Saturn has entered Aries today (February 14, 2026)

To mark the ingress, I’m sharing an excerpt from the 2026 Forecast (Print Edition), where this transit is examined in depth.

Each year I publish a long-form forecast exploring the deeper cultural and psychological patterns shaping the year ahead. The 2026 edition focuses on identity, collective coherence, technological influence, and the subtle conditions that create instability long before visible events unfold.

What follows is a passage from the chapter on Saturn in Aries and the erosion—and reconstruction—of the self.

Excerpt from “State of the Planets,” p. 48—2026 Forecast (Print Edition)

When Saturn enters Aries, the message is clear: it’s time to build the self and it has to be the real one. Aries carries the raw spark of “I am,” and Saturn brings structure, discipline, and accountability. Together, they begin a period when identity can’t be borrowed, filtered, or performed for an audience. The era of endlessly editing ourselves to fit a feed starts to lose momentum. Saturn in Aries asks for a self that’s grounded and lived—rooted in inner truth, not outside approval.‍

War erupts when a society can’t see itself clearly.‍

When people can’t tell what’s true from what’s false, they become easier to persuade, mislead, or divide. The inner compass weakens and early warning signs get ignored. Over time, a culture can lose its ability to name what’s actually happening, and that confusion creates openings where fear and hostility spread.

History shows that major wars rarely come from one leader’s choices alone. They happen when whole societies lose clarity and cohesion. In the years leading up to World War II, many European countries underestimated Hitler’s ambitions because their publics were fragmented, overwhelmed, and too willing to accept reassuring stories over hard truths. Some people sensed the danger early, but many mainstream institutions and cultural voices failed to respond in time.

In our time, a similar pattern is emerging, and it connects to what many people already feel building as we move into 2026. Collective awareness is being blurred by something new, something no earlier generation faced in quite this way: algorithm-shaped identity.

For millions of people, social media feeds act like mirrors that quietly reshape self-image, behavior, and even beliefs. Over time, it can get harder to tell what’s genuinely you and what’s been nudged into place by what you’re shown. As a result, many people struggle to answer a simple but important question: Who am I without filters, audiences, or algorithms? 

It has become the central question of our era, and a significant part of the world does not know how to answer it.

Many people have never learned how to form a sense of self that is not dependent on digital approval. This creates an empty space within, a loss of inner direction.

A society that cannot define itself becomes emotionally unstable. When people do not know who they are, they react quickly and often violently. They cling to groups in order to feel safe. They allow others to decide what is right or wrong for them. They mistake their moods for facts. They become vulnerable to sudden waves of fear. They look for authority figures or enemies to explain their anxiety. They lose resilience, which means they can no longer tolerate ordinary stress. They confuse attention with purpose and struggle to manage even simple fear.

When enough people feel this way, the entire atmosphere of a society becomes cloudy and chaotic. This is not because people are bad, but because they are confused. A confused society becomes an easy target for manipulation, polarization, fear-based thinking, simplistic explanations, and charismatic figures who know how to take advantage of uncertainty. This is how societies drift toward danger without realizing it. This is how wars begin, because collective consciousness has dropped too low to recognize the warning signs. These wars are not always traditional battles. Sometimes they are wars over identity, meaning, attention, and narrative. Sometimes they happen inside individuals long before they ever happen between nations.

Saturn in Aries tests personal sovereignty. Saturn’s influence usually introduces friction in the form of limits, boundaries, and a sharpening sense of pressure. In Aries, that pressure lands directly on the self. We begin to feel the weight of every identity we have unconsciously adopted, including the online persona, the job title, and the curated version of ourselves we created for approval. Saturn triggers a reckoning with the question: “Is this who I am, or is this the version of me the world rewards?” For many people, that question will feel deeply uncomfortable.

We live in a time when identity is shaped through digital systems that fragment the self and reward performance. Saturn in Aries exposes the cost of that fragmentation. It places structure around illusion and forces us to face the hollowness of borrowed identity. The digital world encourages us to define ourselves through avatars, metrics, and curated images, yet Saturn in Aries demands something far deeper, a self rooted in lived reality rather than virtual reflection. The more we rely on digital scaffolding to define who we are, the more this transit will feel like pressure, limitation, or even identity collapse. However, that collapse can be holy because it marks the demolition that must occur before the rebuild.

The Stakes Are Higher‍

We have seen Saturn in Aries before, in 1996, and the themes were unmistakable. Identity became a public performance. High-profile trials, reality television, and the rise of the 24-hour news cycle turned fame into spectacle rather than a reflection of talent. That era revealed how easily identity can be transformed into a product rather than a truth. It marked the birth of brand culture, when self-image began to be curated for public consumption and people learned to define themselves through the gaze of others. Society became addicted to the external. Outrage, drama, and public humiliation became entertainment. Validation became currency. The collective learned to feed on surface-level reality, which was a dangerous game. Saturn now returns to bring correction to that imbalance.

Read the full 2026 Forecast in print.

The 2026 Forecast

An 88-page print edition exploring the cultural, psychological, and geopolitical patterns shaping the year ahead.

Limited print run.

Order the Print Edition →

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