Imagine this: someone is standing before you, offering you a gift. To accept that gift, you must extend two empty hands and grasp it. But you already have something in your hands. And no matter how hard you try, you cannot put down what you already have in your hands. In fact, it seems as though what you are carrying has become an extension of you, a part of you.

So the person offering the gift shrugs, and moves onto the next person. This person’s hands are empty and they joyfully accept the gift. You, on the other hand, are left holding onto something that you no longer need or want, something that has stopped you accepting further gifts, all the while glaring enviously at the person who received your gift.

How often do you empty your kitchen tidy bin? Daily? Weekly? When it’s full? Whatever your routine, I know that you don’t allow the bin to overflow, then keep throwing garbage at it and complain two weeks later about the awful smell emanating from that corner of the kitchen. Instead, you take the garbage out to your council bin (at least that’s how it works in Australia), which is emptied weekly.

At some point we have to empty our energetic garbage bin.

Emptying Your Energetic Garbage Bin

If ever there was an astrological transit that represents the idea of ‘emptying your energetic garbage bin’, it’s Neptune’s current position in the last degree of its own sign, Pisces. The last time Neptune sat in the final degree of Pisces was 1862, so it’s a rare event.

Pisces sits at the end of the astrological cycle. The final degrees of Pisces are the ideal time to ‘take out the garbage’ by releasing, letting go or surrendering anything that no longer serves us. Pisces represents the collective unconscious, the energetic realm lying beyond the reach of our five physical senses. We receive messages from this realm through dreams, intuitive nudges, synchronicities and archetypal images, all things that Neptune is well-equipped to deliver to you through the sign and house placement in your natal chart. And the undercurrent of these messages is always the same: surrender, release, let go.

With Neptune moving into Aries on 26 January 2026, we are all being offered a fresh opportunity to start again, to be truly reborn, to stand up and be counted for who we are, what we believe in and what we stand for.

But to accept this energetic gift, we must first empty our hands of anything lingering from the past 14 years.

Neptune in Pisces February 2012 to January 2026

Now is a good time to pull out your chart and identify the house where Pisces holds sway in your chart. This is the area of life where, over the last 14 years, you have been asked to let go, release and dissolve any outmoded thoughts, feelings or behaviours. This message will have been delivered not by the postman, or via email, but via intuitive nudges, knowings, strong feelings, maybe even visions and visitations.

This same area of your life is where you might have been most confused, lost in a fog or isolated. It might also be the house of your undoing. This more than likely occurred because you either didn’t hear/see the intuitive messages, or you chose to ignore them. As I said in my article last week on Neptune as the portal to the collective unconscious, if you lock Neptune in the basement, he’ll tunnel out and pop up in the backyard. Translation: if you try to ignore him, you’ll get bitten on the bum!

Think back to what was happening in your life 14 years ago, leading up to February 2012. Now move forward through your own timeline to today. What are the major themes of your life throughout this time? Have you opened up more spiritually? Have you tapped into your intuition? If so, have you followed that still, clear inner voice? If you have, well done! You’ve emptied your energetic garbage bin.

If you haven’t, you have one last opportunity to dispose of that burden you carry, in preparation for the new Aries era commencing in January 2026.

Saturn in Pisces March 2023 to February 2026

If Neptune is most at home in Pisces, Saturn is the stoic lost at sea. Saturn likes control, structure, plans and being organised. Pisces likes to dissolve things, create confusion, bring in the fog and, like the ocean, will relentlessly wash up against you until it erodes away any weaknesses. Since Saturn’s ingress into Pisces in March 2023 we’ve all been challenged to let go of the need to control every last little thing in a particular area of our life, and to use our intuition more than our rational logic and practical planning to decide what must stay and what must go.

Look to the house Pisces rules in your chart. That is the area that has been feeling the push-me-pull-you energy of Saturn joining Neptune in Pisces since March 2023. If Neptune is the Mystic, Saturn is the Stoic. One yearns for anything beyond the known world, the other believes only in the known world. One wants to dissolve that which no longer serves you, the other wants to build things that last forever.

And in this battle, they can’t both win. Since March 2023 you will have been forced to let go of much that you believed to be permanent in the realm of your Pisces house. It’s ok though. Neptune asks us to dream, Saturn asks us to make plans. The final throes of both these planets’ time in Pisces will see the end of the dream, and the beginning of assertive action.

Provided you’ve emptied your energetic garbage bin.

The Houses

As a reminder, I’ve listed the areas of life covered by the 12 astrological houses below:

1^st house: self, physical body, ego, independent action.

2^nd house: money, resources, self-esteem, self-esteem.

3^rd house: communication, perception, neighbours, siblings.

4^th house: home, family, roots, emotional conditioning.

5^th house: creativity, children, play, romance.

6^th house: work, health, habits, mentors.

7^th house: relationships, open enemies, one-on-one connections with others.

8^th house: intimacy, shared resources, taxes, debt, death.

9^th house: higher meaning, study, travel, religion, foreign places.

10^th house: career, calling, public persona.

11^th house: friends, groups, causes, hopes & wishes.

12^th house: endings, unconscious, dreams, undoing, blind spots.

Take a moment to check where Saturn and Neptune currently sit in your chart by transit. You’re looking for the area that covers 25-29 degrees of Pisces. This is the area of your life where you need to do both a solid accounting (Saturn) and listen to your intuition (Neptune) to learn what you need to fully release before you can embrace the new energies coming in.

