Saturn and Neptune have been opposing each other in the sky for the last couple of years, with an unmistakable impact upon the mass mood. In some ways blatantly obvious, in some ways extremely subtle, this aspect is an all-encompassing indicator of the feeling tone of what has been a very peculiar period.

Neptune’s penchant for the non-ordinary has seeped into humanity’s emotional life, enlivening the last half of the decade with ambivalent dramas as fascinating as they are disturbing. Within hours of the transit’s most recent peak, on February 28th, the stock market plummeted on Wall Street; an apt illustration of the themes for which the opposition is notorious: delusion, deflation and anxiety. A peak of another kind will take place this month, when Saturn makes a direct station while still opposed to Neptune (exact on April 19th at 2:25 pm PDT).

In humanistic astrology, transits are tracked not to make predictions but to expose what lessons we are meant to learn at a given time. Though the Saturn-Neptune transit can and does operate through external events, especially when it is peaking, these events are not where its meaning lies.

As students of astrology we must come to terms again and again with this reality: that although the meaning of transits can always be decoded, the particular events with which transits coincide cannot be guaranteed. To imagine that the sky is dictating what happens on Earth is to miss the point about astrology entirely; worse; it turns the supposed seeker into a credulous child.

Planetary cycles only mirror the lessons inherent in Earth affairs. They are symbolic rather than literal, and their specific manifestations depend upon the level of consciousness of the native(s). In the humanistic view, transits don’t tell us “What’s going to happen” at all. They tell us which issues have the spotlight. When we track them this way, we get to “know the future” and keep our freedom at the same time.

This is how we put the element of choice backinto transits that have been saddled with grim reputations, like the Saturn-Neptune opposition. Since group consciousness by its very nature tends to lag behind individual consciousness, we are not surprised when a transit like this coincides with collective confusion and meltdown — it’s no more than realistic, when Saturn and Neptune are facing off, to expect the mass mind to go a little nuts — but we, personally, don’t have to experience the transit this way.

In fact, we can use the craziness in the collective to help us understand the transit’s workings. The bizarre theatrics we tend to see under skies like these, as the group plays out the archetypal principles involved, can be vastly instructive when viewed as illustrative rather than definitive.¹

And how about its effect on us as individuals? This transit is coloring the psychic atmosphere of Earth; none of us is immune to it. It will feel overwhelming for some and merely a background energy for others — its impact depends on the aspects it forms to the natal chart — but wherever its influence shows up, it has a profound job to do: to destabilize (Neptune) whatever we perceive as stable (Saturn).

This is not, by the way, what happens when we are “doing the transit wrong”; this is what happens when we are doing it right. Undermining our sense of security is the transit’s intention. Saturn represents whatever our particular psychological status quo has decided is solid and secure; and Neptune represents the suspicion that there is a truth beyond whatever that is.

Pledging an allegiance to this truth-beyond may be pathologized by the person or by the group s/he lives in (e.g. as escapism; spacing out; self-delusion, “losing it”) or it may be framed in extravagantly positive terms (spiritual revelation, sexual ecstasy, artistic inspiration). Either way, Neptune’s truth-beyond feels like a negation of the here-and-now, and the here-and-now feels like an insult to it. Neptunian states of mind do not fit easily into conventional lifestyles; the planet conjures visions that defy business-as-usual. Even though these teachings may be more vivid to their recipient than anything she experiences in three-dimensional form, they fly in the face of empirical evidence (Saturn) and are not easy to embrace. Thus the transit is associated with disbelief and its disempowering side effect: doubt.

So what’s the best way to handle this showdown between the planet of dreams and illusions and the planet of nuts-and-bolts “reality“?

In contemporary Western culture, it is Saturn that is embraced as the arbiter of normalcy and Neptune that is considered suspect. But there is a re-balancing of forces trying to happen here.

On the personal level, we are being asked to listen more carefully to the interior urges that whisper of worlds beyond the physical, and find a way to implement these into the literal concerns of daily life. On a philosophical level, we are being forced to come to grips with nothing less than how we interpret reality. The fairy world, the dream world and the spirit world are disturbingly close at hand. Intuitions and premonitions (note the movie of that name that came out as the transit was peaking) are vying for supremacy with established ways of seeing things.

