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I. BORN TO DIE
When a new-born does not cry, it is bad news for Life. The body does not possess the skill to release and forget. The tears we cry at birth are loud and essential. Essential, for they carry the autobiographies of other lives, past lives perhaps, out of our bodies. These tears are loud for birth implies the separation from our mother, the exit out of our Memory of Oneness. Is there a difference between memory and the imagination? As seen through Neptune’s closed eyelids, all fiction is non-fiction. Neptune’s truth lives in a feeling, in the vibrational essence of life, in the language of the water. In mother’s pillow of ocean, we lived as vampire-fishes in a state of bliss. All of our needs were fulfilled in the instant, beyond thought. We were one with the Source of creation. In this heaven of instant manifestation, we spoke the language of synchronicity and vibration. Neptune is the gatekeeper of this 7th dimension where all simply is. Neptune symbolizes our yearning for the bliss of The Cosmic Womb, at once our Home and a distant, mysterious blue dream. Reigning over the cosmic waters of Pisces, Neptune brings the hero’s journey to an end in the ultimate union between our soul and all of life. Wherever Neptune falls in our charts, we long for completion. Hindu philosophy and the God of the Waters share great affinity. Vedic wisdom teaches that life is but an illusion, a dream dreamt by Maha-Kali, The Great Mother. This womb of origin is the ultimate Reality which pulls us back Home. Yet when we die, we only temporarily dissolve in the waters of Divine Mother, to do it all over again. Just like when we dream, we awaken within the realm of the soul to born once more to the morning sun and our bodies, Maha-Kali dreams us with an exhale and takes us back to the Timeless Truth of Soul with an inhale. The endless cycles of birth and death, what the Buddhists call samsara, give rise to the idea that it’s the search for the origin of life which matters most. The scientific glamour of searching for water on other planets is only example of the distractions that stall our pilgrimage, veiling Neptune’s existential question: Why am I born if I have to die?
Sacrifice and the Law of Death seem strangely opposite to the first Law of Vibration. Neptune symbolizes the journey of remembering to forget ‘better’ at the end of our lives, when we will once again wave the personality our soul dreamt up goodbye. We live to die more beautifully. The language of ‘more’ and ‘better’ speaks of the struggle with perfection Neptune-heavy transits or placements sponsor. In an age where we want to understand with our logical mind, not knowing inevitably causes existential anxiety and psychological pain. Neptune turned 1 in 2011 in our awareness, and more people than ever pierce through veils of illusion, attend their own funerals. In the light of a global awakening to the reality of the invisible, glamour and illusion are heightened and new spiritual challenges arise together with their healing potentials. Synchronicity can be the silver thread of our being, but also a wild sea that swallows us. At one end, there is the confusion and chaos of mental illness, at the other divine guidance. How do we live on this planet beyond the story? Neptune: how do we say yes to life? The first thing on the list is to accept that we were born.
II. LOVE ON NEPTUNE : NEPTUNE AS THE HIGHER OCTAVE OF VENUS
“I saw her from across the ice cream parlour. Time stopped. We locked eyes and I forgot who I was. I could have happily died in her eyes.” Any Neptunean recognises this sort of scenario. We are seduced by a recognition of souls, a remembrance of a lost paradise, and, before we’ve got a good taste, we’re left abandoned in a felt photograph. If we’re prone to escapism, there might be an empty bottle on the kitchen table, but Neptune did not leave a message. Why does Neptune serve us this appetizer of divine bliss to leave us longing? As the higher octave of Venus, Neptune symbolizes both the Spell and the Call of The Beloved and speaks the language of ‘falling.’ We fall from grace, we fall asleep and we fall in love… The trustee of the 12th house of ‘undoing’ sweeps in with unfinished karmic business, brings back ‘the loves of our past lives.’ As a painter, Neptune is blind, splashes exquisite colours and misty clouds on a canvas and titles it ‘Eden.’ The painting shows no forms or objects but simply transmits the feeling of unconditional love. Neptune says: all of life is love, why did you glue a face to it? Or a job title, a number on the bank account, an ultimatum…? Neptune sends our hearts on a pilgrimage. Towards the sun of sovereignty that shines through the veil of abandonment.
THANK YOU, DISILLUSIONMENT -- Wherever Neptune falls in our chart, we get a glimpse of the potential field beyond disillusionment. Something fascinating happens when our false gods have left the building and our precious illusions are crushed. We meet our soul. We learn that Love is not a fantasy, nor an emotion, nor a love for the spiritual. Love is the reality of who we are. The river of life that carries us, no matter what. By not giving us what we want, Neptune informs our relationship with eternity through humility, the core quality of every living Light aspiring to serve. If we can see and feel God in the other, we can see and feel it in ourselves. We no longer cry the loud tears of birth, we cry Neptune’s silent tears of awe. Imagine a field of consciousness where feeling the shadow of betrayal at once awakens the sunshine of pure desire and we are able to hold both expressions with equanimity. Our yearning for The Beloved is the longing for a future level of consciousness yet to be birthed. One where we are the loving witness of the movie of our lives. Disillusionment is the portal and inspiration for human to rise in love. This future level of consciousness is our ever-expanding capacity to love the process of living –a higher love which harbours our Longing within our own hearts.
