Neptune stations retrograde today for the first time since entering Pisces in February. That means Earth is approaching its annual passage between Neptune and the Sun, which will take place in August. The reality of Earth catching up to pass creates our illusory perception of Neptune moving backward. Illusion is a characteristic associated with Neptune, making its retrogrades especially meaningful in general. Another quality of Neptune that pertains to this particular retrograde is that, as Eric recently wrote, “It has a way of disappearing.”
You may therefore find this time of your life not only tinged with confusion but also distinguished by what is hidden in plain sight. Neptune’s reversal today is practically hidden amongst the most amazing astrology of your life. Neptune’s retrograde follows a solar eclipse by two weeks and a lunar eclipse by 10 hours, while preceding Venus transiting the Sun and a lunar occultation of Pluto by two days. It’s the sleeper that pervades this auspicious time.
It is not an overstatement to say that Neptune is pervasive right now. Of the three ruler planets with orbits exceeding the average human lifetime (the other two being Uranus and Pluto), Neptune was the last to change signs for the long term. Pluto’s last Capricorn ingress in 2008 saw the beginning of a world-wide financial meltdown still in progress. Uranus’ final commitment to Aries in 2011 was precisely concurrent with the Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdowns, also still in progress. Neptune’s ultimate entry to Pisces was in February of this year and that event appears to coincide with the meltdown of progress itself as we have come to know it since Neptune was discovered.
By the time Neptune was identified as a planet in 1846, humanity had progressed to the threshold of realizing the Old Testament’s dictum of dominion over the Earth. What was not commonly understood by those inflicting that dominion on other cultures and species was the outright lie that supported the obscenity of manifest destiny. The underlying deceit behind what came to be known as progress was the idea that there were no limits to the abuse and exploitation Earth could endure at our hands. Now that Neptune has completed just over one orbit of the Sun since its discovery, the consequences of that mass deception are being revealed as a threat to all forms of life on this planet.
Deception and lies are the dark side of Neptune as its archetype is expressed in your life. To hear some tell it, the dark side is Neptune’s only side, but that is not the case for any object or point utilized by astrology. There is another side, a brighter side, having to do with dreams and humanity’s unique ability to make dreams real. Given its timing, Neptune’s retrograde station is the opportunity not only to see but realize that brighter side as it pervades the more rare and publicized events taking place concurrently.
As Neptune and the Sun approach their opposition (another way of saying Earth is moving between them), Neptune does in fact become brighter from our point of view with more of its distant surface reflecting solar illumination in our direction. The reality of a more luminous Neptune that synchronizes to its retrograde period is already being seen symbolically in how corresponding celestial events are being described.
Recent writings on Planet Waves have described this morning’s lunar eclipse as a chance to distinguish “beyond shadowy levels of the psyche,” and the lunar occultation of Pluto as “deep passion working its way through.” Even more tellingly, psychologist-astrologer David Tresemer counseled us to take this century’s last Venus transit of the Sun as an “opportunity to cultivate your relationship to ideals.” If you examine each of those characterizations, especially key words like “shadowy,” “psyche”, “deep” and especially “ideals,” you could just as well be talking about Neptune — and indeed you are.
Neptune stationing retrograde today is yet another evidence that movements of the Sun, Moon and planets as observed from Earth are not random or chaotic, but synchronized with each other and your life. Everything in how you have experienced the eclipses bears the wet fingerprint of Neptune. What will happen during what Eric has called the “eclipse-like events” to come will likewise reflect Neptune’s positive expression of dreams and ideals: permeating like water soaking into the ground, flowing through your body, falling as rain, giving life a chance to survive underlying deceptions that feed toxic enterprises, allowing you to be cleansed, refreshed and filled to the brim.
