeate our collective history and spring from every corner of our world. In Hinduism, in Greece, in Mesopotamia, in Egypt, in Nigeria, in Scandinavia, in the creation myths of the Aztec, Ojibwe and Maya, in the Incan legends of South America. The oldest known narrative of a divinely initiated flood originates from the Sumerian culture in Mesopotamia - the Epic of Gilgamesh, dating back four thousand years. In the Hebrew Genesis, God decides to flood the earth because of the corrupted state of mankind. The story repeats and repeats across civilisations that had no known contact with each other.

Why?

Carl Jung felt that myths resemble one another not necessarily because they originated in the same place, but because on a subconscious level every human brain makes sense of the world in the same way. That we carry these stories in our collective unconscious. That they rise up through us whether we know it or not.

I think my childhood captivation wasn't idle curiosity. It was a memory reigniting. We hold our collective history in our DNA whether we realise it or not. These flood myths have deeper meanings tied to re-creation and renewal - a cycle of creation, un-creation, and re-creation. The flood is never just punishment. It is always also preparation.

And so when I look at the rain outside - forty days of it, the land sodden, the sun absent - I feel something ancient stir. A primal fear. The story we carry in our bones. That this is punishment. That this is the end.

But perhaps it isn't punishment. Perhaps it's just weather. Perhaps the fear itself is the thing worth looking at - that old story rising up from the collective unconscious, asking to be noticed. To be felt. And then released.

Atlantis fell. And yet here we are. Still. Carrying the memory of the flood in our DNA and still, somehow, finding reasons to make breakfast. To call a friend. To step outside when the rain eases for a moment and feel the cold air on our faces.

We are individuals living our own little lives and we can only see the world at large from within them. We can't stop the deluge. Can't control the eclipses or the political theatre or the wars on every horizon.

The rain is here for the time being. What if we learned to appreciate it? To be grateful? What if it's washing away what we need to let go of - the misconstrued notion that we have conquered nature? We were never concrete, never permanent. We're clay. We're water ourselves.

But we can choose how we meet ourselves in it. We can cultivate the inner strength to weather what comes. Through presence. Through loving ourselves enough to do the unsexy work of being embodied. Fed. Rested. Connected.

The illusion wasn't safety. The illusion was that safety was ever external.

Now we learn to become our own shelter. The ground has always had the potential to shake beneath our feet. To succumb to the power of nature. We have always been this fragile. And yet we have always endured.

The Astrology: What's Coming

Let's be specific about what we're moving through. The astrology in February is concentrated, potent, unsettling. So much happening at once.

Mercury has already entered Its shadow phase and will station to turn retrograde in Pisces on the 25th of February, and won't leave the sign until the 15th April. Communication slowing down. Thoughts becoming foggy, intuitive, emotional rather than logical. More time in the inner realms.

Yesterday – 10th February: Venus entered Her exaltation in Pisces. She's still under the beams, hidden from view, gathering strength in the dark. We won't see Her shine brightly yet. But She's there. Building. Read more about Venus in Pisces.

14th February: Saturn leaves Pisces and enters Aries. After dissolving structures in water, He moves into fire. From collective grief to individual will. From surrender to initiation. This isn't a gentle shift - Saturn in Aries asks us to act before we feel ready, to build whilst the ground is still uncertain. Saturn and Neptune meet in an exact conjunction at zero degrees Aries. The threshold of the zodiac. Initiating a new cycle that will span decades and change how we act in the world, and how we perceive it. I wrote about Neptune's arrival in Aries here and will write more about Their merging when I've published this.

17th February: New Moon Solar Eclipse in Aquarius at 28 degrees, tightly squaring Uranus in Taurus. This is the first eclipse in Aquarius, marking the beginning of a new 18-month eclipse cycle across the Leo-Aquarius axis. The nodes spend around 18 months in each sign pair, and this initiates a whole new story. Solar eclipse energy is New Moon energy - beginnings, that may arrive through endings. Seeds being planted. With Uranus involved, expect the unexpected. Breaks from established patterns. Disruption to what we thought was reliable.

What does an Aquarian eclipse season look like? Aquarius is about the future, technology, individuation, community. Saturn's sign. And Saturn is starting a new cycle in Aries on the same day he shifts signs. There's something here about power to the people. About breaking from old authority structures. About finding our own sovereignty whilst also recognising we need each other. The collective and the individual dancing together.

