Neptune In Pisces - The Invisible Bridge

“Valley’s deep and the mountain’s so high  /  If you want to see God you’ve got to move on the other side.”—John Lee On Friday, February 3, Neptune entered Pisces for the next 13 years.

In my first piece last spring about Neptune’s move into Pisces ("Home I'll Be"), I focused on Neptune’s longings, and how imagination allows us to see and experience the world as something miraculous.  Since I didn’t go into much detail about actually doing that, I want to pick up where that piece left off.  How does imagination fit into this?  What do we do when Neptune seems to call us away from the world in which we live, into a world of fantastic imaginings, heightened longings, poignant nostalgias, or a sense that what we’re dealing with in the practical world just isn’t satisfying?  If Neptune is associated with “escapism,” does that mean there’s something fishy about the imagination?  Let’s dive in and see!

LA MER

Neptune is named after the god of the seas, so let’s start with the biggest seas of them all:  the oceans.  Neptune in astrology is oceanic.  It’s epic, vast, expansive, enveloping, and seductive.  If we look at earth itself, 71% of the planet is covered and filled by oceans, and the oceans are teeming with colorful, diverse and abundant life.  From enormous, elegant blue whales to microscopic plankton, intriguing orange sea horses to mysterious pink jellyfish, yellow starfish to great white sharks, giant green turtles to lean swordfish.  We find octopi that shoot black ink when under threat, and cute poisonous puffers (“blowfish”) that inflate themselves and show their pointy bits when in danger.  All of these finned and gilled beings weave in and out of the constantly shifting waterscape, sometimes making their way through the occasional remains of ships lost at sea, those vessels wracked and wrecked by violent and stormy waves, their crews and treasures buried indefinitely among the pastel and fluorescent-colored coral reefs, the turquoise, teal, and other moody blues of the deep-sea trenches.

Note: virtually all of this happens beneath the surface.

The oceans of earth are as violent as they are serene, as tumultuous as they are tranquil, and as dangerous as they are alluring.  In trying to imagine all they contain, our minds and visions are stretched far and wide, high and low.  And there’s so much water!  “Your ocean is an image of eternity, I think,” said Queen Elizabeth to Walter Raleigh in the movie “Elizabeth:  The Golden Age.”  Amidst all of this visionary majesty, what’s a little land-locked mortal to do?  Combine that with William Blake’s classic statement, “The world of Imagination is the world of Eternity.”  And Novalis, who believed that “eternity could be reached through imagination and imagination was the realm of poetry.”  Which brings us to one of the key archetypes of both Neptune and Pisces...

THE POET ARCHETYPE

With Neptune in Pisces, we have the opportunity to perceive the world as if we are all great poets.  For centuries and centuries, great poets have been peering at the everyday world through symbolic eyes, painting pictures with words, bringing figures of speech to life, and sculpting metaphors that link the physical world in front of us with the magical and animated world of the imagination, turning concepts into art.  It’s as if every individual thing in the world becomes 71% ocean, full of colorful, animated life swimming beneath its surface.  Life comes alive!  For Emily Dickinson, hope was not just an idea – it was “the thing with feathers.”  Hope has wings to fly!  For William Wordsworth we aren’t just born into the world as ordinary babies; rather, “trailing clouds of glory do we come.”  For Hafiz, a leaf is not just a leaf, but rather “a singing cleaning woman, dusting all the shelves in the air” with her elegant green rags.  Through imagination,  life isn’t just “business as usual,” unless business as usual is a trip down the Yellow Brick Road, replete with witches, talking trees, poppy fields, flying monkeys and an Emerald City up ahead.  To connect the ordinary world with its roots in imagination, as Poets do, is one of Neptune’s gifts.  It doesn’t make sense, and it’s not really supposed to.  As the great 19th century Romantic poet John Keats put it, “Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept the mystery.”

Speaking of Keats, one of his most famous lines can help us expand on this connection between the ordinary, natural world, and the fantastic world of imagination.  In one of his letters he writes, “Call the world if you please ‘The vale of soul-making’ Then you will find out the use of the world.”  Let this be our Neptunian bridge, connecting the imagination and the world around us.

SOUL 

To call the world the “vale of soul-making” first requires us to acknowledge the world.  This can be tough when the Siren’s call of Eternity enchants us elsewhere, pulling us to some unseen home away from home.  Yet, here we all are.  Here we are, amidst the deep valleys, rocky mountains, expansive prairies; underneath ever-changing clouds, skies of blue and pink and purple and red and black; alongside insects, countless trees, rolling hills, city sidewalks, glass windows; and immersed in chirping, tweeting (not that kind), barking, cawing, mooing, purring, honking, and howling.  How does this life in the valley called earth “make” soul?  With the soul’s influence via Neptune, skyscrapers can heighten our senses, valleys can depress our everyday lives into deeper feeling, the friendly skies can expand our sights, and those sidewalks can encourage our wanderings.

