THE MADNESSES OF NEPTUNE and THE SATURN-NEPTUNE CONJUNCTION

THE MADNESSES OF NEPTUNE: NET-ZERO and TRANSGENDER

I am bringing my own views in here quite strongly, so you could say I am declaring an interest :)

The astrologer Liz Greene has suggested Dionysus as a more appropriate figure than Neptune as the ruler of Pisces. Dionysus was driven mad by Zeus's jealous wife Hera. If you reject him, as did King Pentheus, you are liable to be torn to pieces by the train of Maenads who follow him.

Pluto abducts you, and Neptune possesses you. As Neptune comes to the end of his own sign of Pisces, so is the western world possessed by collective madnesses: net-zero carbon and transgender ideology. As well, more broadly, by 'wokeness': the authoritarian, sentimentalised over-protectiveness and over-prioritisation of minorities.

Instead of saying yes, we will need eventually to replace oil with nuclear, and we can adapt to, and probably even benefit from (which we have a genius for) climate change, we are cutting our own throats by attempting in short order to get rid of what has become our lifeblood, fossil fuels, and calling anyone who questions this narrative a 'climate-denier'.

It could be enormously damaging, particularly for the poor and the developing world: indeed, mythologically one could read net-zero as the sacrifice (another Neptunian theme) of the poor and the 3rd world to assuage the guilt of white liberals for their sins against pristine mother nature. There is a hatred of human impact behind net-zero that feels like a leftover from Christianity. It is also, you could argue, the Far Left's version of the Far Right's Gotterdammerung. No politician currently dares stand up to this narrative, though one can discern their private doubts.

As for 'transgender', instead of saying yes, we need to allow men to be more feminine and vice-versa, to even live as the opposite gender if they wish, we are collectively in the grip of a corrupt medical fantasy that says that men can BECOME women and vice versa. Again, no politician dare stand up to to this fantasy, nor directly oppose the resulting mutilation of teenagers, which does not bear thinking about. Even wanting to protect women from predatory 'transwomen' will get you labelled a 'transphobe'.

Transgender surgery, particularly on teenagers, is a Pluto in Aquarius theme. In attempting to help humanity through science, Aquarius can become inhuman: this is the shadow/Pluto side. It is something I find dreadful.

The pushback from questioning either of these madnesses is currently vicious. You can lose your job, your reputation and your friends. I hope it doesn't cost me my Facebook account!

The Chinese and Russians must be scratching their heads and wondering what has happened to the West.

 

(We are, of course, still experiencing the economic consequences of the madness that was Covid, when most of the world shut down over a relatively minor disease. It was like a herd of horses bolting, that could not stop once they had started.)

My hope is that as Neptune enters a new sign - Aries - in a couple of years, and is joined by Saturn, we will start to wake up from these nightmares.

 

 

THE UPCOMING SATURN-NEPTUNE CONJUNCTION

The further a planet is away from the Sun, the greater its transformational power. Pluto holds pride of place in the transformation stakes. On average. But because his orbit is elliptical, he is sometimes the same distance from the Sun as Neptune. As he has been for some decades now. So they have arguably been packing the same punch during that period.

If we look back to the last Saturn-Neptune conjunction, in 1989, we see that it took place 4 days after the Berlin Wall came down, precipitating the end of the Cold War. That event was every bit as powerful as a Saturn-Pluto conjunction – the last of which, in 2020, occurred at the start of the Covid panic. This idea could be tested historically, if someone fancies some mundane research.

Saturn gives the outer planets the ability to manifest. He acts as a bridge, and we see their pure power. The terror of the Saturn-Pluto opposition at the time of 9/11. The bursting of the communist dream (Neptune) in 1989 and the awakening to economic realities (Saturn). The Berlin Wall was built in 1961, and it came down on its Saturn Return. Saturn is walls, you couldn’t make it up.

So we need to be talking about the upcoming conjunction of Saturn and Neptune at the beginning of Aries in 25/26, just as much as if it was Saturn-Pluto. 

 

Politically, you could say we have been living in the post-Cold War World since the last conjunction, and its outcome has been a new polarisation with Russia.

The last time Neptune entered Aries was in 1861, as the US Civil war began. Just as we have a ‘culture war’, so too did the US have one over slavery, that precipitated that war, an Aries showdown, which the North eventually won.

Just as Saturn-Pluto ushered in a new world 3 years ago, so too are we likely to see another new world in 2026, and possibly the year before, when the conjunction will be almost exact. What astrology teaches you is how just unpredictable the future is. Who could have guessed Covid, or the prolonged conflict over Ukraine?

But what we do know as astrologers is that something big is on the way. And probably a new start in some way, because it will be the start of Aries. There are tensions starting to boil: nuclear-armed Russia’s ongoing humiliation over Ukraine; the culture wars over transgender, historical slavery etc and left-wing authoritarianism generally (as in ‘woke’); and perhaps the biggest one of all, net-zero carbon, which I don’t think the average voter is going to stand for once what it entails starts to impact on their lives: that may leave room for a new and pragmatic political vision, based on the material abundance that we actually have. Saturn-Neptune at the start of Aries speaks strongly of a new dream. But that may require wreckage as well.

