neptune in pisces 2011 into the mystic

7/30/2019 Neptune in Pisces 2011 Into the Mystic

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NEPTUNE IN PISCES 2011: INTO THE MYSTIC

Neptune was first observed by Galileo December 28, 1612, when it waszodiacally exactly conjunct Jupiter at 26 Virgo . . . however, Galileo thought it wasa fixed star. He did not know that Neptune was, in fact, stationary-retrograde onthat very day, thus apparently motionless. Also, he was seeing it with Jupiter, (bothat 26 Virgo) a known wanderer, thus he could not have realized Neptune was aplanet given the circumstances. Also, Neptune only covers a span of about 3degrees every 18 months. Not a speedy pace.

Galileo observed Neptune, again, January 27th, 1613, but the cosmic shaman wasthwarted both by the quality of his telescopes and the fact that Neptune was fullinto retrograde motion. At both sightings Neptune remained elusive to our collectiveconsciousness, hiding in retrograde motion, disguised as a fixed star.

After numerous observations when Neptune was finally apprehended, the sun wasopposed to it, at the flashpoint of a retrograde planet iii . . . but it was not firmlyestablished until around midnight of the 23rd to 24th September, 1846, when itwas exactly conjunct Saturn at 25 Aquarius. The symbolism of Saturn containingNeptune may be a bit arcane, but I like the image . . . of the elusive, ineffable,illusionary Neptune being grounded by the old Titan deity, Kronos, the boundaryof visible planets in our family system.

So, it would be 234 years later, September 24, 1846, well after the sighting ofUranus, that Neptune became known as the second trans-Saturnian planet. Thefinal sighting and establishment of Neptune as one of our solar system planets wasfraught with obscurity, confusion, and mathematical eccentricities . . . such are thenature of this great planet.

We are now just past the exact anniversary of Neptunes sighting it first returnedto 25 Aquarius in March/April 2009 and its final return when it went stationary-direct in November 2010 when Neptune returned to its place at 25 Aquarius.Now, astrologers have a full conscious round of Neptune to look back over. ThatNeptune was sighted in the same degree as the United States natal Moonmanifests in many events that are descriptive of Neptunes daemonion as we

perceive and experience it in astrology both personally and globally, historicallyand currently.

On the Seas of Liminality Neptune in PiscesAs Neptune now begins its transit to and fro 0 Pisces over the next eighteen monthretrograde/direct pattern, it will cross the first degree three times before firmlyestablishing its home in November 2012.


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It will remain in Pisces through March 21, 2025 when it begins its sojourn in Aries.1. April 4, 2011 Neptune enters Pisces 0 00June 2, 2011 Neptune Stations rx 0 55 PiscesNov 9, 2011 Neptune Stations D> - 28 08 Aquarius2. Feb 3, 2012 Neptune direct pass into Pisces 0 00

June 4, 2012 Neptune Stations rx 3 09 Pisces3. Nov 10, 2012 Neptune Stations D> - 0 21 PiscesNeptune returning to its own sign mind you, assigned to usurp Jupiters domain inPisces upon its sighting puts the global transit of it as a collective experience ofthresholding, transitioning and a sense of chaotic dismemberment of identity andchaotic loss of knowing who we are and what to do.

This is evident in the religious wars now occupying the Middle East in active war . . .as well as more subtle acts of war, the loss of cultural boundaries, the dissolution ofterritory and place for billions of people on our planet.

Too, there is the coincidence of phenomenal Earthly incoherence, where entire polarformations are melting, ground is upwelling, tectonic plates cracking and earthsplitting asunder.

Neptune rules earthquakes and the resultant tsunamis; volcanic activity is morePlutonian - the vulcanization of earth is Hephaistos, the chthonic (earth) god who isknown as Vulcan in the Roman theocracy, and is the craftsman and metallurgist,husband of Aphrodite. The sudden tearing asunder of entire nations is Uranian in itsrevolutionary/collective tribal role.

Nuclear meltdowns are both Uranian and Plutonian, but the resultant toxicity and itsinvisible terrorism and creeping death is very much Neptunian, and requires a newvision to adapt, morph and move toward the next stages of our personal andglobal lives . . . the horoscope figure above symbolizes this creation/destructiontension perfectly.

So, we are aware of these phenomena but we may not be aware of them ascyclical; that the ending of every Great Epoch has been affected in a fit of highinnovation and ingenuity coupled with dire cultural extremes that end entirecivilizations, giving rise to long sleeping archetypes in which we all undertake a new

apprenticeship. To begin again, to take a step across the threshold, to a newglobal archetype and an evolutionary step forward, is actually an incrementalbackward step through the precession of the equinoxes, the Great Ages of theplanet earth.