As Neptune approaches the equivalent of its full phase over the next couple months, you can expect more of the same. Its accustomed way of disappearing will be reversed. You will see evidence of Neptune everywhere, in the words people use, in how you feel, even in how things look, taste, smell and sound. Sleeping behind both the symbolic and the real, the great depth of life’s unity will arise and the superficial differences will be submerged. Give yourself a chance to get off the old worn lie of progress to ride the new tide of Neptune and from within you the sleeper, so long hidden in plain sight of your soul, will awaken. Can somebody please say life?
Offered In Service
Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.
P. Sophia – so glad you liked it! yesterday a bird briefly alighted (alit?) on my terrace and sang the most beautiful birdsong I’ve ever heard. I was on the phone (landline) to my father, so I didn’t get out in time to see it. Though it’s prob just as well cos I would have scared it off. I’m sure it was a nightingale! Not for nothing John Keats dedicated a poem to them.
http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/n/nightingale/index.aspx
Huffy, wow thank you for this link. I cannot believe the symbolism to my experience. And the timing and serendipity. Talking about Eros, resurrection, transformation, soul, lightness, path and how this is/was represented in the various cultures and with Christ. These are so many of the emotions I felt in the experience of that day.
berin, and mm too, just feeling so privileged being connected to you all.
Have to run, presently love is to be reclaimed…Our Venus transit awaits!
P. Sophia, your butterfly story is exquisite. Came across this just now:
http://www.whats-your-sign.com/butterfly-animal-symbolism.html
There will be another fact of Neptune to observe it is its position in the midships to the axis of the Lunar nodes which was also observable 8 years ago in 2004 when the first transit of Venus, since Venus is considered in exaltation in the sign of the fish or Neptune is the modern master.
It will give an idea of the psychological state that we will get and the icing on the cake, Neptune will be in second half of June square Jupiter, Saturn parking… that’s ideas for articles Len not to be missed
‘life!’
xxxp
Hi to all reading! Carrie, stumbled across this, thought it would make for interesting reading, http://www.daughtersofnarcissisticmothers.com/
The Mother-English translation dictionary is a cracker!
“A quintile (72 degrees) is an aspect of the occult. It’s also about the use of the will. The spiritual will, if you will, and it transcends physical limitations like being stuck where you are. It has the ability to help you understand the inner relation between seemingly isolated sets of circumstances.”
especially interesting given the session i had earlier with a spiritual counselor/healer…
thanks, be —
I am looking forward to Thursday!
Ok the week (with Neptune Rx and the lunar eclipse) is already going strange. Just last week I took my only sibling off my FaceBook friends list because he desn’t really talk to me and he doesn’t have me listed under “family.” Then today, out of the blue, he calls me on the phone to chat. To chat???? He never does that. He is a high powered lawuyer and he puts money first in his life. Our values are nothing alike. We talked a bit and he didn’t sound condescending; not even once.
Needless to say I cried like a baby after he hung up. I helped raise him (he is 12 years younger than I) and after all these years of being marginalized by him (our mother is a narcissist and he is her favorite) suddenly he is 40 and contacting me. ::::shaking head::::: I didn’t include that when I made a vision of what I want my world to be because I had given up on us ever having any knd of relationship. I don’t know what it means and it probably doesn’t mean anything but it is odd just the same.
What a weird start to this week. My mother turns 75 tomorrow; I no longer speak to her because she is harmful and toxic in her narcissism. I don’t miss her at all.
Bard Len, a poet bringing out the poet in everyone! Woke up 4:30am or so this morning after a special request to my inner alarm clock to wake me before the moon set behind the escarpment west of my house that hides the horizon of sunsets and moonsets from me unless I climb it ahead of the auspicious moments. I was hoping to see a bit of the eclipse, and there she was resting gently above the escarpment saying, I was waiting just for you! My husband got up when I came for him and got to see it too. Feel so blessed with celestial events lately and their visibility here in central New Mexico. Tomorrow, have a Venus transit party to go to, hoping to take the telescope with the homemade filter for viewing my sweetiepie made, but we have clouds and rain today! Shall I wish clouds and rain away for sweet Venus and the sun’s rendezvous, or should I more generously, given our drought stricken state and huge fire down in the Gila Wilderness, wish for more and more? If Venus and the sun wish to cloak themselves in a bit of privacy on their last visit with each other for some tens of decades, I will not grudge it them.
