NEPTUNE GOES HOME TO PISCES IN FEBRUARY …. the effects may be too subtle for words but we will feel them ...

In February 2012 Neptune enters its own sign of Pisces. Neptune as a planet was first discovered in our solar system in 1846 and its position was postulated at first because it was obscured behind Uranus - the planet just before it. This obscurity or hidden position was held to be symptomatic of Neptune's veiled strength, its behind-the-scenes proclivities, its elusiveness and its formless, boundless and non-material nature. Neptune has to do with acts of illusion, and also illusion itself.

The sign it rules (Pisces) is key when it comes to the same kind of themes. If we live in a world of material illusion, then it begs the question of where the illusion starts and finishes. The question of what reality is in its basic nature is one of the big ones. Our world is increasingly made up of illusion or 'virtual reality' via computers, digital processes & other technology involved in making the unreal come to life. Will Neptune into Pisces carry the mystery of what reality is and is not to ultimate heights. Might it demonstrate for us or expose more of where the possibility of illusion can be taken ultimately. The laws of creation and the Causual Plane.

Pisces is noted for its dreamy quality, its deceptively deep nature. Although appearing often as a lighthearted and superficial type of energy it is actually enigmatic and given to dichotomy. Pisces Sun people are among the hardest to fathom and as the popular description has it, they are full of inner duality of direction and manner, like the two fish swimming in opposing direction in the glyph depicting their sign; they are either given to the mysteries of the universe or to trying to apply formless rules to the practical world in which they live. For this reason Pisces can be utterly creative, or very destructively negative. Often Pisces influence is less than practical and struggles with the need for logic, order and conformity.

In the general sense, since the extra Saturnine planets act like a vehicle for mankind as a whole and play a serious part in our collective evolution, the effects of Neptune/Pisces will really start to bite from March to May but will then back off as the planet retrogrades, and as 2013 comes in will take a serious hold on our psyche.

Since Neptune rules altered states of consciousness, the unconscious and comatose states, we can only hazard at what effects individually will be and where that will impact on the collective or society as a whole. It will take approximately thirteen years for Neptune to finish its journey through its own sign, but like all the slow moving outer planets it will thoroughly make its mark.

It will most probably test the tenets the Age of Pisces brought over the last 2,000 years and see if the legacy is worthy of having.

Neptune rules: anaesthesia, narcotics, addiction, memory, hypnotic states, mediumship, fears and phobias, loss of all kinds, the distant past, illusions, delusions, disappearances, idealism, magic acts, mystics, meditation, nebulous states, invisible factors, the unconscious and the ocean depth.... and probably umpteen other things we have for gotten about.

In Pisces, Neptune is at home, so Pisces people will feel that some (not all) of their favourite subjects and predispositions are ones that become key within society's thinking .... spirituality, the thorny subject of altered states of consciousness and yes, the big one .. death itself! They may not parade the fact but Pisces are quite often quietly confident that the transitional state between physical and non-physical is just that - a change of energy or vibration into something else. Pisces rules the twelfth house of the wheel, the other worldly and that which cannot be quantified or even properly construed.

More and more will be talked and learned of unconscious states and new dimensions over the next thirteen years, which will alter the way we treat death and the way it is viewed, in the clinical and the religious sense. Hopefully death might lose its sting.

There are two zodiac signs which historically concern themselves with the after-state (or death) more than other vibrations – Scorpio and Pisces. Both in differing ways. In an astrological convention once in the U.K. I remember listening to various Pisces Sun people of mixed ages talking about how they randomly and calmly visualised their own deaths and fantasised about their own funerals.

Whereas Scorpio is more fascinated in the clinical side of death and the modus operandi. Pisces, it could be said, loves the aesthetics while Scorpio loves the mechanics.

The very height of the Spiritual revolution and its thrust into mainstream society was the doing mainly of the Victorians. The Victorians loved all that stuff - seances, psychic investigations, exploring the occult etc. And the appearance of Neptune in the solar system was synonymous with it. Or was it the other way round? the fact that these sort of questions were being asked by a great deal of mankind necessitated the energy and therefore the appearance of Neptune! This is the kind of thing we can never rule out astrologically and cosmologically.