The Threshold: Your Personal OdysseyIt furthers one to cross the great water I Ching: Book of Changes


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The state of being in between you have left a known place, but have not yetarrived to your destination is called liminality. Literally, it is a place in thethreshold, the limen. It is best to be nemo nobody - in this place, on the seas ofchange. Nemo is the Latin translation from the ancient Greek outis, also meaningnobody . . .

So, here we are, in the midst of massive global transits in synchrony with one ofearths major evolutionary upheavals. As background sound to our personaltransitional experiences, this is very loud noise, and even if you do not know aboutit, you are part of it. We are all tied into it. As David Suzuki says, We ARE air.There is no demarcation of experience in the profound level of Weltschmertz world pain. We are in this together we are one mind.

Each in our own fashion, of course.

Typically, people find themselves in the crossroads with shock and great resistance,and the threshold looming can shock the most intrepid traveler.

The beauty in this experience is pure shamanism: we arrive to the crossroads, andsee something we never have seen before. What we see is the realization of whowe are not ! The work of not being is powerful, and many helpers (and tricksters)appear in the threshold, to guide and direct or warn and delay us. This is preciselywhat a shamanic experience induces - a porous state of divine openness to theelemental agencies of nature and our deepest heart source. Thus, thresholding is aninitiation, a rite of passage in which our individuation quickens through dissolving the

bounds of the ego, and to greater or lesser degrees, identity morphing ordissolving.

When in a crossroads, on a new threshold and in the midst of a sea-change themost profound meeting is with our own self. We meet ourselves in the crossroadsand this experience requires a new form of relationship. We find our old languageinadequate to converse in a meaningful way . . . we are required to find new waysto commune, visit, encounter and be with ourselves.

Seeing the Neptunian analogy of a sea change, a state of being in-between, and

experiencing loss of energy, identity, focus, drive, desire, passion and all the humanforces that bring us to what we think of as our self, we will find some soothingremedy in the balm of Neptune . . . for he was a kind god to those he loved andwho gave him his due.

The Crossing of the Threshold of change, experiencing stuckness, liminality andattendant grief, angst and revelation, occurs in varying states of intensity several


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times in the course of our lives. There are as many varieties of astrological transitsto natal transits that mark personal rites-of-passage as there are transitional statesand people undergoing them. There is no single indicator of undergoing themysterious journey from one place to another. Neptune and its attendant shape-shifters are exemplary of the archetypal metamorphoses we undergo when in the

crossroads, and approaching the threshold.

The Sacred and the ProfaneDuring a transit of Neptune to natal planets, regardless of the angle, one enters arealm of true mystery and mystical experiences. I have found that Neptune is theleast informative of planets . . . in that when it is transiting it washes awayboundaries, shorelines, containers, definitions and all forms of ego control. Thereare potentials for non-rational fears, high levels of anxiety, difficulty in decisionmaking, falling into a folie a deux madness of two being caught in adelusion collusion and not being able to really see what you or others are doing!

This also arises in the collective - a folie plusieurs- in which case large numbersfall into a fugue of mass psychology and inadvertently lose their individualidentities, becoming mob mind. We are now immersed in such a miasma enmasse, while Neptune reinforces its position in Pisces, we will see increasing numbersof global both dire and illuminating fashions parade before our minds andemerge in the social arena.

The timing of Neptunes three entries into Pisces has an evolutionary process in itsstages:

The first pass of Neptune is the opening of the doors of perception. There are subtleshifts in our cellular memory and neurological responses, the brain chemistry alters,requiring and bringing leaps in perception. Many people seek out themetaphysical to coincide with their own metamorphosis. Others seek out the RiverLethe, the underground stream near Hades, whose name means oblivion, and isthe root of lethal.

The second entry of Neptune into Pisces brings more information, more evidence ofwhat the intention of the mass mind has in place. For us, as individuals, we will findthat there is more tangibility to the shifting forms of our lives, goals, ideas, fixations

and even our illusions. The problem with the whole issue of illusions or delusions isthat they are always replaced immediately with another one or more, once theillusion is dashed! Strange, but true.

The final passage of Neptune into Pisces will be as it stations-direct, when we canexpect an inundation. A clear image of what the global transit in all its innovative,creative, imaginative, magical and amazing potentials is about to form. We are


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already seeing another rise, a peak, in interest in psychedelics and psychotropicsubstances, plant or chemical, in both scientific and medical fields, as well as activediscussion on the legalization of various ethno botanicals and valid uses for them.

This, like all Neptunian things, has many faces. The many faces are too numerous to

write about here, but do range from positively dangerous, to ultimately liberating!Shamans have been using plants and herbs, roots and vines as long as human kindhas existed. However, it wasnt until Neptune was sighted that we could say wehave a drug problem here. Drug addiction, as we know it today, in the form ofmass cartel hierarchy, from source to street, to child to man to anyone who seeks toundergo a religious experience, but doesnt know how, is modern. Yes there waslaudanum for the ladies, and brandy for the men, but the addict as commonly foundnow, is a result of a laboratory not a sacred rite of passage through the agentsof a natural herbal or root based Gaia given plant.