Where Keats calls the world the vale of soul-making, poet Mary Oliver writes that “the world offers itself to your imagination / calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting.”  Rather than follow Neptune’s call away from this world, we need only engage with this world through the imagination—the world calls us and we call the world in mutual response, engaging the soul of it all.  Our vocation, our calling, is to live.  We are called to live, and life calls us.  Engaging with the world via the imagination is about feeling the world, seeing its signs and wonders, hearing its voices, seeing its imagery, touching the world and letting the world touch you.  The soul speaks in symbols, images and signs, and the world is packed-to-overflowing with soul.  To engage Neptune in Pisces within this world is to engage the soul of the world.

Later in the 19th century another of those great poets, Alfred Lord Tennyson, wrote, “For so the whole round earth is every way / Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.”  Now there’s an image!

NEPTUNE AND OIL

In astrology, Neptune “rules” oil.  This typically means that Neptune transits can reflect oil issues in some way, be it oil prices, oil dependency, etc.  In a different way, perhaps—keeping the poetic eye intact—we might say that imagination is the oil of the psyche.  Imagination is what keeps the gears of the psyche turning, visioning, wondering, enchanting, imaging.  Imagination keeps the engines of life moving, spinning an endless array of creative visions that fashion the world around us, and create the cultural fashions that Neptune also rules.

Ancient Greek culture considered the heart the center of imagination.  Without imagination, the world becomes only literal, what you see is what you get; nothing more, nothing less.  Boring!  Without imagination, we end up like the Tin Man, fixed and immobile on the winding and circling Yellow Brick Road of life, cranky and creaky, waiting for someone to come along and oil our stuck joints, to once again give us flexibility to bend and curve where and when necessary, and to give us a heart.

Neptune changing signs is like a global oil change.  The images that keep our gears turning are changing.  When Neptune moved through Aquarius we all experienced the heady, technical genius of the Internet connecting us all together; we saw the technology and special effects in movies explode into unprecedented HD clarity and complexity; and we saw talent bloom on “reality” shows along with some of the colder and less compassionate aspects of humanity.  With Neptune in Pisces we’ll likely see the images soften a bit.  Lady Antebellum sings in their beautiful song “The Heart of the World,” that “oil is the soul of the engine / ... love is the heart of the world.”  Neptunian love is compassion, and Neptune in Pisces can bring out the compassionate side of humanity in new ways, especially as we are consciously connected as a globe like never before.

THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE

Poets take a decidedly Neptunian view of the world, via the imagination.  I’ve quote a number of poets in this piece to emphasize the link between the poet’s vision and imagination, and to steer imagination far and away from the notion that it’s something merely “made up.”  Poets connect the natural world and the imaginal world seamlessly.  They devise poems with metaphor, and metaphor means “to carry over.”  Neptune is the invisible bridge that allows us to carry over the images of imagination into physical form.  What images are you carrying over?  What’s in your imagination?

Another of Tennyson’s famous lines reads, “The old order changeth, yielding place to new.”  Remember from my first piece last spring that all new life emerges from water.  With Neptune’s waters washing through Pisces between now and 2024, our imaginings of a new world can become tangible, and we can embrace a truly enchanted view of an alive life, a renewed life, where “once upon a time” is now, and where “somewhere over the rainbow” is here.  We can sense the extraordinary beauty and other-worldly grace that makes life down here in the valley, right here and right now in this world, quite marvelous, really.  Here’s to water, and here’s to life!

Mercury Retrograde In Sagittarius - Bigger, Better, and Backwards

Mercury went retrograde on November 23, and will keep moving along his backward path in the sky until December 13.  You can read an earlier post of mine to get my general approach to Mercury retrograde periods, with the difference this time being that Mercury is retrograde in the sign of Sagittarius. I want to focus on Sagittarius, but first I want to add another level to what seems to go on during these sometimes frustrating and sometimes surprisingly calm periods, by taking a look at Mercury himself.

MERCURY, GUIDE OF SOULS

In mythology, Mercury is commonly known as the Trickster. This is the face of Mercury that gets the most press during retrograde cycles, especially in the mainstream press, as he shows up in all sorts of inconvenient ways, interrupting what were supposed to be the normal, smooth, everything-going-as-planned days of our lives.

There’s more to Mercury than just this Trickster aspect, though; much more.  If we look at Mercury through his Greek counterpart Hermes, he is also known as the Guide of Souls.  This is significant.  What does that mean, to be a Guide of Souls?  And how might this shape our understanding of a retrograde period?

