SATURN RETROGRADE, THE LUNAR NODES SHIFT, FULL MOON IN AQUARIUS + WEEKLY ASTROLOGY FORECAST FOR JULY 26, 2026

We're deep in the waters of summer now. The Mercury retrograde in Cancer that just ended brought so much to the surface. It brought gifts too. For me personally, it brought clarity around mothering, around my inner framework, around how I've grown and shifted over the years. And I've been hearing from clients and friends that the same is true for them. The retrograde was intense, but there are these little gems of illumination on the other side of it. Moments where you realize: look how much I've grown. I approach this differently now. I have more compassion, more resources, more wisdom than I had before.

These moments need to be honored. When you notice them, take space to acknowledge them. Download them as confidence. Let them become the fertile soil from which you grow something new.

This week we move into another retrograde. This week is dynamic. All through August will be dynamic. And if you caught my 2026 forecast workshop back in December, you know that June, July, and August are fast and accelerated. There's so much happening in such a compressed timeframe. We're moving into eclipse season. The energy is building.

But this week, we have several major events converging. It's going to be big.

SATURN RX IN ARIES

On July 26th, it stations retrograde in Aries at 14 degrees.

Last year, Saturn entered Aries for a brief window before retrograding back into Pisces. That was from July 13th through August 23rd of last year. If you think back to that time, what was coming up for you? What were you moving through? It was at a totally different degree back then. Saturn had only reached 1 degree before it turned around. Now it's at 14 degrees. It's traveled much further into Aries terrain.

So this retrograde is an opportunity to look back at what's been emerging since February 14th of this year, when Saturn re-entered Aries. What have you learned about responsibility? About self responsibility? About power? About the ego? What have you been building?

Saturn retrogrades are incredibly helpful because they slow things down. They ask: what are you building and how? Saturn is the planet of structure, discipline, long-term growth, consequence. It asks us to stop moving quickly outward because Aries can be reckless. It can want to move fast. It can be reactive. It can be driven by urgency. This is the audit. This is the moment to look at what you've already constructed. Saturn is demanding accountability and decisiveness. It's a checkpoint before you continue building the new architecture.

If you think about the new architecture that's being woven right now, there are several elements working together. Neptune provides the ideals, the ideas, the dreams, the consciousness. Uranus is the vehicle, the systems and technologies and ideas we're building with. Saturn is the actual structure. When Saturn retrogrades in Aries, it's asking: how are we building? Are we building from the ego? Are we building from scarcity? Are we building from fear? Or are we building from authenticity?

This is the real work of this time.

Saturn responds to choices. It responds to accountability and discipline. How you show up each day. The choices you make. Those choices are the bricks that lay the foundation for your life. So what are you choosing? What bricks are you using? This allows you to take the architecture you've been weaving since February and make it personal. It allows you to understand how your personal choices weave your reality.

Aries is the self. It's so personal. So once again, with all this Leo energy happening too, it's making it personal. It's asking: who are you becoming within this new architecture? How are you connected to self? How are you moving from self? Are you moving from the wound? Are you moving from the ego? Are you moving from your higher self? Are you a conscious warrior? Or are you creating from fear, scarcity, urgency?

This Saturn in Aries transit over the last year has felt like pressure. Pressure to do things fast. Pressure to make things happen. Pressure to speed up time. But Saturn likes to move slowly. Hopefully this retrograde will begin to remediate some of that pressure. You can slow down. You can understand what bricks you're placing and where. You can see what choices you're making and what they serve. You can notice where you need more discipline and devotion, or where you need more aligned action and drive.

You might feel like things you've been working on stall or pause. You might feel like you can't move forward with certain things. Honor that. Retrograde cycles are there for a reason.

THE LUNAR NODES IN LEO + AQUARIUS

On July 26th, the lunar nodes shift into Leo and Aquarius. This is significant. This is evolutionary work for the next 18 months.

I'm actually hosting an entire workshop dedicated to this on August 9th at 9 AM Pacific on Zoom. We're going to dive into what this means over the next 18 months and really focus on eclipse season and how to work with it intimately. I'll link the details in the show notes.

