Neptune in Pisces: First Whispers

4.4.11


Today (Mon Apr 4), Neptune enters Pisces, the sign of its modern affinity, for the first time since 1862… and deferring to its spirit, I seek not to contain its meaning through neat delineation.

Neptune will spend many many years here, spreading compassion and spiritual significance far and wide through its invisible psychic undercurrents, and there is no rush to say everything now.

In short, this just-in-time transit of Neptune through Pisces will wash us over with a nebulous mist of unifying sensitivity… to foster the experiential emotional recognition of what's really going on when we don't follow the Golden Rule of treating our neighbors as ourselves. We are all one—both when we inspire each other, lifting our collective vibration with heartfelt altruism, and when we knock each other down, operating as if life is a game where there are winners and losers.

The sacred waters (element of Neptune and Pisces) connect us, not merely according to this abstract 'we are all one' notion but literally, condensing and evaporating and raining down again, flowing onward, carrying grains of eroded earth from one continent across thousands of miles to the shores of another, intermingling microorganisms and mackerel and mammoth marine mammals with toxic chunks of detritus from our whorish human consumerism, increasingly making what's considered 'precious' and what's 'garbage' indistinguishable. We treat our waste-producing industrial processes as irreplaceable (which they aren't), while trashing the natural environment that's made them possible. What message do our scrambled priorities send?

Alternatively, we can romantically use this watery interconnectedness to transmit positive messages-in-bottles across the planet. Capture the intention in a sturdy vessel, send it out onto the waves, and it will find its way to an unsuspecting recipient's open heart. We have no control over the delivery of this message, who will find it or how it might alter their life forever. But we know a bottle of loving sentiments is virtually guaranteed to make a person, someone, somewhere, smile… and thus to make the world a better place. Who accepts this romantic responsibility: to send love out onto the waves, expecting nothing in return?

The past year of accelerating transition, imprinted astrologically with sign-changes for Uranus and now Neptune, is bookmarked in history by (among other things) two globally significant oceanic events: an explosion of an offshore oil-drilling unit in the Gulf of Mexico, and a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan. Both were jolting occurrences that led to massive leakages of toxic waste into our planet's waters, as a direct result of large-scale human efforts to generate energy for our machines, deploying technology we've proven to possess no confident grasp over. First crude oil, then radioactivity, spilling into the seas… altering chemical compounds, harming and killing life-forms, profoundly throwing off the self-regulating systems of natural balance, informing our home planet we obviously don't give a rat's-ass about it. When we profit at our neighbor's expense, do we honestly think it won't affect the whole neighborhood?

When the big one comes—and it always does: as hurricane or volcano, blizzard or blast, invasion by terrorists or little green spacemen, the equal-opportunity embrace of God—it will not matter what any one of us believes. It won't matter if we have intangible assets squirreled away in computerized accounts once the networks go down. It won't matter who we voted for, which party has our undying loyalty, once those supposedly in charge reveal their inadequate ability (or willingness) to help. It won't matter who lucked into health insurance when the wounded scatter the streets, lacking proper legal identification.

All identities, always partly deceptive anyhow, eventually flatten out. The great leveling experiences show us we really are all one and the same. And if we consciously choose to operate in spiritual reality, we cannot claim an exemption, based on job title or prestigious family-name, skin color or any other symbol of false superiority. Stripped of trappings, exposed as raw soul, we attend to our brethren who are also us. The hungriest get fed. The sickest get cared for. The most able-bodied step out of their cubicles, roll up their sleeves, and work to save our collective life. Through willful acknowledgment of each other's suffering, we recover basic mutual respect. Our tears wash the grime away. Our supportive gestures soothe the pain. We're in it together.

Not everybody wants to engage on this level of consciousness, of course. Purposeful disregard for the consequences of one's actions may spare a selfish individual the intrusion upon his conscious awareness, though the ripples of impact still strike his soul. The sense of 'something not right' is not easily ditched like an unwanted baby at a doorstep or a dumpster. It follows him around, an unwelcome shadow requiring ever-more-intense denial mechanisms—psychiatric drugs, jugs of cheap vodka, worship at the altar of materialism, demonizing projections onto 'those bad people over there'—to numb the spiritual agony. At base, such self-imposed ignorance is an immoral deceit. Budgetary line items, quick to be sliced as thin as the ridiculously overpriced Kobe beef the butler will soon be delivering, are nothing less than real people's necessary livelihoods. Jobs, homes, families, faith… left to die agonizing deaths for so-called political advantage. Any less forthright an understanding of what's at play merely greases the palms of these epic cheaters.

Neptune in Pisces carries with it a beauty so exquisite and divine, it often hurts our hearts as we open to accept it in. Many of these words I throw together, in crooked-line logic, may sting with despair from this unflinching look at our species-legacy. But that perception is but a first reaction to these conceptual surfaces. (Concepts as unifying factors is so Neptune in Aquarius.) Here, words are knowingly insufficient. To touch its fullness, we can only evoke… hint at. Without interference from our manic minds, that distinguishing biological feature which sets us apart, the beauty always hovers over. A spark of life, in whatever shape or dimension, is a timeless miracle.

I am not merely an astrologer, businessman or scholar. I host a poet's soul, a caretaker's touch, a prophet's voice. You are not just a bookkeeper, bodyguard or civil servant. You keep the hearth-fires burning. You guard the ethics of loving-kindness. You serve the common good, however called to. We lock eyes, and the bodily trappings melt away in the presence of our total being. In that moment of connection, we transcend it all.

This is what we're here for, to have this human experience: In the gaps between our egos' constant strivings to reassure ourselves we're worthy, we touch the glimpses of each other's perfection as it always already is. I recognize you, and you me. Here we are again. What a trippy incarnation to be sharing this time.

Neptune will be in Pisces until August 4, before retrograding back into Aquarius for about six months. Neptune returns to Pisces on Feb 3 2012, where it'll stay through 2025.