Neptune: Nirvana, Prison Or Addiction
June 2018
In Part I of this series of blogs we looked at the times, which are a changin', and have been, astrologically, for the past two hundred years or so. So it might seem odd that I'm now going to talk about the old age that we're coming out of - Pisces. But it's not, and there are several good reasons for this; one is that the end of an astrological age (and technically, remember that the ages represented by the constellations are moving backwards, so the equinox point is actually near the beginning of the constellation Pisces) is said by astrologers to be one of its strongest periods psycho-spiritually, and secondly, that we all have Pisces, and its ruling planet Neptune, somewhere in our birth charts. Thirdly, in the Tropical Zodiac, which is the one used by Western astrologers, Neptune is actually transiting Pisces, the sign which it rules, from 2012 to 2025. So as of this writing, Neptune is having a very strong effect on humanity for the next seven years or so.
In Greek mythology, Poseidon, or his Roman counterpart Neptune was god of the seas, and in Qabalah, the Hebrew letter associated with this key is Mem, one of the three Mother Letters, and it means "waters". In esoteric lore, water is the mind-stuff, or consciousness and wherever we see water in the tarot keys/cards, it symbolizes that mind-stuff flowing in the background, in both our subconscious mind and the universal subconscious mind. We cannot see it, but we know it is there because we feel it. It is the same water that Jesus spoke about when He said that ordinary water will not satisfy our thirst, but this sort of water is a well of everlasting life. If you know any Pisceans, or people with strong Neptune in their horoscopes, you will probably know that they are not heavily in this world - at least not the practical down-to-earth side of it, but they are very spiritual, artistic, and sometimes psychic. One very notable exception would be Albert Einstein, a Piscean who also had a very strong intellect, translating the only imaginable theories of how time, space, light, gravity and energy all fit together into mathematical formulae.
How could an image like this possibly represent nirvana and spiritual enlightenment? The poor guy - who Christians might associate with St. Peter, who was crucified upside down at his own request, seems to be tied to a tree or gibbet, with his head dangling beneath the ground - probably overlooking a gorge with running water flowing in it. But his head has a halo of light around it, indicating that he is indeed not unhappy about his situation. The T shaped tree symbolizes the planet Saturn, which rules the physical world, and this man has managed to voluntarily submit himself to Saturn's law of limitation. That is why the tarot key is on the left side of the tree which has the spheres of Saturn/Law and Mars/action on it. The man's red tights stand for the Mars energy. So this image indicates submission to Cosmic Law, and funnily enough, this is what gives us real freedom - not running around doing selfish and hedonistic things in the outer world.
The outer planets, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are sometimes seen spiritually as Divine Mind, Divine Love and Divine Will, with Neptune being the second part of this Holy Trinity of Inner planets. Externally, the planet was discovered by the astronomers Urbain Leverrier and Johann Galle in 1846, in Berlin, and just like the discovery of Uranus and Pluto, this event is correlated by astrologers with changes in the mass consciousness of humanity. This date was two years before Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published their Communist Manifesto, which theoretically was designed to bring some love to the working classes and poor. Neptune has subsequently been associated with the dispossessed, homeless and movements which try to help people in need. It was also around the time that Charles Darwin was researching and writing his Origin Of Species, the foundation of the Theory Of Evolution. On first sight, the Theory Of Evolution does not seem to have much to do with Divine Love and Unity, but that is only because we are looking at it from the material world view. If we look at evolution with our current knowledge of how everything in the "created" universe is composed of the same fundamental particles - and remember this "mind stuff" is the water seen in the tarot images, and also remember that life evolved in earth's oceans, perhaps we can see how evolution connects all life. More about evolution in Part VI of The Esoteric Sceptic.
Neptune's discovery also coincided with the popularity of photography, which we almost take for granted nowadays. The science and art of magically capturing an image of reality without pen or paint actually started with the Chinese, but it is was Louis Daguerre who introduced it worldwide in 1839. The use of anesthetics was also popularized at this time, with Queen Victoria extolling the virtues of Chloroform to ease the pain of a tooth extraction. Compassionate relief from pain is very Neptunian. The Victorians were not only habitual drug-takers, but the British trade establishment of the mid 1800s was one of the largest drug dealers in the world. The Opium Wars of 1839-1860 saw the British East India company smuggling opium from India to China, getting millions of Chinese addicted to the juice of the poppy plant.
But what happens when we refuse to voluntarily submit our will to the larger cosmic laws? The law of karma steps in and if we don't necessarily find ourselves in some sort of man-made prison, we might end up in a metaphorical one, feeling isolated from wholeness in a bubble of guilt or shame. This is the 12th house in astrology, the house naturally ruled by Neptune's sign. In countries which have some semblance of a Christian morality, the point of locking criminals up is not only to punish them by taking away their freedom, but to also force them to reassess where they went wrong, by giving them time to go inwards.
And what happens if we get a taste for Neptune's palliative qualities in the form of medicinal or illegal drugs? We currently have an epidemic of opioid addiction in the US, and a nationwide yearning by American and UK youth to waste their days getting high using recreational marijuana, urged on by a greedy cannabis lobby and irresponsible media journalists who only report what supports their own selfishness. Misuse of drugs is not spiritual at all - remember in the Gospels how Jesus was offered vinegar to ease the pain when we was being crucified, but refused, as if to say that we all have to bear our burden sooner or later - there is no escape from that T shaped tree of cosmic law. This is the big lesson with Neptune - it is about spiritual, non-material processes which cause a change in the chemistry of the blood, which in turn causes a change in consciousness. Drugs are material things - and because of the way our bodies are designed (by which I mean evolved), they always strive for balance or homeostasis. If you take recreational drugs, you get high for a while, but then sink low - lower than you were before, so you take more drugs and the cycle of addiction starts. And because the psychoactive chemical in some drugs is fat-soluble - for example the very concentrated amounts of the chemical THC in today's hybridized marijuana, it accumulates in the taker's brain and nerve sheaths, severely impacting their mental health in the form of psychosis, loss of motivation, unemployment and sometimes permanent schizophrenia and homelessness - please see my blog article Ask You Real Doctor II for more about this. Neptune's sign Pisces and its corresponding 12th house also rule mental asylums.
So what will happen in the next few years until 2025 regarding religious devotion, sacrifice, poverty, refugees, our prison systems, political socialism, addictions and drug taking world wide? Astrologers believe that the first half of a planetary transit through a Zodiac sign brings up problems to our awareness, while the second half is an opportunity to solve those problems. Since 2012 we've seen an alarming increase in religious fanaticism and terrorism in the form of suicide attacks. Suicide is of course the ultimate expression of self-sacrifice and devotion to a higher power, in some people's minds, however misguided it may be, and however many other people it kills or injures. This has perhaps made followers of the Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam examine how the same natural laws, devised by the same God, can be interpreted in such different ways. As for drugs, perhaps humanity, having seen the addiction, mental illness and misery that they cause, will finally learn to reach nirvana without their use, getting high on reality.
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