On a personal level, if you have anything in your chart at the beginning of the cardinal signs, then that aspect of your life will be affected in a big way. You will be possessed, maddened and ultimately re-ensouled :) You will begin to seriously notice it towards the end of 2024, as Neptune and Saturn go Direct and start to move towards their almost-conjunction of 2025.

LIFE VS DEATH

My personal opinon is that we need to get this Coronavirus done ASAP. There is a Mars-Jupiter conjunction in Capricorn at present, applying for the next 2 days, so the government (Capricorn) is putting up a big (Jupiter) fight (Mars). With any luck, events will overtake their strategy over the next 2 weeks as Mercury (transmission) approaches a conjunction with Neptune in Pisces (pandemic). Life is for the living, life and death between them are a part of a much bigger dream. Remember the suffering caused by austerity, we can now learn from that (as Saturn starts to leave Capricorn) and not enact something far worse. 

 
Some people think I am being callous when I say these things, but I am not. Choices have to be made, and more deaths than there might have been - mostly on the part of people in poor health - needs to be weighed against a disastrous breakdown at a basic level, which is what we are facing. Pluto in Capricorn stuff. I've already been called things for saying this, and have blocked one friend as a result. People think you are being uncaring when you say these things, and that is not true.

This complex civilisation we have created, that makes us feel so powerful: it is fragile, it is a bubble on the surface of mother earth. We are being shown this.

--------------------

I offer skype/FB video astrology readings, by donation. Contact: BWGoddard1 (at)aol.co.uk

---------------------

Humanity Enters the Dreamtime

Neptune began to change sign earlier this year, from Aquarius to Pisces. Neptune governs the underlying myths, the underlying dreams by which we live. This is not just an overlay on ‘objective’ reality: these myths ARE the objective reality. They generate it. It requires a certain amount of subtlety, however, to see this. Naïve literalism, with black and white values, is a much easier and more certain way to live.

A simple example would be the experience of space as a real 3-d box within which everything happens. If you think about it, 3-d space is just a way in which the brain builds relationships between the objects it experiences. It is not literally there, it is just a story. It is a story which, to us, is real.

When Neptune changes sign (about every 14 years), our dreams, our mythologies change. They change anyway as Neptune moves through a sign, they gather momentum. But particularly when Neptune enters a mutable sign, and particularly when it is Pisces, the 12th and final sign of the zodiac, old dreams and mythologies fall apart. Humanity collectively enters the dreamtime, the land where all things are possible, but where all is spirit and it can be hard to manifest.

Humanity is embarking on a big bit of dreaming for the next 14 years, but we will not be properly ready to live it until Neptune enters Aries, the 1st sign of the zodiac, the place of new vision, in 14 years time. 

Neptune is leaving Aquarius, the sign on a collective level of Science and Democracy. And what do we find? In America, the home (as they see it) of Democracy, the system is ceasing to work. In July and August, at a time of financial crisis, the government was paralysed by partisan dispute, and as a result America for the first time had its credit rating reduced. In Europe, another proudly democratic continent facing a financial crisis, the collective government is also paralysed, not this time by partisanship, but by a system that was a product of political idealism that got carried away with itself. The system that is working and that is on the rise, and which is anything but democratic, is Chinese totalitarian government.

As Neptune leaves Aquarius, so is the dream of Democracy starting to fade. With Neptune’s dying breath in Aquarius, we have this year seen the ‘Arab Spring’, the widespread and sometimes successful revolts against autocratic, secular leaders. But as in the Iranian revolution 30 years ago (which took place with the Sun in Aquarius), the eventual outcome seems just as likely to be theocracy: you don’t even need a majority vote for this, just a determined minority, and the Islamists are certainly determined.
__________________________________________________
Ad Break: I offer full webcam astrology readings (£60) and written responses to specific questions (£30). Price negotiable if you’re hard up. Contact me on Dharmaruci71(at)hotmail.com.
__________________________________________________

Only yesterday on BBC News there was an article entitled ‘Dark matter theory may be wrong’. A few days ago there was an article in which the idea of supersymmetry was brought into doubt. In both cases the doubt came as a result of experimental evidence. These theories have become fundamental to the way science sees the universe at the galactic and quantum levels respectively. Science has been stuck for some decades now in trying to develop theories, backed up by evidence, as to how the universe works when faced with the extremely large and extremely small.

I have always doubted the existence of dark matter. You could say Dark Matter is a projection onto the universe of our own ignorance: there’s lots of it – 96% of the universe – and it’s impossible to detect. It’s a case of the Emperor’s New Clothes.

It’s been as though any theory that will explain major gravitational anomalies, however outlandish, is better than no theory. It’s based on a primitive need for certainty.

As Neptune leaves Aquarius, so it seems to me is the dream of Science as in principle able to explain everything, fading. I, for one, am delighted!