Drug use is ancient, but what we have now, is not vaguely a shamanic or even aDionysian rite of passage, a sacred ritual based on sacred origins. It is a travestyagainst the nature of the botanicals humanity has been given by (the gods if youwish) Gaia as one of her gifts to the soul and the healing of psyche.

So we will see the continuing rise in interest in natural medicine and green dying,in areas of exploration of the psyche and also psychology. The whole issue ofpsychoanalysis may be on its last legs. Psychology has been a door opener, anda mind expander and the greatest modern entry to the layers of the psyche, butsince much of it in practice has been by and large blame based, at least in that

form it is fading out as newer forms emerge.

There is some evidence that subsequent generations to mine (Pluto in Leo) aredecreasingly interested in 19th/20th century conventional psychology, and muchmore interested in exploring alternative ways of perceiving their world, andbreaking old ties that bind back to the generation/s before.

The rise of a new generation of astrologers at this time is hopefully a guaranteethat the reuniting of the heavens and earth the astrology of the times will live tocarry its gnosis into this new epoch, upon whose threshold we now stand.

Neptune Stories:

A time for sleep and dreams, and waking journeys to the other side of thecrossroads, to distant shores, to homeThe sacred place that we occupy when we are without identity and egoless, andare between the known departure point and the unknown destination, is one that


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needs to be treated with respect. This space is a psychological, spiritual and aphysical state of being. It speaks of a kind of ambulatory temenos, a sacred placewhere one undergoes a loss of ego identity. You are not who you used to be, butnot yet who you are to become. This space and transition is always about givingbirth to a new self.

The long, triple transit of Neptune over a degree is so akin to a sea-journey foranyone experiencing it, that the metaphors that arise in this transit are literal. Onebecomes nemo - nobody/no one. It is not by accident that Jules Verne named thecaptain of his fictional ship Nautilus, Captain Nemo. Twenty Thousand LeaguesUnder the Sea is the story of a man whose origins are unknown. He is in apermanent state of if and maybe, when and but. This is the provisional,contingent state of liminality.

Nemo never leaves the sea, never puts a foot on solid land, eats nothing but

oceanic foods and claims to have no interest in the affairs of the world above thedeep, mysterious body of salt water. He is a man in deep thresholding, nothing ofhis past is known, and his future is as limitless as the apparent horizons of the greatseas. It is hinted that he has lost his entire family and has no country of origin oraffiliation, and abandoned land for permanent in between on the seas.

His motto on the ship Nautilus: moving in the midst of mobility.

On Being NemoPoseidon, later adopted into Roman myth as Neptune, held the rulership of theoceans and the underwater tributaries of freshwater streams. He was known asEarthshaker. The striking of the earth with his trident, caused the earth to shudderclimactically, resulting in the tsunami that we know today. He was also guardian ofall who sail upon his realm. He was the vengeful one who punished both mortalsand demi-gods if they defied the laws of the transitional state of liminality.

Poseidon mated with Medusa - the only mortal gorgon and she gave birth to theirchild, Pegasus, and when Perseus severed her head and the winged horse flew outof it. Poseidons domain over horses often is depicted by his avenging horse-crested waves crashing upon the shores. Sea-goers would often sacrifice horses toPoseidon before sailing off to war.


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Poseidon/Neptune is also known as the god who inflicted the sacred disease ofdivine fits, now known as epilepsy, according to Hippocrates, and like Dionysus,who inflamed the maenads into unthinkable madness, Poseidon would cause themind to shape-shift. Aristotle would have had Poseidon as the god of divinemadness, being eternally in a state of mental shape-shifting or in contemporary

terms, a visionary, a seer, poet and heretic.

We, ourselves, become the guests, the strangers when we go through an identityshift and there is a crack in our perception of reality and we no longer relate towho we used to be yet not who we will be. This thresholding at the crossroads isa divine state of being in which we enfold ourselves in mythic occurrences. Webegin to look for signs and portents, and they also arise spontaneously, so we seekthe mystery, the magical and the mythic.

Things become numinous, magical powers reside in objects, and meaning is derived

from omens while the preponderance of synchronicity is profound. Even if itsdifficult, even if its in a state of pain, we might still arise each day with an excitedfeeling of adventure. During change, one is vulnerable because one is open toattack and this is where its important to realize that there is a place of safety inthis liminal state, but it is not found in the old places, since they have, themselves,changed.

Another Sea-Tale The Long, Wrong Way HomeThe ancient poem of Homer, the Odyssey, is the story of a sea-journey, where thehero is bound to the guest/stranger rules. In the Odyssey many stories

are directlyrelated to liminality Odysseus himself exemplifies this law of sacredtransitional reality, of nonidentity. However, he transgresses the most importantcommandment when one is a journeyer, when on the seas of liminality.

