No Woman Wants To Be Veiled

In astrology, the movement of the outer planets help us understand the larger spiritual and emotional atmosphere we’re living in. The planetary transits reflect shifts in collective consciousness, shaping how entire generations think, feel, and relate to the unseen world. Neptune — the planet of the subconscious — takes about 165 years to travel through the entire zodiac, so when it changes signs, it signals the end of a long cycle and the beginning of a new one.

As Neptune prepares to leave Pisces and enter Aries, we are entering a moment of radical transition.

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Neptune, a planet associated with spirituality, transcendence, mysticism, surrender, and dissolution, has been moving through its own domicile—Pisces—since 2011. A planet in its home sign expresses its qualities with the greatest fluency and power, and Neptune in Pisces has magnified the archetypal themes of spiritual longing, collective compassion, religious devotion, and emotional permeability. However, as with all astrological signatures, the expression of this energy exists along a spectrum. What can manifest as spiritual elevation and self-transcendence in one context may easily become a form of passive idealism, porous boundaries, or a tendency to sanctify suffering in another. The desire to dissolve the ego or transcend the self may also obscure the necessary work of maintaining clarity, responsibility, and personal sovereignty.

Over the last decade and a half, under the influence of Neptune in Pisces, spiritual and religious narratives across the globe have emphasized submission, endurance, and in many cases, silence. This is not to say that Neptune in Pisces has caused these patterns, but rather that it has supported the collective conditions in which they are more easily perpetuated or justified. Spiritual rhetoric has often been used to validate pain, and cultural systems rooted in power have presented disappearance—particularly of women—as a form of moral virtue.

The symbolism of Pisces, often associated with veils, hiddenness, and the unseen, becomes particularly significant when viewed through this lens. In the esoteric tradition, concealment can serve a holy purpose, guarding the sacred from profanation. Yet when concealment is not chosen but enforced—when it becomes a method of control rather than a gesture of reverence—it ceases to protect and begins to erase. Nowhere has this tension been more visible than in the treatment of the feminine throughout this period. Across many traditions, the feminine principle—embodied in women themselves—has been veiled, both literally and figuratively, in the name of modesty, piety, or communal order. But what is often left unspoken is that what is veiled also becomes unavailable: unheard, unseen, and ultimately disempowered.

Within Jewish tradition, the clearest archetype of concealment appears in the figure of Esther. Her story, read annually during the Hebrew month of Adar—Pisces season—takes place in ancient Persia, a land that has long been associated with hiddenness, secrecy, and reversal. Esther’s very name shares a root with the Hebrew word hester, meaning “to hide.” Throughout the Megillah, G-d’s name does not appear explicitly, reflecting a divine presence that remains concealed throughout the narrative. Esther hides her identity for much of the story, and yet at the pivotal moment, she reveals herself in a way that shifts the entire structure of power. The transformation in the Purim story comes not from divine intervention that bursts forth from above, but from within a veiled structure that is overturned from the inside out. In this way, Persia becomes not only a geographical location but a symbolic space where the interplay of hiddenness and revelation becomes the very mechanism of redemption.

This pattern appears again in the mystical tradition, where the land of Persia is linked to eschatological transformation. In the Midrashic collection Yalkut Shimoni, there is a striking teaching that when upheaval emerges from the lands of Persia and Arabia, it is a sign that the time of redemption is drawing near. This text actually starts like this: “On the year that the Messiah will come” revealing that that when entrenched systems based on concealment begin to fracture, the conditions for messianic emergence become possible.

This teaching becomes especially relevant in light of the present moment. As Neptune prepares to leave Pisces, we witness widespread unrest and uprising among Iranian women—modern descendants of ancient Persia—who are rejecting the systems that have forced them into symbolic and literal veiling. Their refusal to disappear into the rhetoric of virtue reflects not a rejection of spiritual life, but a call for a spiritual life that does not come at the expense of embodiment, voice, or presence. To say that no woman wants to be veiled is not a rejection of modesty, privacy, or sanctity, but a rejection of compulsion and theologies that equate absence with devotion.

What makes this transition even more significant is that Neptune will not linger in a neutral space after leaving Pisces—it will enter Aries directly. Aries, as the first sign of the zodiac, represents emergence, identity, individuation, life force, and the assertion of self. Aries is ruled by the planet Mars: the red planet of war, the planet of blood, the planet that influences our drive and our willpower. The transition is brutal. Where Pisces dissolves, Aries defines. Where Pisces surrenders, Aries acts. The movement from Neptune in Pisces to Neptune in Aries is not only the closing of a 14-year cycle, but the completion of a full zodiacal round. This is a once-in-a-lifetime event: a planetary shift from spiritualized erasure to spiritualized sovereignty.