There is a difference between ignorance and not knowing. Not knowing is a wonderful place to be: the Universe opens up as a ‘Great Mystery’, and wisdom flows from it. Socrates claimed to be the wisest man in Athens because he knew he didn’t know. In the West, we have become addicted to certainty, whether through the claims of Christianity, or latterly through Science and political ideologies. And this is ignorance, which comes from the word ignore, suggesting something wilful: it’s obvious when you think about it that there’s very little, if anything, that we really know. But we don’t think about this, we feel about it, and it feels uncomfortable and insecure. So we ignore it, we choose to be ignorant. Ignorance is thinking you know.

So this is where Neptune is starting to take us as he enters Pisces: into the place of not knowing which, for humanity as a collective beast, is a very uncomfortable place to be. I think this is why the prophecies around 2012 are so popular: they provide a sense of certainty and even hope in a world which is increasingly uncertain, and in which we are rapidly destroying the environment and resources we need in order to have a future.

To this extent I think the 2012 mythology is a cop-out, a collective delusion. To sort a situation you need to head straight into it, taking the time to re-dream it as you go, on an individual level. There are no inevitabilities in either direction. 2012 mythology is not mainstream, it belongs to the ‘alternative’, more ‘enlightened’ culture, which in this respect is showing itself to be just as superstitious as any collective is in times of insecurity. Some 2012 mythologies are apocalyptic, others describe collective spiritual transformation. In either case, they produce disengagement from the actual problems while we wait for the causeless big event that will change everything.

All the big ideas of the 20th century are failing: communism and democracy as political absolutes, scientific knowledge as metaphysical underpinning, the inevitability of economic progress. Neptune in Pisces is underscoring this. The Great Recession, which seems about to double-dip, and the rise of China, have given the West a tremendous blow to its self-confidence, and this has not fully played through yet by a long chalk. We are still hoping that things will go back to what they were.

Pluto is usually considered to be the planet of ‘power’. And he is that, he gives us the power to live and the power to transform and unfold. His power is basic and raw. But Neptune has his own power, which is the mythologies we live by. People will live and die for them, they are that real to us. There is something human about Neptune that Pluto does not share, because animals and plants do not live by mythologies: they just live, they know what they are, and they get on with it. Pluto lives in the Underworld, he is not human (though he still has a very important role to play for us.)

Neptune, in a way, is also not of the human realm, because he is god of the ocean. But while we cannot visit the Underworld – not, that is, if we hope to return – we have always sailed the seas, we have always visited the life-giving waters of the Imagination which Neptune represents. For humans, Pluto alone does not enable us to live. Without Neptune, we will die of a different kind of thirst.

So Neptune in his own sign of Pisces is tremendously powerful. It is a cauldron of the Imagination. His Ingress into Pisces represents the old certainties failing, and that creates much collective anxiety. We can inevitably expect a retreat into right-wing governments and fundamentalist religions as a response, for now, to that anxiety and insecurity (as well as into millenarian, 2012-type prophecies.) And that is described by the Uranus-Pluto square which is occurring concurrently: the empowerment (Pluto) of radicalism (Uranus), whether of a left or right wing variety. Uranus is an archaic god, and can describe a collective retreat into primitive, less conscious forms at times of insecurity: look at the rise of Fascist regimes under the last Uranus-Pluto square in the 20s/30s.

Rick Perry, Mr Texan Death Penalty, who is starting to lead the Republican race in the US, is an appropriate expression of this.

There is an issue of survival which has not filtered through to the collective yet, blinded as we are by advertising and politicians. The survival issue is of course based around environmental degradation and the profligate consumption of limited resources. Perhaps the larger a collective is, the stupider it gets. Any intelligent individual can see the danger, but what can they do? Preach to the converted? Any ‘primitive’ tribe would have acted by now.

And unfortunately, the party isn’t over yet. There are still enough resources left so that when a humbled West picks itself up again some years down the line (as Uranus finishes its square to Pluto around 2015), it can continue for a while as before, albeit less sure of itself, less dominant in the world. This shift in the world balance of power, away from the West and in favour of the BRIC countries, seems to be much of the meaning of this Uranus-Pluto square.

But all the while Neptune will be in Pisces, a subterranean collective re-dreaming on the part of what is now a global tribe. Uranus-Pluto will come to an end in 4-5 years, but Neptune will remain in Pisces for a further 9-10 years. The party will be continuing, but not with the old certainties: they will be in Neptune’s cauldron.

Interestingly, Neptune’s passage through a sign, 14 years, is about the same time as Saturn takes to complete half a cycle round the Sun. Saturn is the opposite of Neptune, he is the planet of manifestation. When he is opposite himself – opposite where he was when Neptune entered that sign – then there is a strong impulse to manifest. In this way Saturn brings Neptune’s dreams into reality, makes his visions grow corn.

Uranus-Pluto is not just about the shift in the world balance of power. Its influence will be felt at many levels, locally as well as globally. And the empowerment of Uranian radicalism, which is so central to the meaning of this transit, will feed into the re-dreaming of Neptune in Pisces, in the progressive sense of Uranus. Pluto is about survival, and while one response to the current crisis will be a retreat into right wing governments and fundamentalism, another will be a growing awareness of the real threat to our survival.