Oh! I love Song of Myself! I am always (somewhat annoyingly, I assume) using an approximation of (or directly quoting) these lines: “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” Always feels relevant. 🙂
indranibe: Yes, Uncle Walt, My Captain, thank you.
Burning River, michle, Cara Susanetta, Patty, aword, Biren, Vatie Vee, Dianae, Jann, and marymack: Thank you for your generous words.
liminali and Hugging Scorpio: thank you also for the hyperlinks.
be: thank you for the Vesta connection – pretty special, huh? Yes, it would be very appropriate to compare Elizabeth II with Vesta.
P.Sophia: Yes, thank you, honored to be referred to as your astrologer.
paola: Good question. Almost nothing in Sadge that everybody does not have (and less than most), yet somehow i connect with solar Sadge people and themes pretty well most of the time. Maybe it’s the GC or GA hooking me up through aspect. Back when i was born (in Bedrock) there were no centaur planets in Sagittarius.
That was fabulous Len, here you are:
“The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains
of my gab and my loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.”
(Uncle Walt, Song of Myself, LII)
P. Sophia … my friend went to SF for the week and I recommended Mt. Tam to her and since that time I’ve had this wonderful place in my mind, missing it so. It’s been years and I’ve not seen anything/anyone mention it until now with your post. Thanks for the share, PS and helping me capture the magic of that place and your critters.
Beautiful, thank you all so much
mm.
Oh! LIFE!!!
Transiting Neptune is (and has been) conjunct my N North Node, and will be for quite some time, also is conjunct my natal Ceres. When I take your message together with Eric’s words today about dharma, I have the seeds for some specific erotic phantasms and visioning (as described by David Tresemer in last week’s podcast).
So, dear Len, I take your words to heart (and soul), holding the trident high. Dreams about the earth, perhaps even a “state of devotion to holding [a cleansed and refresehed] world together”. Now, to vision this with specificity. Thank you so much.
JannKinz
Len,
Eloquent. Perceptive. Spiritual.
Lightning. Lightening. Enlightening.
Simply, thank you.
JannKinz
I love the image of the cleansing rain nurturing our souls/soil to bloom our creative urges.
I feel the need to share also. Thanks Len!
Life! And really, just AWESOME, Len. Thank you!
And thanks to the poets and the thinkers and the reflect-ers who share here. Such beautiful words and thoughts. Loving it all!
Life!
(that was for you Len)
🙂
P.Sophia… i am so filled with *something* after reading your story… that i can’t NOT share it with others.
i am copying it, and putting it on my facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/birenshah64)
please come there and comment in your FB persona…
i will be attributing it to you by writing “P.Sophia” for now.
love/b.
Dear CaraSusanetta and Burning River,
And to your…”heart a world of good”, and so precisely, eloquently say, “…welcomed into more of the mosaic of Life and its Beauty”, both statements for me truly capture what is real and now!
Thank you.
eclipse dream was – in a theatre classroom of sorts with young people brainstorming to put together a production piece. I struggled for my voice – heavy pressure on chest – but struggled through it enough to suggest we/they create a work about/using Chopin’s final composition as the beginning and then ‘hard cut’ (I was adamant about the ‘hard cut’ for some reason) to a pastoral scene.
The idea was enthusiastically accepted and production began.
I had to look up Chopin’s final work this morning – I grew up with classical music, but am not overly knowledgable about specific pieces.
It was not as “strange” as many of my dreams, but seemed to “carry weight”.
Helpful and beautiful writing as always Len, thank you.
Burning River! thanks! And right back at ya! Lovely words in your poem.
