S4 Ep16 How to extract Soma from Saturn and Neptune’s Transit through Uttara Bhadrapada Nakshatra
Have you been feeling squeezed in 2025? That pressure might not just be life’s trials—it could be the current notable Saturn transit and Neptune in Pisces locked in a slow dance through Uttara Bhadrapada Nakshatra in Vedic Astrology. In this post I share how the rare Saturn–Neptune conjunction and Saturn retrograde in Pisces are pressing out our karmic lessons and reshaping collective ideals in the penultimate lunar mansion of the zodiac.
Saturn & Neptune Transit through Uttara Bhadrapada Nakshatra
Right now both Saturn and Neptune are journeying together through Uttara Bhadrapada Nakshatra, the second-last Vedic Lunar Mansion before the Zodiac’s end. They’ve been moving forward since Northern Hemisphere Spring 2025 and will soon retrograde back through this Nakshatra, heightening the sense of pressure and inner reflection. Whether you work with Tropical or Sidereal Vedic Astrology, this extended transit may be profound opportunity to deeply integrate the lessons of this cycle.
Neptune in Pisces and our collective ideals
Neptune in Pisces makes me think of Vishnu’s sustaining presence — holding a space for our dreams, ideals, and social tolerance. Since Neptune’s current Pisces transit began in 2010 we’ve witnessed greater acceptance of gender fluidity, neurodiversity, same-sex unions, and maybe even aspirations for peaceful coexistence across cultures. As Neptune edges toward Aries, we might begin to ask ourselves what visionary ideals will fuel our pioneering spirit under this astrology transit as Aries is a sign that encourages our individual impulses.
Saturn Retrograde and the Oil Mill Metaphor
Saturn’s pragmatic truth-telling can feel a harsh contrast to this. So it is a bit bi-polar that they are transiting together! In our Patreon Book Club “The Greatness of Saturn”, Dr. Svoboda’s shares an Oil Mill Lord image of Saturn revealing its purpose in ensuring each of us gains the maximum benefit from the experiences we are here to experience. This image makes me think of grinding wheat into nourishing flour by opening the wheat germ or pressing olives into the golden ‘Azeite’ Olive oil that we love so much in Portugal! These images invite us to surrender to this Saturn retrograde in Vedic Astrology as an essential, transformative ritual, instead of a setback.
Ahirbudhnya Serpent and the Soma Extraction Ritual
In Uttara Bhadrapada the serpent deity Ahirbudhnya binds cosmic heights to Earth’s roots, much like Vasuki churning the Ocean of Milk. Vedic texts describe two energies in this Nakshatra:
Abhiṣiñcantaḥ (anointing from above)
Abhiṣuṇvantaḥ (pressing Soma from below)
This dual flow — blessings raining down and priests squeezing sacred Soma — mirrors how Saturn and Neptune are co-creating a deep Soma extraction ritual in the skies.
Embodying the Cosmic Squeeze - Practices and Integration
How can you turn this planetary pressure into your personal nectar? Maybe practicing yin yoga spinal twists to physically embody the pressing and release stored tension or journaling with prompts like “What wisdom am I distilling from my past cycles?” to capture your karmic essence.
Need support? - reach out and join us on Patreon
This transit continues through Easter 2026 and is an extraordinary window for retrograde integration and karmic distillation. If you’re curious to explore more, join my our Greatness of Saturn Book club or Moon Investigation on Patreon where we unpack Vedic Nakshatras, Planetary transits, and practical remedies. Join me to turn cosmic tension into sacred essence and deepen your Vedic astrology practice together.
