Like many of astrology’s symbols, Neptune is complex. Yet, there are some salient features. The mythology of its name evokes water, especially the seas. There is also a quality that combines what is evident with the elusive. For instance, it was first sighted by Galileo over 400 years ago, but he knew not what it was.
Only with the Libra equinox of 1846 was Neptune at long last knowingly located by telescope and identified as a planet in our solar system. At the time, it was moving through late Aquarius.
In April of 1847, Neptune made its first tentative foray into Pisces. Shortly after, an annual retrograde took it back to the sign of its discovery. As 1848 drew to a close, the back-and-forth concluded. Neptune then traversed Pisces (the sign it is now said to co-rule, along with Jupiter) continuously until a another drawn-out transition to Aries initiated in 1861 and ended in 1862.
Nobody now living was alive from 1847 to 1862, but we do have a lot of information from the period. As the first half of the 19th century transitioned into its second 50 years, both the world as a whole and the U.S. in particular went through a lot of changes that still ripple through to this day.
Thus, when Neptune returned to Pisces in 2011-12, astrologers could reasonably expect an eventful tenure. Having Chiron lead the way this time around did nothing to dispel anticipations that Neptune would flex in ways both evident and otherwise. That being said, correspondence to events from other outer planets (Uranus, Pluto and Eris especially) has been far more obvious over the past five years or so.
Even if similar displays of correlation to Neptune in Pisces have not been clear for you before, recent days have strongly implied that Neptune’s signature is no longer exclusively written in disappearing ink.
Obviously, an unprecedented hurricane implies a rather muscular representation of Neptune’s nominal archetype. The principle extends to how everything (including hurricanes) is now subject to a pervasive climate in which authentic data is only with some effort sorted out from audaciously promulgated misinformation.
A national epidemic of premature and unnatural death due to alcohol and prescription drug abuse in the U.S. does not exactly seem incidental either.
If the mid-19th century is to be taken as an example, however, Neptune is also operating on levels beyond the obvious. The greatest legacy of its 21st-century tour through Pisces may just as well be you (or something or somebody in your life) as any famous, powerful or prosperous entity.
Whaling, for example, was a huge business during Neptune’s previous period in Pisces. Now, the hunting and killing of whales is nearly as vestigial as cetacean legs.
Traveling medicine shows, on the other hand, were not exactly considered to be harbingers of the future in the 1800s. Yet, from such beginnings sprang the means and methods of three of the largest corporate forces of our time: the indisputably Neptunian petroleum, pharmaceutical and entertainment media industries.
Now, the long-overshadowed, 21st-century flexing of Neptune in Pisces is finally becoming more prominent and recognizable. Unfortunately, many of the indications are as troubling as the mass slaughter of whales. Even so, the dissolute is not all there is to Neptune.
Also intrinsic to Neptune is the phenomenon of emergence. From below the surface of dominant realities will come what could be an entirely different future. What is even now rising from just under to just above the level of your conscious awareness are almost certainly some unprecedented ways of perceiving, living, loving and evolving that could very well continue to ripple through other lives in other centuries.
Perhaps most of all, Neptune represents what is hidden in plain sight. Therefore, should you perceive yourself being treated as invisible anytime soon, do not despair. Those who refuse to acknowledge you are not doing themselves any favors. In addition, they are according you a greater power than they could possibly understand: to operate on Neptune’s elevated ‘see level’. If ever there were a time to begin using that power for the good of everybody involved, it is now.
Offered In Service
Your writing reflects the many levels of Neptunian action you describe. The last paragraph is pure gold, thank you.
Yes – and the paragraph before that one, too! Thank you, dear Len. I’m so sorry you weren’t – hope you’re feeling loads better now. Take very good care of yourself. (((())))
Oops! I’m so sorry you weren’t well …
Thanks Len for bringing Neptune out in the open. It seems we (humanity as a whole) are still at a level of consciousness that we perceive the “bad stuff” of Neptune (and Pluto and Uranus) more readily than the point of the symbolism. Unfortunately, it is usually the bad stuff that gets the attention of the masses, and it is only by getting that attention that large leaps in consciousness can occur.
The outer planets, Neptune, Uranus and Pluto (with the assistance of Eris and others), at least at this time in history, work together to force, it would seem, consciousness upon the peoples of the world, no where more so than in the U.S. at this moment. One of the less promoted ways is in the long cycles between planets whose charts spell out attempts to bring deficiencies in to the light.
