Astrological Paradigms

The social construction of the meaning of Neptune

The social construction of the meaning of Neptune
by Juan Antonio Revilla

I. Introduction

Many of the usual astrological meanings of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto developed by european and american astrologers become useless in very poor, ex-colonial countries because the reality with which individuals must cope daily is very different from that of the astrologer, and often represents dimensions of experience that are unknown to typical ethnocentric astrologers overseas who live under a very different set of cultural codes. The differences are more of emphasis and values, not necessarily that the traditional views are "wrong", though often they are inadequate or meaningless.

In the case of Uranus –for example– consider the following quote regarding a community of australian aborigens:
“This essentially spiritual basis of life, while denying people their capacity for independent creativity, does not deny them their individuality. Instead, it simply removes creativity as a criterion for individual social status or worth. The measure of man becomes a continuing willingness to follow the founding design, to submit to… a sacred purpose. In this way, humanity reaps the benefit of reciprocity, in the form of continued fertility of living things and the maintenance of a long term ecological and social status quo.” (ref.: p.15 “The Mardudjara Aborigenes, Living the Dream in Australia’s Desert”, Robert Tonkinson, 1978).
In this context, Uranus individual liberties and social change, when imposed from outside, has condemned many traditional communities to disintegration, starvation, or extinction. When the traditional social structure has been destroyed in the name of progress, religion often becomes a unifying force that allows communities to maintain a sense of identity, and it is natural to see the emergence of extremist religious groups as the only alternative to preserve spiritual integrity.

Astrologers tend to interpret Neptune (deception, confusion, spirituality, etc) in isolation of the economical, political, and ideological forces that the person is trying to cope with, or escape from. Neptunian entanglements based on private fantasies, unrealistic expectations, projections of guilt, messianic feelings and the like can be explained as an inadequate or perverse relationship of the individual with the social and cultural compulsions that either overwhelm him or elude his consciousness.

These conventional ways of seeing Neptune ignore the involvement of this planet with abstraction, economics, and political and cultural issues –unconscious or not– found at the heart of its focality. What is usually described is the consequence of a very low social conscience characteristic of certain cultural and economic strata. Neptune is the planet that brings to light these socio-economic differences.

In natal charts or by transit Neptune shows how a person “opens up” and is exposed to alien cultural or socio-economic realities, which can be for very simple causes like getting emotionally involved with people who are not part of the familiar world, i.e., they belong to other social class, culture, religion, or race. It is Neptune that traces how we deal with cultural diversity and relativism or how we refuse to deal with it and take refuge in religious, scientific, academic, or “pop” ideologies and cults.

Neptune is prominent in cases where the person must deal with those living in marginality, where social and economic injustice and exploitation tends to disintegrate people’s personal lives. We can deal with it professionally, we can turn our face and ignore it, or can be a victim of it. Normally there is absolutely nothing having to do with blurred thinking or mystical or artistic tendencies. What we see is the result of economics, culture, and politics.

Please keep in mind that I'm not saying that the usual manifestations (spirituality, sublimity, glamour, make-believe, surrender, acceptance, betrayal, etc) are not there. But I say that such a way of seeing Neptune is inadequate and incomplete, the manifestation of a naive and deceptive perspective of life which is very neptunian itself, particular of a certain ideology of "eyes wide shot" that is exported and sold as "reality" to the rest of the world in multiple ways.

This essay discusses how the conventional astrological meaning of Neptune was created or established by the astrological community. It is an attempt to answer two questions: 1-) How was the historical, political, social, cultural, economic process of the slow formation of the meaning of Neptune after its discovery in 1846? and 2-) Why this vital question has not been researched or given priority among today’s astrological or academic researchers?

(end of the Introduction or 1st section)

The social construction of the meaning of Neptune
by Juan Antonio Revilla
(cont.)

II. the Social Science perspective

The history of how Neptune acquired its present meaning is traced by Francis E. Poletti in a PhD dissertation: “The Neptune Awakening, An Archetypal Interpretation of the Cultural Trends in the XIXth Century” (2012). Chapter II examines the references to Neptune in the astrological literature of the time and concludes that the final empirical consensus about the meaning was reached in the late 1890’s and early 1900’s, mainly through the work of Alan Leo and Sepharial.

But nothing happens in a vacuum. We have to add a crucial fact: they were theosophists living near the end of the Victorian Era. Neptune was discovered during a time of great british and french colonial expansion, fed by the brutal exploitation of the colonies and the doctrine of european superiority. This means that the conventional meaning of Neptune was developed by an astrological culture that was the result of a western, capitalist, individualistic, protestant ideology that made possible the expansion of colonialism, romanticism, and spiritualism, but also of hard science and materialism.

Neptune often shows –at the world or individual level– the exploitation and alienation of the poor, the self-justifying manipulative and deceptive ideology of imperialism –something nobody would complain to Alan Leo or Sepharial for being ignorant or silent about all their lives. The exclusion of the sociological aspects of Neptune was a reflection of their own taken for granted, cultural “neptunian” attitudes or private choices converging in the theosophical ideology itself. Refusing –consciously or unconsciously– to include in their lives an awareness of the long history of british colonial exploitation of India –where theosophy originated and later had its headquarters– they effectively erased that socio-economic dimension out of the meaning of Neptune, which was right at their front door but remained invisible, it was not part of their mental world. Their interpretation reproduced the ideologies in which they lived, which excluded socio-cultural matters and “hard” materialistic science.

We gain more perspective on these omissions when we compare them to the outspoken activism of Annie Besant, who became the president of the Theosophical Society in India in 1907. She had a very strong Uranus focus in her chart (ADB-A) in contrast to Neptune which is more passive and receptive, in concordance with the attitude of Leo and Sepharial in their books. The alienation and exploitation work both ways: the british collectively alienate and exploit India, while Leo and Sepharial alienate themselves from the science and society of their time that rejected their theosophical and astrological creeds (Leo was prosecuted for “telling fortune”), while facing their own exploitation in the hands of theosophical leaders like C.W. Leadbeater and A. Besant (Krishnamurti messiah, Leadbeater scandals and pseudo-clairvoyance). The result of their silence or lack of social awareness was a neptunian or “fringe” way of seeing Neptune that reproduced the place of astrology in the larger society of their time: an un-formity, a fog, that prevail to this day (more of this in the next section).