19th February: The Sun enters Pisces. Read about Pisces season here.

20th February: Saturn and Neptune meet and merge at zero degrees Aries. This is the threshold of the zodiac - the zero point - an initiation of fire. These two old Gods begin a new cycle that will last decades. Discipline merging with dissolution. Structure meeting spirit. A radical new beginning, an opportunity for collective rebirth.

This period may feel profoundly unsettling. The spotlight is on zero Aries. A new era beginning before the old one has fully ended. Neptune in Aries bringing flood instead of fire. Saturn trying to build in a sign where He struggles. Venus learning to love in the dark. Mercury preparing to turn retrograde.

How might you be feeling this personally?

Using whole sign houses and your rising sign, the eclipse at 28 degrees Aquarius will activate the house ruled by Aquarius in your chart. That's where new beginnings are being seeded. Where you're being asked to break from old patterns. Where something innovative, collective, or technologically oriented might emerge.

For the Saturn-Neptune conjunction at zero Aries look to the house ruled by Aries. That's where you're being asked to blend discipline with spiritual wisdom. To act with faith. To build something new even when you can't yet see the full picture.

For Aries rising: This is happening in your first house. Your sense of self, your body, your identity. Profound personal restructuring.

For Taurus rising: Your twelfth house. Hidden enemies, the unconscious, what's being dissolved behind the scenes.

For Gemini rising: Your eleventh house. Friendships, networks, communities, hopes for the future.

For Cancer rising: Your tenth house. Career, public role, reputation, what you're building in the world.

For Leo rising: Your ninth house. Beliefs, higher learning, travel, philosophy, what gives life meaning.

For Virgo rising: Your eighth house. Shared resources, intimacy, transformation, what you're being asked to let go of.

For Libra rising: Your seventh house. Partnerships, relationships, how you meet the other.

For Scorpio rising: Your sixth house. Daily work, health, service, the rituals that sustain you.

For Sagittarius rising: Your fifth house. Creativity, pleasure, risk, self-expression, what brings you joy.

For Capricorn rising: Your fourth house. Home, roots, family, your private foundation.

For Aquarius rising: Your third house. Communication, learning, siblings, your immediate environment.

For Pisces rising: Your second house. Resources, values, what you have, what sustains you materially.

Use these headlines as invitations to pay attention. Notice where you're being asked to change, to let go, to build something new whilst the ground is still shaking beneath your feet.

How to Make Chai

This isn't meant to be prescriptive - find what works for you. But here's the method I've settled into:

Spices (for one pot - makes a 2-3 cups - adjust to taste):

• 4-5 cloves

• 1/4 teaspoon black peppercorns

• 4-5 cardamom pods

• Small piece of cinnamon stick (or 1/2 teaspoon ground)

• Small piece of fresh ginger (about an inch, sliced or grated)

• Pinch of nutmeg

• A stalk of lemongrass (bruised) or a teaspoon of dried

Method:

Crush the cloves, peppercorns, cardamom and cinnamon with a pestle and mortar. Don't pulverise them – just break them open to release the oils. Smell them as you work.

Add the crushed spices and ginger to a pot with about 2 cups of water. Bring to the boil and let it simmer for 5-10 minutes. The longer you simmer, the stronger the medicine.

Add two or three teaspoons of black tea (I use 3 Assam teabags). Let it steep for a few minutes.

Add milk to taste (about 1/2 cup, or more if you like it creamy). Add your sweetener – jaggery, coconut sugar, sugar.

Strain into your favourite cup.

Drink it slowly. Taste each spice. Feel the warmth spreading through you. This is love made liquid.

Or watch the video that inspired my practice: Learn to Make the Perfect Traditional Chai with Ayurveda Master Vasant Lad

If any of this has resonated and you'd like to understand how these energies are moving through your own chart specifically, I offer birth chart readings in person at Essential Therapies in Sidmouth and on Zoom. When the world feels unsettling, a reading can offer perspective - a map of where the focus is, which areas of life are being activated, and how to navigate them with clarity. Because the key to applying Venus' wisdom - to knowing how to truly take care of yourself - is to know yourself better. And that is exactly what a birth chart reading offers. You can book online with me here. And learn more about my readings here. For £10 off your reading subscribe to my newsletter here - I haven't got into the swing of sending anything out yet but I'm aiming to in the next few weeks.