Neptune, the god of mists and waters, casts a dreamy sheen over the month of June. The planetary station on June 12^th marks his maximal impact.

As a pebble dropped into a pond creates concentric circles in space, the effects of a transit like this spread outwards in concentric circles of time. The couple of weeks before and after the 12^th are inflected with ripples of subtle feeling.

Mercury, too, makes a station, just a few hours before Neptune’s. Having retrograded down to early Gemini, Mercury will now start heading direct.

Good ol’ Mercury retrograde

In most astrology blogs, it’s the stations of Mercury that get the most press. This makes little sense when we consider that Mercury’s is the most frequently occurring of the retrograde cycles, and therefore theoretically the least life-altering. Although Mercury, like every planet, has an esoteric dimension (see this essay), it’s mostly associated with the more prosaic level of experience: walking, talking and texting.

In fact, maybe its very ordinariness is the reason we like to complain about Mercury retrograde. The glitches it’s supposed to cause are easy to recognize, and they hit us on the level of life we spend most of our time on: the everyday level.

We we take great umbrage at disruptions in our daily routine, such as having to make a detour on our drive to work, or running into a problem with our tech equipment. We imagine there’s something exceptional about these events, and we look around for something to blame them on.

Especially our miscommunications. We don’t like to think these arise from our own lack of awareness.⁽¹⁾

The soul

Neptune, as an outer planet, is more complex than Mercury. Its effects on our psyche are harder to pinpoint. They feel all-encompassing rather than particular, emotional rather than mental.

But Neptune is not, strictly speaking, an emotional planet. Not in the way Venus and the Moon are. It certainly feels as if it is, but that’s only because our feelings are more responsive to its messages than our thoughts are.

But personal feelings are not Neptune’s domain. It doesn’t much care about our personal selves. It’s interested in the soul.

This is one reason why Neptune transits have a reputation for being confusing, undermining and untrustworthy. They resist analysis. They appeal to a layer of our being that many modern people aren’t even sure exists.⁽²⁾

Kvetching about traffic feels more plausible.

Illusion

The fundamental law of Neptune is that everything is connected: we are all drops of water floating around in the same cosmic sea. When Neptune is strong, as it is during its tenure through Pisces (2012-25) and especially when stationing, it will find ways of reminding us that existence is a swarming dance of illusions.

These reminders will be precisely tailored for each of us. To the extent that Neptune’s teachings clash with our belief system, we’ll probably resist them. This is normal, but never a good idea; especially where the outer planets are concerned.

Resisting Neptune tends to trigger the least desirable aspects of illusion: self-delusion and/or deception by others.

Confused and Deflated

Neptune’s teaching is that everything in existence is inviolably linked to everything else. We all already know this, of course. We know it more deeply than we know anything else. But our belief system may be living in separation consciousness.

Neptune’s propensity for confusion arises from this disconnect. If our conception of reality cannot accommodate the principle of universal interconnectedness, the spiritual deepening that wants to happen will be lost on us. We’ll pick up the mood of the transit without the understanding.

We may simply feel confused and deflated, perhaps victimized by what feel like forces beyond our control. We may feel haunted by memories that don’t even seem connected to this lifetime.

Astrologers cannot say exactly how an unknown native will experience a given transit, because each of our minds creates our individual reality. How we channel Neptune depends utterly on how in tune we are with cosmic laws.

Under a station of the planet of illusion, a person may draw to herself an event that expresses deceit, or some other less-than-desirable version of illusion. This wouldn’t be the optimal use of Neptune, but it’d still be a teaching about illusion.

Ideally, we accommodate Neptunian Law respectfully, consciously and deliberately: through ritual, art, emotional cleansing, acts of compassion. It’s a time to honor the mystic within: the part of us who knows that this world of form, which seems so real, is really just a movie.

Reason vs. intuition

Pay attention to your intuitions in June, especially around the middle of the month. Psychic pick-up is poignant. The underlying commonality we feel with other living things is harder than ever to deny.

At the same time, our empirical thinking is at the top of its game, because Mercury is in Gemini.

Not only are Mercury and Neptune stationing back to back, but they are squaring each other, and in the signs of their rulership (this means that each is a perfect fit in that particular sign, like actors who are typecast). Mercury is in early Gemini, Neptune in early Pisces. Their collision is exact to the degree on June 23^rd, just after the solstice.

The two hemispheres of the brain are engaged in an active conversation. This gives us the ability to render the irrational rational: to work more closely with the fleeting pictures bubbling up from the imagination.

Right brain vs. left brain

The part of the psyche often called “the unconscious,” for lack of a better word, is up against the logical mind. The tension between them will be especially noticeable if the square aspects something in your natal chart.⁽³⁾

Here we are, awash in the oceanic mind, like drunks and addicts, artists and altruists. These are all governed by Neptune because they all seek escape from the ordinary. Our society labels some of these states as degraded and some sublime. But so long as it is more rarefied, more elusive, more subtle than wherever our mind is right now, Neptune approves of it.

Neptune’s search for transcendence may lead us into depression and lethargy, or romantic angst. It may plant in us a yearning to disappear temporarily into other worlds, as do writers of fiction; or into infatuation, as do lovers bewitched by their heart’s desire. We may be swept up in spiritual adoration, as are devotees of a guru.

Or we may immerse ourselves in the identity of another person, as actors do. Great impersonators typically have a strong natal Neptune.⁽⁴⁾

As far as Neptune is concerned, the other person being disappeared into might just as well be a perfectly ordinary one — as happens in the case of identity theft. Just so long as the person isn’t us.

The underlying phenomenon is the same. Something within us is motivated to unburden ourselves of our selves.

Notes

1 For a more thoughtful take on Mercury retrograde, see this essay by astrologer Frederick Woodruff.

2 For an in-depth discussion of Neptune in transit and in the natal chart, see my webinar.

3 This will be most obvious if the natal planet is between 4 and 10 degrees of the mutable signs: Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces.

4 Look at the double trine connecting Streep’s Neptune in the 3rd house (speech) to Mercury/Mars (deliberate, controlled self-expression) in Gemini (mimicry), sextile her Pluto (transformation) in the 1st house (personal appearance, demeanor).