So there is this other, more hopeful, side to Uranus-Pluto which is kind of inevitable, because Pluto is there to ensure our survival. He is the life-force. You put that together with Neptune in Pisces, and you can see a growing current in the collective, determined that we should survive (Pluto), open to radical solutions (Uranus) and quietly dreaming the sort of world in which this is possible (Neptune.) As I said earlier, there are no certainties, and if we do build a slightly saner world, there is no knowing at this stage what form it will take. But if the outer planets teach us anything, it is that there are powers beyond us, creative depths to nature that in our hubris we overlook. The present situation is certainly an outcome of hubris, and you cannot avoid the eventual cost of that; but the outer planets, nature itself, has a way of surviving, and humanity is part of nature.

We are not just another species, we are a new development, and maybe we won’t last, or maybe most of us will be wiped out, only to repeat the same mistakes, as in Battlestar Galactica, some millennia down the line.

But what we have forgotten is that there is a deeper knowing within us, that knows where to go from here on a collective level, and Neptune in Pisces can take us there. It comes down to whether collectively we are prepared to listen. We ain’t there yet, but as we emerge from the Uranus-Pluto reckoning of the next few years, and as Neptune – as we collectively - have time to dream deeply from there on, a way forward will gradually present itself. Neptune is, after all, the planet of redemption.

The chart for Neptune’s first entry into Pisces, on 3/4 April 2011 (depending where you live) is quite remarkable, for it has 6 planets, including a New Moon, in Aries.

Click to Enlarge

It sends a strong message that out of the collective re-dreaming, the search for new ideas/mythologies, of the next 14 years, something very, very new will be born. As if to underscore this point, the Ingress chart for Neptune into Aries in 2025 also takes place under a New Moon in Aries. Spooky!

I want to be fanciful for a moment, but I have talked about Neptune in Pisces in terms of the Dreamtime, which is an Australian aboriginal idea. And Uluru, or Ayers Rock has come for us westerners to most symbolise that dreamtime. So what was happening at Uluru when Neptune entered Pisces?

Click to Enlarge 

As you can see, the Ascendant was at the midpoint of Pluto and the North Node, both of which were within 5 degrees of the Ascendant. This suggests the power (Pluto) and significance (Node) of the idea of Neptune in Pisces as humanity's Dreamtime.

Pluto in Capricorn and Neptune in Pisces: the New Reformation?

I’m starting to think that Pluto functions particularly powerfully in Capricorn. Look at the present transit: just under 4 years in, and we are in the thick of the Great Recession. Pluto’s last transit through Capricorn saw the American Declaration of Independence. And the time before that saw Martin Luther kicking off the Reformation.

Huge stuff that revolutionises the establishment, as you would expect from Pluto (transformation) in Capricorn (the establishment). In the first case, it was religious. In the second case, political (the French Revolution followed soon after.) And in today’s case, it is so far looking economic, though with clear political implications.

Why should Pluto function so powerfully in Capricorn? Maybe it is that Pluto, after his discovery, took on many of the attributes (such as death) previously associated with Capricorn’s ruler, Saturn. Maybe Capricorn, with its tendency to become encrusted and conservative, is like a red rag to Pluto who, underneath his demolition hat, is really concerned to bring about renewal.

In the 1520s, when Martin Luther was starting the Reformation, it was particularly the Church’s decadence, such as its sale of indulgences, that he was attacking. In what became the US in the 1770s, there was successful rebellion against the old-style established European Monarchy, heralding the rise of democracy across the western world.

Pluto in Capricorn destroys that which is decadent in the establishment. We don’t yet know what is being destroyed by Pluto’s present passage through Capricorn. Unlike the 1520s and 1770s, this transit is being intensified and made more dramatic by a square from Uranus. We can speculate: the West has had continual prosperity since soon after WWII. Taking it for granted, we have borrowed far too much and lived beyond our means. And growth has become an end in itself, a sacred mantra. That is decadence, an economic establishment that is no longer useful. The same with the American political system and European politics in the form of the EU. Both have recently shown they cannot work effectively in a crisis. That Democracy which was heralded by the last transit of Pluto in Capricorn has itself become decadent. America treats its political system as sacred and as an example to the world. It would be mega if that changed, but the astrological signs are that it will, particularly as the US comes up to its Pluto Return at 27 Capricorn in 9 to 10 years time.

The big question is what is coming next. Many people, astrologers and non-astrologers alike, can see a storm coming, particularly economically. In a way it’s obvious. My reading of the 2008 Pluto Ingress Chart is of a prolonged Recession coupled with deep structural change. I’m not thinking Depression, which suggests a much bigger drop in output and rate of unemployment. If Pluto was in Sag or Pisces, for example, I would be thinking Depression because you get boom and bust under these signs to a much greater degree, both being Jupiter and or Neptune-ruled.