The liquid, invisible, and “beyond” nature of Neptune doesn’t necessarily means spiritual:

“Of all tangible things, money is probably the most spiritual or social, since it is the most generalized or universal medium of community experience” (Marc Jones in “Astrology How and Why It Works”).

Abstraction and interpretation of all kinds of social and historical realities are also physical intangibles that transcend the individual. Neptune itself was discovered by mathematics alone, which together with ideology and culture are larger than the individual and are invisible, but they practically rule the way we see the world and think. Society itself is larger than the individual. Hence a strong Neptune often indicates a vocation for working from an analytical and critical social perspective very far from the vulgar (and as we shall see, lunar) meanings of Neptune such as blurred thinking, deception, mysticism, and the like.

If we are interested in the perspective that social sciences can provide to understand how Neptune acquired its present meaning we need to consider the following questions:

Who was an astrologer in the second half of the 19th Century?
Who were their favorite or preferred authors?
What were the subjects most likely to be found in their home library?
What degree of formal education did they have?
What was their relationship to Science?
What kind of people was most likely to constitute the population of case studies they used in the process of construction of the meaning of Neptune?
Did they share a certain number of common traits among themselves?
What was their status in society and how this status influenced the way they interpreted the things they observed?
Did they understand the concept of cultural and historical relativity?
Was their astrological practice through life circumscribed to one specific cultural niche?
What was their attitude toward and their knowledge of other cultures?
Who were their clients?
On what sample of the population were they most likely to base their astrological experience and observations of the astrological action of Neptune?
What sample of the population were they most likely to never come in contact with?

This above doesn’t mean that the present astrological meaning of Neptune addressed by Poletti was not based on careful observation, or that it is “wrong”: it means that it was and is a social “construct”, a slow process of social construction. How did this process come about?

NOTE: Francis Poletti’s thesis uses historical events concurrent with the time of Neptune’s discovery but does it exclusively, ignoring other methodological approaches such as examining the role of Neptune in birth charts (see the list of example cases in the next section). The charts where Neptune is prominent or focal would produce simple astrological rules which are then used to identify social or historical trends. In the absence of this control, the selection and interpretation of trends reproduces the author’s bias or pre-established notions. For example, the role of Neptune in XIXth century natural sciences was omitted from the text, so was the development of historical materialism, both of which continue to have a profound cultural influence to this day. An examination of the progress of materialism in the XIXth Century would have shown, using the same methodology, that Neptune rules both idealism and materialism. The point is: Neptune IS NOT idealism or romanticism but ideologies and social movements in general, and this is the clue to understand what Marc Edmund Jones says about it. Not surprisingly, the name “Dane Rudhyar” appears 33 times in the text, while Marc Jones appears zero times. Rudhyar’s “The Astrology of Personality”, published in 1936, is carefully considered, while Jones’ mimeographed lessons issued around 1930 that were well-known to Rudhyar, are ignored.

(end of section II)

The social construction of the meaning of Neptune
by Juan Antonio Revilla
(cont.)

III. working with astrological examples

Individual examples of a very focal Neptune among hardcore scientists and thinkers abound. The following list is not unbiased, the cases were chosen specifically because they challenge or question the conventional meaning of Neptune. The sketch in quotation marks is from the Britannica or Wikipedia. UT 12h is used unless otherwise noted. ADB = Astrodatabank (online). The solar conjunction “seeds” or “incarnates” or “empowers”. The solar opposition “emerges”, “reveals” or “confronts”. The Moon “entangles” and “ties”. The square “resolves” or “triggers”. Mercury rationalizes, elaborates, interprets…

(1)
John Stuart Mill (b.May 20, 1806):
Sun = 28,44 Tau
Neptune = 28,58 Sco r
“Philosopher, economist, and exponent of Utilitarianism, which he tended to humanize and infuse with an element of Idealism”

(2)
Charles Lyell (b.Nov 14, 1797):
Mercury = 10,51 Sco
Neptune = 10,54 Sco
“Lyell’s achievements laid the foundations for evolutionary biology as well as for an understanding of the Earth’s development”

(3)
Georg W.F. Hegel (b.Aug.27 1770)
Neptune = 11,15 Vir
Mercury = 13,56 Vir
“One of the great modern creators of a philosophical system that influenced the development of existentialism, Marxism, positivism, and analytical philosophy”.

(4)
Neil Armstrong (b.Aug.5 1930 ADB-AA):
Mercury = 1,50 Vir
Neptune = 2,31 Vir
aeronautical engineer, pilot, astronaut. First man on the Moon.

(5)
J. J. Bachofen (b.Dec 22 1815)
Mercury = 18,21 Sag
Neptune = 20,01 Sag
“Swiss jurist and early anthropological writer regarded as a major contributor to the development of modern social anthropology”

(6)
Louis Pasteur (b.Dec 27 1822 ADB-AA)
Mercury = 0,45 Cap
Sun = 4,49 Cap
Neptune 4,57 Cap
“chemist and microbiologist one of the most important founders of medical microbiology. Pasteur’s contributions to science, technology, and medicine are nearly without precedent.

(7)
José Ortega y Gasset (b.May 9 1883)
Sun = 18,29 Tau
Neptune = 18,31 Tau
“philosopher and humanist who greatly influenced the cultural and literary renaissance of Spain in the 20th century”

(8)
Miguel de Unamuno (b.Sep. 29 1864 ADB-AA)
Sun = 6,23 Lib
Neptune = 6,58 Ari r
“educator, philosopher, and author whose essays had considerable influence in early 20th-century Spain”

(9)
Simone de Beauvoir (b.Jan 9 1908 ADB-AA)
Sun = 17,31 Cap
Mercury = 14,16 Cap
Neptune = 13,22 Can
“a member of the intellectual fellowship of philosopher-writers who have given a literary transcription to the themes of existentialism.”

