The first time I tried to write this blog it disappeared. Typical Neptune.

I had been writing

it within another document and although the other piece remained, Neptune just
vanished. Similar experiences have happened with Neptune involved: a married client
talks about her ghost lover during a session, and my recording device on my computer
times out leaving us with no evidence of the discussion. Neptune absconds with time,
too, as if to prove that actions mark time, and that without actions time is made
irrelevant; many Neptune transits leave the person experiencing them with a Neptune-
induced amnesia people forget what they did for days, weeks and even years. Books
are started and half-finished, romances appear then disappear, houses are swept away
by floods There must be a special place in heaven for those still left wondering,
Whaaatt? by their Neptune transit. A Neptune Lost and Found, a place where people
can go and be reunited with lost objects, people, ideas, lives. I hope so.
The Neptune Square is a generational transit. It happens for all of us between the ages
40-42, for approximately a 2 year passage. The Neptune Square introduces itself with a
general malaise and fatigue, dis-enchantment if you will, with how things have panned
out so far. The timing of this makes sense. Your thirties are a busy time spent striving to
make goals and livelihoods happen. Most of us are building a career, relationship and
family and all of this takes so much energy, energy we can senselessly spend, and
often without stopping to pause or self-introspection, because we do have the energy
and determination to forge ahead.
The Neptune square marks a crisis in consciousness. The plans wed previously made,
ideas, ambitions that may have been designed years ago, are faltering. We area at a
crossroads, and an area of our life our career, marriage, health, finances, creativity-
feels at sea, adrift. We may feel, in mounting sea-waves of anxiety, that our life may no
longer actually fit the person were walking around being, and yet who are we? The
person we are today is a moving target, at best. I love how Steven Forrest captures this
intangible existential experience of self-hood when he says (to the AP class), I am
doing a really good impression of being Steven Forrest today, arent I? Yes, we think, I
am here, but who is the I? This self-construction may actually just be good theatre, a
dramatic creation. We may feel like we are actors in our own life, like everything has
both become too real and yet nothing is real. With Neptune, Nothing is as it seems. The
reference point for the I is changing, but its happening underwater so theres no
perspective on whats truly happening. There is a sense of being in a bubble or
aquarium, being removed from life.
Ive just begun my Neptune Square. My energy and interest, it sort of floats. The tether
to daily reality can feel thin, and when it does its easy to get sidetracked. Projects go on
hold. Sleeping and dreaming have taken on enormous importance. Routines, like
sticking to a daily schedule, feel too rigid, and goals that Im not able to be utterly
absorbed by and lose myself in completely, feel somehow contrived and false. But then
again, even if Im absorbed in a project or aspiration, the next day may find me feeling
empty and uninspired, unable to show up in totality. Enthusiasms and passions come on
strong, and then leave mysteriously, without a trace. I am feeling the typical direction-
less-ness and living with unknowns that accompanies this time, too. The only reliable
anchor throughout is the present moment, and the present moment refuses to be
pinned down to anything more than what is happening. As I re-read this paragraph, I
know this is the kind of stuff that strikes fear in the hearts most of us. After all, we live in
a society that is hellbent on productivity, that measures our worth and status by how
much we earn, contribute and produce.
Ive got a chronic illness, which is terrifying in its own right but because its my Neptune
Square Im wondering if Ive lost the better part of my health

forever. Neptune always creates heightened sense impressions and anxieties like the
moon but on steroids. I fear fading away, disappearing from society altogether,
becoming one of societys invisible ones, which Neptune also charges. Neptune rules
my Sixth House of Health, this fear is not entirely irrational, but it is tinged with the
heightened emotionalism, loss and grief of Neptune.
In Neptune, astrologer Dana Gerhardt says: I think of the countless thirty- and forty-
somethings who in the middle of their Neptune square*, lost their dreams, their taste for
life, their sense of who they are. Dana also echoes something I feel: how flimsy it
sounds to tell anyone experiencing a Neptune transit that this is a time for exploring
spirituality and creativity. Or, if someone is in the middle of a great loss, trying on the
idea that loss could be the revenge of a dishonored God? It doesnt hold water.
Contemplating Neptune, it doesnt help that we astrologers have an arsenal of
nightmarish Neptune stories, our own version of why do bad things happen to good
people?.
So what is the purpose and value of the Neptune Square? Rob Hand says, The
function of this transit is to make you reevaluate who you are, which at the moment you
do not know. That about sums it up. I believe, in a roundabout way, we will eventually
find that the Neptune Square wants to re-inspire our consciousness and yet we dont
have the map for getting there.
With Neptune around, we ask these questions: is our Soul inspired? Do we need
healing? Do we need ecstasy? We know that when Neptune comes around it is a time
to favor the experiential, mystical and impractical in life, and that Neptune cares little for
how much time or how reasonable an activity is. A friend spent his entire Neptune
Square listening to music and drinking, which only yielded a musical anthology a sort
of your life in music set of recordings. But, he recalls fondly, for the hundreds of hours
spent with nothing much to show, he spent them in sheer bliss. He has natal Neptune
conjunct Venus in his Sixth House.

Do we need more relaxation, healing and bliss? Another friend, during her Neptune
transit, after a period of feeling rudder-less and directionless, gravitated toward a
spiritual manifestation practice. Using Martha Becks book, Finding Your Own North
Star, she was instructed to write down ten dream activities if money (and salary) were
no object. She was then instructed to take one easy action toward Getting paid to have
spa treatments, one of hers. As one synchronicity led to another, before she knew it,
spa owners of prestigious spas were contacting her with free treatments in exchange for
a review of their services on her new spa review blog. She is a Virgo with Natal Neptune
in the Second House.
Im inspired by my friends stories. For both, the Neptune Square yielded blissful,
positive experiences, and for both it required them to surrender, down to the rabbit hole
and then see what kind of magic was waiting there. Yet even recounting their successes
tempts my wiley Ego -who is already licking Her clever little chops, trying to design a
way to make the Neptune Square work for Her. If we think we are running this show,
impressionable, susceptible, elusive Neptune will create false hope and false starts; if
we decide that our Neptune square is the perfect time to write that epic fantasy, play or
romance novel, Neptune just may be tempted to erase it. Maybe we can make the Gods
work for us, but only on their terms, and Neptunes are notoriously hard to pin down.
To that end, Neptune, is the planet of consciousness and perhaps this is where we
finally get the answers we seek. The answers we look for in books, from astrologers and
psychics, often prove as elusive as our own self-perception. The fact of the matter is,
we are not yet who we are to become, just as the seed doesnt know whether it will
grow into a tree or a flower, we will probably not understand what our Neptune Square
has delivered into our life until our consciousness has flowered enough to contain that
understanding. Till then, we can align our intention for vision with Neptunes desire to
enlighten us. Then we can wait and see.