Extracting Soma from Saturn & Neptune’s Transit through Uttara Bhadrapada Nakshatra
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Saturn and Neptune Transit Deep-Dive at the Zodiac Threshold
Fiona Marques: Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Vedic Astrology Podcast. My name is Fiona Marques and I wanted today to make a connection to our previous podcast, episode 15 in season 4, where I spoke with Jack Lyons about the threshold between Pisces and Aries. We looked at the imagery from the ancient text that helps us to understand Aquarius, to understand Pisces and to understand Aries. And it was a really fascinating and profound discussion about what it is to end one cycle and begin another and how do we do that? How do we do something as enormous of that? But something that actually happens in a mundane way all the time. Every year the Sun passes that threshold, and for many planets, they do it regularly too. So it got me thinking about [00:01:00] the Nakshatra that straddles that space as well. And, depending on which Ayanamsha you use, if you're looking at Vedic Astrology through the Tropical lens Uttara Bhadrapada straddles Pisces and Aries, if you're looking at it through side, it is completely inside Pisces. And it is that penultimate Nakshatra for both systems. The second last Nakshatra before the end of the cycle. So this Nakshatra really got me thinking about how does it match up? What does it have to help inform us of this leap from one cycle to another.
So at the moment in the sky, whether you look at astrology through a Tropical lens or a Sidereal lens, we have two great big energies in the [00:02:00] Nakshatra of Uttara Bhadrapada. We have Neptune and we have Saturn. And they are in this slow dance right now, getting closer and closer together. They've been moving forward during this movement out of winter, through spring into summer. But now, as the Sun begins to get further along its summer journey, these two plants from our perspective are going to turn Retrograde and head backwards and spend even more time in this Nakshatra. So they'll Retrograde back together through the Nakshatra. And then if you look at it through Tropical, they've Retrograde some of it will take place in Pisces and their exact degree conjunction will happen at zero degrees of Aries in a Tropical Ayanamsha. [00:03:00] So it's something that is grasping at our attention, these two planets.
And in some ways they're a little bipolar to each other. So let's think about Neptune. And for Vedic Astrology, we don't necessarily study the outer planets as much and for that reason. It can be hard sometimes to know what to do with being aware that there's an outer of planet involved.
Neptune in Pisces - Ideals, Dreams & Social Tolerance
Fiona Marques: But one of the ways that I like to think about Neptune is maybe we can see Neptune, is being connected to Vishnu. If we looked at the Trinity of outer planets related to the Trinity of Brahma and Vishnu and Shiva. That perhaps Neptune helps us to sustain, and does that [00:04:00] work for Vishnu, sustaining our experience, the experience of consciousness awakening through this dream of materiality. And Neptune maybe helps us with our dreams and aspirations, highest ideals that sustain us through what can be quite an intense experience of being alive. Perhaps it's pretty important to have some hopeful visions or some aspiring dreams and ideals. And perhaps Neptune does that for us.
And if we think about Neptune right now, has spent some time in Pisces, whichever way you look at the Ayanamshas. And we can maybe reflect on Neptune being in Pisces, allowing humanity this period of time where [00:05:00] we've been sustained by these ideals around two fish swimming in opposite directions. This was one of the things that Jack and I spoke about in our imagery podcast. That Pisces has this beautiful poetic imagery of two fish swimming in opposite directions. That they're not controlling each other, they're not creating rigid rules or paradigms for each other. They're swimming in opposite directions and it's perfectly okay. And perhaps we can look at this time of Neptune being in Pisces and associated it with a lot of acceptance and fluidity around gender, around same-sex partnerships, around gender continuum a sexuality continuum, even an acceptance of neurodiversity. And many things like this. May be also a kind of vision around peacefully coexisting with different [00:06:00] religions and different political systems, different cultures.
And as we head towards Neptune coming into Aries, we wonder about what will be the ideals and dreams that sustain us in Neptune coming into Aries. Mars ruled sign. A fiery sign, the first sign of the Zodiac. Are we going to see a more pioneering and independent spirit being those sustained ideals that give us the energy to keep going in our experience of waking up. We might be thinking that we are going to see some visions that are more pioneering and individualized or individualistic. These ideals of starting something new, getting it right this time, perhaps Neptune can help us with those.