Quantum theory may now be the new religion but it is just as mysterious to laymen as the religions of old. Major difference being that it can be questioned and scorned without fear of reprisals, which wasn't the case in the days when religion dictated to both science and philosophy.

The effects of Pisces/Neptune are yet to be seen and felt. We can only make observations of the planet in its sign as the time and the influence move through. It might be too out of-this-world or sublime – which is the very nature of Pisces - that we actually do not understand it.

As well as virulent idealism Neptune rules fears or phobias, so maybe we will be made to take a different look at some of these, and maybe people will find new ways to deal with them.

Will we be less fearful under Neptune/Pisces or more fearful? We will have to examine the nature of fear itself perhaps, rather than the symptom or the object of the fear, as the next ten years or so elapses?

Below are some of the possible effects of Neptune by house within the birth chart:

1^st House: Impractical ideals or unreachable aims.

2^nd “ Predisposition to defrauding, obfuscating, or being prey to these things.

3^rd “ Loneliness, reclusiveness, fears of everyday living or denial of its importance.

4^th “ Lack of stable home surroundings, fear of being isolated.

5^th “ Idealism in love matters, romanticism, creative need to look back.

6^th “ lack of vocation, addiction to habits, loss of loyalty.

7^th “ Fear of commitment, lack caused by partnership.

8^th “ Money problems, instability within intimacy, deep fear of dying.

9^th “ Mysticism, loneliness away from origins.

10^th “ No stable career, creative endeavours for money, loss of goodwill

11^th “ Lifestyle gaps, associations that bring negative reputation.

12^th “ Mediumship, heightened intuition, isolation, unknown fears.

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Mars Major Transit through Virgo - the 8 month effect ...

Mars through Virgo loves revelations, exposing faults, loopholes and limitations.  Skeletons rattle in cupboards during this combination of energies & symbols.

The long transit of Mars through Virgo began in November last and continues until July 2012. When Mars does an extra long transit through any sign it means a thorough movement or purge of that sign - and the house it presides over.  A particular house in a personal birth chart shows an area of life (a compartment almost) but the transit has a mundane (or collective) effect too. The general or outer effect often impacts the personal situation in which someone finds themselves.

The transit takes so long because the planet retrogrades for a while mid-way through the eight month period and then goes straightforward again. Think of it like a telescopic light sweeping in an arc and then doubling back before going on to complete the arc, in order to double-check.

Virgo (mutable negative earth) is ethical, zealous and scrutinizing. While Mars is forceful, uncompromising and resolved.   People with Mars placed in Virgo in a natal chart are noted for being self-critical, driven to perfection and sometimes excessively over-anxious about detail.

The transit of Mars through this sign over that eight month period may not exactly be restful, but it will in the long run be revealing and probably quite cleansing or purifying. The movement can be likened to a JCB ploughing through land and churning it or turning it over.  Apply those traits described in a general sense to various life-scenarios and you have the rough idea of how everyone will feel about some area of their life. Bear in mind that even if you do not have planets in Virgo you will know others who do, and the effect on them can result in an effect on you via their circumstances.   In this way we are all linked.  In this way we are all part of a greater script.

Below are some of the effects of the long transit.  Keep in mind that these can be both personal and transpersonal. The mundane level (trans-personal) and the individual level (personal)......

Off the record audits. Close scrutiny of charitable causes. Demands for more explicit rules. Sudden surges to get ambitions off the ground. Ground excavation for interesting or intriguing reasons. Scrupulous declarations of high intent. Noble causes pursued. Vulnerable situations bringing attention. Austerity measures unveiled. Violations of modesty. Agricultural reform. Farming proposals. Changes in Maternity & mid-wifery legislation. Revolutionary gardening produce. Land reform bills. Hygiene issues. Cemetery & graveyard legislations. Rise in sexually transmitted diseases. Crusades for puritanical monitoring. Questioning of long term loyalty. Personal integrity tested to the limit. The first shall be last and the as shall be first. Boom in homegrown food. More businesses started from home.

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Success or failure in life may depend on how we learn to deal with disappointment ....