Click to Enlarge

But Pluto in Capricorn is not like that. It is about creating solid foundations after an initial tearing down. In the Ingress Chart, Pluto is conjunct Venus and Jupiter and trine to Capricorn’s ruler, Saturn. I think this set of planets is probably a key to understanding the Recession. Saturn is Retrograde, suggesting Recession in order to restructure. Venus indicates that the economy is part of what Pluto in Cap will be addressing. Jupiter is the expansion that will return to the economy. And Pluto is gradually transiting all these planets. He will make his final crossing of the Ingress Jupiter in December 2012, a few months after the first exact square from Uranus to Pluto. This Pluto Ingress-Jupiter transit in Cap suggests the West re-formulating its ideas around economic growth, moving towards something more realistic and sustainable. For one, that means lower growth, and therefore new ideas around what matters in the economy: economic values, which is the Venus part of the stellium.

We haven’t hit bottom yet, but I suspect by the end of next year, after the Ingress transits and the first Uranus-Pluto square, we will be beginning to see a new kind of future; the Capricornian new foundation will be there, at least as an idea.

This, of course, is 2012 that we are talking about, a year that has its own mythology built up around it that can be quite apocalyptic. Remember the year 2000 also had this kind of mythology, and so have many years before that. Most prophecies do not come true, particularly these apocalyptic ones, and particularly ones that have become part of the collective and which do not have the proper discernment of a competent diviner behind them. When you are making a prediction, you are using intuition, but you have your own plumbing to pass it through first, and that needs to be clean. And there are all sorts of qualifications and justifications (if you are an astrologer) that need to be made around the prediction you are making. 2012 is a speculative prediction based on an extinct culture that has gained considerable collective momentum. I think that a lot of people probably do have a genuine intuition that a lot is going to happen in 2012, and western astrology backs that up, like it would for a lot of other years where a lot has happened.

I think it’s important not to let that genuine intuition be blurred by the New Age hype around 2012. These collective things do not have the discerning intelligence that an individual has, they scare people, and they are usually wrong.

I began this piece while thinking about the combination of Pluto in Capricorn and Neptune in Pisces, and when did that last happen? Because these 2 planets more than any other describe the age we are living in. The last time it happened was 1520-1531, when the Reformation began. This was a huge event, because the Church had so much power, and because it was so fundamental to the way people saw the world.

So not only was a major institution torn apart – Pluto in Capricorn – but people were also freed to have their own direct relationship to God, without the need for an intercessionary priest: this was Neptune in Pisces. Neptune is the mythologies we live by, and religion as myth (rather than as belief and dogma, which is Jupiter) comes under that heading. In Pisces, there are no barriers between you and God, it is the aspect of the mystic.

So that maybe gives us a clue as to the meaning of the age we live in now, which has the same signature as the Reformation. It is fascinating, because it is so unlikely, to find these 2 planets in the same signs so recently, and for such a huge and descriptive event to have occurred.

What we are looking for is the tearing apart of an encrusted establishment that leaves people free to experience reality for themselves. An establishment that has dogmas behind it. There are a few possibilities.

Politically, there is the dogma of democracy. We are led to believe that this is the most advanced political system, and that all societies will naturally evolve towards it, particularly if they get a helping hand, militarily if necessary, from ourselves. The democratic system, as I said earlier, is proving ineffective in the current crisis after 240 years, one Pluto cycle, in the ascendancy. To be ‘undemocratic’ is to be a bad person, and this dogma subverts free thought.

Economically there is the dogma of growth and free market capitalism. The economic success of the West has led to the belief that its political system, Democracy, must also be responsible for that success. So there is a tangle of beliefs here which will take a hit as the West becomes relatively less powerful and China, which is not a democracy, gradually becomes the leading superpower. The triumph in the Cold War confirmed the West’s belief in its own politics and economic system. The triumph of China will reverse that belief.

But if we are going to stick as closely as we can to the events of the 1520s, then we need to look for the undermining of a state-backed religious establishment that has undue power over people’s minds. That religious establishment is Science. The Ingress Chart for Pluto in Cap in 1515 had Pluto in a loose stellium opposite Jupiter, religion and belief. The current Ingress Chart also has Pluto in a stellium involving Jupiter, so a revolution in Science-as-Religion seems plausible.

Moreover, the Ingress Chart for Neptune in Pisces has 6 planets, including a New Moon and Jupiter, in Aries. This is very strong, and suggests new guiding mythologies.

Click to Enlarge

Science today provides the answers to the metaphysical questions that the Church used to provide. Like the medieval Church, it has state power behind it, and presents itself as the only possible reality. There is an enormous amount of freeing up of people’s minds that is needed here – it is a collective brainwashing as far reaching as occurred under medieval Christianity. Science, of course, has its validity: the brainwashing lies in the notion that it describes the only reality, the one true way of seeing the world.

The astrology is there, over the next 10 years, for this primitive way of seeing the world to start to fragment decisively (just as the events of the 1520s, dramatic as they were, were just a beginning – and beginnings are not always apparent at the time.)

The reason I think this may happen – and I am being speculative – is that we may be reaching the limits of Science at the micro and macro levels. In the middle ground, so to speak, Science continues to progress and technological developments occur apace.