If you’ll notice, the “inconveniences” that annoy us the most during Mercury retrogrades periods are always the inconveniences in our physical lives.  It’s the toaster that breaks down, or the computer that crashes, or the files that were “suddenly” deleted by some invisible visitor who happened to use your computer (while you were on it), or it’s the phone that doesn’t ring, or it’s the phone that does ring (your cell phone, right in the middle of the most important job interview of your life).  Or it’s the new road construction that just began, right as winter is setting in.  Any way you look at it, it’s the strange detours our physical lives are forced to take—the inconveniences that we didn’t see coming—that get the most attention during Mercury retrograde.

Conveniently, Mercury is the god of the “in betweens” of life.  For example, when you’re on a road trip, Mercury is those “convenience” stores you stop at between the place you left and the place where you are heading, to get gas or get a snack.  Likewise, when something comes up “right in the middle” of something (after it starts and before it ends), you can be sure Mercury is making an appearance.

One of Mercury’s unique characteristics is that he is the only god allowed to freely travel from the soaring heights of Mount Olympus above, down into the dark depths of the Underworld below, always connecting with the world in between (our world).  No other god or human was allowed entrance to the Underworld, that remarkable place of astounding mystery only open to humans once they have died, and only then if they pay the proper toil.  Only souls are allowed into the Underworld, and therefore, the Underworld is the world of Soul.  And it’s Mercury (Hermes) who guides souls as they enter the Underworld.

What this has to do with us, physical humans living very physical lives above ground, is that we have souls, and the soul is the invisible, non-physical part of us.  And it’s not just a part of us—it’s everywhere.  Soul does not begin and end.  Soul is not bound the way we are.  We may not have access to the Underworld, but our soul does, and Mercury is our Guide.

SAGITTARIUS

They say everything is bigger in Texas.  This may be true, but what’s truer is that everything is bigger in Sagittarius!  A mind that was once small gets the bigger picture in Sagittarius!  What was once a normal and ordinary life gets slotted into the bigger and grander scheme of the whole of Life!  It’s part of a huge plan!  What were once simply little things enjoying their simple little lives get wrapped inside phrases like, “Little things mean a lot!”  What was once good becomes extraordinarily fabulous!!  And what was once merely likeable becomes the most amazing thing in the whole entire universe!!!  Whoever invented exclamation marks must have been a Sagittarius!

See, Sagittarius is a sign that is fabulous at exaggeration, in the best ways and the worst ways (if there is a “worst” way to exaggerate).  I could say that Sagittarius is the most amazingly terrific, astoundingly brilliant, ceaselessly wondrous sign there is, and I bet all of the Sagittarians would agree.  Behind this exaggeration, though, lies the larger truth of our lives.  There’s something mythic about Sagittarius, something that aspires toward the heavens, searches for meaning, and always aims at the higher perspectives of life, often through religion, or through spiritual endeavors.  Sagittarius loves to keep moving, always continuing this wondrous spiritual journey we call life.  Life as a continuous journey is a Sagittarian perspective.

But let’s shrink this down for a minute, so as to connect it to our still-ordinary lives that are in the midst of Mercury going retrograde in Sagittarius.

MOVING BACKWARD

A retrograde planet moves backward in the sky.  Not really, but it just looks that way. So, at the heart of a retrograde period is the very notion that things are not necessarily as they appear.  How appropriate, then, for Mercury the Trickster!  And how appropriate, too, for Mercury as the one who guides the soul, that invisible, non-physical, non-literal realm of life.  And how appropriate as well for Sagittarius, the sign that seeks the invisible meaning of life not obvious if we look at life only from the ground (physical) level of things.

If we get stuck focusing on the inconveniences of our physical lives (as is usually the case with Mercury retrograde periods) between now and December 13, we miss a grander opportunity this time to explore the higher meaning—the symbolic meaning—hidden within those inconveniences.  You know, maybe there’s something more.  Maybe!  Maybe these things are literal exaggerations begging our attention so as to divulge the “real” reason something happens.  What may be seriously inconvenient to our physical lives may be a store of convenience to the soul, and Mercury is our Guide.

This requires a thoughtful, reflective, somewhat philosophical approach to life until December 13, but that’s what Sagittarius is all about.  And the soul in its very nature is reflective.  It requires a leap of faith from us when we are being too literal.  It requires a leap into something non-physical, rather than just looking for the hard-copy outcomes we may be more accustomed to.  With Mercury moving backward, it’s a good time to not only look backward (by reflecting on meaningful things of the past year, for example), but to look at life backward, where what you see isn’t always what you get.  Maybe moving forward all the time is what’s getting you stuck, and if you get stuck somewhere during Mercury retrograde, it may be what’s necessary to move you forward.

