Neptune urges us to transcend ordinary reality, to lift ourselves up and get in touch with something more wondrous. The true mystic lives in the world and of the world and isn’t simply trying to avoid the bits they don’t like. A person of a truly mystical bent isn’t trying to escape from discomfort but, perhaps having cultivated a more sensitive perception, is able to grasp beyond what is immediate and material, is able to glimpse a Divine hand at work, or sense the bigger picture.
Under neptunian waves the person is able, as William Blake expressed it, ‘to see the world in a grain of sand’. The problem can be in deciding whether someone does have that greater sensitivity or whether they have merely deluded themselves into thinking that this is the case. As always, Neptune is the planet to associate with delusions of all kinds. This is because everything under its waves becomes One beyond any form or shape it may take, merging with the whole.
One way to get a feel for Neptune is to remember what it’s like to be high on alcohol, opium, or other mind-altering drugs or substances. We drink or take these for a variety of reasons but one of the effects of drinking these is that after a drink or two (or five or seven), nothing much matters any more, the work-related stress of the morning disappears in the drugs haze of the evening.
Neptune function is dissolution. It dissolves everything it touches into a bigger realm, just like the river dissolves into the sea. Lord Shiva’s weapon, the trident, is the same symbol of the planet Neptune and the Greek gods of the seas where only dissolution into oneness exists. The planet is boundless, unfathomable, and its vastness is usually under-estimated. Neptune works by undermining and dissolving what it touches, taking away any sense of definition or separation. Imagine drawing a line in a piece of paper with a soft pencil or charcoal; the effect of Neptune is like that of a soggy finger rubbing over the line, it will eventually become indistinct and hazy.
In a world where there is no separation between self and not-self, one becomes naturally a compassionate being for there are no boundaries to prevent us from empathizing with the suffering of others. We don’t need to put ourselves in another’s shoes for we are already wearing them. The house where Neptune is found in a chart and the house it rules (the one with Pisces on the cusp) show an area of particular compassion and openness to mystic experiences of unity and universal love.
Neptune is the higher octave of Venus, the planet of material love. This creates an elevated state of consciousness that revolves around higher Love, kindness, compassion, and spirituality which reach a wider bandwidth of connection with self, the others, the world and the whole.