Neptune In Pisces - Home I'll Be

“That which is imagined need never be lost.”—Clive Barker Neptune recently moved into its own sign of the zodiac, watery Pisces.  In its own sign, Neptune comes home and is in the sign most closely connected to its own nature.  What is that nature?

BOUNDLESS LONGING

Neptune is typically associated with dreams and illusions and mystical longing.  If the practical world is your home base and you strive to manage that world with ease, Neptune is challenging.  Neptune provides dissolving and softening, like a muscle relaxant to the worked-out rigidities of the practical world.  When it comes to the practical world, Neptune dutifully achieves its escapist reputation via fantasies, guilty pleasures, down-time, and countless other time-wasters that lure you away from “reality.”  If reality is about being grounded, getting work done and being responsible, Neptune is more about having a deep, relaxing massage that never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever ends.

Neptune’s discovery in 1846 occurred during the Romantic period of western history.  The power of the imagination contained within the Romantic vision is also contained within Neptune’s boundless waters, oceans, fogs, mysteries and yearnings.  While Neptune’s longings may get in the way of fulfilling your real-world responsibilities, the great Romantics saw (and see) the world from a different perspective.  Says James Hillman:

“To be filled with longing—that is fulfillment. Tell me what you long for, said the German Romantics, and I will tell you who you are.”

Fundamentally, Neptune is a longing.  Longing for what, though?  William Wordsworth, one of the great Romantic poets, writes, “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting / The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star / Hath had elsewhere its setting.”  The Neptunian part of you is the soul, longing for its home—its real home, elsewhere—a home you can barely remember but can never forget, a home you can only glimpse through imagination.  While this longing for home feels intensely intimate and deeply personal, it’s a longing shared by every human, and from it emerges great art, great music, great movies, and great poetry.  Within the essence of our imagination and artistic expression resides the source of who we are, as individuals and as a collective.  The longing for that source is particularly strong when Neptune is in Pisces.

When Neptune was last in Pisces, the California Gold Rush brought countless people galloping over the rugged American terrain (imagine Neptune’s horses) longing for gold from the waters of California, establishing what has become the modern American Dream.  Not surprisingly, popular culture (a strong carrier of Neptune) is currently envisioning the American West again:  “Rango” features Johnny Depp as a heroic lizard cowboy who saves the water reserves of a dried-up town, and in the process meets the mystical Spirit of the West itself; the lead character in the television series "Justified" is a cowboy detective; British sci-fi show “Doctor Who” heads to America for the first time with the centuries-old time-traveling Doctor donning a Stetson; CW hit “Supernatural” brings the Winchester brothers into the Wild Wild West, cowboy hats and all; and this summer Harrison Ford stars in “Cowboys and Aliens.”

ORIGINS & MEMORIES

Water is the source of all life as we know it, according to science and according to most creation mythologies of cultures worldwide.  The emergence of great art from the imagination shows more of Neptune’s nature as a womb-like source of creation.

With these Neptunian connotations of the womb and birth, it’s not surprising that shortly before Neptune entered Pisces this year, Lady GaGa took the music world in her monster arms again and rocked it (to sleep?) with “Born This Way.”  For the song’s premiere live performance, she arrived at the Grammy Awards in an egg, having incubated in it for three days prior so she could emerge from it to perform the song.

Again:  “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.”

In addition to its connection to life, water is also associated with memory.  If Wordsworth is correct that when we are born we forget our true origins, Neptune’s longing reminds us with its subtle IV drip of memory that seeps into every moment of every life.  We have glimpses of the eternal self we dream of being “if only....”  It can be very difficult to hang on to that whiff of a memory, despite its enormous appeal, especially if it makes the world around us look all the more dreary, ordinary and dull.  This leads to one of the most challenging components of both Neptune and Pisces: addictions.

THE ADDICT ARCHETYPE

One of the dangers of Neptune in Pisces, particularly relevant in today’s culture, is addiction.  It’s hard to track cycles of addiction historically, because not only has addiction saturated our modern world, but the modern world—still rushing for gold—includes addiction to the modern world itself (shutting out the past, living “in the now”).