I know, that all sounds so abstract and philosophical, but at the heart of philosophy is “sophia”—wisdom.  And there’s often a wonderfully wise common sense about being where you’re at in life, accepting the things that happen in life (the ups and the downs, the happiness and the stickiness) with an active curiosity and wonderment.  A line from a favorite song (“The Journey Home”) often reminds me that, “Not every boat you come across is one you have to take; sometimes standing still can be the best move you ever make.”

This Mercury retrograde, notice the things that make you stand still, and take in the larger picture.  Wonder about the meaning of it all, and carry that meaning forward with you as of December 13, when Mercury starts moving forward again, guiding our souls into the holiday season.

Mars In Cancer - Make Omelets, Not War

The planet Mars has entered the sign of Cancer (on August 3) until September 18.

THE MAN IN THE MOON

Mars’ sterling reputation as a strong, manly-muscled Warrior God takes a bit of a beating in the shadowed, silvery moonlight of the vulnerable, caring, nurturing and emotionally oh-so-sensitive sign of Cancer. As standard practice, Mars is interested in “getting it up,” manning up, rising up. Just look at the symbol. If there is an uprising, you can be sure the god Mars is involved. The sign of Cancer, however, is one of the deepest signs, often tremendously insecure, and the downward pull into emotional vulnerability typically proves challenging for Mars. The downward drive is even expressed technically: Mars is considered in his “fall” in Cancer. Mars wants to be direct and straight to the point, and emotions aren’t exactly direct. The Man in the Moon was never depicted with a sword, was he? See, Mars just isn’t the type to offer a comforting squeeze and a warm hug when someone is feeling sad. Feelings? Who cares! Besides, battles are easier to fight during the day, in the light of the Sun, rather than in the mysterious and indiscriminating shadows of night. Ultimately, the battle for Mars in Cancer is between keeping the tide of emotions in versus letting it all out; emotions that are held in tightly tend to be released with steely force. Just think of Alanis Morissette, who has Mars in Cancer, and her scalding and scathing song "You Oughta Know," the murky "Madness" (lunar craziness rather than anger), the lyricism of "Underneath," or the simmering "Torch" in which she catalogues her burning memories of a former love. She even sings "In Praise of the Vulnerable Man."

THE MAN WITH A PAN

In the sign more associated with the kitchen than the battlefield, rather than putting up his dukes in war, Mars in Cancer is left to beat eggs, mash potatoes, whip cream, grate cheese, mince meat, and grill chicken. You get all of the basting, beating, thrashing, broiling, boiling, stewing, roasting, poaching, scrambling, creaming, scalding, grating, chopping, searing and toasting action that Mars loves, but you’re carrying an egg whisk rather than an axe. Rather than meeting his opponent with a battering ram, the only thing getting battered is the moist, soft cookie dough. Yum! It’s time to trade in the Super Trooper for the Hamburger Helper! Yes, it’s easy to make fun of Mars in Cancer – and the more you get him boiled, the more he’ll just stew in his own juices. (Secretly I think he loves it, because it gives him a good excuse to come out and fight – or at least try to.) In his sign of exaltation, Capricorn (opposite Cancer), Mars is the Man With a Plan; in Cancer, he is the Man With a Pan. Make omelets, not war!

All joking aside, my real point: there is an amazingly constructive side of Mars in Cancer. It's not just in the kitchen, but any creative emotional outlet. I've already mentioned Alanis Morissette. Author Joyce Carol Oates also has Mars in Cancer and wrote "Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart" and many other deeply emotional books. Stephen King marched into the darkness and managed to take a stand in "The Stand," creep the hell out of everyone with "The Shining" (talk about lunacy!), keep us up all night with "It" (best book title ever!), and most recently dim all the lights entirely in "Full Dark, No Stars." Other powerful expressions of Mars in Cancer include the works of Toni Morrison, Dolly Parton, Picasso, Jessye Norman, Naomi Judd, George Lucas, and Malcolm X. While I like to make fun of Mars in Cancer, its depth and serious side should never be underestimated.

While Mars in Cancer might be a strange combination any way you look at it, emotions are the name of the game. Keeping them in, letting them out, it's all a challenge. Fights happen, life goes on, much like the ebbing and flowing of the tides. The key hidden somewhere in the shadows of the Moon is to direct the emotions toward something constructive and creative, so rather than following a recipe for disaster, you stand a chance at a five-star meal—which hints a wee bit toward Mars in Leo, which begins September 18.