What the World Needs Now is Neptune
As I type, Jupiter finds itself at 4 degrees of Pisces, and I’m already feeling late to the party as we’ve only got this fantabulous alignment in the skies until early May. Nutshell backstory: Jupiter loves being in Pisces and Neptune is there too, making the first part of this year an ideal time to shack up with some Dreamy McWackadoodle energy and give zero 🦊.
Prada Fall 2011 - the last time Jupiter was in Pisces
On a high-end note though, I’m exploring the possibility that Neptune in Pisces is poised to unleash an un-sheepish embrace of spirituality after the big-fat-bummer of the last two years (and the mechanistic worldview powering it) has run its course. I’m placing my bets on Jupiter—planet of magnanimous magnification— ramping up this energy and giving many of us some kind of spiritual rebirth as it conjoins Neptune this spring, around April 13th. Lord knows we could use a clean slate after lo these many seasons of spiritual compromise.
Speaking of compromise, I got into an email spat sometime in 2020 with one of my favorite astrologers over the role of Neptune in all the chaos we’ve been subjected to. The planet of delusion was popping up a lot in order to explain the confusion and “misinformation” problem; something about it opposing important degrees in mid-Virgo which have to do with our country’s founding. She insisted that Neptune was Neptuning half the population (the half she disagreed with). I.e. these folks were believing the wrong thing and were therefore, because of these wrong beliefs, somehow responsible for the ongoing horrors. That a tragedy was being properly addressed by one side, and callously politicized by the other. I had bigger expectations for how I thought Neptune’s signification, especially in watery ol’ Pisces, could be interpreted.
I argued that Neptune goes beyond one’s political affiliation. It doesn’t protect some believers by bestowing truth and besmirch others by tossing their sensibilities in the salad spinner. When the planet of dreams and delusions is at peak activation, not allowing oneself to question any and every reality (especially in light of politics, algorithms, mass psychology, conflicts of interest, manufactured consent, etc.) is to entirely miss the point of Neptune. In other words, to think Neptune is only pulling the wool over the other guy’s eyes is, well, just so Neptune.
Isn’t the whole point of astrology to take a step back from the braying hordes and note the bigger story unfolding?
I forgive it in the general populace, but astrologers? Isn’t the whole point of astrology to take a step back from the braying hordes and note the bigger story unfolding? The rug has been pulled out from all of us, and to cling to your preferred brand of the nightly news fearblanket and mistake it for safety screams Neptunian delusion.
Two years later, I’m feeling a bit vindicated as the tables of “truth” have not only turned but have been revealed to exist on something of a rotational axis akin to the Mad Hatter’s Teacup ride at Disney. If you’re on the ride, you’re holding onto your table, which seems stable while the world is spinning out of control. Standing on the sidelines, you can see all the different parties spinning, orbiting, wave-forming. Best be ready to duck, because the vomiting that comes from this kind of neurotic oscillation is projectile in nature.
Seeing astrologers so convinced that their version of reality was fact (and somehow backed up by astrology!) was frustrating until I came across an Astrology Podcast discussion of an unexpected kinship between Neptune and Saturn. Neptune being the planet of dreams and illusions while Saturn is the planet of cold, hard realism means these two domains could not be more different.
For instance, when someone has a difficult Neptune transit, they may be susceptible to alcohol or drug addiction - or completely lost in a situation that is not what it appears to be. A difficult Saturn transit, on the other hand, could involve an abrupt challenge that requires facing reality and taking responsibility. One will make you get lost while the other will make you show up and grow up.
Saturn is revealed to be the illusion that there is a reality while Neptune’s soup of dreams and fog is the true nature of our experience - utterly nebulous.
And yet—as these experienced astrologers tell us—when you explore these paradigms further, Saturn is revealed to be the illusion that there is a reality while Neptune’s soup of dreams and fog is the true nature of our experience - utterly nebulous.
For someone new to astrology, this might seem neither here nor there. But to someone who has listened to enough astrology podcasts to make my ears fall off, it’s notable. Not because the meanings of Saturn and Neptune are “not what I thought” but that reality is.
This whole collective nightmare started with Saturn conjunct Pluto back in January 2020. Astrologers have been unanimous in calling these times “a big deal” because Pluto has been creeping ever closer to its return degree—the point in the sky where it was at the founding of the United States of America. Revolution is in the air! If only there was music in the cafes at night. Sigh.
Saturn representing reality, or rather “reality”, meeting with Pluto —the planet of deep dark transformation and the unearthing of the most taboo truths—really socked it to us back in January ‘20. The combo was a cocktail of institutional meltdown, brazen power grabs and a hybrid opposite-day/groundhog-day experience unlike that which we soft Americans are accustomed to tolerating in unison. How do you cure a two-year hangover of that variety?
Meanwhile Neptune has been moving through the last half of Pisces, which encompasses the final degrees of the zodiac, territory of the oldest souls. A watery planet in a watery sign means there’s nothing firm to hold onto here. But instead of being wary of Neptune and not trusting anything or anyone, its location at the end of the cycle suggests there’s some deep wisdom to be gained from accepting you can’t control the cross currents and remembering how to float. Especially as we’ve seen how terribly the Saturnian call to trust the experts, institutions, systems and others masquerading as “grown-ups” has gone.
Photo by Jill Allyn Peterson, Ericeira, Portugal, 2019
I now think our reality has been shattered because we believed the illusion of Saturn (that there is a reality) instead of the reality of Neptune (it’s all illusion, all the time). With the whole concept of authority itself revealed as a belief system on par with The Secret, what each of us is left with is our own personal chaos. Billions of personal experiences of chaos, colliding.
Many of us are currently chanting in the lower octaves of each planet, in the yin/yang of chaos and authority. At some point we outsourced our structural integrity to “society”, i.e. deferring to some abstract concept of good person/bad person instead of tuning up an internal, embodied, moral compass. We also compartmentalized a pretty grim Neptunian slide into darkness, refusing to see how the opioid epidemic (it’s not addictive, it’s workers comp) was a dress rehearsal for the larger scale pharmaceutical smash-and-grab operation (it’s safe and effective, you can go back to work) to follow. As Maya Angelou advised, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time”.
So it seems like the project for many of us now is not just to #buildbackbetter but to completely rebuild one’s relationship with reality. I don’t think it gets better from here, it probably gets weirder. Perhaps we start rebuilding reality with a new set of Neptune-Saturn mantras in the higher octaves of both, and replace the droning chants with scat singing, improvisation and coloratura. You have to be incredibly well disciplined to pull off those techniques (Saturn) but the art of improvisation is having no map (Neptune) and yet a more authentic and fantastic voyage as a result. It also requires the courage to let the sheet music go and break free from the chorus—thankfully here comes Jupiter to lift the latch.