Neptune’s longing for home is also a longing for eternity, to be outside of the tight, restrictive bounds of time and space with its limits and walls and separation and aloneness.  These longings can be so powerful and overwhelming (oceanic) that we may try desperately grabbing on to something—anything!—in the world around us to make them go away.  We grab onto the illusion that eating enough chocolate bars or cookies will make them go away.  See, addictions aren’t just a desperate attempt to escape the dull, drab, ordinary world of limits, or to escape from the emotional wreckage of a troubled childhood.  That is one component.  Addictions are also—from the other direction—an attempt to shut out eternity, to occlude the memory of eternity we each carry.  This is why, in the throes of addiction, the one particular thing in the one particular moment of “now” becomes so vitally important.

See, with Neptune we always have a paradox, and with Pisces we always have two fish.  From whichever direction we approach addiction—as an escape from this world or as an escape from the memory of eternity—the question still remains of how to deal with the paradox of addiction.  Apparently, eating the chocolate bars, drinking the alcohol, smoking the joint, spending the money, or working overtime-and-then-some, never really works.  Working never works, and escaping is no escape, so what’s left?

THE MYSTIC ARCHETYPE

If the Addict archetype is one of the two fish, the other is the Mystic archetype. They work together: little fish, big fish. The Addict is a Mystic, trapped in illusion.  Trying to escape from confining limits, the Addict only finds himself more confined (to twelve steps, one at a time, for example); running from eternity, he only finds himself closer to it (addiction takes its toll on the body)—no wonder Neptune has a reputation for confusion!

While the Addict is devoted to the ego, the Mystic is devoted to the soul. While the Addict shuts out memories of eternity and of the past to live in an isolated moment of “now,” the Mystic embraces it all, now, and celebrates with an exuberant dance of life. Neptune’s longing for the soul—a bane for the Addict of earth—is the Mystic’s key to unlocking the paradise of life on earth.  Where the Addict sacrifices life for the sake of the addiction, the Mystic makes all of life sacred (the true meaning of “sacrifice”).

When the ordinary world is too dull and uninteresting—or way too distressed—think like a Mystic. Through the eyes of the Mystic, what is “ordinary” (regular) becomes “ordained” (holy)—the two words have the same etymological roots. This transformation from something plain to something sacred is what Neptune is all about. Everything seems to stay the same, yet everything has changed. It’s what happens when reading a poem, and why so much of poetry consists of seemingly “normal” images which somehow become magical through the vehicle of poetry. When we operate from the imagination, the whole world becomes sacred. Rather than trying to feed the insatiable ego, we can satisfy the soul.

When Clive Barker wrote in his book Weaveworld, “That which is imagined need never be lost,” he hit on the Neptunian connection between memory and imagination, and how the imagination can return soul (eternity) to the world around us.  The world needs our imagining, not our escape into literalism.  The world needs our participation, because how we image things makes all the difference in the world, in what we create and how we create.  While Neptune is in Pisces, we have the opportunity to weave eternity into the world around us—our home away from Home—with threads of the imagination, one end tied to the true source of who we are and the other end open to sacred connection.  Eternity is real, it’s right in front of us, and it’s only a fantasy away.

What is an archetype?

I use the word "archetype" a lot in this blog, and most if not all of the posts will be tagged with the word.  So I thought I'd spend a post talking about what an archetype actually is. To put it simply, an archetype is a pattern.  It's a structure, or a form.  And it’s invisible.

How does this work?

If you take out a blank sheet of paper and draw a circle, you have drawn a pattern or a form we call "circle".  We all recognize circles.  We see them all over the place if we stop and look around the world.  We see circles in the shape of the Sun, in the shape of coins, the wheels on cars, the top of most drinking glasses, the shape of CDs or record albums, the shape of the pupil in your eye, or in a merry-go-round.  We recognize circles when we see them.  Before we even draw a circle, we automatically know what a circle is.  The same can be said for squares, triangles and rectangles.  The main difference between those shapes that you see, and an archetype, is that the archetype is invisible.  Wherever in your imagination you pulled the foundational image from which you drew your "circle" is the same place where all sorts of invisible patterns and shapes and forms reside.  Archetypes are the foundational patterns of everything.  If something exists, it originates in an archetypal form first.  From the archetype of "circle" come all other circles.  

