Not your average sunset -- the setting of a precise conjunction of the Sun and Neptune over Fort Pond in the middle of town. Neptune is invisible to the eye but not the soul. Photo by Eric.
Welcome to an age of Pisces. Not the big kind of age — that would be 2,000 years or so, of which we’re supposedly at the end (and it’s a long ending). This is a phase more human in scale, of a generation or so. Though Neptune ingressed Pisces a couple of weeks ago, Sunday the Sun caught up with the eminent god of the sea (and of earthquakes, which often happen at sea) and formed the first conjunction to Neptune in Pisces in more than 150 years. This will happen just 13 more times between now and 2025 as Neptune makes its way across Pisces.
Chart for the Sun-Neptune conjunction earlier Sunday. You can tell there is a conjunction because both points have the same degree value, 00 Pisces 36. Note the Aquarius Moon above, and the many other points in Pisces and Aries below.
Neptune events have a way of being subtle in their obvious manifestations, at least for long stretches of time. It’s like they’re invisible or can be perceived only at the far end of our senses, and our sense of time. There is something undeniably mystical about this alignment, though we may only be able to see it out of the corners of our eyes, or notice it like the subtle changes of light when the Sun is nearing the horizon. Neptune summons us to another level of awareness, the deeper world than this that Sting once reminded us is tugging at our hand.
This may be that unusual something that’s been coming through your dreams, your fantasies and your art or music the past few days. Neptune can have a slightly narcotic feeling, or a touch of clairvoyance that you might wonder whether is real. It’s a quality of presence that most often goes unnoticed in the world, or it’s so exploited with glamour, liquor, meds and advertising that it verges on impossible to notice because the frequency is so jammed up already. That and the too-often prevailing chilly cynicism of the world are enough to make most people impervious to the subtler dimensions of Neptune and Pisces.
But let’s pretend that we’re not, for a moment. Let’s imagine we really can pick up on the imagination that this transit inspires, and think of it as what was once an opaque veil being made transparent; now the choice is whether to pull the veil back and reach in a little deeper. Where would you let your mind go? What would you do with your imagination? In what ways would you demonstrate the sense of ‘universal calling’ implied by such potent Pisces energy? Many of our readers are involved in both artistic and spiritual exploration as a way of life. Be grateful that you have those modes of expression, and take this as a cue to go deeper with them. If you long for some way to express what cannot be said in words, this is an opening, a direct invitation to take the chance.
There’s a lot more than Sun-Neptune happening in Pisces by the way. Sunday the Sun joined Chiron (a slow-moving centaur), Pallas Athene (a classical asteroid) and Mercury, all in the first 10 degrees of Pisces. Jupiter and Chiron are still in a sextile pattern, which brings the traditional ruler of Pisces into the equation by aspect. So we’re talking about a lot of Pisces all at once, in the form of planets well-suited to that sign. And though the fast-movers will all move on fairly soon, we’ll be left with Chiron and Neptune as guiding forces in our lives.
It’s difficult to count the ways in which this setup harkens another way of seeing the world in contrast to so much of what we’ve been through for so long: the contraction, the unmitigated fear, the constant suspicion and the shamelessly unloving political establishment giving us every alleged reason to be selfish, to deny nourishment to others, and to live like God only favors some people. It’s time to laugh at any such notion and go on with participating in a world of which we are all part, supporting one another in lives to which we are all the inheritors if not of happiness, then the authentic quest for happiness.
The Moon is in Aquarius right now. It’ll make its way into Pisces just past noon EST on Tuesday, followed by the Pisces New Moon at 5:34 pm EST. This is a special New Moon, happening at the midpoint of Chiron and Neptune, two of the most distinctly spiritual influences available. It’s also conjunct Pallas Athene, one of the most mentally astute influences in astrology. Though both Neptune and Pisces have that dreamy quality, this chart is more like the chart of a lucid dream, a dream in which we awaken to the fact that we’re dreaming and, in so doing, gain a modicum of influence over what we experience, where we go and how we feel. (If you want to know more about lucid dreaming, check out the film Waking Life).
This Moon also comes with a healing agenda, which one of our astrologers here likened to an art therapy session on a cosmic scale — this is on account of the conjunction to Chiron and the New Moon being opposite Orcus, a distant planet that’s a kind of proto-Pluto — a god of death and transformation currently in early Virgo. We’ll describe that and offer other messages from this New Moon in tomorrow’s edition.
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