One of the most understated of emotions is ‘disappointment’ .... whoever you are and whatever you aspire to be there’s no getting away from the natural ebb and flow of personal fortune. Tensions and situations are winding us up, knocking us back or letting us down.  Ranging from mild discouragement to chronic soul-destroying disillusionment, it affects everyone from the cradle to the grave at various times, and our success or failure in life may depend on how we learn to read it and deal with it.

To understand early on what disappointment is and how to deal with it is to know that a) the world doesn’t revolve around us. And, b) not everything we think we want comes in the package we envisage. Only people who have weathered disappointment and immersed themselves in the aftermath and made something ‘else’ with the remnants are the true philosophers. They have probably understood that within their life script there is an unknown hand at work that is both rebel and tyrant and acts without the consent of the logical mind, but perhaps with the backing of the heart! and maybe at some unconscious level they knew exactly what they were doing all the time!

The often ignored territory around disappointment is ‘choice’. Sometimes we have to learn how to choose or simply how to choose again on something we thought we wanted. And sometimes we have to learn when not to choose at all, but to wait and see! If insight is missing or limited then so is choice. Choice comes and goes, or so it seems. Often its presence has not been obvious until it has passed. But if disappointment takes root in the soul as an accepted state of existence it may become apathy, which in turn becomes rigidity, which can then become despair with unknown origin.

Anticipation is linked to expectation which is close to desire and what is strongly felt as desire becomes an absolute rule of consciousness - even an obsession. (This is why mystics and aesthetics throughout the ages practised self control to the point of self denial - to understand the mastery of self). But the whole business of wanting things through to totally being unable to live without them is part of the human experience. And never has it been more prevalent than in today’s society - ‘delayed gratification’ is no longer a very fashionable mind-set.

Influencing the material world is one thing but controlling other areas of life where disappointment arrives in varying forms is something else entirely; a broken relationship! a bereavement! a business failure! These are occurrences that may or may not be soothed by a credit card spree or a holiday.  There are distractions which might or might not be viable substitutes for those kind of losses but overall, eventually, and in some way, the disappointment has to be dealt with. And by the time this happens we may have blown ‘disappointment’ up into something else.

The bigger and more expansive our access to life experience becomes these days the more important it is to let ourselves feel the subtler emotions Iike sadness or apprehension! There is a tendency we have to drag subtle feelings by the scruff and shape them into states like depression or anxiety, when they may actually have started with something as mild as disappointment or discontentment - which we refused to absorb or acknowledge - but we are liable to transform them into some massive upset or trauma.

Over-blowing feelings is as bad as not acknowledging them at all. The middle ground is both the goal and the key. Among some draconian cultures, feelings of disappointment are repressed or discouraged, whilst in the more indulgent of societies those same feelings may be bought off with alternative consolations and substitutes. It is only in the most enlightened of environments where we are actually taught to understand the balance between wanting and accepting lack, and perhaps re-appraising the whole matter. Meanwhile stressing over things we can’t have, or even over potential failures to acquire, is like the hair-shirt of past religious martyrs - if it isn’t done we may forget who we were when we got out of bed in the morning! Or incur the wrath of the invisible gods of beneficence!

Disappointment is in fact an anti-climax, a landing stage to other shores, a chance to re-trace steps and take a different route. If only we can gird our loins, grit our teeth, go back to the drawing-board and start again. Was the desire wrong? or was the planning just flawed? That is the pivotal part of the necessary post-mortem. Once we have dealt with that we can move on.


If disappointment is not properly addressed and absorbed, or is refused admittance, it can become the sort of frigid pining which breeds paralysis - a state where we cannot risk anything new for the fear of being let down and so we live in a perpetually nostalgic limbo. This is similar to once having sustained a painful injury and then forever protecting the affected part of the body against reoccurrence!


To experience too much disappointment without fighting back is to invite all sorts of later psychological-through-to-physical consequences. Conversely, to expect life to be free of disappointment is to remain unseasoned:  a sapling never grown into a tree, a bud never opening into a flower. If we don’t eat life then life eats us! The seasons have to take us and we have to let them. Otherwise we will never know who we really are!

The Uranus in Aries Process

Uranus through Aries is taking some situations and events around in a loop ....

