Neptune's Come Home ~ Will We Now Go Back To Sleep?

Our annual few weeks of Sun in Pisces have come around once again; more interestingly though, so has Neptune's infrequent and much longer sojourn in that sign, its sign of rulership. Neptune will remain in Pisces until around 2025.

First, keywords for Neptune - a long list of 'em, can be found HERE. All have a rather loose feel, indistinct, foggy, dreams, no barriers, not unkind, not hard-headed or mean, fuzzy......think alcohol or drug induced fog and delusion; also Neptune links, unsurprisingly, to the sea and, more surprisingly, to oil, film and photography. Keywords for Pisces, the zodiac sign, are along similar lines, because Neptune rules it.

Overall, I suspect that Neptune in Pisces will have less to do with actual events during the transit than will the other outer planets, Uranus and Pluto. Neptune in Pisces may simply tell us about how the population at large is likely to feel as events and situations unfold. Neptune in Pisces will blur and soften some harsh events and soothe our jagged edges.

Type "Neptune in Pisces through history" into Google's search box and see some articles by astrologers comparing events during periods when Neptune transited its sign of rulership in the past. I read through a few of these pieces, but a ho-hum kind of feeling crept in. To take a planet in a sign and extrapolate a likely series of outcomes, isn't especially helpful, anymore than it is to take only a Sun sign and interpret a personality from that alone. I wonder whether the population at large had their jagged edges soothed during past Neptune/Pisces transits. We can't know this with any certainty.

When considering past Neptune in Pisces periods, we should take into account the positions of the two other slowest moving planets, Uranus and Pluto. These, too, add "flavour" to the astrological and historical "soup du jour", producing distinct differences within each cycle. Currently and for some years to come, during the time Neptune will transit Pisces, Uranus will travel through Aries and later on, Taurus; Pluto will travel through Capricorn.

Because there's a similarity to current transits in the last Neptune in Pisces period (it ran approximately 1847 to 1862) a vague hint of the kind of events we can expect between now and 2025 might, be detectable. Aggressive Martian input from Uranus in Aries, is common to both the 19th century Neptune/Pisces transit and the current one. In both cases Martian flavour is replaced by Venusian when Uranus moves into Taurus around the half-way mark of Neptune/Pisces.

Along with the similarity mentioned above, there's a significant astrological difference in 19th and 21st century Neptune/Pisces periods. It's the Saturnian flavour from Pluto in Capricorn we now encounter, this will linger throughout almost all of the current Neptune/Pisces transit.

In the first half of the 19th century Neptune/Pisces transit Pluto was in Mars-ruled
Aries Those poor people experienced a double dose of aggressive Martian flavour, manifesting as political upheavals in Europe and civil war in the US, among other disruptions.

Pluto moved gradually away from the Martian atmosphere during the second half of Neptune/Pisces, on into Taurus, adding gentle Venus to their astro soup of the day, marked by a gradual blossoming of talent in the arts.

Tiny Pluto does seem to pack an extraordinarily powerful punch astrologically. Its presence can mean a breaking down of something followed by healing and transformation. In Capricorn the focus is on established standards, institutions, businesses, so one or more of such bodies could, in coming years, be due for an even more serious shake-up than we've seen already.

There isn't a comparable period in history with Pluto in Capricorn when the position of the other two outer planets matched our current pattern. There is an old example of Pluto in Capricorn though. It was during a 16th century Neptune/Pisces transit. Pluto (then undiscovered, but there all the same) transited Capricorn during, roughly, 1521-1534. One clear manifestation was in England - separation of the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church during the reign of Henry VIII; Dissolution of the Monasteries, establishment of the king as supreme head of the Church of England. The monasteries had owned large areas of land worked by tenants. Henry VIII dissolved them (1536–1541) and transferred a fifth of England's landed wealth to new hands, creating a "landed gentry" beholden to the crown. However, in the 16th century, though Neptune was transiting Pisces when Pluto transited Capricorn, there was none of the Martian flavour we now experience, from Uranus in Aries.

Every transit is unique just as every human is unique, but it's tempting to play a guessing game, with the hints of evidence we have from the past. It's safe to predict that during the Neptune/Pisces transit 2012 to 2025, aggressive Martian, restrictive Saturnian, and later, artistic Venusian flavours will colour our world, in addition to Neptune's signature illusions, delusions and general fuzziness. We'll be seeing a noticeable flourishing of some novel talent in the art world when Uranus moves into Taurus around 2018, and by 2025 we can, fairly confidently, expect to be able to identify some clear area of transformation following a Pluto-type breaking down of one or more established institutions, mode of business, or suchlike.

We (as in We the People)will wake fully from our soothing Neptunian stupor, when the planet moves on into Aries, and when Pluto enters Aquarius, around 2025. Uranus will then be in Gemini, revolutionary methods of communication may be a new part of the mix.

We often consider these to be interesting times, but for really interesting these will have nothing on 2025 onwards!

(Disclaimer. I do not mean to imply from any of the above that I believe the planets themselves cause what I refer to as "flavours". My theory is that the planets simply act as markers for us - markers of various waves or cycles of time. These waves, of as yet unknown significance or composition, will cross at certain points or, run parallel, collide, form patterns - with consequent manifestation here on Earth. So, although Pluto is tiny, compared to Neptune, it still acts as an important marker on a particular wave or cycle of time.)