(10)
Georges Cuvier (b.Aug 23 1769 ADB-AA)
Asc = 17,08 Leo
Mercury = 19,59 Leo
Sun = 0,11 Vir (1st house)
Neptune = 8,59 Vir (1st house)
Mercury/Neptune midpoint = 29,29 Leo, 0.42′ from the Sun
“zoologist and statesman, established the sciences of comparative anatomy and paleontology.”

(11)
Richard Leakey (b.Dec 19 1944 ADB-C “early morning hours”)
Mercury = 6,14 Cap
Neptune = 6,19 Lib
“anthropologist, conservationist, and political figure, a member of the Leakey family of scholars… was responsible for extensive fossil finds related to human evolution.”

(12)
Dian Fossey (b.Jan 16 1932 ADB-AA)
Mercury = 2,43 Cap
Moon = 5,34 Tau
Neptune = 7,37 Vir
grand trine with collection of light = Mercury + 2.51′ = Moon + 2.04′ = Neptune
Mercury/Neptune leading and receiving planets of locomotive
“American zoologist who became the world’s leading authority on the mountain gorilla”. Author of “Gorillas in The Mist” (1983).
death Sun = 5,03 Cap (approx.)
death Neptune = 3,24 Cap

(13)
Alexis Carrel (b.Jun 28 1873 ADB-AA)
Mercury = 27,24 Can
Neptune 28,17 Ari
French surgeon, sociologist, and biologist. “Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912 for pioneering vascular suturing techniques… coinvented the first perfusion pump opening the way to organ transplantation… was a pioneer in transplantology and thoracic surgery… known for his leading role in implementing eugenic policies in Vichy France… ” (Wiki)… “His book ‘Man, the Unknown’ (1935) expounded many of his religious and social ideas.”

(14)
Erich Maria Remarque (b.Jun 22 1898 ADB-AA)
Mercury = 22,15 Gem
Neptune = 22,36 Gem
“novelist chiefly remembered for ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’. The novel’s events are those in the daily routine of soldiers who seem to have no past or future apart from their life in the trenches. Its title, the language of routine communiqués, is typical of its cool, terse style, which records the daily horrors of war in laconic understatement. Its casual amorality was in shocking contrast to patriotic rhetoric.

(15)
Jane Austen (b.16 Dec 1775 ADB-C before midnight)
Sun = 24,57 Sag (approx.)
Neptune = 24,53 Vir
“realistic treatment of unremarkable people in the unremarkable situations of everyday life… recreated in her novels the comedy of manners of middle-class life in the England of her time… her concentration upon character and personality and upon the tensions between her heroines and their society… the wit, realism, and timelessness of her prose… her shrewd, amused sympathy… lay bare the tragicomedy of existence.”

(16)
Elvin Hatch (b.Sep 20 1937)
Mercury = 16,09 Vir
Neptune = 19,01 Vir
a cultural relativist and anthropological theorist and historian, my professor of anthropology at U.C. Sta Barbara. His classes were so good that he inspired me to major in Anthropology… to no avail, I never got rid of my obsession with Astrology!

In the introduction to the dissertation, Francis Poletti provides a short list of “interrelated themes and qualities evident in both the lives of individuals and the larger patterns of human culture and history” that describe the alleged neptunian archetype:

  1-  a heightened artistic, musical, and creative imagination;
  2-  an attunement to aesthetics, beauty, refinement, and glamor;
  3-  an interest in imagery, myth, symbolism, and poetry;
  4-  an orientation toward idealism and utopian hopes for a better world;
  5-  a fascination with mystical, esoteric, Platonic, transcendent, and idealist philosophies;
  6-  a heightened interior sensibility and awareness of psychological subtleties;
  7-  an empathic and compassionate sensitivity toward the suffering of others;
  8-  an openness to non-ordinary states of consciousness, such as dreams and visions;
  9-  a yearning to transcend the limits of one’s separate ego-boundaries in order to merge with another person, a larger collective identity, the natural world, or the divine source itself.

In the above list of 16 examples, how many fit directly and unambiguously into any of these categories?

  category 1 = none of the above
  category 2 = none of the above
  category 3 = none of the above
  category 4 = none of the above
  category 5 = none of the above
  category 6 = Jane Austen
  category 7 = Dian Fossey the suffering of gorillas, Leakey conservationism
  category 8 = none of the above
  category 9 = Dian Fossey merging with gorillas, Leakey conservationism

Only 3 of the 16 example cases fit any of the 9 categories that allegedly define the conventional role of Neptune in history or in birth charts. They show that there is something essential missing in the traditional astrological meaning of Neptune, and the reason for this miss is a collective trait or series of traits that characterize astrological practice and astrologers themselves. This trait is itself very neptunian, so astrologers are blind to it.

The fact that an inadequate, incomplete definition of Neptune established at the end of the victorian era is still dominant today shows that a-) astrologers constitute a subculture or niche with specific values, beliefs, and psychological traits that has not changed much since the times of Alan Leo and Sepharial, b-) this subculture has determined the process of construction of the meaning of Neptune, and c-) this conventional meaning is a reflection of the astrologers themselves and it is not yet understood or formed, it is still an absence, or a flux.

The neglect of the social or group perspective in the conventional meaning of Neptune in modern Astrology is the reflection of the bondage to a community at large that considers Astrology a pseudoscience or a superstition and condemns astrologers to live in the fringes of society, practicing a seriously undervalued and misunderstood profession. Living at the edge of normality, astrologers do not see the larger social or group perspective that controls their lives, or they have not developed the intellectual, analytical tools offered by formal education and academia; their practice has not a solid philosophical foundation in the modern world, and they are usually grouped with fortune-tellers so very few outside their cultural niche will understand what they actually do for a living. Socially speaking, astrologers are overwhelmed by Neptune, and are victims of the professional choice they made and the conscious or unconsciouss motivations and obvious low social self-esteem that lead them to that choice.