But when we go down to the quantum level, or up to the galactic level, there are indications that the scientific paradigm may be breaking down. At the galactic level, there is the phenomenon of dark matter, an undetectable form of matter that allegedly makes up 83% of the universe. It has remained undetected ever since it was first postulated in the 1930s to explain the rotation of galaxies, which do not obey Newton’s Law of Gravity. In any other discipline, it would by now have been laughed out of court. I think it is a case of the Emperor’s New Clothes.

Science has also been stuck for a long time at the micro level. For decades this counter-intuitive world has been described by a model that involves the notion of supersymmetry. But there has been no experimental evidence for it. Evidence does now seem to be being gathered, but it leads away from the idea! The quantum world is one that no-one can ever see directly, possessed of numerous attributes that the mind can never fully grasp, and which seems to become more complex and fragmented the more it is pursued.

Then there is the Holy Grail of Science, the Theory of Everything, that would unite the micro and macro levels in one Grand Theory. For some decades String Theory has been the leading contender.

For some time there were 5 competing versions, then someone united them all under M Theory, which posits 11 dimensions, some of them existing at a nano level and wrapped up inside other dimensions. The theory is still not complete, and has been criticised for being untestable and lacking predictive power.

I think my point is clear! At the micro and macro levels, science seems to have been stuck for some time. And it doesn’t seem to me like some Einstein needs to come along and resolve it all. Science is and always has been a model of physical reality, and as a model it inevitably has limits: the model will break down when pushed to an extreme. Those limits seem to me to be being reached, and this will have a profound effect on the way we see the world. Every schoolkid will one day learn that Science no longer works when faced with the extremely large and extremely small, and it is therefore just a tool rather than a metaphysical system to which all other disciplines should bow. Pluto in Capricorn alongside Neptune in Pisces seems a good place to start: the dismantling of a rigid orthodoxy and the freeing of the individual to have their own perception of reality. This cultural impulse could be further established as Pluto moves on to Aquarius, the sign of Science; and as Neptune moves into Aries, a place of new mythologies. And let us hope that in the process the West moves on from its 1000 year love affair with monotheisms.

Neptune and Collective Mythologies

In a strange way, the world becomes what we collectively imagine it to be. You could say this is a definition of mythology. We have stories about ourselves, about the world and about the universe. Science, which provides the modern worldview, is no different. It has 2 big Creation Myths: the Big Bang (the Universe) and Evolution (Life). It also believes that its stories are not stories, unlike every other culture’s stories.

The assumptions behind the science story (at its worst) are that the universe is a material object ‘out there’ to be studied, that it is fully comprehensible by human reason alone and that it is inanimate and indifferent to us. Any other stories are the product of primitive minds. Huge, cold assumptions.

Jupiter is the planet of story-telling. But I think that Neptune, the planet of the Imagination, is the ocean out of which the stories are picked. Neptune is that place where consciousness and matter merge, where it becomes obvious that you cannot separate human consciousness and the universe that consciousness is always trying to understand and describe.

So our stories in a sense create the world, and it makes Neptune a very fundamental planet. We usually think of Neptune as fashion, as addiction, as creativity, as redemption, as a sense of connectedness. And all this is true. But underneath it all Neptune describes the sort of world in which all this takes place, the sort of world that the collective imagination has in fact created. It may be a beautiful, harmonious vision of the universe in which humanity and nature live in balance and flourish.

Or it may be a nightmare vision of master races and dominance of nature by divine edict. I think that in the West we probably have to go back to pre-Christian times to find a healthy collective mythology. We have forgotten what it is like.

Neptune was discovered in 1846, so its placement then tells us a lot about the world people imagined they lived in at the time. The Discovery chart (see below) has Neptune stationing conjunct Saturn in the 10th House at 26 Aquarius. So the Universe was becoming scientific (Aquarius), with man, rather than God, at the top of it. Aquarius supports humanity’s intellectual gifts, but is also prone to hubris. Prometheus was a very Aquarian figure. He brought all sorts of gifts to mankind, and Zeus told him not to bring Fire, but he did, and was punished for it. Prometheus had a disregard for Zeus as the embodiment of the laws of nature.

1846 was before Darwin’s book on the Origin of Species was published, but the idea of Evolution was already becoming known and gaining credibility in the academic world. So it was entering the collective imagination, and is well described by Neptune in Aquarius. Evolution is a scientific Creation Myth that puts Man at the pinnacle of Creation, continuing the sense of dominance over nature that was granted by the God of the Old Testament. Neptune’s close conjunction to Saturn in the 10th House reinforces this sense of dominance. Neptune stationing (standing still) is like him staring at us, saying you really need to look at this.

Click to Enlarge

In the last few years we have had the 1st Neptune Return, in the sense of Neptune reaching the place it was in when it was discovered. We have just had one full Neptune cycle of Science as our underlying collective mythology. So it is not surprising that the imbalances of that mythology are becoming clearer, that we are living in a time when we can no longer ignore the sense of dominance over nature that we have inherited from Christianity, and then had compounded by Science. We are collectively in the position of Prometheus with his liver being pecked out afresh every day.

