Astrological Neptune

Astrological Neptune exerts a feminine, quiet force; its psychological and spiritual power is to forgive, to dissolve all bitterness and grievance, to dissolve the barriers to love. Its affinity is with the power of love, its implement is forgiveness, and its result is oneness.

If you look up into the sky at night, and if you know where to look, you can see the planet Uranus with the naked eye. At its brightest it shines at about +5 magnitude.

You cannot see Neptune with the naked eye. It was first recorded with a telescope by Galileo in 1613, while it was conjunct the planet Saturn. He logged it into his notebook as an 8th magnitude star.

Neptune was again sighted by a French astronomer, Jerome Lalande, during the French Revolution (It was noted on May 8 & 10, 1795).

In 1854, a young mathematician named John Couch Adams (1819-1892), doing calculations on the perturbation of the orbit of Uranus, discovered the planet. Around the same time, a French scientist, Urbain Jean Joseph Leverrier (1811-1877), also published findings that an eighth planet had been discovered.

Today, drawing on data from the Voyager II scientific probe, we know much more about Neptune than we ever have before. Its appearance, from out a few million miles looks like a soft blue jewel hanging in the sky with a few white cirrus clouds flying across its surface. Its diameter is some 50,000 kilometers (where the Earth’s is 12,756 kilometers), and its mass is 17 times that of the Earth. Neptune is a big planet.

Has Neptune exerted an astrological influence all those thousands of years that it was unknown? Of course it has. Must a body be viewable to the naked eye to exert an influence? When the broken reactor at Chernobyl in the Ukraine spewed out deadly gamma rays, no one saw them. The unseen radioactivity was there, nevertheless, and people died from it, some very swiftly.

Like Pluto and Eris, and like possible planets beyond, Neptune exerts an influence, and always has. This influence can be traced deep into our historical past. We now know it is there and perhaps that knowledge is deepening our understanding of astrology. Its influence is quite powerful, especially when it is found in a synodic configuration.

The power of astrological Neptune is subtle in its influence on world events.

Normally, in order to effect change, straight direct force is required. This is what war and Mars is about: Armies march and conquer. Rome built an empire that lasted millennia, and built it with Martian and Scorpionic energy—straight direct force.

The Neptune influence works quite differently.

Much astrology focuses on the negative side of Neptune—the drugs, the escapism, the lies and calumnies, the sleaziness, the ungroundedness. It has been called “malefic”, though I don’t know if any planetary influence could be termed so.

Neptune’s energies have often been misused. In the Middle Ages, tens of thousands of children gathered together in a mass and made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. This was called the Children’s Crusade and was a Neptunian manifestation. When the children appeared in the Saracen lands, they were promptly sold into slavery. The October Revolution in Russia began as a great idealistic movement to wipe out centuries of injustice and oppression; it ended in 1991 by the outlawing of the Communist Party. The McCarthy years in America were a Neptunian manifestation.

When the power of Neptune is raised to a very high level, miracles can occur. Neptune functions within the Law of Non-Resistance. This is a principle not discussed very often. The Law embodies the principle of water eroding rock, of the tree bending to the wind. “Resist not evil,” says scripture. “Resist not”, employs the archetypal energy of Neptune. It states that whatever your resist, you become. Neptune has the power to transmute many negative situations through application of the Law of Non-Resistance.

Neptune’s influence acts so as to dissolve, to transmute, to alchemically change one energy into another. Its influence works to align the energies of the earth and its inhabitants therein to stellar, galactic, and other cosmic influences, acting as a force for evolution and growth. It enables the soul to grow by the process of transubstantiation, wherein it evolves from the density of matter into ever increasing levels of light.

We live in a free will universe. If we so will, this call to a deeper understanding of all the realms can be resisted. This resistance comes through the agency called ego. Neptune works to dissolve the power of ego. Mass movements that lead to confusion and sadness and unbelief are often governed by the Neptune influence. Yet still they have a value, namely, to dissolve hardened points of egocentric consciousness.

Higher Manifestations of Astrological Neptune

Neptune, in its higher manifestations, always leads to a deepening of the spiritual states of peace, of love, of oneness with the light, of oneness with all life. Those with a concentrated Neptune energy in their charts, in their oneness, feel the joy and the suffering of others. Some of them possess a special sensitivity to music and the arts. This sensitivity, which is often very loving, can transport them into a nirvana or oneness with God.

As a power, astrological Neptune always works best when it functions as non-resistance. It is the sapling whose roots are sunk deep into the earth, which when blown to the ground by the hurricane, springs back up when the wind is spent. This energy works in a like manner: It urges one to the principle of non-resistance, to non-contention, to oneness.

Neptune can work positively to balance disparate forces in a people. At the onset of Eisenhower’s presidency, the Saturn/Neptune conjunction signaled a time when the world had the choice to return to a relative condition of peace. Perhaps this conjunction signaled the beginning of a period of a massive shift to a higher consciousness on the planet.

In the Soviet Union, the same Saturn Neptune heralded the death of a collective ego that had lasted for almost a millennium. This was the time when Joseph Stalin died. The breakdown of collective ego would take another Saturn cycle (thirty years) to manifest clearly to everyone from its quiet beginnings.

When Neptune force is misused, as Senator Joseph McCarthy misused it, this quiet force has the tendency to reflect back on its abuser. Its effect can be devastating. Senator McCarthy destroyed himself with alcohol. That was a Neptune manifestation. President Eisenhower was able to direct Neptune energy to bring about the changes he felt were needed in a way that was effective, secret and non-resistant. Notice, however, that he did not receive much credit for his achievements while he was president or even while he was alive. That credit had to be “sacrificed” to the needs of the collective unconscious transformation occurring on the planet.

I will discuss Neptune in more depth when I examine how the planet functions in synod. That includes Pluto/Neptune, Uranus/Neptune and Saturn/Neptune and this about Abraham Lincoln.