If we today had the capacity to see what a generation of british and american astrologers around Alan Leo and Sepharial could not see or neglected more than a century ago, we could produce a more empirical preliminary list of well-defined Neptune traits that incorporate the social perspective and can account directly for the 16 example cases above. Assigning each example to the different themes can be a little subjective at times but it is enough to distinguish some clear trends:

The dream of one man is the lunch of another… or
“one man’s dream is another man’s lunch”

social or cultural issues (1)(3)(5)(9)(13)(15)(16)
impersonal, evolutionary, collective perspective (1)(2)(3)(6)(7)(10)(11)(16)
reconstruction of remote past: geology, archaeology, paleontology (2)(5)(10)(11)
mathematics, hard science, high abstraction, philosophy (3)(6)(7)(8)
strangeness, indefiniteness, otherness (12)(16)
dissolution of cultural or moral boundaries and prejudices (9)(15)
psychological or economic bondage, victimization, exploitation (9)(14)
acute responsibility to alleviate human or animal suffering (6)(12)(13)
alienation, existential angst (8)(9)(14)
acceptance, surrender, renunciation, sacrifice, loss (4)(12)(14)
compulsive elimination of self-interest (4)(13)(14)

NOTE: some of the characteristics of astrologers as a cultural group, and the problems associated with them, were discussed by Stephen Arroyo 40 years ago in his book “The Practice and Profession of Astrology” (1984).

(end of section III)

The social construction of the meaning of Neptune
by Juan Antonio Revilla
(cont.)

IV. The loss of lunar symbolism

 The case of Dian Fossey's relationship with gorillas is different from the other 15 cases because it is the only one that includes the Moon in the definition of Neptune's focality. This is why it appears covered by category 9, ilustrating the tendency to confuse the symbolism of the Moon with that of Neptune. Neptune surrenders and disciplines the ego, but it is impersonal, collective, sophisticated, distant and colder when considered by itself, pushing through a process of socialization or spiritualization that is final and cosmic. It is the Moon that merges with other beings through an intensification of feelings that makes the Moon liquid and striving to assume the form of other beings.

Alan Leo in “The Art of Synthesis” (3rd edition 1912, reprinted 1978) was careful to point out the misty and otherworldly aspects of lunar symbolism. When describing the Moon from the point of view of consciousness (p.7) among other things he mentions “receptivity, imagination, impressionability, changeableness, some kinds of psychic faculty, and mediumship.” In the chapter dedicated to the Moon (p.50) we read:
“The Moon has also a great influence over such matters as spiritualism, mediumship, dreaming, and psychical investigations and experiences generally; and therefore to the list of the occupations must be added those arising out of these affairs: mediums, mesmeric subjects, crystal gazers, untrained seers of various kinds, etc.”
But unfortunately, if the lack of a social perspective of Neptune is a reality that evidences the status of Astrology as a profession, the modern confusion between the symbolism of the Moon and that of Neptune seems to be its endemic consequence. In the appendix to Poletti’s dissertation a full list is given of up to 73 universally consensual neptunian themes that are considered in the text, 35 of which correspond to traditional lunar symbolism, while the remaining 38 are social themes that can be accommodated into the 12 empirical categories described above (or a slight modification of them). The fact that half of the themes belong to the traditional sphere of the Moon seems to indicate that there has been a change in the symbolism, a shift from the Moon to Neptune.

The use of the word “mystic” with regards to Neptune, popularized by Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite “The Planets” (composed 1914-17 and performed in 2018), shows the historical environment in which the image of “the mystic” was tied to Neptune, in oblivion of the traditional association of mysticism with the Moon. If we qualify the “lunar mystic” in contrast to the “neptunian mystic” we could get a glimpse of what Neptune is bringing to the table, because the two types of mysticism are very different. Apparently, “the mystic” was simply displaced from the Moon to Neptune and the differentiation was never made. Since the meaning of Neptune is not conceived as a social construction but as “a given”, an atemporal archetype, it didn’t matter that the symbolism was duplicating that of the Moon in violaton of the principle of “orbital domain” on which astrological symbolism is based.

Two of the more frequent attributions of Neptune today are a direct result of using mythology as a source of astrological meaning: the sea, the oceans, derived into “the waters of the uncoscious” and from the unconscious derived psychism and sonambulistic phenomena. This thinking in terms of what the mythological name suggests, together with the characteristics of the zodiacal sign of Pisces to which Neptune is tied, have apparently been major contributors in the construction of Neptune’s meaning by astrologers, even though mythology doesn’t seem to have had the same weight (or didn’t have any weight at all) in the case of Uranus.

The methodological problem that results from this role played by sign rulership and by mythology in the formation of the meaning of Neptune and Pluto is described here. (NOTE: here goes the link to “Psychological Astrology and Jungianism, a critical view”)

Both the waters of the ocean as well as the nocturnal world of dreams and illusions have been ruled by the Moon since ancient times and transcend the field of Astrology. The Moon represents an actual, immediate sensuous experience of (1) the pull over the mostly water content of our body that wants us to defy gravity and leave the body and the earth, (2) the mystery and power of the big waters outside in the open ocean, and (3) the world of the night and all its symbols. The fact that this direct experience of the Moon has been “psychologized” or conceptualized as manifestations of “the unconscious” is the result of a historical trend clearly related to the discovery of Neptune and the history of psychoanalysis, but it is the lack of a group perspective among astrologers as a subculture that has resulted in defining Neptune in purely lunar terms.

The Neptune appropriation of traditional lunar symbolism is a social phenomenon that incorporates fundamental changes of meaning: the deep oceanic waters are now a symbol of the freudian or jungian unconscious, and the figure of the mystic, the artist, etc. appear now marginalized, their status in society has changed. In the past, before the industrial and scientific revolutions, before urbanization, atavistic clairvoyance or “second sight” and belief in fairies or spirits was a common phenomenon, it was “normal”, like the work of the “mathematician” or astrologer; today their place in society is very different, they are not “scientific” and are not taken seriously by the establishment. Now they are neptunian figures.