The last time Neptune entered Aries was in April of 1861, precisely at the beginning of the American Civil War. This is the exact historical context for the ideological unrest that accompanies these transitions. Neptune in Aries challenges the ways in which belief systems are embodied in real structures, calling attention to the gap between spiritual ideals and lived experience. It asks not whether an idea is beautiful, but whether it is right, not if an idea sounds holy, but whether it is just, fair, and under the Aquarius stellium we are currently under: if it will be freeing to the collective.

Aquarius is the sign that cares about truth, clarity, and freedom—especially freedom that benefits the collective. It is less focused on personal emotions and more concerned with what serves humanity as a whole. Aquarius invites us to challenge systems that limit human dignity, and it encourages bold, even disruptive, thinking in the name of progress. At its core, Aquarius wants to liberate what has been trapped—whether in culture, thought, or spirit. It supports movements that ask hard questions: Is this structure just? Is this belief serving the people it claims to protect? Is this the future we want to build?

This energy is being reinforced by Pluto, the planet of deep change and transformation, which has just entered Aquarius for the first time in over two centuries. Pluto brings things to the surface that have been buried. It reveals the places where power has been misused or held in secret. When Pluto moves through Aquarius, it pushes us to examine the very foundations of the systems we live in—religious, political, and social—and to begin the long work of changing them. It does not promise ease, but it does offer the possibility of regeneration. It asks us to imagine new ways of organizing life, grounded not in fear or hierarchy, but in shared responsibility and spiritual integrity.

Now, with Neptune beginning its transition from Pisces into Aries, we experience a shift from dissolution into emergence. Aries is the sign of identity, action, and sovereignty. If Pisces is about surrendering the self, Aries is about finding it. As Neptune leaves its home in Pisces—where it has supported ideals of unity, mysticism, and spiritual submission—it enters a sign that calls for strength, clarity, and the right to exist fully. Neptune in Aries brings the question of belief into the body: not what do you believe, but what are you willing to stand for, and how do those beliefs live through you?

Taken together, this moment asks something precise of us. It asks that our spiritual lives be aligned with truth, that our institutions reflect justice, and that our practices do not veil the very people they claim to protect. It asks that the feminine—long concealed, spiritualized, and controlled—be welcomed back into visibility, not only as a symbol, but as a force. Under Aquarius and Aries, there is no room for spiritual structures that depend on silence. What is veiled must now be revealed, not to destroy what came before, but to make space for what is finally ready to be born.

In a profound alignment of sacred time, this astrological transition occurs during the reading of Parashat Beshalach, the Torah portion that describes the Jewish people’s exodus from Egypt. This Parasha marks the turning point from bondage to liberation, from enforced labor to spiritual identity, from imposed silence to communal song. It is within this portion that the sea splits, that the Egyptian army is swallowed, and that for the first time in generations, the people of Israel experience what it means to move forward freely. The culmination of this narrative occurs not in the battlefield but in the moment of song, when Miriam the prophetess takes up her drum and leads the women in dance. Her voice, which had been silent until then, initiates a public act of praise that marks the beginning of redemption—not after the danger has passed, but in the very act of crossing.

The word Beshalach has a gematria of 340. Remarkably, the Hebrew word for Persia—Paras—also has a numerical value of 340. That the numerical value of Persia should match the name of the Torah portion read during this astrological transition—while women in the land historically called Persia remove their veils is a magical spiritual convergence. It shows us that Neptune is indeed entering Aries under Pluto in Aquarius, and that perhaps—for the first time ever— wee are truly ready.

In Kabbalistic thought, the ultimate goal of creation is the revelation of the Shechinah—the indwelling divine presence—within the physical world. The Shechinah is often described as feminine, as rooted in the body, in the earth, in relationship, and in voice. When she is veiled, the world appears disconnected from its Source. When she is revealed, divinity becomes visible through the ordinary. The re-emergence of women’s voices, especially in places that have historically demanded their silence, is not merely a social movement. It is a mystical event.

As Neptune leaves Pisces and enters Aries, the Shechinah begins to rise through reclamation. Through the end of silence and the return of her presence. And in this rising, we begin to see clearly the outlines of Redemption—not as something that arrives all at once from above, but as something sung into being from below, loudly, by the feminine.

May it happen soon and in our days.