Modulating Infogestion
and Harnessing Opportunities for Creative Destruction
In between hugs from former students in their graduation caps and gowns, and closing up my classroom for the summer this May, I have been participating virtually in the Shifts Happen Too astrology conference. Attending a conference virtually is really not the same as attending in person: listening to downloads while driving to and from work, all while still navigating the usual end-of-year whirlwind that every teacher knows all too well.
But there has been a distinct luxury in this, too, and it isn’t that I am keeping up with my laundry or weeding my flower bed. I’ve been able to take my information in smaller doses—which suits my slower, sensitive Mercury in Pisces quite well. Pacing the lectures gave my brain time to digest the ideas, saving me from the acute infogestion of data overload. Like slowing down after a good meal, our brains and nervous systems need time to gel with new experiences and ideas. When we look at the Gemini transits approaching this summer, slowing down the infogestion may become more important for many of us because we may experience a sharp reality check on our collective nervous systems in July.
Pacing the Gemini Frequency of 2026
On July 4, 2026, Mars and Uranus form a conjunction in early Gemini, producing a sudden rebellion, shock or rupture, a jolt to the electrical nervous system of the collective, our communication or transportation systems. Together, the two planets make a tight trine aspect to Pluto at 4 Aquarius, which simultaneously sextiles Neptune at 4 Aries. With Neptune also sextile Pluto, the outer planets form a configuration known as a Minor Grand Trine, sometimes called a Talent Triangle or Magic Triangle.
In this alignment, Neptune in Aries acts as the midpoint and fulcrum. This triple aspect at 4 degrees will remain influential throughout the rest of July.
As we add Jupiter in Leo to it, things shift. As astrologer Hiroki Niizato notes in his analysis of 2026 Astrology: A Year of Change and New Beginnings, harmonic aspects like trines and sextiles are beautiful, but they can be passive.
It is the tense Jupiter in Leo to Pluto in Aquarius opposition that acts as a catalyst, throwing a match into the room and forcing this latent triangle into active, visible expression.
Further, scan the ephemeris forward and you will notice a coming brief period of 12 days beginning on June 6, 2027 where these three planets also return to this exact same aspect pattern, but further along at 6 degrees. It isn’t until 2028 that this Minor Grand Trine Pluto-Neptune-Uranus configuration truly starts to dissipate and loosen up.
It may be helpful to consider pacing our nervous systems through this period leading up to next summer in 2027 and through 2028 because the pace could be frenetic. The nervous system in Gemini can easily fry its circuits.
As someone entering the freshman class of old people, I find I have to consciously keep grounded: eat well, simplify my activities and attention, but especially prioritize good quality sleep to cope with the tendency to overload. Setting personal limits on cellphone use may be especially helpful in modulating the Gemini energy, not only because of the techno- tyranny that excessive screen use invites, but also because it’s better for your nervous system and helps to slow things down.
Ang Stoic put it quite directly recently when he wrote:
“The organic body needs to stay sovereign over the device if we are to avoid becoming welfare system slaves of the techno oligarchy.”
We do still live in organic bodies. Sovereignty is an important word here. Kids can be led around by their noses, and so can the masses. Teachers can readily see the detrimental effects on our young people, whose brains are still maturing. Their neural circuitry is being rewired by the device just as the natural 'pruning' processes of adolescence are underway. But while the kids are staying up all night on their phones texting their friends and scrolling TikTok, serious damage is being done. Meanwhile, algorithms are gathering up the data from mapping what their young eyes land on to hold them captive more effectively. It is a quiet, systemic captivity.
Cracks in the Foundation
During the panel discussion on Artificial Intelligence, astrologer Rick Levine spoke about our physical bodies becoming weaker in this tech-saturated era. We can recognize this in many ways. I always think of the movie Wall-E when it comes to this. And yet, perhaps at some point, technology may bolster our health such that the line between what is artificial and what is natural is no longer distinguishable. Whether that’s good or bad misses the point. It just is. It is here, implying that we simply accept the situation. Big Tech might improve our health, but with rapid degradation of the environment, it is a massive, and terrifying gamble. The relentless fact is that we all depend on the natural world for food, water, sunlight, and air. Just as technology is not going away, our dependency on Earth is not going away anytime soon either.
I recently saw an image that perfectly captured our modern dilemma. It was titled, “The House That Eats Its Foundations: A system cannot survive by consuming what it holds up.” The schematic style drawing showed a giant multi-level house. At the bottom are the earth, the land, and the animals. Above them are the ordinary people who do the daily work to keep us fed, built, and repaired. Yet, all the wealth is concentrated at the very top. Nothing is being done to shore up the foundation despite more weight continually being added at the top. Eventually it leads to collapse.