What is the difference between the lunar unconscious of yore and the neptunian unconscious? Same phenomena but different meaning? Or the meaning is the same and what we witness is sloppy thinking? Are the waters of the Moon and the waters of Neptune exactly the same? Has the discovery of Neptune (and of the whole trans-neptunian world today) re-defined forever the astrological meaning of the Moon? Have we deprived the Moon of its magical allure or its oceanic depths? Is the displacement of meaning from the Moon to Neptune irreversible? Is it universal? Is it necessary? Is the tuning to the waxing and waning of the moon an irrelevant vestige of the past?

In the book “Your Personality and the Planets” (1980) Michel Gauquelin provides an extended description of the lunar personality or “type”. She uses a statistical method based on content analysis of texts and on a concept of angularity somewhat similar to the traditional doctrine of “planets in the angles”. Her detailed description based on a list of character traits allows us to illustrate how many psychological characteristics of the Moon are today ascribed to Neptune. Of the Gauquelin list of 77 traits about 30 are today mentioned often in descriptions of the neptunian personality: charitable, confused, devoted, disorderly, futile, humane, prone to illusions, imaginative, inexact, indecisive, influenced easily, malleable, naïve, poetic, sensitive, sensitive to others, understanding, dissipated, etc.

This displacement of meaning is a contemporary cultural phenomenon. When in medieval times the Moon was described as the Queen of the Night, it ruled the world of dreams, imagination, the supernatural, but now she is an astrological planet like the others, defined by convenience, conventions and abstractions, normally deprived of its primal preeminence as a luminary, and the consequences of this are symbolic incoherence, confusion, and superficiality; as if clinging to the “loony” magical, irrational, popular, socially oblivious construct of Neptune’s present-day meaning were the result of a basic lunar psychological need or hunger that is not being satisfied.

NOTE: The more direct and primary experience of the Queen of the Night can be seen today being formed or codified around the true or osculating Black Moon-lunar apogee.

(end of section IV)

The social construction of the meaning of Neptune
by Juan Antonio Revilla
(cont.)

V. Marc E. Jones and Dane Rudhyar

When faced with the task of finding the astrological meaning of a newly discovered planet, astrologers employ many different resources, but there are 4 main methodologies that are more consistently used and accepted:

  a- free association based on the myth that corresponds to the object's name
  b- methodical observation and interpretation of cases where the planet is focal
  c- analysis of world events or processes concurrent with the date of discovery
  d- inferences based on the planet's orbital domain, i.e. its orbital symbolism

These 4 methodological approaches have more weight than all others and can be called “canonical”. They complement each other but astrologers tend to employ one approach and ignore the others, and there is a tendency today to rely too much or exclusively on mythology (method “a”). Marc E. Jones –the great codifier of 20th Century Astrology– essentially ignores mythology and the main bulk of his explanation of planetary symbolism is based on orbital metaphors (method “d”).

His most elaborate and concise exposition of Neptune’s meaning is found in one of his early books, “Astrology, How and Why it Works” (1945). It can be summarized and simplified in the form of 25 propositions divided in 3 categories: neutral or statement of principle, positive, and negative:

neutral:

1- the greatest necessity to do what the group as a whole wishes him to do
2- extreme of cooperation or allegiance is demanded of him by others.
3- required relations to the new and interdependent culture,
4- bondage to necessities larger than his comprehension
5- strength dissipated by the psychological drag of a community organization.
6- social sensibilities reassured or confused below the level of consciousness
7- the continual demands of overwhelming realities about him
8- the personality finds itself under its obligation to alien ways of action.
9- required to make voluntary contribution to the current community vision

positive:

10- it disciplines him constantly, to make him creatively aware of group values
11- things may seem inconsequential and unreal because of their remoteness.
12- an adequate or creative interest in the intricacies of community organization
13- awaken to the unfolding potentials of his own intricate constitution
14- the skills to make an enduring contribution to his day and age
15- higher type of group intuition, social insight or prophetic capacity
16- express the race destiny in some measure
17- capitalize spectacularly upon his place in the scheme of things.

negative:

18- self-enslavement when an individual’s general social interest is deficient
19- unsocial perversions instead of an enlargement of self-function.
20- artificial compensations in the form of drugs or other facilities of modern life
21- substitutions may be twisted into a false service and final betrayal of self.
22- social despair, cannot rise to the full significance of things in larger society
23- apt to become anarchist if not mentally unbalanced
24- destructive tendency to resist rather than utilize the compulsions upon him.
25- tilts against windmills, and becomes a voice of malcontent in every situation

Where did all this come from? How did it take shape? How was this way of seeing Neptune formed? The answer is: most of it stems from the orbital metaphors astrological paradigm. (NOTE: A full, complete examination of the role of orbital symbolism in Astrology is in preparation).

Orbital symbolism (orbital metaphors, orbital paradigm) is based on the idea of the solar system as a structure where the meaning of one part becomes clear only when seen in relationship to the other parts. The best illustration of this principle is Uranus, since it is easy to demonstrate that all its astrological characteristics stem from the fact that it breaks the ancient order signified by Saturn, opening the door to the new and emphasizing individuality against tradition. These characteristics are based mainly on the position of its orbit, one step beyond Saturn.

Orbits do not provide the meaning of an astronomical object “a priori”, but they provide the framework and the limits in which this meaning is constructed as a result of empirical, cumulative observations over time (methods “b” and “c”). The elaborate meaning given to Neptune by Marc Jones was very consistent from his first books. Essentially, with few exceptions, it has never been assimilated by the astrological community. It is part of his understanding of Uranus-Neptune-Pluto as “conditioned capacity for response to community values and group objectives”, which has a foundation on the orbital paradigm

A quick examination of Jones messy mimeographed material written before his books, from ca.1930-1933, shows heavy use of the orbital paradigm to explain the meaning of Uranus and Neptune. A dialog is established between Uranus and Saturn which becomes phase 1 of an evolutionary cosmic or social process, and between Uranus and Neptune, which becomes phase 2 of the process. Uranus is intensification, Neptune is surrender and reduction, leading the way to cosmic or social consciousness.