It means a widening of an arc or a circle formed from March 2011 until April 2012 when it passes its peak point of the preceding twelve months and forges ahead.  It may feel like you’re going round again and again ..  but don’t despair, it's just deepening any existing understanding of new ground you may have made 

Uranus/Aries ...  the laws of attraction & a mighty leap of faith
In with the laws of attraction and to get where we’re intending to be there’s often the need of a massive leap of faith, resulting in action. This is what the planet Uranus is all about - pushing concepts, innovations and forward thinking matters to new ground,  regardless of consequences ... or so it seems ....

The saying ‘brave new world’ springs to mind when we’re talking of the movement of Uranus into Aries. And so does the cliché  'give me a break' - Probably because with Aries - the sign of things to the fore and bold in outline - there is liable to be a cutting edge somewhere within situations both individual and collective.

In June 2010 the first movement of Uranus into Aries (however brief) was inclined to cut through some of the tense situations set up by the Saturn/Pluto square of that year because Uranus would then be forming one angle of a T square involving the Saturn/Pluto aspect already in existence. Added to this is the fact that Jupiter was accompanying the first entrance of Uranus - the second and full entrance was in March 2011- and it means that the energy is enlightening, maybe dramatic, but certainly beneficial, by courtesy of Jupiter, if the circumstances are used in the right way.

The message at the June/July juncture was to get a good view of what you can positively do with the new horizontal possibilities.  At the very least that was a trailer or a forerunner of things to come, getting more solid or permanent in the spring of 2011.

Uranus in Pisces gave a deceptive effect to future changes in many ways; Pisces does not lend itself to the natural dynamic of Uranian energies without resistance. So the effects were fogged or fudged or subdued - even maybe driven undercover. In Aries they can be none of those things as Aries doesn’t trade with anything too subtle. Fire, cardinal and yang in nature, Aries is naturally overt, outgoing and forceful in energy.  The exact opposite of Pisces. Therefore one symbolic description of the changes might be that whatever was traveling incognito or out of sight now emerges to be seen and heard. Apply this to your own life circumstances, the collective as a whole and various situations you are aware of round about and you have the general idea.

These interjections or breaks obviously may occur in varying ways - as varying as there are people and situations - and will be subject to interpretation. It must be remembered that all astrology is subject to interpretation and that three people with similar charts experiencing identical planetary influences will express things in different ways, this is why we say the person 'stands before their chart’- meaning that the individual psychology, life situation or general mood can diffuse and colour the overall influence as a merging of those influences with the free will of the person takes place.

In a general sense the intervention of Uranus into Aries might be invasive, loud and totally ‘in your face’ .... It might be, but there again, it may not at first be felt that way.  The months after June/July 2010 when it retrograded back into Pisces until March 2011 could have seen any stark change or occurrence forgotten, reversed, or even diluted by familiarity to what is gradually taking shape, or at least becoming familiar by the spring of 2011 when it re-enters and takes up fuller residence in Aries. Therein lie the surprises - that certain things have been in attendance or jogging alongside all the while.

The natural cycle of Uranus through a sign is seven years. It is in fact the very epitome of the septimal laws (divine rule of seven). At one time there were seven planets visible to the naked eye, and the seven pillars of wisdom and seven rays aligning with the archetypes. Hence the seven stages of man, talked of in Shakespeare's plays. 

Planet Uranus is concerned only with breakthrough and transformation, that which is untried, avant garde or revolutionary, the downright anarchic and the mad.  Uranus loves change and transformation at any price and is not part of the peacemaking process afterwards.  That's for other more pacifying influences.

Aries as the first zodiac sign rules the head, the new and the prominent. It's rather transparent, but it will be diluted somewhat by other planetary effects as they occur over the next seven years of its transit through the sign. The direct and underlying message remains however; new cycles, reform and maybe a lot of revolution along the way as this comes about.

The effects of Uranus cannot sustain without the support and movement of other planetary influence, it is part of the integrated system we know as astrology.  It is both heartening and a little frightening, this combination of Aries/Uranus.  Take note all you Aries sun and Aries rising people - there will be a call to arms of some kind. A call to use your strengths and attributes towards the whole in some way, for better or for worse, although those born in the last two deconates of the sign will feel more of the effects as 2013 comes in.

