Contemplating Neptune...

[Chris Anderson/Onefeather]

On April 4th, 2011, Neptune will enter its natural home in Pisces (by Tropical Placidus calculation) and the potential for a vast transformative era will begin. Although it will retrograde back into Aquarius for one final brief “adieu”, by the summer of 2012 it will be firmly positioned in Pisces for a duration of 13 years of solid entrenchment. Neptune was discovered in September of 1846 and, syncronistically, seemed to unveil itself just in time for astrologers around the world to contemplate its arrival on the threshold of its passage into Pisces.

Neptune last entered the sign of Pisces in 1847 and during its passage through the House of the Fishes, a wave of social revolution swept the planet... Carl Marx published the Communist Manifesto, less as a doctrine of government but in response to human rights in opposition to industrialization and the dehumanizing conditions that arose in factories across Europe and America. Darwin’s writings threw traditional Christian doctrine into chaos and evolution was debated in schools of theology and natural sciences everywhere. Painting, literature and the musical arts began to explore a less structured representation of human consciousness, eventually with the result of forcing humankind to expand their vision of the Universe we’re surrounded by. Romanticism and impressionism replaced the constricting schools of hyper-realism that had dictated standards for the previous 300 or more years. Berlioz, Liszt, Aubert, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Dickens and Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne and an endless list of others comes to mind. Woman's Rights became a burning issue in America and eventually spread to other countries. (On a darker note, the Civil War decimated the United States as mankind sought to crawl away from the oppression of slavery.)

Transcendentalism came into being and was evolved by literary, political, and philosophical movements centered around Ralph Waldo Emerson. Other important transcendentalists were Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Amos Bronson Alcott, Frederic Henry Hedge, and Theodore Parker. The transcendentalists operated with the sense that a new era was at hand, questioning the empirical dogma of religion and searching for a deeper meaning in life. Metaphysics and Mind Control, spiritual healing and personal intimacy with God was sought after and embraced, giving rise to Christian Science, Science of Mind and a plethora of other variations on the idea that everything originates within the mind and that material reality is, at best, a delusion.

While Eastern philosophy was embraced with enthusiasm, some of the more secretive organizations like the Theosophists and the Order of the Golden Dawn demanded one become an initiate in order to “be given” the new doctrine. The applecart not only was upset, it was, in many ways, sacked and burned! Now, 160 + years later, as Neptune poises to reenter Pisces, one is given to wonder what the next wave of social and spiritual evolution might look like. Will we continue to attempt to resolve issues of ownership with the tools of war or... are we about to come to the reckoning that any form of attack wounds and cripples the attacker as much as the one being attacked. As the prophet said, can we enter the period when swords will be beaten into plowshares... and peace on Earth is realized?

This is the turning point: how personal will this outer planet’s journey be to each individual who’s witnessing the voyage through space and time on Spaceship Earth? Will the finger of God touch the receptive heart in enough people to shift our combined consciousness forward, wherein we come to see and experience our oneness as a united family of man? Are we, collectively, willing to transcend the ills of nationalism, theology and economics in order to ascend to a higher way of living... and transitioning out of the mortal life to the spiritual identity we forgot?

Each person who is called to read these ruminations has a personal stake in the process. Every one of us is the point where the light can break through the darkness, where tolerance is transplanted with brotherhood and finally the realization of oneness. Neptune speaks to humanity with its mystical vision, its capacity to bend the “real world” and transform our vision of self. It beckons like the tides that arrive on the shores of consciousness, leaving a clean swept beach and the potential to re-script the story of mankind.

A number of cultures associate the crane with the time of Pisces, and therefore, by association, Neptune also. The crane, in Japan, is believed to be one of the most mystical or holy creatures alive and is said to live for a thousand years. Japanese legend promises that anyone who folds a thousand origami cranes will be granted a wish by a crane, and this idea has evolved into a cause for world peace... in reference to the story of Sadako Sasaki. Perhaps folding cranes and meditating on the idea of oneness is an appropriate way to greet Neptune’s arrival.