Looking at this another way, to connect it more to our lives,  just like a blueprint consists of rectangles and squares and other shapes that combine to form the structure of a building, archetypes are the invisible structures of your life and of your soul.  Archetypes are the invisible architecture of your soul.  And these archetypes carry names that we resonate with in the same way we know what a circle is.  Common archetypes include the Mother, the Father and the Child.  When you hear those words you instantly recognize what they are.  Similarly, it's easy to recognize the Teacher, the Artist, the Storyteller or the Clown.  These are all archetypes.  And in the way that many buildings together create a city, a combination of different archetypes create your life.  You may be an Artist and a Teacher and a Mother.  Or you may be a Student and a Prince and a Hero.  If you are a Rebel and a Princess and a Hero (as seen, for example, in the movie “Whip It”), life gets very interesting and alive.  See, when we embody a particular archetype we personalize it.  If you are a Mother, you likely have a very nurturing nature, yet no two mothers nurture in exactly the same way.  You mother the way you mother.  Likewise, some teachers teach history, some teach math, and some teach theatre--and no two theatre teachers will teach theatre in the same way.  

An important piece in understanding archetypes is that they are not literal.  They are first and foremost invisible, which means you don’t need to dress in big shoes, a giant colorful curly wig and a round red nose in order to be a Clown.  You don’t need to stand up in front of a literal classroom to be a Teacher.  And you don’t need to be a particular age to be a Child.  You don’t need to have literal children to be a Mother, and not all mothers carry within them a strong sense of the Mother archetype.

In an even more complex way, archetypes combine to form larger patterns.  Together, the Mother and Father and Child form the archetype of Family.  A Teacher and Students combine to form the archetype of a Classroom, and Classrooms form a School.  A School and a City Hall and a Post Office, a Grocery Store, other Businesses and some Homes might form the archetype of a City.  A King and a Queen, a Prince and a Princess, a Knight, a Damsel, and a Fool create the archetype of the Court. 

In whichever manner you approach archetypes (on a personal level, a cultural level, or a historical level), essentially archetypes are recognizable because they are common to human experience.  They are timeless.  If you’ve ever learned something, you recognize the Teacher as well as the Student.  If you've ever saved somone, you know the Rescuer.  If you've ever birthed something, you know the Mother.  If you’ve ever had your heart swell with passion, you know the Lover archetype. 

To “see” archetypes is to see what is invisible within the visible, to see its essential makeup.  And to see yourself and the rest of the world this way is to see symbolically rather than literally.  Sometimes it can be like an upside-down reversal of how you typically see life, if you take the world in front of you literally.  Yet, the advantage of learning to de-literalize and see the archetypal nature contained within anything (including yourself) is to bring a sense of soul back into life--into your life--and to see the enchanting and magical and eternal essence at the heart and soul of life itself.

Tangled

Part 2 of 3. Back in the 1960’s, western culture was enamored with hair.  There were plenty of beehives and bouffants, but to be more specific I’m referring to the musical “Hair”:

“Gimme a head with hair, long beautiful hair.”

From the same musical came the anthem “Aquarius” with its visionary imaginings of the “dawning of the Age of Aquarius.”  Hints of the dawning of a new age took hold.  It’s true—this is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.  We are living it.  But the dawning of one Age is also the twilight of another, just as sunrise in one part of our planet is sunset in another.  Now we are sitting, uneasily, in the twilight time between Ages, and it seems our long, beautiful hair has become... tangled.  Tangled in the twilight, tangled between the outgoing Age of Pisces and the incoming Age of Aquarius.

What does this mean?  What does the tangle look like?  To start, let’s look at the symbolism of Twilight itself.

Twilight is a fascinating time, when the sun dips just below the horizon.  The day’s light has just set, the evening’s darkness has begun to rise, and for a short while day and night live together in the same space.  (A charming depiction of this is the recent Pixar short “Day & Night”.)  No longer is it only day, not yet is it only night.  Most cultures view this time of day with trepidation, fear and uncertainty.  The light is disappearing, and who knows what the darkness holds?  Will the light ever return again?  The imagination can have a field day.  Mythology shows that Twilight is the dangerous time when Vampires emerge from their coffins and roam the world in search of pristine and pure Virgins (often with long, beautiful hair) on whom to feed.  The Virgin is the symbol of integrity.  Her purity intact, the “unmarried” Virgin has not yet become tangled in the world, has not yet been penetrated.  She is herself; she is one. 