Uranus hates stagnation and Aries loves to pioneer: the result is unavoidable progress!

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Neptune Changes the Face of Group Activity Subtly from Within ...

As Neptune sweeps between Aquarius & Pisces the changing use of Group Activity or the way we see the group is quite marked...

Okay, so the age of Aquarius is a lot about ‘the group’ and group action and the combined energies of those on the same wavelength within any group or collective.   But the other part of the Aquarian energy often overlooked is the radical sense of the individual and their autonomous need to become a law unto themselves.  Even to the point of eccentricity ....  the outcast, the loner, the solitary activist. 

The more popular slant on Aquarius in this New Age, so called, is that of alining our principles and thoughts and actions with those of others. It is thought sometimes that the strength of the group gives the focus and the energy to whatever objective motivates the group.
But as Neptune now leaves Aquarius after twelve or so years and heads for its own sign of Pisces we begin to see the fragmentation of ‘the group’ in various forms and the ‘regrouping’ of collective numbers in favour of the individual need to honour their inner world and give it pertinent energy in the outside world.  Individual Creativity. 

More and more we see this ... in popular forms of entertainment, sport,  and certain forms of spirituality.  We live in the age of the social entrepreneur.

Of course groups will still form but the group itself (in the future) can only be as tenable and necessary as the strength of each individual’s endeavour or belief allows it to be; the group will need to serve the individual and not the other way around.  Another way to view it is that the individual will becomes quite naturally equal to the collective will and unless the group supports the individual the individual cannot support the group.  It is evident then that the group can no longer carry individuals who are not alined with the group consciousness. And this puts a radical new twist on personal integrity within group behaviour.

The evidence of the current dissolution of groups-for-the-sake-of-groups is all around for anyone who cares to look.  And if it sounds like a shift to massively selfish behaviour, it may also be a way of highlighting the kind of sycophantic urge of some to draw from a group on false pretences or for hypocritical reasons other than the main consciousness or focus of that group. 

Neptune entering Pisces - by courtesy of it’s nebulous element - will naturally call into question the integrity of people within groups . In commerce, in families, in political factions and religious areas and so on.  Anywhere where there is a collective for the sake of an ideal or a main value.

It is easy to see how the fragmentation of society can take place when large planetary influences move.  None more so than Neptune moving from the Uranus ruled Aquarius into its own gentler but less transparent wavelength of Pisces.  Creating the dissolution of associations that have held sway for long periods of time.  Whether they are personal or non-personal collectives.

Politics follows the individual's philosophy on a larger and transpersonal scale - if those individuals go to vote. But in the end the strength will lie with what the individual actually does and is allowed to do because of where they find themselves placed.  The movement of Mars through Virgo - November 2011 to July 2012 - is set to instigate the sorting of values within factions or loyalties. 

Is group based on loyalty or is it based on something else!  This is the big political hot-potatoe at present, not necessarily for politicians themselves, but for voters or those interested in what makes politicians and governments tick.  And it merely follows on from the whole issue discussed here.  Conspiracy theories aside, the history of human evolution on earth is not based on anything so well documented to date as power, greed and the occasional quantum leap in understanding by the few.  That is changing.

Whether we distrust groups or not, there is a need to look to the power of our individual belief and focus  - and to that mysterious thing called the ‘law of attraction’ and the unconscious forces of faith. 
The unconscious has a collective too, as any Jungian well knows, and in the end it is what we believe and truly believe that moves our destiny forward.  Both as individuals and as individuals contributing to collectives or groups.


n.b. Neptune is currently retrograde in the last degrees of Aquarius. It will enter Pisces fully in February next year.

Mars Through Virgo - November 2011 to July 2012

Mars through Virgo loves revelations, exposing faults, loopholes and limitations.  Skeletons rattle in cupboards during this combination of energies & symbols.

The long transit of Mars through Virgo will begin next month and last until July next year 2012. When Mars does an extra long transit through any sign it means a thorough movement or purge of that sign - and the house it presides over.  A particular house in a personal birth chart shows an area of life (a compartment almost) but the transit has a mundane (or public) effect too. The general or outer effect often impacts the personal situation in which a person finds themselves.  