And right at the exact same time [00:07:00] that Neptune is crossing this portal from Pisces to Aries, Saturn is also tagging along, getting closer and closer to Neptune. And in some ways it's hard to think of two planets that are more different because Saturn has such a pragmatic sense of reality. Such a harsh and brutal sense of truth. The cold, harsh facts. So this bipolar experience of being sustained by idealistic visions from Pisces of everything being integrated and us all being able to swim in our different directions, but loving being in the same ocean. While Saturn is bringing us those realities.
And I don't know whether you are having this kind of bipolar experience in your algorithms on your news feeds or YouTube feeds or whatever, where 50% of your [00:08:00] content is telling you that humanity is lifting up and consciousness is being raised, and we are just a breath away from enlightenment. And at the same time, we're also being fed so much news as well about that move to isolate ourselves, to defend what we have, to protect what we have to attack, those who maybe are a threat to us. So it's a bit crazy around here at the moment with these two planets crossing that threshold together.
And we've been looking at that in our Moon and Transits group where we meet every couple of weeks and as Vedic Astrologers, we're just trying to become a little bit more aware of where the planets are moving. Being as often we're more comfortable relying on the Caranamasha or the Vimshottari Dasa system to help us with timing. But as we've been meeting for a while now, every couple of weeks discussing transits we've been becoming more familiar with this Saturn and Neptune slow dance.
Saturn Retrograde Impact
Fiona Marques: And at the same time of [00:09:00] that I have another Patreon group that looks at the myth called "The Greatness of Saturn" and in that we meet once a month to, to go through one of the chapters in "The Greatness of Saturn". It's a very rich and inspiring book. And there's a beautiful part towards the end of the book where Dr. Svoboda talks about Saturn and his role of this cold, harsh reality, and compares it to a grinding of the Mill. And Mills were these contraptions that helped and do continue to help help us squeeze out and grind out things. So if you think about, maybe we all have the idea of wheat being ground by heavy stones. Perhaps you can imagine the donkey walking the stone wheel around and crushing the wheat. Or maybe you can think of the windmill moving that heavy stone over the wheat and crushing it. And the Mill is so important because wheat is relatively [00:10:00] undigestible. Certainly the germ that the oil that's in there that's so nutritious can't really be accessed by the human digestive system. So breaking it down into its pieces and really squeezing out all of that nutritious oil, the juice, the essence of the wheat is the idea of these kind of Mills. But you can also have Mills to press oil. So if you're like me here in Portugal, the olive oil press where we are turning and squeezing those olives to get out the beautiful olive oil, the Azeite. So we can think of Mills for this example, from "The Greatness of Saturn". And in the book King Vikramaditya goes through a lot of tribulations and trials and ends up sitting on top of the Mill and squeezing out the oil and singing beautifully.
So this idea of the Mill is in the myth of [00:11:00] "The Greatness of Saturn". But later in the book, Dr. Svoboda compares the axis on which the Earth is precessing through the equinoxes to an oil Mill axis. And he says, "Atop the Mills axle, supervising its whirling sits Saturn, the Oil Mill Lord, who is the so-called "genie of the pivot". His grist comprises of the multitudinous inhabitants of the universe whom he grinds exceedingly fine, reducing them by time to the tales that others tell. It is the job of Saturn, who is time, to ensure that everyone, humans, Devas and Asuras alike, experience those events that must be [00:12:00] experienced". So that's from page 208 of my copy of "The Greatness of Saturn".
And this image of Saturn atop the axle of the Mill really stuck with me. And so when I heard about Uttara Bhadrapada having also this squeezing role, there was a match, a kind of click about, because Saturn is associated with that Nakshatra as well and made me think about this grinding and squeezing imagery.
Exploring Uttara Bhadrapada Nakshatra transit imagery and meaning
Fiona Marques: And like all Nakshatras, Uttara Bhadrapada has many layers of imagery and many components that make up the richness of each Lunar Mansion. So I am really encouraging you to take a deep dive into this Nakshatra, but today I'm really focusing around the grinding and the squeezing part of that image.
