
A. Y. Jackson -‘House of Ypres’ c1918 {{PD}}
· Neptune crossing the IC may bring forward one or more instances of questioning the identity, obscuring ‘where we live’ in a psychic sense, or false starts in the ‘what I should be doing’ department. The contact places a layer of uncertainty and creative potential over the deepest beliefs about the Self and, reflexively speaking, shines this on the Midheaven as well. Can mark the beginning of a shift in Self-perception that drives new career, creative, or path-development options.
· Neptune through the 4th sets us on the quest for an ideal home; this often takes both a literal form and a figurative one. An environment most suitable to the ideal Self is sought, and we may explore different living situations, in the hope we’ll find the one that feels completely like ‘home’. It’s unlikely we’ll find anything that fits the bill, simply because for Neptune home is the womb–a place we can’t exactly crawl back into! There’s often lots of uncertainty surrounding the living situation when Neptune transits here, and typically at least a few crises focused on the way in which we live (earning a living and/ or the routines or habits of consumption or daily life). Some with this transit enter group living situations such as communes or shared housing, and radical changes to possessions (particularly to the idea of what we need) may occur; it’s also possible that becoming a vagabond of sorts to a Collective cause may happen, effectively ‘dissolving’ the need for a home, at least for now. Everyone taps a deep inner creativity at this time; some will funnel Neptune into decorating and creating an ideal environment, and it’s easy to think we are meant to hang out our shingle and decorate everyone’s homes, become artists, or otherwise abandon careers to do something we’ve only just taken an interest in–but as with the creative writing of Neptune’s transit of the 3rd, only those with some proclivities for this shown elsewhere in the chart, a natal influence that’s been under development before Neptune’s ingress to the 4th, should take such a potential path seriously. This transit may also plant the seed for mental, emotional, or physical maladies of a hard-to-pinpoint Neptunian nature that show up later.
· In the 5th Neptune seems to summon the natal Neptunian proclivities and apply them to the creative acts, the children produced, the romances concocted, or the risks undertaken by the individual. Here we get much more of the flavor of the natal placement, rather than an undiluted Neptune vibe, and perhaps this is because each of the events/ acts associated with the 5th are Self-generated: you can’t make a project, a child, love, or gamble without willing participation. Permanent shifts in the way we regard 5th House subjects may be brought on during this transit, either from uncertainty and questioning of our previous approach, or through a new ideal or creative form that comes to our attention at this time. We may measure each House area for its personal spiritual applications for us–for instance, we may decide that our spiritual development does not require us to experience romance, or to have a child, and so these may be checked off our list forever. Trends seem to split into the highly idealized (which typically takes further efforts into ‘striving mode’–as with Art, or a new, imaginative goal or project–or into the realm where no further changes will come about–as in, for example, the idea of a ‘perfect child’ or perfect work of Art, that one will then not have, or not attempt to create, in order to maintain the possibility) or into a fixed state of delusion, fantasy, or inadequacy, wherein no efforts can move us forward, yet a lot of energy goes into yearning for the imagined outcome. We either ‘snap to’ as Neptune transits this House, and eventually muster vast creative energies in a highly original way, or we sink under the weight of a Self-imposed and accepted confusion (or beneath a choice to be indifferent, disoriented, or unfocused) that permanently excuses us from participating in 5th House areas of life.
· Through the 6th Neptune can wreak havoc in the everyday routine and on the job front; it may seem there’s always something going on of which we’re unaware, or about which we haven’t been informed, so necessitates a scrambling to keep up. Confusion about our true duties and obligations can cause us to neglect what’s really meaningful to us and a sense that no progress can be made on the job front may be disconcerting and cause us to ‘give up the quest’. Unless our daily efforts are keyed to the creative or are in some way Neptunian, this transit can be highly debilitating, as it seems that we can’t gain ground, and can’t really tell the whys or wherefores of our distress. This is often the time when Neptunian illness seeded during transit of the 4th shows up, as the 6th is a house of health and the body. Best use of this passage for Neptune may be if we can see the bigger, spiritual point to our daily activities; if we can connect the dots between our own little lives and the workings of the Cosmos, we just might find a highly tuned Purpose behind the everyday humdrum and chaos, one that brings unprecedented peace and acceptance, taking our Beingness and our attunement via the mundane to a whole new level.
See Part I here, or what’s coming up later in the month here or the current forecast here–thanks!