Wherever Neptune is in your chart, you will experience “fogginess”. A lack of clarity, maybe some lack of focus. Depending on the context, this fogginess may be pleasant – like floating on a pinky cloud – or it may be dangerous – like being mislead to believe something that is not real.
Many failed romances have Neptune at the root of the failure. There was a strong pull in the beginning which ended bad. The two people felt an intense, even “fated” attraction, only to discover, in a jolt of lucidity, months or years later, that they don’t really have nothing in common. And that the entire relationship was just a projection of their own expectations from the other one.
It’s easy to see how we may start to blame Neptune for this. After all, it’s our time, it’s our life and we feel like we’ve been cheated. Alas, it’s not Neptune. It’s us. Neptune is only there to show us where we experience “gullibility”. The soft spot which may be used – and it’s used, many times – to be taken advantage of. Wherever Neptune is in our chart, we need to learn at least two important lessons: lucidity and unconditional love. The two may seem to collide, right? Wrong. They don’t collide, they’re very much related. Let’s take them one at a time.
Lucidity: suppose you have Neptune in the eleventh house, in Sagittarius. Now, you may feel an intense attraction towards spiritual groups and you are very easy to go out with friends. So easy, that many of them are simply taking advantage of you. Maybe they are abusing your time (and you feel so “lucky” that you’re not rejected) or maybe they’re abusing your network of relationships (and you feel so “lucky” that you have so much to share with other people). No matter how this abuse is manifesting, the pattern is: you enter in a certain group, strive to be accepted, make strong relationships and at some point you realize you don’t really belong there. And they were not your real friends.
Now, who’s responsibility is that (I hate the word “fault”, that’s why I’m using “responsibility”)? Yours, of course. If you were paying a little bit more attention, you weren’t so easy to be played with. You would have noticed some signs. But you didn’t. That’s what Neptune does: it obfuscates your visual field and lures you into some nice smelling swamps. You enjoy the perfume, for a while, but only until you realize it’s still a swamp.
Unconditional love: suppose you have Neptune in the second house, in Cancer. Now, it may be that all your romantic relationships are very closely connected to your possessions. Or money. Or your job. And, one way or another, you end up being the cheated one. Like actually losing money. Why this is happening? Because, of course, you didn’t see from the beginning that the relationship was not so much about yourself, as it was about how much you “worth”. Now comes the sad part: it’s because you ” broadcasted” that. Your Neptune exuded a thin, invisible perfume of: “I have money, come take it from me” and that activated the exact kind of person you didn’t want to attract. If you would be there just for yourself, not asking to be perceived in a certain way, you will be experiencing some sort of unconditional love that would have left the money part out.
Well, that’s Neptune. We all need to experience illusion and disillusion, romantic feelings and disappointment, hope and despair. Neptune pack these opposite pairs in such a way that it forces us to raise above our human condition. It forces us to go beyond our expectations, our ego. It dilutes the ego. And, mind you, the ego doesn’t like to be diluted.
So, how can you cope with this? How can we integrate Neptune’s experience in such a way that we could benefit from it and still limit the damage?
Over the years I came to the conclusion that Neptune asks for a “significant one” in the specific house where it sits in your natal chart. Like a clear mind. Someone that will ground you when hard times are coming.
If you saw the movie “A Beautiful Mind” you may remember that sequence when the main character is visited, after he knows that he has hallucinations, by one of his students. And, while they were talking, the main character asks the student: “Do you see those people on my left? Or are they only my imagination?”. The student responds: “No, there’s nobody here.” So they go on with they conversation.
I find this the perfect example for how we can cope with Neptune. In the movie, the main character is clearly living in a personal dream (namely, is having pathological hallucinations). That’s Neptune at its worst. So, he “cures” himself by accepting that fact (unconditional acceptance) and relying on other people to ground into a much more manageable reality.
So, in the end, the influence of Neptune is very positive. We end up connection, interacting, mingling and blending into each others, just like the basic influence of the planet promises us to do. But, most of the time, we go through some very rough times until we get there.
Just be sure you have a much grounded person into your life wherever Neptune is strong into your natal chart.