In the section titled “directional astrology” he writes: “Neptune is the planet of living ‘on beyond’ death, or living above the things which are above death. Where it is active in the chart (for it is active in few charts!) and to the degree it is active in the chart, it is the planet of initiation.” – This phrase takes us back to theosophy and to Dane Rudhyar, who a few years later published “The Astrology of Personality” (1936) making use of the same approach based on orbital symbolism that Jones used, but from a different philosophical standpoint. Rudhyar’s elaborate interpretation of the orbital paradigm of Neptune lacks a truly social perspective and his interpretation is heavily ideological, based on the blend of jungian and theosophical ideas. It will not be discussed here but the whole book can be read online.

Despite the ideological or more sectarian character, Rudhyar’s “new age” views had a considerable influence in contrast to those of Jones. He is the succesor of Alan Leo’s efforts to give Astrology a more spiritual purpose, and the forerunner of today’s archetypal psychological school. His interpretation of Neptune allows us to see the path followed by the original vision of Alan Leo and Sepharial, including the social inadequacies and neglect. For example, in “The Astrological Houses – The Spectrum of Individual Experience” (1972) we read the following vapid and useless (from my perspective) description of Neptune in the first house:

“Neptune in a natal house transforms by dissolving all that remains in the past, but it holds within this dissolution and de-personalization the subtle outlines of a wider and more inclusive future –perhaps what often is called a utopia. As experiences related to the first house are normally centered upon what constitutes and individual’s uniqueness and difference from other individuals, Neptune in that house indicates that this is not the way to reach one’s highest truth of being. The attention should rather be directed to the whole of which he is a part; or his consciousness should give up all feeling of being focused and, as it were, allow the universe to enter. Thus the sense of self, at least theoretically, would become universalized”.

VI. Influence and originality

For all the recognition that Marc E. Jones has received, there is to this day little understanding of most of what he wrote. His thinking has never been integrated into astrologers’ thought-process, with the exception of his “planetary patterns” and the Sabian Symbols. In contrast to this trend we must mention exceptions, like the folks of “American Astrology” magazine, Kenneth Irving, Jimm Erickson, Jim Lewis, Tim Lyons, Clay Reed… who in the 1990’s published some of the most amazing astrological commentaries and social criticism I have read

Let's consider for example the following explanation by Jimm Erickson ("American Astrology", June 1989, p.59):

“Neptune is involved with the level of reality –social or otherwise– at which simplistic black and white notions break down and become increasingly hazy; Neptune is concerned with long-term, abstract, complex ethics. At best, this leads to a profound understanding of how to harmonize with reality in a consistently beneficial way. Life is terribly complicated, though, and it’s hard not to short-circuit the brain with Neptune’s insights. At that point, Neptune can become “the great deceiver”, a vulnerable zone in which an individual or group can be manipulated through patriotism, moral fervor, or messianic illusion; ethics can then be an excuse for imposing one’s own highly debatable or ambiguous morality on everyone, and forbidding any deviance from this illusory unity. When Neptune is thus perverted, the main source of its distortion is the compulsion to “force the issue”, to grab at the most gratifying or self-serving ethos and hold on to it no matter what the objections to it might be; such stubborn myopia is a defense mechanism used to beat Neptune at its own game, to screen out all the complexity and moral ambiguity Neptune reveals. This is dangerous; Neptune is best understood as a flow, a development, a continuous interaction and negotiation between the self and the world… Now, with Saturn conjoining Neptune, the social tendency will be toward structuring the most unrefined and simplistic Neptunian impulses, instituting what is as yet unresolved, and forcing a rigid, unyielding, and myopic reification of selective ethical decisions –giving birth, as it were, to conclusions that are not at all developed.”

He then relates this to 1953, when the last conjunction had occurred at the peak of McCarthysm, and, in 1989, with the abortion / anti-abortionists war.

The case of astrologer Robert Pelletier in his book “Planets in Aspect” (1974) must be mentioned for its rarity and accuracy. He wrote:

“Neptune is the dynamic by which social obligations are fulfilled in response to an obscure feeling of guilt and spiritual duty. The need to serve society is difficult to determine precisely, so one wanders aimlessly in search of some relief from the anxiety it produces. Neptune is extreme sensitivity to the injustice of whole segments of society being caught in an inextricable web of negative circumstances. It is the unconscious, sympathy, empathy, aesthetic appreciation, utopia, rhythm, illusion, and poetry. It is music, imagination, and psychism but also fantasy, eroticism, and slavery. When Neptune is positively expressed there is exquisite appreciation for the highest and most sublime creative manifestations. It shows motivation to compensate for the decaying human conditions that afflict society. Personal satisfaction comes from restoring order to the chaos in environmental circumstances. It shows interest in the activities of institutions such as those for criminal, mentally afflicted, emotionally disturbed, or genetically impoverished people. The interest is also directed toward religious establishments and ministerial work. In any case, the individual is motivated to pursue this kind of life by social concerns, and hopes to be rid of personal guilt about the existence of these conditions.”

Robert Pelletier’s explanation of Neptune is exemplary and obviously based on his own professional experience, and it has many parallels with M.E. Jones, but unfortunately it wasn’t followed through in his description of individual aspects in the rest of the book, such as –for example– in his description of Mercury conjunct Neptune that we quote below. This virtually universal interpretation of Neptune is messy and pathetic not because it’s wrong, but because it is so absurdly negative and omissive or plain wrong:

“With Mercury conjunct Neptune your imagination often works overtime. When you state an opinion, your interpretation is likely to be as faulty as the “facts” on which you base your judgment. Because you are uncomfortable with reality, you often bend the truth into a shape that you can accept. You are extremely sensitive to your environment and intolerant of painful experiences, which you try to escape or withdraw from. It is essential that you find a constructive means for expressing your highly developed and sensitive mentality. Your profession must give you the opportunity to use your artistic talents… “Mystery, romance, and illusion fascinate you, but be careful that you are not overwhelmed by the desire to use them to escape from reality and responsibility… ” You idealize beyond attainable levels… You tend to be influenced by the illusion and glamour of famous or even notorious people. You often imitate the people you admire… You are quite responsive to suggestion and should therefore avoid artificial stimulants.” (ref.: Planets In Aspect, Para Research 1974)

It is clear that there are astrologers who are conscious of these socio-economic dimensions, particularly those doing mundane work. What is lacking (it exists, but is not the general tendency) is a view of Neptune in natal charts that is able to face the challenges posed by economic injustice, cultural diversity, alienation, and the inescapable and unsolvable paradoxes of modern life and of knowledge. Normally a majority of astrologers would never think along these lines when interpreting Neptune. Astrologers tend to see in Neptune only dreams, lies, drugs, other-worldly, out-of-the-body, phantasmal, rose-colored glasses, spiritualism, etc.