So I'm going to [00:13:00] take all of that richness and look at a small part of the description of Uttara Bhadrapada. And we can look at that it's associated with a serpent. A serpent that goes by the name of Ahirbudhniya. And these two words, Ahir is relating to serpents and Budhniya relates to being bound.
So whenever I hear serpents, it reminds me of the story of the churning of the ocean of milk to help consciousness bring into awareness and manifestation everything that will provide these experiences and delight the waking up of consciousness, the game that we're all in. When I think of serpents, I think of the way that the Devas and the Asuras work together to churn that ocean. [00:14:00] And here once again, we see a very sacred serpent being mentioned in this Nakshatra.
And this serpent is bound to the root. So that also makes me think of the lotus that is bound. The beautiful lotus flower that has this stalk that connects it deep down into that silty, muddy water of the pond. That this serpent in some ways, this very priestly serpent because this Nakshatra relates, it's the penultimate Nakshatra, it relates to the transformation, the funeral, the letting go, the what remains. And this serpent is almost on an altar. It's that priestly. And here it is actually connected, bound to the root. This brings to mind again for me, this grinding the conical movement of the [00:15:00] precession of the way that the North Star, from our perspective, that axle jumps out of its placement and finds a new North star. It's as if this serpent is also spinning, rooted at the bottom of the pond and a beautiful lotus flower at the top. So that was one of the images that came to mind for me.
But also we can see that this serpent, because it's grounded it's what's keeping the earth in its goldilock space in space, keeping it at just that right magnetic field. Maybe we can think of it as the serpent coiled around the earth, keeping the waters, the Earth, the ether, the space, the atmosphere. What a special arrangement it is that we are in that goldilock space in our solar system, but also that all of the conditions are exactly right for life. And perhaps this serpent is playing that role too.
So we have this serpent and like all Nakshatras, [00:16:00] it has a Shakti from above and from below. A power that is unique. And the power from above with this Nakshatra is anointing, sprinkling. This is a Nakshatra that is associated with water. So we can see that the previous Nakshatra, the beginning of the funeral had this fire element to it. And created the ashes, created the components that when we add water to them, we can sprinkle, we can anoint, we can give blessings.
And the power from below is the power that squeezes and grinds and extracts the essence or the Soma. So this is what caught my ear around this amazing connection between Saturn grinding in the Mill and this Saturn owned Nakshatra or this Saturn heralded Nakshatra [00:17:00] having this connection around grinding.
What are Saturn and Neptune doing for us as they go through this Nakshatra? Very slowly, as they get closer and closer together, now they're just about to Retrograde moving even closer and closer together. And then they're going to go forward until they exactly conjunct all inside this Nakshatra. Now they are both actually, they're both helping us with this grinding and extraction. What are we going to take from this experience? What is the essence? What is the Soma, the juice from all of this suffering in some cases that we've been through? What can we squeeze out so that we become the tales that others tell?
Saturn has been in this Nakshatra since March, the middle of March this year, 2025. And it's going to be there through till April, [00:18:00] 2026. And you remember that? Back in the beginning of 2025, like through February and March, we had Venus, the Sun and Mercury all move through there as well. We had Venus Retrograde through there, so this is a Nakshatra that has been very supported. It's giving us a lot of support to take the essence from this moment in time. And now we're just left with these two players, Neptune and Saturn, doing this very slow dance.
Saturn was last here in January of 1996. Neptune was last in this Nakshatra starting in 1857. So are they wrapping up and squeezing something from 1996 or from 1857? And they were both conjunct together in 1989. So are they squeezing something from that experience that they had in Capricorn in 1989? [00:19:00] This might be what they're squeezing. I don't know what you feel like they're squeezing in your own life right now.