A healthy mythology has stories about the consequences of humanity’s innate tendency to get above itself. Hubris and its consequences are fundamental to ancient Greek Mythology. You find it also in the Chippewa Cree stories in the figure of Wisahitsa, a figure of fun who is always getting tripped up by his own self-importance. But an understanding of hubris is not part of our modern mythology, which is full of pride at human achievement, at how clever we are.

The Big Bang is the other modern Creation Myth, and that began to gain acceptance in the 1960s, while Neptune was in Scorpio. That is the perfect sign for the Big Bang. Under Scorpio, or Pluto transits, seeds are planted that turn out to have tremendous power, and that is exactly what the Big Bang was. A singularity giving rise to the whole Universe. It is interesting that the Christian Era also began under Neptune in Scorpio, and that has the Creation Myth of God creating the world out of nothing.

The fact that Neptune was discovered under Aquarius suggests that the Myth we need to pay most attention to is the one behind the Big Bang and Evolution, which is the Myth of Science itself and its approach to knowledge, as well as its placement suggesting power and dominance. And it is first of all important to recognise that it is a Myth, in the sense of an underlying story that we have collectively created. This is hard to do, because it is so much presented to us as an undeniable reality. But any Myth worth its salt will have this quality of believability.

Years ago I read a short book called ‘The World is as You Dream It’ by John Perkins. It was based on his experiences with South American Indians, and the title is self-explanatory. Perkins was arguing for the need to re-dream western culture – that, if you like, a new mythology is needed. And I think the Neptune Return is also telling us this.

Neptune changes sign every 14 years or so, describing the ongoing shifts in the stories we tell ourselves about the world we are in. A mere change of sign doesn’t point to a fundamental change in mythology, you need to discover Neptune for that! For some of the significant changes, you probably also need to look at the Progressed Neptune chart, and the changes in direction of Prog Neptune, or the progressed new Moons, for example. In the early 1930s, Prog Neptune reached the position it was in when it was discovered, and there was also a Prog New Moon. And this was the time that Japan and Germany’s master race mythologies changed the world.

Neptune will change sign into Pisces on 3rd/4th April (depending on where you live). There is no reason to suppose it will re-dream the whole of western culture, but coming hard on the heels of the Neptune Return, and being in its own sign of Pisces, it may well be more notable than most.

Click to Enlarge

In the last 3 years we have seen both Pluto and Uranus change signs, and this has been quite dramatic. Within days of the 1st Pluto Ingress (entry into a sign) into Capricorn in January 2008, the Stock Market began to rock and the financial crisis got seriously underway. Pluto is a god of wealth, and so rules the economy. On Uranus’ last day in Pisces earlier this month, there was the biggest recorded earthquake in Japan followed by a tsunami. On his 1st day in Aries (his 2nd and final Ingress), there was an explosion at a Japanese nuclear plant affected by the earthquake.

The Ingresses are not always dramatic, but they remind you that these planets and their signs are real things, that the meaning of human affairs is to be found in the heavens.

The chart for Neptune’s Ingress into Pisces has six planets, including a New Moon, in Aries. This suggests to me that, while our basic mythology may not change, there will still be some big changes to the way we see the world. Neptune in Capricorn, which began in the mid-1980s, was an era in which money (Capricorn) became fashionable (Neptune). Neptune in Aquarius, which began in the late 1990s, began the Internet Age: Aquarius is computers and Neptune is the interconnectedness of the web. Neptune in Pisces. Who knows?

Events near the Ingress can be suggestive. A tsunami occurs in Japan, and the whole world feels involved. The major powers are acting in concert to help the people of Libya. Globalisation – the connectedness of Neptune – may move on a step from just business convenience, the globalisation of Neptune in Capricorn; and electronic friendships, the globalisation of Neptune in Aquarius. Humanity may begin to identify more with the world as a whole. There is a nuclear accident in Japan, no-one has died from it, but both Germany and China call a halt to their nuclear programmes. That halt may not last, but it shows how sensitive we have become collectively. Even China, which has an autocratic government that doesn’t have to pay too much attention to its people. If nuclear power takes a hit, and we all know that oil is ultimately limited, then that means we are starting to tell ourselves a different story about our relationship to the earth, that we are planning to move towards clean, renewable sources. Not only is that sensible for practical reasons, but it creates a new mythology in which we can no longer dominate in the way we have become used to. It means we can only take from the earth that which she can renew, which our ancestors – and anyone with half a brain – always knew. But it is not just knowledge, it re- creates a feeling relationship that has been forgotten. And when you have knowledge and feeling working as one, then you have a new imaginative relationship, you have a new mythology. So I think that Neptune in Pisces will bring this in to some extent, even in the USA (which is notable for not changing its nuclear policy and not wanting to curb its greenhouse gases.)

Neptune in Pisces

Below is Adrian Duncan’s latest article, a predictive piece on Neptune in Pisces:

It’s been a long time. Neptune was discovered on September 23, 1846 and as it takes 165 years to go around the Sun, it is only recently that it has returned to its discovery position, which was 26 degrees Aquarius. One year after its discovery Neptune entered the sign it was later to have rulership over… Pisces. We have just experienced a Neptune birthday, and on April 4, 2011 this enormous planet will enter Pisces once again.