(end of section V and VI)

The social construction of the meaning of Neptune
by Juan Antonio Revilla
(cont.)

VII. Geological time

Astrologers in the 19th Century and to this day are not likely to know who Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875) was, and if they know, they are not likely to have studied his chart. To this day, his birth data (let alone the speculative or documentary work about his birth time) does not appear in the astrological literature. Likewise, his role in the change in the way scientists thought about the earth as a planet and about chronology and time will be probably ignored by astrologers, and when writing their comments about the historical period in which Neptune was discovered, they will probably not think on how Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” and Lyell’s “Principles of Geology” are equidistant in time to the discovery and related to what Neptune means astrologically.

  Lyell's final Vol. III of "Principles of Geology" published May 1833

  13.4 years - Neptune was discovered the night of Sep 23-24, 1846

  13.2 years - Darwin "The Origin of Species" published Nov 24, 1859

They will probably not pay attention either to how the exact Mercury-Neptune conjunction at the time of Lyell’s birth is related to Lyell’s scientific ideas, and will probably ignore how Neptune works scientifically and rationally in the charts of many important thinkers, of whom, probably, they have never heard, at least in the astrological literature.

  Mercury = 10,51 Scorpio (12 UT)

  Neptune = 10,54 Scorpio

The almost infinite or endless dimension of time that developed as a result of geological thinking, challenging the creationism and catastrophism of a previous epoch, coincided with the discovery of Neptune. In particular, this aspect of Lyell’s Mercury is an ilustration of how Neptune works scientifically and rationally, complementing the usual way of seeing it which denies this part of Neptune’s nature.

Lyell’s book has been called “the most influential scientific book ever”. It was published in 3 volumes from 1830 to 1833, and when Lyell died in 1875 it was on its 12th edition. The first volume published in 1830, was given as a gift to Darwin by the captain of the “Beagle” before they set sails on December 27, 1831 at 2:00 pm:

  Mercury = 24,39 Capricorn

  Neptune = 23,58 Capricorn

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_voyage_of_HMS_Beagle

“The geologist Charles Lyell asked FitzRoy to record observations on geological features such as erratic boulders, and before they left England FitzRoy gave Darwin a copy of the first volume of Lyell’s Principles of Geology”.

This establishes an identity between Lyell and Darwin’s famous youth expedition that was the basis of his theory of evolution, an identity that is astrologically described by the Mercury/Neptune conjunction. Another clear Neptunian connection is established at their deaths:

  Lyell died 22 Feb 1875: Neptune = 28,35 Aries

  Darwin died 19 Apr 1882 4 p.m.: Sun = 29,28 Aries

James Hutton, considered “the father of Geology”, was the first to explain the principle of small gradual changes over very long time spans –in opposition to his contemporaries– in 1785, later published as “Theory of the Earth” (1795). He was born June 3, 1726 (O.S.). With wider orb but still remarkable:

  Mercury = 0,19 Geminis

  Neptune = 4,25 Gemini

One neptunian feature of physical and biological evolution is that in these very long processes, the role of the individual is insignificant; men simply follow natural laws, and the life-time or time dimension of a human life is for Nature like that of an insignificant mosquito in comparison. This was followed by the spiritualist movement that culminated in the theosophical-buddhist impersonal conceptions of unending cycle upon cycle of planetary and individual reincarnations and karma parallel in time to cosmogenesis and anthropogenesis, which transposed the concept of unimaginable spans of time into the sphere of spiritual evolution.

In practice, geology or earth are used as a “matrix of metaphors”, a paradigm where correspondence in time is based on analogy and not on quantity, i.e., it is established at different time-scales. For example:

