The Neptune-Pluto Sextile
The secret ingredient.
Okay, so. In order to reeeally get into the Week Vibes for this upcoming week (July 7, 2025), I want to first get into the astrological weeds about a particular aspect.
The Neptune-Pluto sextile has been resonating in the sky for the last eighty years. It's taken a new tone since Pluto popped into Aquarius in 2024 and Neptune ingressed into Aries at the end of March 2025, and it's going to continue showing up in some especially interesting ways through 2036—and after that, another Neptune-Pluto sextile will not appear in the sky again until 2334.1
That's because of the dynamic between Neptune's orbit and Pluto's—Neptune takes about 164 years to make a complete round eccentric trip, and Pluto takes about 244 years. As a result, there's a good 500-ish years between Neptune-Pluto conjunctions, and because of the high eccentricity (non-circular-ness) of Pluto's orbit, the flow of their aspects from one conjunction to the next has some funky characteristics.2 As Neptune separates from its conjunction with Pluto and hits that first sextile, Pluto nearly matches speed with Neptune—and as a result, the separating sextile of the Neptune-Pluto cycle lasts for nearly a century, making it a truly intergenerational aspect.
Remember Iron Chef, the cooking competition show where the chef contestants had a particular secret ingredient that they had to showcase in all their dishes? The Neptune-Pluto sextile is like the secret ingredient of the last 80 years.
And a sextile is a great ingredient. If I had to choose any aspect to have to include in all my recipes, from soup to dessert, it'd be a sextile. Sextiles play well with others. They're harmonious, not overpowering—but they definitely add a flavor you'd miss if it weren't there. A sextile can add a welcome nougat-y texture to an otherwise crunchy moment dominated by a square or opposition.
The most recent Neptune-Pluto conjunction took place in 1891. The separating sextile began in 1945 and has remained within 3 degrees of orb more often than not, except for a longer 27-year stretch between 1993-2020 (with Pluto catching up to within about 51 degrees of Neptune in 2008). As of April 2026, Neptune will remain within 3 degrees of its sextile with Pluto until separating for good in 2036.
And aside from Neptune's lil retrograde back into Pisces from October 2025 to late January 2026, the remainder of the sextile will take place with Neptune in Aries and Pluto in Aquarius.
…So what?
Neptune sextile Pluto is all about the unifying power of imagination. Pluto loves to compost and transform systems. Neptune loves to dissolve the illusion of separation—between people, between ideologies, between constructed binaries. Put those energies together for a hundred years and you've got, like, three to four generations of people with special access to the transformative power of belief in the unseen.3
Whether that lends itself to the creation of visionary art or, y'know, fascism, depends.
Because the dark side of imagination is paranoia. Like, some folks believe the path to peace is through colonial ideologies of control and/or fundamentalist dogma. Some believe it's through remembering our not-separate-ness from the universal animate consciousness that pervades all things.
Details.
Anyway, check your birth chart! Do you have the Neptune-Pluto sextile? Mine is within 1°59' of orb.
Stay tuned—this aspect plays a big role in the vibes for the next few months, and especially this coming week!
The next applying sextile (which lasts only a handful of years) begins in 2334, followed by the next Neptune-Pluto conjunction in Gemini in 2385. The next separating sextile will begin in 2440.
Aside from the separating sextile and the applying trine, a Neptune-Pluto aspect usually lasts from 2-6 years. Next up is a separating square (2060-2066), followed by its separating trine (2086-2092), then its opposition (2136-2142), then a long-ass applying trine (2193-2279), an applying square (2308-2313), the applying sextile (2334-2339), and the next conjunction (2384-2386). Big, big thanks and credit to John Christopher at https://cyclicaldynamics.com/neptune-pluto-cycle-timeline/ for his work on this.
Also one of a bucketful of reasons why all the elder millennials you know are on ketamine.