Ellen Longo's Astrology Blog

Hello friends.

Neptune has been in my mind so much these last few days, precipitated, I assume, by her ingress into her home sign, Pisces, this week.  She’s also been in my dreams in the form of the sea.  Last night the sea was rising all around my house, a lovely sea-foam green color.  I was unmooring a boat in my garage and packing it with food in case I needed to float on the rising tides.  I was trying to decide whether to fasten my boat to something in my home so I could always find my way back again, or whether that strong rope would just pull me under when the waters rose too high.  Always practical even in dreams, I decided to bring a strong knife so I could cut myself free if I needed to.

I think the gallery of pictures included in this post are beautiful representations of Neptune but you’ll note they are all male.  I think of Neptune as female or as a formless energy, which is why I use the feminine or neuter pronoun when I speak about her.

As Neptune enters Pisces she forms an exact square aspect to my natal Sun, representing an open channel from Neptune to my conscious awareness.  So I thought I’d just share some musings and see if we can catch a glimpse of her today.

I’m using OmmWriter for this piece, which adds a touch of Neptune to a writing session.  OmmWriter is software for writing that provides light background music.   Music is very Neptunian because it permeates space and crosses boundaries.  Think of the scene in The King’s Speech when both the King and his coach both know the words and melody to Way Down Upon the Swanee River and Camptown Races.[1] These songs were based on the experience of living in the South of the United States during the 19th Century yet were favorites of these two men living in England in very different social spheres and strata.  The songs not only crossed the bridge between two continents but between these two men.  This is a perfect example of Neptune at work in social consciousness.

In the U.S., music and sport, both Neptune realms, helped to bridge the divide between the Negro and Caucasian populations in the 20^th Century in a way that no amount of rhetoric or philosophy would ever have accomplished.  Why sport?  Isn’t sport something martial, ruled by Mars, or the Sun, or Jupiter?  Yes, certain aspects of it have been, especially in the past when sport was practice for the hunt or for warfare.  Sport now represents something very Neptunian.  It is a coming together across boundaries to enact a “religious” experience for its players and followers.  Think of the ecstasy in a city whose team has just won a pennant. 

I remember when Philadelphia won the World Series; everyone in Philadelphia was rejoicing, hosanna!  The city of brotherly love erupted in joy, brother to brother, sister to sister, parent to child, businessman to steelworker, Black to White.  There was no one who didn’t deserve a smile, no one who didn’t understand what his neighbor was feeling no matter their color or social class.  When you looked into someone’s eyes, there was that shared experience:  “We” did it!  “We” won!  Unity.  Neptune.

The Neptune energy will use whatever tools are at hand to compel people to drop below their consciousness of differences and find the realm of unity.  Sport works.  So does science.  Darwin’s[2] work is a scientific representation of the Neptunian perspective.  Certainly there are other theories from which to view the world.  Neptune’s unification is only one step on a continuum from complete absence of awareness to complete differentiation down to the smallest atom.  But Neptune’s realm is the level where consciousness is not split into parts and this level exists in and around us all the time.  Neptune focuses on the trail through history where each life form developed from the last; where the similarity among succeeding generations is the salient point, not the distinction.

In the multi-faceted experience of being conscious Neptune holds the awareness of unity.  You can see it everywhere.  In storytelling, Neptune is the archetypes that are played out again and again throughout literature, television, and movies.  In fashion Neptune is the trends which sweep the world and level distinctions:  blue jeans, peasant blouses, 4″ stilettos, make-up, hairstyles and colors.

Neptune courses through art.  Art with lasting appeal appeals because it expresses feelings that everyone experiences.  The artist is a channel for the commonly held feelings of man, even when men don’t know they are feeling that way.  Each person responds because they recognize their shared humanity in the dance or painting or design.

An apt metaphor for Neptune is air travel, with the plane zooming across the boundaries that are drawn so carefully on land and vehemently protected with fences, borders, walls, and languages.  Yet when flying in the plane and looking down, every distinction dissolves and just the green and brown and blue beautiful earth is below.  Neptune is also the clouds which obscure from above and below; obscure but allow light to shine through always.

Neptune is the elusive unified theory of everything, which I think will be revealed while Neptune is in Pisces.  It is also the colors and lights of the meditative state, and the sounds which connect all beings.  It is the open state of consciousness in a baby, before language sections off knowledge into separate and distinguishable parts.

Neptune represents love when it is given without borders, compassion when spread beyond home base, and freedom when it is gained through the inner doorway.

Now that Neptune is in Pisces it will bring to its home everything it has gained in the whole last cycle of 168 years.  Everything it has learned, everything humans have accomplished, every joy and each degradation the earth has endured, every new birth and every permanent extinction of a species.  All of the joy and all of the sadness will come into the sign Pisces.  We will all become aware of what the last 168 years has brought to us and we will experience it on a feeling level.  We will gain the opportunity to address and correct the errors we’ve made.  Neptune in its home will be active, pulling each being into its mystical, connected realm.

In its home it will strengthen.  It will seep into art, music, storytelling, medicine, religion, and provision for the needy.  It will melt barriers.  It will erupt as the sea to wash everything clean.   It will bring people to consciousness of their interdependence in whatever way it takes.  This is Neptune’s warning so it bears repeating:  it will bring people to consciousness of their interdependence with each other, with all life forms, with the earth, with the galaxy, in whatever way it takes.  It will foist a scientific breakthrough that will rearrange our understanding of nature, as it did with Newton[3] two cycles ago when it was in Pisces and with Darwin during the last time it was in Pisces.

How do we work with the Neptune energy?  Neptune is accessible in the outer world through the arts, team sports, and through fields based on compassion, such as nursing and social work.   In the inner realm, Neptune is accessed through meditation, music, and movement arts such as dance and Tai Chi.  You can feel the Neptune pulse in your body or listen for its sound in your mind.  You can visit the sea and let the rhythm of its tides heal you.  And of course, Neptune speaks in your dreams.  Neptune brings great joy as you let the consciousness of unity permeate your life.

Some folks are more or less attuned to the energy of Neptune as indicated by stronger or weaker contacts in the natal chart.  If you’d like to test the strength of Neptune in your chart, see this article by Donna Cunningham, How Strong Is Your Neptune?  Here’s the Score!

For another look at Neptune, see this post in my other blog, Blending Without Drowning. How Saturn Saved a Neptune Type.

For a look at transiting Neptune, see this post in my other blog, Neptune Transits, Mermaid Calls.

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[1] Both songs were written by Stephen Foster, an American composer, in the mid-19^th Century, the last time Neptune was in Pisces.  Foster had an exact Sun/Neptune aspect in his natal chart.

[2] Darwin published The Origin of the Species in 1859, the last time Neptune was in Pisces.

[3] Newton published Principia in 1687, the prior time Neptune was in Pisces.

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