Neptune, planet of bliss and brutality, creativity and duplicity, is nearing the final stretches of its fourteen year home run in its own sign Pisces. Previous such phases oversaw great epic poetry from several cultures – Persian, Tamil, Hindi, Provencal Troubadours, T’ang Dynasty, German; as well as the establishment of major hospitals. Mathematics also figured – Fibonacci and Isaac Newton were both at their peak under a Neptune in Pisces. Exploration flourished – Livingstone (Pisces) discovered the Victoria Falls and Richard Burton (Pisces) Lake Tanganyika under Neptune in Pisces; and the first European to explore the Atlantic coast of the USA did so under a previous Neptune in Pisces; at the same time as Peru was discovered by a Spanish explorer. The first Thomas Cook travel tour was a Neptune in Pisces occurrence. Religion featured heavily with key events in Christian, Muslim and Buddhist history.
Not much springs to mind that is similar in the recent past but it may need the perspective of distance to extract positive highlights.
In mythology there are pointers to creativity, one of Neptune’s talents. Pegasus, the winged horse, symbol of the soaring imagination, was born when Medusa was beheaded and he/it was set free. Throughout Neptune’s story there is always this paradox – revelling in brutality of the bloodiest variety in order to set free the ideal. An eternal war between the physical world and the spirit.
Christianity, despite its love and tolerance motif, has at its heart an image of gruesome torture and the acute physical suffering of a forsaken son. Neptune has a dissolving action so physical dismemberment is part of his lexicon. And in certain modes Neptune is anti-life. This ‘vale of tears’ was the old Christian outlook for getting through a life of suffering and mishaps, until the happy land beyond St Peter’s Gates is reached.
Neptune, the god, ruled the watery oceans and waged war on Athena, who ruled the land. As an act of aggression he raped Medusa (then a beauty) in Athena’s temple, in revenge for which Athena turned her ugly and banished her to the far wildernesses. His domain, the sea can be cruel, cold, changeable, liable to brew up into storms and is capable of chipping away relentlessly at rocky land until it collapses.
In astrology, religion and spirituality comes under its domain. The atrocities perpetrated in the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Protestant versus Roman Catholic battle waging for six centuries, the Islamic Shia-Sunni split, the Muslim v Jewish conflict ongoing, throws a different slant on Neptune, the spiritual dreamer. The all-encompassing other-worldly vision can obliterate everything that is human and display and insensitivity that is chilling.
Merged with other planets Neptune can be a powerful force and not always for the good. Neptune Pluto is scandal prone and megalomaniac, as well as innovative. Neptune Uranus can be fanatical as well as inspired. Neptune Saturn is associated with epidemics, paranoia, mental instability as well as social reform. Neptune Jupiter rules high-finance, bankers and con-men gurus.
Neptune together with Saturn at the moment and through 2026 are polar opposites. Saturn rules the earthly material world, the body, organizations, rules and regulations, practicality, sanity. Neptune undermines our security in the real world, dissolves the boundary between what is fact and what is fiction. It also affects the body so difficult to diagnose illnesses and epidemics occur. On a positive note it also undermines the patriarchy so women’s rights come to the fore with social reforms moving up the agenda.
Random Neptunian oddities:
Top athletes who need exceptional physical endurance often have strong Neptune aspects to their Suns. Successful businessmen and explorers are often Pisces, which is ruled by Neptune. The Nazi doctor Josef Mengele was a Pisces Sun trine Neptune. John Gacy, who raped and killed at least 33 teenage boys, was a New Moon in Pisces opposition Neptune. Not always what is expected.
Another intriguing astro-pattern: When Neptune changes sign (every 15 years or so) an iconic female figure dies – Princess Diana, Grace Kelly, Nathalie Wood, Sharon Tate, Judy Garland in previous transitional times of Neptune leaving a sign.
1901: Neptune leaving Gemini – Queen Victoria dies.