In the 2nd of 3 conjunctions between Pluto and Uranus the planet Jupiter (understanding) is sextile Mars (force) who is conjunct the U.S natal Chiron (pain brings consciousness) in Aries. This sextile between Jupiter and Mars forms a Yod with the same chart’s Neptune at 21+ Scorpio. When the transiting Jupiter and Saturn made their conjunction in the year 2000 they were at 22+ Taurus and opposite the Neptune in the Pluto-Uranus conjunction #2 chart.
The implied heads-up from this information is that the present cycle between Jupiter and Saturn effective 2000 – 2020, a cycle addressing cultural, societal issues, would be opposing the powers of Neptune as expressed via the Uranus-Pluto cycle. Again, Neptune in that same chart, the 2nd Uranus-Pluto conjunction on April 4, 1966, was the apex point of a Yod between the same chart’s sextile between Jupiter at 24+ Gemini (the Uranus discovery degree) and Mars at 20+ Aries (the degree of the U.S. natal Chiron).
Convoluted as it may be, this present cultural/societal cycle that started in 2000 is addressing Neptunian issues in various forms, thanks to the team efforts between the outer planets. (Neptune was sextile the Uranus-Pluto conjunction in all 3 of those conjunctions in the 1960’s). Transiting Jupiter will reach the degree where Neptune was in this Uranus-Pluto conjunction chart, 21+ Scorpio, in January-February, 2018, April 2018 and September 2018.
This transit of Jupiter to the Neptune of the 1960’s Uranus-Pluto cycle comes during and after this trans. Jupiter makes the 3rd of 3 sextiles to transiting Pluto and the 3rd trine between trans Jupiter and trans. Neptune. In the end, the gods do try to make it easier to reach the needed consciousness!
Transiting Jupiter in Scorpio will also be facilitating the energy expressed by the sextile between trans. Neptune and trans. Pluto in August-September 2018 as trans. Jupiter will sextile Pluto in Capricorn and trine Neptune in Pisces.
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Interesting read about Neptune during the whaling era. People used to need whale oil for their lamps, and hemp for the sails. They also used hemp oil. All farmers were required to grow hemp for rope, sails, cloth, and oil. Henry Ford’s first autos used hemp oil to operate. But Rockefeller determined that coal oil and its by-products would better serve the world (and his pocketbook), and he was behind the movement to outlaw hemp use. Maybe the time has finally arrived when hemp, a sustainable product with multiple uses for medicine, industry, and fuel, will finally be allowed for public consumption. It had been used for 10,000 years until it was outlawed in the 20th century!
“17th Century America, farmers in Virginia, Massachusetts and Connecticut were ordered by law to grow Indian hemp. By the early 18th century, a person could be sentenced to jail if they weren’t growing hemp on their land! Hemp was considered to be legal tender. For over 200 years in colonial America, hemp was currency that one could use to pay their taxes with! ”
“In 1896 Rudolph Diesel had produced his famous engine. Like many others, Diesel assumed that the diesel engine would be powered by a variety of fuels, especially vegetable and seed oils. Henry Ford of the Ford Motor Company seeing the potential of biomass fuels operated a successful biomass conversion plant producing hemp fuel at their Iron Mountain facility in Michigan. Ford engineers extracted methanol, charcoal fuel, tar, pitch, ethyl acetate and creosote, fundamental ingredients for modern industry. Today these are supplied by oil-related industries.
Viewing hemp as a threat, a smear campaign against hemp was started by competing industries, associating hemp with marijuana.
Propaganda films like “Reefer Madness” assured hemp’s demise.” Read more at http://www.hemp.com.
It is extremely interesting to see the synchronicity of all these events, to say the least. While natural oil pits were used over the centuries for a variety of reasons, like warfare (Herodotus), we obviously didn’t use the oil, or even coal, the way we used other fuels. Even the website “How It’s Made” has an entire section on how hemp oil could easily replace fossil fuel. Alas, not while the captains and the kings say otherwise, obviously; or until the planet flips, whichever comes first.
thankyou for your article Len, and I would like to see more of this ilk; could you develop it into a longer piece? Sorry to hear you are/were not well and hope you’re better soon. and Patricia Proctor’s info on hemp is very interesting to this Australian who doesn’t know about these things. I always enjoy Barbara Koehler’s insights altho’ the technical detail does boil my head a bit. Many thanks.
our societal hidden/unseen emotional volatile turbulence and fear being reflected back to us by Nature?
Liking it like it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAxdTSc_fts