The lunar nodes show us our evolutionary growth. They tell us why we're here, where we came from, what we've done in many lifetimes. The South Node shows us what we've already mastered, what we're comfortable with, what we're good at. It shows our gifts and our strengths but also where we default and our shadow patterns.

This lifetime is about leaning into the essence of the North Node while honoring and working with the medicine of the South Node. It's not about cutting off or detaching from the South Node. It's about integrating it, understanding it on a deeper level, and harvesting the medicine from it. As we do that, we get comfortable with the new terrain of the North Node.

The South Node in Leo is what we're being asked to release. The ego. Our attachment to individual acclaim. Performance. The need to be something special. The need for validation. Any identities built on recognition or wounding. This is what we're releasing.

But we also have Jupiter in Leo, which is demanding that we speak and create and open our self-expression. So this is a nuanced transit. Jupiter is saying: be big, be seen, express yourself. But the South Node is saying: make sure it's authentic. If it comes only from the ego, it won't work. This is a deep audit of where we're creating from. Are we moving from the ego or from the higher heart?

Our creations are offerings. That's the key element here.

The North Node in Aquarius is inviting us to move toward community, shared vision, something larger than personal legacy or recognition. It's asking: what are we creating for? Are we creating for the self or for something bigger? The future is being built together. And Pluto is also in Aquarius, so this is another big checkpoint. Why are we creating what we're creating?

This is going to challenge groupthink and echo chambers, which we desperately need. It's going to open new portals for us to create systems that actually serve the greater good, not just big boisterous leaders or egos, but what the greater good needs now.

Pluto is also going to reveal the deepest, darkest layers of idealism. Are these systems actually enabling us to be free? Or are they systems disguised that actually want to make us less free? So many of the systems we've used in our collective journey aren't built on freedom. They're not built on true liberation of mind, body, and spirit. If we keep looking to the past thinking those systems will liberate us, we'll keep creating the old.

Pluto represents power. It's going to reveal where we pedestal people, where we're willing to follow leaders that promise us things that aren't even possible. We're seeing this on a collective level. We're seeing it with movements that are disguised as liberation when they're actually just setting us up to be hijacked by more authoritarian power.

This is where discernment is needed. This is where humility is needed. Don't just jump on the bandwagon. Ask: is this actually in service to the highest, greatest good? Or is this just another power trip disguised as a movement for liberty and equality?

This is bigger than one conversation. But if you're feeling pulled into an ideology or building a new system, beautiful. This is where discernment matters. Pluto is going to ask: is this built on truth and authenticity and equality, or is it built to set us up to be hijacked by another power?

Over the next 20 years as we literally build new Earth, we're going to have to be discerning about what we're giving our attention and our power to. The North Node in Aquarius will open up lots of potential for new systems to be built. But this starts internally. What systems are you building internally? What belief systems? What architecture around truth and authenticity? Are we building from the ego or from something deeper?

This is tricky because Aquarius is fixed air. We're moving from mutable air and earth, where there was a lot of opportunity for change and non-attachment. But fixed air can be very rigid. It can hold fixed beliefs, even revolutionary ones, very tightly. So this might reveal where we all hold fixed mindsets, where we're unwilling to see the faults in our own ideologies. People think of Aquarius as the great disruptor. I find it fascinating that so much of the revolutionary ideology emerging right now on both sides of the spectrum is actually very rigid. There's not a lot of space for nuance or complexity or inclusivity. It can be quite authoritarian in nature.

This is the danger of fixed air. It's fixed in its beliefs even if those beliefs are revolutionary and out-of-the-box.

What we need is the gray. We can have strong beliefs about things as long as we're keeping it in check, as long as we're asking whether it comes from truth or if we need to pivot and change. My mind is always changing. I stay open to that because I know how dangerous it is to grip to an ideology and be unwilling to see beyond it.

The South Node and North Node over the next 18 months will affect our eclipses over the next two years. We'll be making big evolutionary moves in the sector of self, ego, and the collective. We're releasing distorted Leo, the performance, the need for validation, the identities built on the wound. And we're asking: what is this contributing to? Are my creations contributing to something larger or just to the self?

This is different from creating just to create, which comes from repair and attunement to self. This is asking: am I trying to get something out of this creation? Am I trying to gain something just for the ego or is there a higher contribution here?

