MY NEPTUNE TRANSIT

This year Neptune will come within 1 1/2 degrees of conjoining my Sun. I’ve been looking forward to this transit for some years. It should be one of those major transformations that you don’t get too often in life. In 1993 Pluto squared my Sun, and in 2003 Pluto conjoined my Moon (in Sag). In both cases, the major events surrounding the transits – which were not comfortable! – occurred the year before the transit was exact. By that reckoning, 2007 could be a major year for me. I don’t feel quite so out of balance/lacking in self-knowledge/naïve as I was with the previous transits, so I am expecting the emphasis to be on positive change rather than on painful challenge.

I think that something that has prepared me for this transit has been living with my partner Vajramala for the last 7/8 years, as she has Moon in Pisces as part of a watery grand trine. So that Neptunian way of functioning has always come very naturally to her, despite having an Aries Sun. And that Neptunian way has a lot to do with trust and letting things unfold in their own way and not interfering or trying to ‘make’ things happen - which used to be my habitual way, and which no doubt would have led to a very painful Neptune transit now if I was still like that.

As I’ve said before, I think that transits tend to get easier as we get older, because we have sorted a lot of the things that need sorting earlier in our lives, and the emphasis can move towards positive transformation. I think that people can sometimes get a bit ‘doctrinal’ about transits and go, “Oh, it’s Pluto, that means I’m going to be torn apart and dragged down to the underworld and suffer intensely because that’s the archetypal pattern and that’s what happened last time.” I think that’s a form of superstition.

Back to me. A composite chart between two people is created by putting each planet at the mid-point between the same planet in each of the individual charts. If one person has Sun in Aries, and the other has Sun in Leo, then the composite Sun will probably be somewhere in Gemini. In a relationship, the Sun and Mars say quite a lot about what the relationship does to the man, and the Moon and Venus quite a lot about what it does to the woman. My composite chart with Vajramala gives Sun conjunct Mars in Pisces. Natally, I am not very Neptunian/Piscean, so being with her has put me in unfamiliar, and sometimes maddening, territory. But, having got deeply out of sorts in the past through being wilful, it has been exactly what I needed. (The composite chart also has Moon-Venus-Chiron conjunct in Aquarius, but that is another story, and not mine to tell!)

So I am expecting an interesting year. Neptune, of course, is also opposite Saturn at present, so my Sun is also catching that: making your dreams (Neptune) real (Saturn). Which was the theme of Lynn Hayes' blog (see astrodynamics link) of 31 Dec. I’m not always comfortable with the idea of setting goals and manifesting them, as that has been exactly the problem for me in the past, as I was far too wilful about it, and my goals were therefore limiting of myself. What I have had to do is to learn NOT to have goals, and that where I need to be is usually not for me to know – something bigger and wider knows, and my job is to trust in that. So I was struck when she said, “There's something powerful in the very act of opening up to the possibility of change in our lives.” I thought, yes that’s more how I do it, it’s an opening up. My problem isn’t making it happen – that’s the easy bit for me – my problem has been learning to be sensitive enough to myself and to some sort of wider scheme of things to know what is and what is not an appropriate goal.

This is all the dance of Saturn and Neptune, and some of us are better at one end of it, and some of us at the other.

I don’t know if any of you have taken flower remedies, but I have just started taking one called “Silver Princess.” It is an Australian Bush remedy, and it has started working pretty quickly but subtly. I recently took Red Helmet Orchid for a while, and that was dramatically effective and sorted all sorts of stuff very quickly. I hadn’t found flower remedies very effective until I tried the Australian Bush ones. The guy who came up with them, Ian White, was led to them by spirit guides and told what they were for, and they do seem very powerful. Living in Glastonbury, UK, I’m usually pretty wary when something is said to be channelled, but I’m also aware that when something is authentically from that sort of source it can be very powerful.

Anyway, Silver Princess helps one find direction in life. Not that I’m lacking in this, it’s just that I’m aware that a new one is coming my way, and I thought this might help. And straight away the synchronicities started. There was Lynn’s blog. And then there was the section in Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which I’m reading at present, where Pierre has his religious conversion and the freemason helping him is full of emotion at the omnipresence of God. I can’t say I believe in God, but I am moving towards a fuller sense of the benign aspect of the universe, the fact that there is so much help there for us if we will only trust in it and take it. Taking the Silver Princess quickly brought me back to the feeling that finding a new direction is not about scratching my head and working out what to do next, but rather opening myself more to where the universe wants to take me, letting it take as long as is necessary, and keeping trust in this process. I guess you could say that my Neptune transit has already started!