This is going to be quite an event. The discovery of Neptune coincided with worldwide social upheaval, which was mostly peaceful. In 1848 the Communist Manifesto was published, which was a response to the inhuman conditions in expanding cities where new factories were sprouting as a result of steam power and industrialization. This was the period when Charles Dickens wrote his novels of social realism, and social democratic demonstrations shook the capitals of Europe. This was also a time when painters like Renoir, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Cezanne and Monet made their impressionist paintings, expanding the world of fantasy and imagination. On the scientific front Darwin’s theory of evolution completely undermined Christian tradition. The first photographs were taken, ultimately leading to the coming world of the movies. Anesthetics were used for the first time in hospitals. Opium became a socially acceptable drug. The accepted reality of the day was undermined and new spiritual, emotional and political realities took form.

Here in 2010 we can now document the movement of Neptune through each of the twelve signs, and await a new spiral of Neptunian evolution. The function of Neptune is to expand our experience of so-called reality by introducing new dimensions of consciousness (more…)

Fashion; building an altar to Neptune

Neptune governs what is fashionable, and he changes sign every 14 years or so. Next year he moves from Aquarius to Pisces, so fashions will change, and are probably starting to do so already. Well, fashions are always changing, or they wouldn’t be called fashions. It’s more the underlying character of what is fashionable that will be changing.

“For the fashion of this world passeth away.” (Corinthians Chapter 7)

So in the last couple of years there has begun to be protest against the fashion for anorexic catwalkers. Aquarius can be disembodied and sci-fi, so not only have we had women held up as icons who are virtually ill from malnourishment, but the Japanese have even managed to create a robot dressed up as a woman that walks and talks. You could say that Chiron in Aquarius over the last few years has brought the matter of anorexic models to a head.

While the ideal is to be thin, the actuality is increasingly the opposite, an epidemic of obesity that has been flagged up as Neptune approaches Pisces. So we may have the opposite problem for some years yet, as Pisces knows no boundaries, but at least, I hope, women will be allowed to have a shape again.


Aquarius is associated with electronics and networking, so he is the sign above all others that governs the internet. Putting this together with Aquarius’ odd relationship to the body, and we have kids whose main source of sex education is the online porn industry.

Teenage girls are now under pressure to remove their pubic hair: the boys find it off-putting after what they’ve seen on the internet. Admittedly the Romans weren’t too keen either on pubic hair, but that was more to do with their ideas on hygiene. This is different. Its origins are pornographic display. To my mind, there are also paedophilic undertones, in the same way that holding up boy-shaped girls (ie the catwalk) as an ideal also has this flavour. At the same time we demonise paedophiles, they are the modern equivalent of the Jews in medieval Europe.

There is another fashion which has been around for some time, which is for women to dye their hair bleach blonde. It used to be just young women who did this, but now it is all ages, and to start with I used to find it hideous and undignified when an elderly woman did this. (I’m not protesting against dyeing, which can look good, it is the bleach blonde effect). It is so common now that I’ve got used to it. I think it is again Neptune in Aquarius – which has been going on for 12 years – because it is an attempt to deny ageing.

Bleach blonde has always had the connotations of sexy and brainless (as in ‘I had a blonde moment’). After several decades of the social advances brought about by feminism, it’s as if many women decided, after all, to choose sex over brains. OK, I’m being a bit hard here, as it’s in many cases not true, but there is still a symbolism going on.

I’m still trying to get my head around Neptune transits, because I’m not very Neptunian, but for the last 4 years I’ve had Neptune conjunct Sun and now it’s approaching my DESC and I still seem to be in a swamp with no way forward. Someone just lent me ‘Making the Gods work for you’ by Caroline Casey and here was a bit that I liked:

BUILDING AN ALTAR TO THE GOD WHO’S BEEN OPPRESSING YOU

The Odyssey provides a Neptunian initiation tale. After fighting the Trojan War, Ulysses’ single goal is to reach home. But because Ulysses has angered Neptune by blinding the one-eyed Cyclops, one of Neptune’s children, the sea god sends disorientating winds and extravagant, weird, exotic adventures to distract Ulysses and blow him off course. Who can’t relate?

Finally, Ulysses consults Tiresias, the blind Underworld prophet, a kind of Pluto figure, who says: “You have angered Neptune. Here’s the ritual you must perform. Take an oar, a symbol of the sea, and walk it inland. When you get to a place where no-one has ever seen the sea, there you must build a temple to the god who has been oppressing you.”

So Ulysses does this, walking inland until somebody asks him if the oar is a piece of windmill, so he knows he has found the right place. He builds a temple to Neptune, the god who has been oppressing him, and it works. In an act of reversal magic, Neptune becomes his ally and sends him sweet winds. Ulysses sails for home, where he reclaims his kingdom.

Our task is to reflect upon what it might mean to build a temple to the god who has been oppressing us. What kind of oar do we take inland? The Neptunian part of us says that to liberate ourselves, we must carry our vision inland to where nobody has ever heard of it before, and give our gift there. It is easy to hang out in a homogenous neighbourhood; go somewhere new.