After leaving the battle of Troy, and several adventures later, Odysseus (Ulysses)and his men climb a high cliff and enter the cave of Poseidons (Neptune) son, thegreatest of the Cyclopes, Polyphemos. Polyphemos being both brutish and hungryimmediately eats two of Odysseus men!

Odysseus is trapped in the cave for another day, while four more of his men are

devoured. So, Odysseus gets the Cyclops drunk, burns out his eye with asmoldering post, and then sneaks his surviving crew tucked under the belly of asheep, down the cliff to his awaiting ship.

The Cyclops, roaring and bellowing in pain, calls to his neighbors, Help, help, Imblinded, Im blinded! And his neighbors call back, Who did this to you, who hasblinded you? And Polyphemos shouts down to Odysseus, Who are you?


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To which Odysseus calls back up, I am Outis, which means I am no-one. That is,he is a liminal being with no identity - which is perfectly in order of the liminal state,a state of being without identity. And so Odysseus actions are perfectly in orderwith the laws of transitional, in-between states.

Polyphemos then calls back to his concerned neighbors, No-man did it, no-man didit, and they all go away, since no one has blinded him, leaving Odysseus free toclamber down to his ship.

When first I read this story, I had an experience much like Freud must have when heread about sons lying with their mothers in dreams my pelt rippled! Of course, Ithought, when in transition - especially on the seas of liminality - one should benobody. It is the natural law of travelers.

That being: do not identify yourself, have no I am-ness. Ego means literally I am.

And the rule of being on the seas of change is to let go, remain in a state of ego-lessness and discovery. As soon as one seizes upon an identity to hold on to, thenone is doomed to the whims of the offended natural law.

However, Odysseus was filled with the vigor and heroism of war and achievement,and suddenly he blows it. He realizes midway down the cliff, what he hasaccomplished in damaging the vicious Cyclops and he wants acknowledgementfor what hes done! He wants to be somebody, not no-body. As the Cyclopscontinues to bray down to him, Who are you, what man are you? Odysseus turnsaround and shouts back, I am Odysseus, son of Laertes, and immediately his fate

turns.

From that point on Poseidon had it in for him. His entire journey of return to Ithaka isbeset with ten years of delays, tests and trials. Poseidon had protected him, untilhe violated the law of in-between, thresholding.

I would like to leave you with a poem by a modern Greek poet, C.P. Cavafy:ITHAKAAs you set out for Ithakahope the voyage is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.Laistrygonians and Cyclops,angry Poseidon---dont be afraid for them:youll never find things like that on your wayas long as you keep your thoughts raised high,as long as a rare excitementstirs your spirit and your body.


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Laistrygonians and Cyclops,wild Poseidon---you wont encounter themunless you bring them along inside your soul,unless your soul sets them up in front of you.Hope the voyage is a long one.

May there be many a summer morning when,with what pleasure, what joy,you come into harbors seen for the first time;may you stop at Phoenician trading stationsto buy fine things,mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,sensual perfume of every kind---as many sensual perfumes as you can;and may you visit many Egyptian citiesto gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.Arriving there is what you are destined for.But do not hurry the journey at all.Better if it lasts for years,so you are old by the time you reach the island,wealthy with all you have gained on the way,not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.Without her you would not have set out.She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka wont have fooled you.Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.iv

Saturn in Transit: Boundaries of Mind, Body and Soul. Erin Sullivan. Weiser Books.2001 (first published by Penguin Arkana, 1991) www.erinsullivan.comRiver Flow: New and Selected Poems. David Whyte. P. 362. Start Close In.Many Rivers Press. Langley, Washington, USA. www.davidwhyte.comRetrograde Planets: Traversing the Inner Landscape. Pp 119 ff, and P. 133. Erin

Sullivan. Weiser Books. 2001 (First published with Penguin Akana, 1992)Collected Poems. C.P. Cavafy. Trans Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. PrincetonUniversity Press. 1992 To hear this poem inGreek:http://users.hol.gr/~barbanis/cavafy/Cavafy-Ithaca.mp3Permission granted from the author to reprint in: The Astrology of Midlife andAgingErin Sullivan. Tarcher, Penguin Group. NYC. 2005. pp 32/33


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Neptune in Pisces 2011 Podcast Want to learn more about Neptune? Listen to thispodcast with Erin Sullivan and Chris Flisher. Neptune In Pisces: The Cosmic Womb -A spiritual and political birthing from 168 years of gestating and returning to itshome. Neptune is the planet that represents dreams, visions and mysticism, as wellas vast earth energy resource. Erin talks about Neptune's sighting, and its relevance

to its entry into Pisces and many aspects of this 168 year cycle.

neptune in pisces 2011 into the mystic

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