HS-beautiful word-thought -feeling poem Thank you. Beautiful All commenters today–thank you for community.
p.sophia: What a gift you were part of. I am immensely grateful for your taking time to share it with us, I now flow with Len’s words of cleansing rain today and butterfly dreams become real to you and therefore also to the rest of us two-leggeds who are being welcomed into more of the mosaic of Life and its Beauty.
P. Sophia. Your story did my heart a world of good. Thank you!
LIFE!!!
LOVE!!!
LIGHT!!!
(a poem I wrote in Sept 2008)
The Bamboo Flute
Beyond the far distance,
A Flute is heard again.
Its lovely voice carrying through the woods,
Piercing a tranquil mist,
Glowing a truth of simple joy.
Music is now breathing in full.
All around, the Trees are held
In its hands of wise caring.
Nurtured with a beauty
Of whose deep longing
Brings quiet fulfillment.
I have been hidden,
From such a sound –
The silence of being completely unaware.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Dk3TseBke0
HS
LIFE!
Yes, synchronized. All is unfolding, unraveling and connecting before me, so beautifully. Feels so good, makes so much sense. Catch me, I am falling…in love with life! And, also my astrologer, it seems. Opps, I am sorry did that come out? Hope this is not viewed as taboo? But can’t be helped Len, I am just one big, bundle of love right now.
This weekend while hiking Mt. Tam, heading up our beautiful mountain, there in the middle of the trail I saw a butterfly lying on the dusty ground. I stopped to say hello and also to see if he was OK. Thinking you don’t often find butterfly’s just motionless on the ground. I put my finger towards him and he immediately jumped on, I thought to myself, “Oh, what a gift”, appreciating the moment, in knowing, assuming he would not be staying there for too long.
We walked on, believing he would flutter off soon. But he sat there just the same, motionless, actually seeming quite content with himself. After a while, still climbing up the mountain we continued on…and I thought maybe I was being bit selfish just enjoying him there with me. To be kind, for his sake, I should at least try to place him back in his environment-world. I looked around and decided on the best spot. I set him on a nice, tall, dry grass. But as soon as I did, it was all panic that came over him. Down he went fluttering, slipping while grasping the dry grass. Looking lost, in this, his environment, I thought! Turning in the grass now on the ground it all started to quickly fold in around him. It was such a feeling of panic I felt from him that I picked him up and there, again this feeling of calm seemed to come to him. “Well”, I thought “I will keep you with me for a while, until?”
There on my finger he stayed, contented and calm, as we continued our journey up, and up. At one point I tried, again for his return, by offering him a flower and then also a long green branch that I felt offered him a rather nice view. But, each time his wings fluttered nervously at the thought of moving off in this direction, and he would not take it anyway. When I pulled back, he remained there wings calm with me. It really was a heartfelt moment, when I came to the realization, to just accept as is and go with it. A confidence and knowing, in this resolution came to me…”He will leave, when he is ready.” Thoughts went on from there….
Nearing the last turn, close to the top, I looked up ahead to where my dog was now turned waiting for me. Then, there in one moment….. Zoom! My friend, butterfly took off to meet – another. I saw it, it was incredible, and like magnates they connected. In the middle of the sky, round and round each other they spiraled up. Higher and higher into the sky, they went spiraling up in a whirlwind, of JOY….They did! I’d say 100 feet high, or higher. Then zoom…they broke away and fell out of pattern, coming straight down at great speeds. I looked around and saw it was kind of a butterfly colony there by the trees and quickly concluded, surely this was his group he had most likely flown of course somehow and guess lost home temporarily.
I sat there watching them for what seemed like forever and a minute, in trance of their beautiful love dance display, repeating in their reunion, again and again. I was touched and filled with such love and feelings of gratitude – One. The connectedness – witnessing, offering, sharing, the miracle. I felt and will stay deeply in this feeling of unity, of creation, life.