The transit takes so long because the planet retrogrades for a while mid-way through the eight month period and then goes straightforward again. Think of it like a telescopic light sweeping in an arc and then doubling back before going on to complete the arc, in order to double-check.

Virgo (mutable negative earth) is ethical, zealous and scrutinizing. While Mars is forceful, uncompromising and resolved.   People with Mars placed in Virgo in a natal chart are noted for being self-critical, driven to perfection and sometimes excessively over-anxious about detail.

The transit of Mars through this sign over that eight month period may not exactly be restful, but it will in the long run be revealing and probably quite cleansing or purifying. The movement can be likened to a JCB ploughing through land and churning it or turning it over Apply those traits described in a general sense to various life-scenarios and you have the rough idea of how everyone will feel about some area of their life. Bear in mind that even if you personally do not have planets in Virgo you will know others who do, and the effect on them can result in an effect on you via your circumstances.   In this way we are all linked.  In this way we are all part of a greater script.

Below are some of the effects of the long transit.  Bear in mind that these can be both personal and transpersonal. The mundane level (public) and the individual level (personal)......

Off the record audits. Close scrutiny of charitable causes. Demands for more explicit rules. Sudden surges to get ambitions off the ground. Ground excavation for interesting or intriguing reasons. Scrupulous declarations of high intent. Noble causes pursued. Vulnerable situations bringing attention. Austerity measures unveiled. Violations of modesty. Agricultural reform. Farming proposals. Changes in Maternity & mid-wifery legislation. Revolutionary gardening produce. Land reform bills. Hygiene issues. Cemetery & graveyard legislations. Rise in sexually transmitted diseases. Crusades for puritanical monitoring. Questioning of long term loyalty. Personal integrity tested to the limit. The first shall be last and the as shall be first. Boom in homegrown food. More businesses started from home.

More Metaphysics at http://www.tarot-online.net/sitemap.html

In Real time .... a question of personal purpose .....

Nothing happens for just one reason. To allow this to permeate the thinking, or simply to take it on board, is to see how diffuse time really is. And to understand it is to automatically make better use of time here in this dimension.  There is no effort involved; it is a mental shift only, but as the mental is creative it begins to shorten the length of development within certain issues and experiences.  In the area of problem solving for one thing, it becomes automatic that two or three minor problems get sorted within one big one.  Some people stumble on this information accidentally whilst others search to find it.  It has little to do with speed, or even with acuteness of vision, it has more to do with the idea of cause and effect and intrinsic or personal purpose.

A good example might be a family member needing attention or some other obligatory duty. This obligation fulfilled or catered to may be a way of preventing you from doing three other things, and those three other things being off the agenda might finally result in you doing only two of the other things.  And perhaps you then make a long term decision regarding the third eliminated thing.  Or maybe a decision regarding all three things together, consolidating or prioritizing through a different  agenda, but still a reshuffle diffusing results in time.

Results in time is a key: deadlines, sell-by dates; time decrements and that is the fact we tend to work with.  But is it right?

To take another generic example: someone gets on the wrong train and heads in the wrong direction and misses the estimated time of arrival at the other end, thus delaying the person picking them up, which in turn has a direct effect on the schedules and lives of a number of people connected with both the first and second persons mentioned   This then effects people connected with everyone concerned, either directly or indirectly, in ways that cannot possibly be known. It can be likened to so many ripples reverberating outwards from a central point in time. A point known variously by the people involved in or around the scenario described.  But there is never one central point, this is a variable depending on factors.

Nothing happens for just one reason.  Even very narrowed vision, thought and movement have ways of finding branch roads. And the branch roads often come upon us suddenly and unexpectedly when we’re least expecting them - and then we call it interference, disturbance or coincidence.   Nothing can occur alone, Nothing can happen randomly and nothing can happen from only one cause or lead to just one effect.
Of course, the ripples-in-a-pond-effect would support the free will of choice within multiple options.  If this were not so we could all be in perpetual repeats of the day before.  But most of us know that we are not; we choose, make mistakes, have regrets, re-choose, backtrack and try again. 

Nothing is unconnected, nothing is unsupported, nothing happens for only one reason.   Doesn’t that give us endless possibilities at all points! 
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