1915: Neptune leaving Cancer – Mary Baker Eddy and Emily Davidson (suffragette who suicided by horse at the Derby). Florence Nightingale also died with Neptune in late Cancer (1911)
1929: Neptune leaving Leo – Emmeline Pankhurst (the great suffragette), Ellen Terry, Isadora Duncan.
1943 – Neptune leaving Virgo – aviator Amy Johnson, writer Beatrix Potter.
1957 – Neptune leaving Libra – Laura Wilder (Little House on the Prairie), scientist Irene Curie
1968 – Neptune leaving Scorpio – Helen Keller, Enid Blyton, Dorothy Parker, Vivien Leigh, Judy Garland, Little Mo, Sonja Henie, Gypsy Rose Lee, Sharon Tate.
1983 – Neptune leaving Sagittarius – Nathalie Wood, Anita Loos (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), Anna Freud, Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, Gloria Swanson, Ethel Merman, Lillian Hellman, Indira Gandhi.
1998 – Neptune leaving Capricorn – Princess Diana, Mother Theresa, Ella Fitzgerald, Ginger Rogers, Lana Turner, Evelyn Laye, Dorothy Lamour, Claudette Colbert, Marguerite Duras, Patricia Highsmith, Mary Leakey.
2011 – Liz Taylor, Amy Winehouse, Jane Russell, Whitney Houston, Lauren Bacall, Esther Williams, Zsa Zsa Gabor.
2025 Jane Goodall, Virginia Giuffre, Cecile Richards, Diane Keaton, Marianne Faithfull, June Lockhart, Roberta Flack.
Neptune in Pisces – surely AI is the most significant ‘discovery’? I asked AI to explain why. It said “the collective unconscious, abstract ideas, imagination, intuition, and the dissolution of boundaries”. It added “Neptune represents that which is beyond physical reality and is not bound by the laws of the physical world. This connects to the abstract nature of AI algorithms and the non-human functions they perform, which can seem boundless in their potential and difficult to grasp logically.” You also have the elements of illusion and deception.
May I also throw in earthquakes? Poseidon was the Earth Shaker and as someone with a prominent Moon/Neptune I have been hyper-sensitive to earthquakes all my life. Just like animals have that 6th sense, they can feel when an earthquake is coming — me too. I had to move off the Ring of Fire to a geologically stable location. I could not stand being plugged in every time a tectonic plate had a hizzy fit.
2025 RIP: Jane Goodall, Virginia Giuffre, Cecile Richards, Diane Keaton, Marianne Faithfull, June Lockhart, Roberta Flack. Many others.
“Exploration flourished – Livingstone (Pisces) discovered the Victoria Falls and Richard Burton (Pisces) Lake Tanganyika under Neptune in Pisces; and the first European to explore the Atlantic coast of the USA did so under a previous Neptune in Pisces; at the same time as Peru was discovered by a Spanish explorer. The first Thomas Cook travel tour was a Neptune in Pisces occurrence.”
Hasn’t the first steps to space tourism taken place in this Neptune in Pisces cycle? Will interplanetary travel, exploration, exploitation and settlement become the norm in the not so distant future?
These so-called Euro-centric “discoveries” of lands that people have inhabited for tens of thousands of years, including the Americas seems to qualify for both Neptune’s duality of transcending boundaries (Europeans traveling to and settling on a landmass they hadn’t yet done so previously in large numbers) and deceit by claiming that they have the right to own what they merely encountered by mislabling these acts as “discoveries” (imagine if we took over every flat or hotel room we rented on holiday, then the building they occupy, then the block, etc.)
In the same vein, as Unmystic Mom pointed out, now, we’re leaving the boundaries of our planet in yet more foolhardy conquests (a la space force–lol), so those who have the means can ignore the absolute mess humans have made of this planet we have been lucky enougj to be a part of and called home.
We do live to lie to others by lying to ourselves.