Thank you all, PW for being there, for listening.
Len,
You are a poet! Thank you for this.
I feel like I’m walking on a cloud, instead of shifting through the fog. What clarity of mind and heart and spirit! I hope it lasts for the rest of my life.
Len,
Thanks for sharing the kinder, gentler side of Neptune with your readers today as too often they get “fogged out”. I’d like to share a secret hiding in plain sight about transiting, stationing, retrograde Neptune too. He is making a quintile aspect to asteroid goddess Vesta. That’s a good thing.
A quintile (72 degrees) is an aspect of the occult. It’s also about the use of the will. The spiritual will, if you will, and it transcends physical limitations like being stuck where you are. It has the ability to help you understand the inner relation between seemingly isolated sets of circumstances. So if we think a moment about Vesta, her clear-headed determination in bull-headed Taurus teaming up with a god who can create dreams, beautiful dreams, and who. . . being the higher octive of Venus. . . can influence how we love and who we love, and at this particular time is tuning into the inner view; what inner relation can you find with what’s going on in the world, and tie it into what’s going on where you are stuck? This is an eclipse chart, a lunar eclipse so how you feel and what makes you weep with joy could be stimulating your own spiritual will.
I watched the Queen and her family brave the rain in London to watch her people show their respect and love in a most beautiful river pagentry of boats of all kind, and with music to stir the emotions of everyone who is English in fact or at heart. She was the Vesta, keeping the fires burning, and all who were there (via TV or in person) were part of the Neptune stationing, and the skies wept with love for her and this country she rules. Nobody complained and everyone had a splendid time. Neptune dissolves boundries and through the brilliance of technology, and with Vesta’s determination to represent the center hearth of England, Queen Elizabeth and I connected today, albeit in a spiritual sense. Love makes the world go round.
be
This is just what I need right now. Thanks for the gentle bonk upside the head 😉
life!
can’t help it liminali: here goes. I wrote it in early 2009
Fire Under Water
out of sight
burning silently in damp,
dark-depths,
soft cool sludge
of lake
or ocean
or river bottom
does it matter?
–fire under water
should go out
but
all motion is fire.
watch out for the fire of water.
the airlessness of breath taken away
the crazed singing and shouting and dancing of moving earth
into tsunami
all motion is fire
my eternally moving molecules
start the Jingle Dance
each time you think of me
fire under water
should go out
but all motion
is
fire
+_-
Len, you are an astrology poet. You must have some Sag in your theme, do you? Your expression goes to the center like an arrow. A soft arrow.
‘permeating like water soaking into the ground, flowing through your body, falling as rain, giving life a chance to survive underlying deceptions that feed toxic enterprises, allowing you to be cleansed, refreshed and filled to the brim’ feels so good just reading it.
And I agree with all that Burning River said.
‘ and the sleeper, so long hidden in plain sight of your soul, will awaken’.
Light
Into
Friction =
Energy
http://youtu.be/p6Ycyn3mwqo
🙂
Oh, Len! I had recently noticed this retrograde taking place today (in my trusty Zodiac Arts Moon Phase calendar) and thought to myself, ok. What’s THAT going to be all about?
Thank you. I choose “What will happen during what Eric has called the “eclipse-like events” to come will likewise reflect Neptune’s positive expression of dreams and ideals: permeating like water soaking into the ground, flowing through your body, falling as rain, giving life a chance to survive underlying deceptions that feed toxic enterprises, allowing you to be cleansed, refreshed and filled to the brim.”
And, not just dreams and ideals that have no substance, but actually to be finding form in the living of my life.
Still scary if I think too much. (Despise fear. Have no respect for fear. Do not be afraid to be wrong or make a mistake.)
I will concentrate on the passing of what should not be there and attend to my eyes get used to the shining of what always has been Light.(Reference to recent sun’s annular eclipse.)
“Do I dare and do I dare?”
Hell, yes.
+_+