“One” is actually the perfect entry point to look at the tangle of our times, between Pisces and Aquarius.  Part of the Virgin’s job is to allow things in, but to keep herself pure all the same.  This requires skills of discernment and differentiation, to let the "right" one in.  When Glinda descended in her bubble in Oz, the first thing she asked Dorothy was, “Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?”  It’s good to know the difference between things right from the start.

Both Pisces and Aquarius connect to "unity" and “one”, although from opposite perspectives.  They both agree that “we are all one,” but Pisces compassionately asks, “Aren’t we all the same, really?” while Aquarius answers, as in the U2 song, “We’re one, but we’re not the same.”

Pisces asks, “Did you get a haircut?”  Aquarius answers, “Actually, I got them all cut.”  What Pisces sees and experiences in gestalt and mystery, Aquarius sees in HD—high definition—clarity.  1 hour versus 3,600 seconds.  Pisces’ lack of boundaries opens it up to the whole ocean, while Aquarius is every drop of rain of the rainy season over which is resides.

In the world we’ve seen how the massive Piscean energies that swallowed humanity in large gulps of Christianity over the last 2,000 years, and then digested them into different bits called Catholics, Protestants, Episcopalians, Baptists, Lutherans, etc., is the same dynamic that took a once-unified group of people called “gays” and divided them up into gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transsexuals, queers, and many, many more.  There’s a lot of in-fighting that leads to divisiveness, but division is not really the problem; it’s the solution.  “Divided” in the sense of “different”; differentiation (Aquarius) rather than diffusion (Pisces).  We are all united whether we are united in that or not.  It's time to split hairs.  Just as in the model of the United States,  where each individual state unites as one country, so too must we unite as different and unique individuals, each a unique part of the whole “one” of humanity.  This is why one of Aquarius’ key traits is the humanitarian.

So we’re back at one.  Not that we ever left it.  If you haven’t noticed, there’s a lot of talk about “the one” in these last couple of decades.  Mom and pop shops have been increasingly replaced with massive “one”-stops;  Neo in “The Matrix” had to accept that he was, in fact, “the one”; "Lord of the Rings" featured "the one" ring to rule them all; and all Elton John ever needed, as he sang, was “the one”.  While new agers joyfully squeal, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for”, California has frequent wonderings of when “the big one” will hit.  Dating websites inspire you to find “the one” who completes you, while a recent movie says to let “the right one” in.  And, of course, all along the Christian religion has its hopes pinned on the return of the One, the Savior, the original Redeemer who is famous for dying, for sacrificing his self, and whose followers have molded themselves into that same shape ever since.

See, ultimately with Pisces the self is sacrificed—martyred—for the good of the whole, or at the very least the self is watered down, particularly by the word “selfish” (i.e., "Don't be selfish!").  With Aquarius, the self is not sacrificed at all.  With Aquarius, the self is celebrated, although not with celebrity.  All selves are celebrated.  But currently we are still tangled up.  We see “flash mobs” of unified individual behavior generated consciously (Aquarius), but acted out with the anonymity of a school of fish (Pisces).  We see people celebrating diversity mostly with mirror-people who are just like them.  Mash-ups (as in “Glee”) may be more truly Aquarian in nature, as two individual songs with their own identities merge and somehow manage to keep their identity within the whole.  Unity without anonymity.

The trouble these days is that the sacrificed self is everywhere (not least as a terrorist), paired with its equally strong opposite:  the narcissist.  They appear together, the two identical fishes swimming in opposite directions, always connected.  How do we let the right one in?  Is there a right one?  How do we know?  The result is nothing short of a fish fry, with people flip-flopping toward burnout at increasingly rapid rates.  Self-sacrifice doesn’t seem to be the solution; neither does vain narcissism.  And so we see the Vampire archetype emerge in the Twilight time, with its sacrificial victims, and we see the anemic walking dead, the consummate victims of a profound energy crisis.

What to do?

Fortunately, the stars offer this opportunity for us to look at this issue with some clarity while the Sun is in Aquarius, as well as the recent pileup of planets in the sign.

Part 3 will look at the upcoming pileup of planets in the sign of Aries, and how that fits into these dynamics.