The ego isn't bad. It's what helps us survive on this physical plane. We need an ego to exist. But this work is asking whether we're only contributing from the ego or whether we have a higher purpose woven into it as well.

JUPITER CAZIMI + FULL MOON IN AQUARIUS

And then we arrive at July 29th. This is a big day.

Jupiter cazimi is one of the most auspicious days of the year. A cazimi happens when a planet moves through the heart of the Sun. It's a renewal, a reset, a purification, a strengthening, an illumination.

This is an invitation to renew your relationship with your own authentic light. Jupiter expands anything it touches. The Sun also rules the ego. Sun rules Leo. So this is a very egoic transit. It's an opportunity to illuminate where you're operating only from ego. Jupiter cazimi will want to expand your ego. Become aware of it. What it's really asking is for you to expand the capacity to live from your heart, to trust your creativity, to lead from your authenticity.

And this cazimi is immediately opposite the full moon in Aquarius at 6 degrees. The full moon happens at 7:30 AM Pacific on July 29th.

A full moon is always the Sun opposite the Moon. Jupiter is meeting with the Sun, then immediately opposing the Moon. The Moon is meeting with Pluto. So we have this intense oppositional force. We have three very strong pressure aspects engaging with this full moon. Venus is squaring Mars. Pluto is opposite Jupiter. The Sun is opposite the Moon. These two conjunctions between Moon and Pluto and Sun and Jupiter are concentrating everything. Everything is illuminated at once.

The Moon and Pluto are bringing us into our depths, into the deeper layers of our subconscious around beliefs and ideals, around our relationship with freedom, around identity and authenticity. Pluto excavates. What surfaces with this full moon might be very raw, destabilizing, even heavy. Old wounds around belonging, being seen, feeling like an outsider in communities that are supposed to hold you.

Opposite the Moon, the Sun is sitting in its exact cazimi with Jupiter. So it's illuminating the self, the ego, creative expression, identity. The Sun and Jupiter are illuminating our inner landscape and subconscious around belonging, around identity, around self.

It's a heart opening. It's asking: can we choose to break free from what's fixed within our beliefs, from what's holding us in old boxes, old narratives, old ideologies? Can we invite a deeper sense of courage and faith and radiance? Can we move from the heart with courage? Can we create an entirely new reality from this moment on?

The Jupiter-Pluto opposition has been building for a while and it's been very confronting. What are we creating and why? Where are we seeing these forces emerge that operate from wounding and ego but are disguised as collective movement?

This full moon is asking: how am I participating in the weaving of this future timeline and the weaving of this new Earth? What do I need to let go of in order to expand in the ways my heart is truly calling me to? How can I dissolve this need to be right, this need to be detached? How can I find a deeper sense of belonging within myself, within my heart and not necessarily in a group?

You can see this is very nuanced. It's not just a straightforward building of new systems. It's really asking: can we not move forward if we're building systems from past wounding, from rigid belief systems, from radical ideologies internally and externally? Because the new Earth will not look like anything we've ever created before. Your new internal systems, the new external systems will not look like anything we have created before.

The past always informs the present. That's why we had Mercury retrograde in Cancer. It brought us back into the past. But now it's asking: can we let that past be honored while creating a new way?

And to add another layer, Venus is squaring Mars. Relationships, beliefs, conflict, challenges, power dynamics, values are all being heightened. This is all up for review within our relationships, our money, our beliefs, our communication.

The South Node in Leo is bringing us into healthy selfhood. The North Node in Aquarius is saying: let that authentic selfhood, that healthy selfhood become a contribution to something greater.

This is going to be a loud time. There's going to be a lot of noise, a lot of promises being made, a lot of egoic expression. You can see it everywhere right now on social media, in the news, wherever you look.

But it's not straightforward. Question anything that appears very simple in nature because it never is. Our authenticity is found in our openness to the Gray, in the ability to move between truths and to really find our own specific truth and then move from that space.

That's where the power is.

— ALI OFSTEDAL

THIS POST IS A REVISED TRANSCRIPT OF THE SOUL ARCHAEOLOGY PODCAST. TUNE IN FOR THE FULL TRANSMISSION WHEREVER YOU LISTEN. Available on all platforms