This has been more or less true throughout human history, of course: psychic and transcendental experiences have always been at odds with whatever a given society sees as worldly. So it makes sense that this opposition wreaks particular havoc in cultures that fetishize rationalism. Perhaps the hardest-hit of all are those of us in the industrialized West, where the assumptions of mechanistic materialism have all but banished the numinous from public debate. But Neptune will not stay banished right now.

The transit is pitting the tangible and the imaginal realms against one another, and demanding that we look again at the definitions we accept as sacrosanct. The burden is upon us, as individuals, to stretch the parameters of both Saturn’s world and Neptune’s world so that each may accommodate the other. Each of us must find a way to do this, for the pressures are incessant. Consider the houses of your chart that are now occupied by the two planets. This is where the struggle is being acted out.

One way or another, the realism of Saturn must be expanded to include the illusion (or greater Truth, depending on your point of view) of Neptune. The problem is that modern thinkers are taught to equate “realism” with literal action, results, productive activity and material security — definitions that are not particularly conducive to the task at hand.

Thus people with highly “realistic” standards tend to suffer far more under this transit than others. For a pragmatic personality, a sudden burst of inspiration may be felt as unwelcome and disruptive. For a person who prides himself on his self-control, to “lose it” emotionally can be quite disturbing. For a narcissist to open up to empathy can be an overwhelming experience; for an atheist to hear the angels sing can be downright devastating.

This is not to say that Neptune is somehow superior, or is “right” whereas Saturn is “wrong.” The problem is that when energies outside of our paradigm intrude into our consciousness – a likelihood under this transit — they tend to manifest as frightening and negative. Where the native has no ideological framework for understanding Neptune’s messages, they may be pushed away through denial (“It must have been something I ate”; “It was the wine talking”), or anger — as happens when we get mad at someone for “making us feel” a certain way. They may even be demonized, as happened in the days when women could be condemned for witchcraft by the men they inadvertently aroused.

But our consciousnesses can grow under this transit if we let it, by stretching the narrow connotations now attached to the concept of realism in our consensual philosophy. Our challenge is to allow Neptune’s realms to fluidly interpenetrate Saturn’s, as happens in well-written magical realist fiction.

If you have the same dream two nights in a row, write it down and think about it. If a wistful feeling nags at you in the middle of the day, leave your desk for a minute and allow yourself to feel it. If a leprechaun knocks at your door, let him in.

The Saturn-Neptune opposition is a wonderful mirror to reflect back to us our attitudes towards self-control. Rule-bound kindergarteners may surprise themselves by coloring outside of the lines.

If you are the kind of person who resists being taken over by emotion, you may find that Neptune arrives in the form of a flood of grief, silliness or longing. If you define realism as never taking a day off, you may find yourself booking a flight to Pago Pago on a whim. If your purchases are usually motivated by practical criteria, Neptune may subvert your best intentions with a spree of impulse spending.

But there is no reason to force Neptune to enter through the back door. When we realize what is trying to happen here, we can script it in ways that do not undermine our intentions. To the extent that we are able to stretch our sense of what constitutes purposeful activity, we will find any number of ways to accommodate Neptune creatively. When we infuse even mundane, quotidian acts with imagination we make them suitable to Neptune’s soulful purposes as well as Saturn’s more literal ones, and both planets are happy.

Conversely, we set ourselves up for misery unless we change our perspective: everyday life is likely to feel like meaningless drudgery otherwise. Under skies like these, we will be able to accept the workaday world only if we allow Neptune to inspire it.

And the opposition works both ways: Neptunian energies must be grounded by Saturn for the transit to work well. We need to take our formless impulses and give them form; as artists do who fix their imagery upon a canvas, and novelists who record their fantasies in print. Like healers whose compassionate hands have a physical effect on tense muscles, we must actively manifest feelings that usually reside only in the heart. We must take responsibility for our other-worldly longings and bring them into the here-and-now, as music-lovers do who show up at the symphony and exchange hard-earned cash for a ticket. We must find a place in the world of the concrete for the most elusive energies imaginable.

Like all oppositions, this one augurs revelations that are normally hidden deep within the recesses of a seemingly unbreachable gap. On June 25^th the transit will reach exactitude again, asking us to close the gap for the last time this cycle.

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Notes:

¹ See my April/07 column in DayKeeperJournal.com for a discussion of the Saturn-Neptune opposition in American society.