III. INTEGRATING NEPTUNE
The best advice I ever received for managing existential anxiety was: do the dishes. Yet, when all the plates are washed and we’re tired of breaking our hearts, what do we do with this longing for The Beloved?
Neptune’s esoteric rulership of Cancer and his exaltation in Leo bring us two paths for integration: the path of our ancestors, the Moon, and the path of the future, the Sun.
A WALK ON THE MOON -- On a soul level, the planet of universal consciousness is the keeper of the private sphere Cancer. Through Cancer and Pisces, Neptune connects Divine Mother with personal mother. This alliance suggests that it’s in our family of birth where we benefit most from unconditional love. Few people will argue with the idea that a child thrives in an atmosphere of loving attention and will suffer in a family where criticism and neglect reign. Yet most parents tend to take their children extremely personally. If it presents such a challenge to love our family members for who they are beyond our attachments and projections, the mastery of unconditional love in the family might as well end the soul’s adventure of incarnation through flesh and bones. Neptune’s move into Aries in 2026 might give us an idea of what birth beyond mother-father looks like.
THE PATH OF THE SUN -- When it comes to Neptune’s exaltation in Leo, it’s important to mention the persistence of human memory. What to do with those memories that resist the technology of tears and Neptune’s priceless gift of sleep? To manage Memory, Neptune proposes the victim-saviour dynamic and its light, Art. Drugged by the illusion that our Longing will be fulfilled by an object, that we lack something or miss someone, we run the risk to become our story. An alternative to soaking our feet in the glamour of victimhood, is opening our hearts to Neptune as our muse. What is an artist but a person who lives a moment so deeply that he needs to transmute it into something ‘more perfect’? It’s no surprise that at the birth of Hollywood and the jazz of the ‘roaring’ twenties, Neptune transited Leo, the Sun’s home. The Sun, the Great Healer, inspires us to re-write our story every day. Whether it’s by creating a book, a movie or a sculpture, the artist gives Neptune a skin. The artwork is the future level of consciousness that reconciles Neptune with Saturn, the 3D-reality we came to learn to love.
The elaborate tear that is a work of art, and the courage to cry it into matter, may draw the difference between an artist and a victim, yet for many the process of creation is still a mirror of birth, a rather painful affair. It seems that those who are truly talented at life, merely lift the corners of their lips as a lost image drifts by and tend to the task at hand.
As we leave the Piscean Age, the question of Neptune to humanity might be: what does it feel like to give birth from joy?
BECOMING THE DREAM -- To collectively heal from the glamour of pain and saviour-victim dynamics, we have to feel that our very life is our work of art. Neptune’s exaltation in Leo holds up with the esoteric proposal that the human soul is on the path of initiation to become a sun. We only have to think of our 21th-century dead superstars to fathom the sacrifice of the pilgrimage the human heart has embarked upon, or the mastery of presence required to become a star and spin worlds around by being…
Fully integrating Neptune in the present instructs that we create a personality we would die for. If we do live our life like a Sun, we will, at our final breath, be able to feel the sentence “I will die for you” and end it with our name.
Esoteric astrology suggests that the sun or the moon veil one of the sacred outer planets. This invites astrologers to look at the birth chart through Neptune’s eyes of infinite possibility. Who would you be if Neptune lived on your Sun’s or Moon’s degree? And why not bring in a contemporary Neptune and embrace the non-binary movement: who would you be if a Sun-Moon conjunction lived on the degree of your Neptune?
To integrate Neptune is then to choose a glamour and live that identity with reverence. It might all have been done before, but it has never been done by the You you’re dreaming now. The decision to exercise free will might just be the ‘sacrifice’ Neptune asked for all along. That we become someone in the world, for life is sacred.
As a bonus, becoming the dream invites in Disillusionment, the mother of Clarity and Faith.
IV. LIFE IS A CEREMONY
2022. Jesus is a fashion victim; all the superstars are dead. The yoga studio has become the new American church, the ayahuasca ceremony the new rock concert. The contemporary fashion of spirituality serves as Neptune’s introduction to living life as a Ceremony. As a work of art, a ceremony honours the impermanence of all form, for its main ingredient is devotion to the present moment. A ritual gives Time a Soul. Neptune was not given a day in the week, because we need Neptune every day. In our morning coffee, our bedtime story, we celebrate the poetry and the magic of the mundane. “Before enlightenment, carry water. After enlightenment, carry water…,” zen teaches. As synchronicity becomes our natural state of being, ritual anchors us in the time-based reality. By celebrating consciousness as Neptune’s gift, we humbly assist Source on the path towards instant manifestation or Perfection. The journey of ascension is in equal measure a journey of landing. Our faith is tested through our engagement with life. With the tides, faith comes to inhabit our frequency. The need for understanding is absolved by inner-standing, or surrender. When Neptune dissolves polarity into unity consciousness, he actually becomes the God of Discernment. The bridge between the intellect and the intuition then graces over a river named Clarity. Devoted to using our imagination lovingly, we become life’s most attuned instrument. At Neptune’s altar, we marry life. Yes.
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Ⓒ Heidi Souffriau
Photos by Lauren Hodges : https://lophotobirth.com