Countless ordinary people are holding up the system. Wealth is continuously extracted from bottom and moved into the storehouses of the few at the top. Meanwhile, the workers who power this engine have all their exits blocked. A peaceful dissenter cannot simply escape to the woods like Henry David Thoreau. The Earth itself is drilled, mined, logged, and burned to fuel the penthouse suite. Rents are high, food is expensive. Our core institutional systems lost coherence decades ago. Healthcare has become impossibly expensive for the insured and uninsured alike, while the extreme political polarity over which party 'did us the dirtiest' serves only to divide and conquer the public. Yet, the building continues, ever reaching upward.
This situation cannot last. History shows us this when we look at fallen empires. I believe the profiteers have known that eventually a reckoning would come. Maybe the dove will someday arrive and there will still be a rainbow after the rain, but we (and our children’s children) are stuck on this earthship together and we need to start acting like it.
Neptune in Aries as a Personal Pivot Point
As we navigate this multi-year peak of intensity between July 2026 and June 2027, the macro-system may feel like it’s fracturing, but our individual power lies in how authentically we choose to act or express ourselves and how well we can anchor ourselves through the midpoint/fulcrum of Neptune in Aries and/or any planets or points at 4 degrees. Neptune in Aries represents the collective dream or “ideal,” or in some sense, the cultural zeitgeist of this coming 14-year period. With Aries often playing the “warrior,” there could be an over-idealization of war, the hero complex, or literal conflict. Interpreting where Neptune falls in a Solar Arc progression, or where it transits the natal chart, may serve as a powerful indicator for the road ahead on an individual level. As one speaker noted during the AI panel discussion in the conference:
“Authenticity is the last great rebellion.”
I think that originality in the age of AI will be key, and it also sums up the raw, survival-oriented Neptune in Aries quite well. Aries is me-focused, even though it wants to lead.
Business and evolutionary astrologer Kathryn Hocking also reminds us that Neptune’s midpoint activation is ultimately our “cosmic pivot point—a rare invitation to realign purpose, structure, and strategy while making courageous, future-focused moves.” I would also stress that it takes time, coalition building, preparation, work, and clarity on your values to lead others toward practical, realistic realignment of purpose or mission.
Aries energy expressions tend to go off half cocked, alone, and without a plan and you don’t map out a systemic realignment in the middle of a fight. The necessary counterpoint here is Libran diplomacy, logic, and coalition strategy. America “going it alone” falls apart in the context of the global economy. Neptune in Aries gives the vibe of unrealistic, excessively idealistic, “unhinged,” potentially self-righteous holy wars.
The need for creative disruption isn’t new; it’s an economic necessity that observers have been noticing for years. Writing when Neptune was at a mere 7 Pisces, David Brooks noted in the New York Times:
Wall Street, Washington, big agriculture, big energy, big universities - are dominated by interlocking elites who create self-serving arrangements for themselves. Society is split between those bred into these networks and those who are not. Moreover, the U.S. economy is increasingly competing against autocratic economies, which play by their own self-serving rules. Sometimes government is going to have to be active to disrupt local oligarchies and global autocracies by fomenting creative destruction - by insisting on dynamic immigration policies, by pumping money into research, by creating urban environments that nurture innovation, by spending money to give those outside the clusters new paths to rise.
Channeling the zeal of Neptune in Aries through the community focus of Pluto in Aquarius and Uranus in Gemini, we can work towards creative destruction by remembering that the wellbeing of the PEOPLE is what equals PROGRESS. We tend to think of all destruction as just being “bad,” but it can be creative. Activating local networks of people and resources that buffer the shocks we may face reduces the risks involved when attempting to go it alone. ( I am talking food, clothing, shelter.) On a personal level, get to know your neighbors, call and connect with your siblings and make plans in case of family emergencies, invest and plan for strategies that respond to sudden survival situations. In other words, activating all that is local and of a communicative nature to mitigate the sudden winds of change and hold us up in times of stress.
We see the value of local alliance most clearly when the power grid fails and forces us to unplug. When Hurricane Ike hit the Houston area in 2008, cutting power during the stifling August heat, our neighborhood became a maze of fallen trees and blocked roads. Yet, as the screens went dark, people emerged. I was shocked to see dozens of children walking around outside whom I had never even met, prompting me to ask, “Where did all of these kids come from?”
For an entire week, curious kids played outside while neighbors checked on the elderly, sharing generators, chainsaws, and hot meals. There was immense comfort in that sudden, raw community connection. But the moment the power grid came online, the kids retreated indoors to their familiar devices. The Matrix rebooted.
That is the ultimate challenge of our times: harnessing the impulse for action (Aries) towards what will strengthen local communities and person to person engagement (Gemini/Aquarius). Creative destruction doesn’t have to mean complete societal collapse; it could mean an opportunity for a controlled burn of all that moves too many resources to the elites at the top, reducing what consumes our attention and resources, thereby robbing and weakening our local, physical networks.
We cannot fix the entire crumbling house in one day, and we don’t have to wait for a hurricane or a winter storm to force our hands. The next time the world moves too fast and the 'infogestion' sets in, try the most radical, rebellious act available to you: claim your sovereignty, put the device down, step outside, and log off the matrix. Go meet your neighbors. Engage with your local community. That is where creative destruction begins.