  • gradual geological evolution of landscape over millions of years
  • long processes in biology, human origins, darwinian evolution
  • development of philosophical and social movements and ideologies
  • deep emotional processes, destiny, karma, psychological healing This type of associations stem from an aspect of orbital symbolism that we call “orbital domain”, i.e., the area or range within which the planet moves delimits its sphere of action in human life or on earth because “place” for planets in the solar system, dynamically speaking, is the equivalent of time-range or frequency (Kepler’s 3rd law). Place, sphere or “spatial domain” within the solar system always incorporates a very specific time dimension, i.e., the time it takes for the planet to complete an orbit around the Sun. Neptune has an affinity with sedimentary rocks. Astronomically, from the standpoint of today’s picture of the solar system, Neptune is the unequivocal big gravitational frontier. Beyond the Neptune threshold, we are in another dimension of time (long sweeps of history, or “the winds of destiny” for the individual) and space (the larger, ultra-complex social/economical architecture), the “civilization” and the over-populated world, which corresponds to the transneptunians. Neptune represents the “breaking point” beyond which the individual defenses are no longer effective, and the process of socialization or of structural collapse wins over, carrying on the relentless action of time through gradual weathering, erosion, sedimentation, deposition, stratification. All these are metaphors of the action of time in human life. Thomas M. Allen, of the Department of English at the University of Richmond, summarizes the radical change in the concept of time that characterizes the 19th century in the following way: “We no longer measure by miles but by orbits of Neptune,” Emerson wrote in his journal in 1856. “The old six thousand years of chronology is a kitchen clock, no more a measure of time than an hour-glass or an egg-glass since the durations of geologic periods have come in use.” In this entry, written at the age of fifty-three, Emerson reflects back upon one of the most significant intellectual developments of his lifetime: the radical expansion of the temporal scale by methodological and theoretical advances in the science of geology. Over the first half of the nineteenth century, a series of widely read and reviewed books such as John Playfair’s Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth (1802) and Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology (1830-33) had displaced, in the minds of most educated people, the Biblically derived “old six thousand years of chronology” that Emerson refers to with a new scale of millions of years of natural history. Emerson is known to have read Playfair and Lyell in the 1830s, when he was first establishing himself as a professional lecturer and writer while developing his ideas about the special character of American civilization. Not immediately after reading these books, but at some point during the years leading up to 1840, consciousness of the immense scale of geological time began to shift Emerson’s thinking about the historical meaning of human actions, staged, as he now perceived them to be, against an inhuman backdrop of numberless years.” Under this social collective umbrella the doctrine of Uniformitarianism appeared, the assumption that today’s physical agents and conditions, given a long enough time, are the same as those that shaped the earth a long time ago (“the present is the key to the past”). Lyell’s ideas became the basis of Darwin’s theory of evolution, and were the foundation of anthropological thinking regarding cultural evolution, the so-called “evolutionism” which also developed in the 19th Century. All this together is very well represented in the highly mythical, quasi-religious linear conception of the development of science and of evolution popularized by Carl Sagan and many others. One way of seeing the role of Neptune is through the often unconscious but prevalent ideology or world-conception, such as evolution and uniformitarianism, which today have become the dogmas of science. But Neptune disqualifies ideologies too, and leaves people in a world of relativism where things that once were unquestioned become more and more a matter of personal belief or faith. Louis Powells and Jacques Bergier called evolution-progress-history the “holy trinity” of the modern scientific world-view: “Our grandparents had decreed the death of God. But the trinity resisted the blow, only the words changed. The father became evolution, the son became progress, and the holy spirit became history. Kill the father once and for all, i.e. question evolution, and then the notion of progress will fail at its foundation; it will lose its absolute value, it will shed its almost religious nature, and, consequently, history will no longer necessarily be ascending. There it is, devoid of messianism, reduced to pure chronicle. Perhaps this is the true landscape, which remained hidden behind taboos. A cold landscape? Undoubtedly. A landscape for free adults, emerging from the warmth of the womb.” (Ref: “La Révolté des Magiciens” by Louis Pauwels & Jacques Bergier, 1971).

(end of section VII)

The social construction of the meaning of Neptune
by Juan Antonio Revilla
(cont.)

VIII. Geological time

The academic fields of paleo-anthropology and archaeology –represented in the example of Richard Leakey– provides a good ilustration of the metaphor of geological time being applied to human and cultural evolution. Neptune is as invisible to the naked eye as is the evolutionary path of humankind in the long lost past, but this path is nevertheless reconstructed in each case according to pre-established geological and archaeological canons (e.g., stratigraphy, geomorphology, material culture), and the resulting data is interpreted in order to arrive at a coherent, scientifically plausible picture firmly supported by the material evidence of the present . The amount of cultural assumptions determined by prevalent ideologies (e.g. materialism, uniformitarianism) in this reconstruction process is enormous, but the resulting picture of humanity’s prehistory is presented to us sanctified by science, with the status of religious dogma. What we think of our origins is a reflection of what we think of ourselves. Welcome to the world of Neptune!

Or the uniformitarian, more poignant and simpler melancholic neptunian way: what we think of ourselves today is reflected or projected to our vision of the past.

When we assume that people 4000 or 40,000 years ago (or even 400 years ago, before the Enlightenment and before the Copernican revolution), experienced the same thing that today we experience when we gaze at the stars, we are working under the tenets of the same uniformitarian thinking that was the basis of 19th century biology and geology, but applied to human consciousness by way of metaphor: how we perceive the world, how we experience time and space in our mind, was the same in ancient times as it is now. We are the top of the evolutionary ladder, the model to which all cultural evolution converges. Ancient man’s earth and sky was the same reality that it is today, the earth was back then of the same material density that it is today. The atmosphere and the weather were the same, Neanderthals’ dreams were like our dreams… We actually don’t know if that is true, we cannot know, but a simple metaphor provides all the answers and hides our ignorance. We have plenty of metaphors. Just pick the one you like, I won’t tell. My name is Magorium…

IX. Conclusion or confusion?

We have shown how at least 50% of the conventional astrological meaning of Neptune today has been borrowed or stolen from the symbolical sphere of the Moon, without any commentary or analysis on the part of astrologers. The other 50% belongs to the social or collective sphere, which is usually interpreted by astrologers exclusively from the standpoint of a specific ideology or belief system. But ideology and worldview are cultural phenomena and represent historical trends, they are not a collection of absolute truths.

The social sphere in which Neptune operates can provide us with cognitive tools and understanding necessary to navigate the bewildering sea of belief systems and irreconcilable worldviews. This navigation is a long, arduous, process of social maturation, during which socioeconomic inequalities or compulsions often make the process of learning impossible, so the Neptune perspective can often be very difficult or elusive to describe, understand, or asimilate, i.e., it remains relative, indefinite, in a state of flux, it canot be handled or grasped. For the average sensitive person, this is painful, confusing, and often intolerable.

It is very clear to this writer that the situation among astrologers concerning the astrological meaning of Neptune is not settled. The reasons for this are also very clear: the process of social construction of meaning is not the gradual revelation of a primal atemporal archetype, this idea represents a specific ideology only and needs to be recognized as such.

On the other hand, astrologers still have to discuss and clarify the displacement of meaning from the Moon to Neptune, while the social sphere in which Neptune operates is still missing a systematic rationalization or explanation. It needs to get rid of the naive exclusivism of one specific astrological ideology and include instead all… or better still none of them. The Moon and Neptune have to be differentiated from one another, which could be easily done if the collective dimension of Neptune were not so neglected. The muddy waters concerning the meaning of Neptune is a mirror of the general situation of the whole of Astrology today as a social practice.

NOTE: A discussion of the “archetypal” psychological astrology ideology and the problems caused by it in the case of the meaning given to Neptune can be read in the author’s “Archetypal Astrology and Jungianism – A Critical View.”

(end of section VIII – IX)

Juan Antonio Revilla,
San José, Costa Rica
May of 2026