And why I'm focusing more on the squeezing side than the anointing side. Maybe that is my experience. I'm feeling a lot of squeezing myself this year. But we have, both Saturn and Neptune are below the ecliptic at the moment. Planets can orbit slightly above the Suns path from our perspective here on Earth, or they can be slightly below from our perspective here on Earth. At the moment, both Saturn and Neptune are transiting below that ecliptic path. So that's why I'm focusing more on that they're using the Shakti from below.
And when we think about extracting the Soma, we can think about this Somalata tree that the priests would collect the twigs from under this [00:20:00] tree under the moonlight to begin the process of going to get the Soma juice. And they would first then soak these twigs because they need the moistness to begin to be soft enough to open up. And this is a water Nakshatra and Pisces is a water sign. So we see that softening up. The filling with water that makes water, just makes things easier. It makes things flow against each other. And after the twigs have absorbed the water, then they can be crushed and squeezed. And it makes me think about, I don't know whether you've had that experience of sucking on a sugar cane and trying to use your grinding teeth to, to squeeze out even more sweet juice from that sugar cane. So that's a bit like this experience that the priests are using the force, the shakti, to squeeze out the Soma.
How to make the most of Saturn and Neptune's Transit through Uttara Bhadrapada Nakshatra
Fiona Marques: And where in our [00:21:00] own lives are we feeling that squeezing? And are you someone that likes the rotations and the twists in yoga? I'm wondering whether this is a time when we all want to practice some yin yoga and practice some of those spinal twists laying on the floor, really surrendering, into those supine spinal twists on the mat. And breathing and allowing Saturn to squeeze out from us the essence. Using our vision, our ideals of Neptune is helping us understand why this squeezing is actually the greatest gift so we can preserve the essence of our experience.
And this squeezing could go right on through into Easter of 2026. So it's our chance. This is our [00:22:00] really great chance to distil our lessons from this karmic cycle. And maybe that's a Saturn cycle since 1996. Maybe it's a very large Neptune cycle of 186 years. Maybe it's the essence of the Zodiac itself. But there's probably not going to be a better opportunity than this to capture the essence of our experience.
And we're in Pisces. Pisces is a mutable sign. It's a feminine sign. It facilitates integration and just understanding the interconnectedness of everything. So it's the perfect place for us to extract this nectar.
And once these planets move forward and. Make that threshold leap out of this Nakshatra into Revati and then into Aries and begin their new cycle. We're off again. We're off in the [00:23:00] drama. So perhaps right now, these couple of podcast episodes are great reminders to seize our opportunity and to really give thanks that Saturn is working hard to turn us into the tales that others will tell. It's a very beautiful investment when a teacher is willing to push and squeeze out of you all that you've learned. And I wish all of us the best with this experience because I certainly am finding it very squeezing. But I can only hope that is, that I am surrendered and that I am giving the essence of what it is that I've learned.
And I want to leave you with that invitation to research this Nakshatra, Uttara Bhadrapada. Get into the mythology and see what you can learn because [00:24:00] the richness that Vedic Astrology has to share with us at these times when society is bipolar, when the Asuras and the Devas are twisting on that rope through Rahu and Ketu, when they're really stirring up and they're trying to cleanse and detoxify what is hidden and bring it out. The mythology is what can really help us to have our Neptune pointed to that North Star. Have our ideals looking up to the top of that axle and see the beauty of what it is that is being churned here, and surrender and give all of our lessons, give that out breath of Uttara Bhadrapada, the Yin of releasing that all. And become the heroes that people speak about of these times.
Great. I look forward to catching up with you next time we get together on the Vedic Astrology [00:25:00] podcast. This is a bit of a theme for me at the moment, this crossover from end of one cycle to another cycle. So I'm hoping to have some more conversations about how do we move from one reality to another, and how do we let go and how do we grieve? So keep stay tuned for more. All right. Thanks for listening, and look forward to seeing you next time on "The Vedic Astrology Podcast". Bye everyone.