My Experience with Neptune and Saturn in Pisces

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Neptune ever since I knew what he was and what he is doing in my chart. For the record, it’s not a good idea to have that type of relationship with any of your natal planets or placements, and over the years Neptune, along with Uranus, have been the transiting wrecking balls of my life.

The Saturn/Neptune transit is occurring in my 3^rd house of communication. Until recently I worked in a place where communication was, frankly, non-existent. No one spoke to anyone, no one told anyone where they were going (if they left the office) or when they’d be back. I never knew where I stood with regard to the work I was doing, or the purpose of my role. This stood in stark contrast to previous workplaces, where open communication was a given, teamwork was strong and a good chat by the water cooler an accepted part of office life.

I knew within 6 months of starting that job that the workplace was not right for me. And yet I stayed. And despite many, many, increasingly strident intuitive nudges from Neptune, I persisted there. But Neptune in the 3^rd house can play tricks on your mind, and I began to feel trapped, isolated, and like I had no other options. I also kept telling myself that things would get better, and that I was fine. Unfortunately, they didn’t, and I wasn’t.

By the time Saturn joined Neptune in Pisces, I had become the frog in the pot – having the heat increased so gradually that I didn’t realise I was boiling alive. In April 2025, as Saturn moved closer to Neptune, the situation at my workplace escalated. I knew people were talking behind my back, and that I was being used as a scapegoat for everything that was not working in that office (classic Saturn/Neptune in Pisces). As both planets made their first foray into Aries I finally said ‘enough is enough’. I walked out for the sake of my own mental and physical health.

 Unfortunately bullies think that once they’ve bullied you, you are always theirs to bully. Earlier this week I received an email from my former workplace demanding I take down a Instagram reel and a TikTok video from my S.E. Harrison author accounts where I had mentioned that I didn’t enjoy my day job. A full 6 months after leaving that workplace, they were attempting to gag me (again 3^rd house).

For the record, I took the reel and video down. I removed the business’s name and my work experience there from my LinkedIn account. I no longer have anything online that connects me with that business, which suits me fine.

But that didn’t sit well with me. Hence this blog post and the accompanying You Tube video. After 14 years of Neptune in Pisces, of mixed messages, smoke and mirrors, having no voice and being dominated and bullied by someone with a louder voice, I will not be shut down. I am telling my story in the hope that it will help someone who may be struggling with the last stages of this Saturn/Neptune transit too.

The End of the Dreaming

With Neptune in Pisces, we may have been given to dreaming the big dreams. The impossible dreams. The out-of-this-world whimsical dreams. And that’s fine. Every great discovery or invention began in someone’s imagination. But there comes a time for the dreaming to end and the action to begin. With Neptune and then Saturn moving into Aries in early 2026, the time for dreaming is coming to an end. It’s time to take action.

But if you’re like me, and the undertow of Neptune and Saturn in the last degrees of Pisces, is trying to pull you under, take a moment to assess what area of your life is being impacted, what lesson you’re being asked to learn there, and what you can do to empty your energetic bin.

I cannot tell you the number of times I wanted to tell my former boss exactly what I thought of him. I dreamed (Neptune) of having that Bridget Jones moment when she tells Daniel Cleaver that “…if staying here means working within 10 yards of you, frankly, I’d rather have a job wiping Saddam Hussein’s arse”. I never got that moment. Instead, I just disappeared. Again, very Neptunian. I now see that, with my method of departure, I didn’t properly empty my energetic bin. So when I removed the ‘offending’ Instagram reel and TikTok video, I emailed them back, informing them that I’d done so and telling them not to contact me again. That’s about as blunt and Aries as you can get.

That’s what I mean when I say that Neptune leaving Pisces is the “end of the dreaming”. If there is anything you’ve been dreaming of doing, saying, or being while Neptune has been wading through his familiar waters of Pisces, now is the time to do, say or be it. Or let it go. It’s also the time to gather up your Saturn, and whatever is left of the life structures in that house he is transiting, and begin making plans and laying foundations to actually bring what you have been imagining into the world.

This is also the end of the illusion. If you have glamorised or glorified this area of life, give it a good, hard Saturn-inspired going-over without your rose-coloured glasses. Things always look different without that rosy tint, and now is the perfect time to have that reality check, and toss away anything that won’t serve you moving forward.

Neptune and Pisces also rule delusions. I deluded myself for years that I was valued in that workplace, that things would improve, that I would be “fine”. It wasn’t until I walked away that I saw clearly that I wasn’t valued, nothing would ever improve and that I most certainly wasn’t fine. By taking away my true voice, and systematically chipping away at my self-esteem, that workplace turned me into someone I didn’t recognise. Trauma does that. And healing, another Neptune/Pisces word, brings you back to yourself.

But this era is ending. Take off the rose-coloured glasses, wake up from the dream or delusion, throw anything that no longer serves you back into the great cosmic sea. Aries is bold and pioneering, it motivates us to begin new ventures, make a break for freedom and be truly independent. As both Neptune and Saturn move into Aries you will feel a definite shift from imagining and dreaming to the urgency and motivation of doing.

So leave that job, write that book, commit to that relationship, book that trip, build that business, start that consultancy, join that community group. Whatever you have been dreaming, the time is coming to do it.

Just make sure you’ve cleaned out your energetic bin first.