PaganSquare


PaganSquare is a community blog space where Pagans can discuss topics relevant to the life and spiritual practice of all Pagans.

  • Home
    Home This is where you can find all the blog posts throughout the site.
  • Tags
    Tags Displays a list of tags that have been used in the blog.
  • Bloggers
    Bloggers Search for your favorite blogger from this site.
  • Login
    Login Login form
Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in Neptune

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

b2ap3_thumbnail_working-mind.jpgEmancipate yourselves from mental slavery.
None but ourselves can free our minds.
― Bob Marley

"Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work.”
― Adrienne Rich

The chart of the Autumn Equinox will resonate until sometime around the Winter Solstice. The equinoxes are always points of balance, and this chart emphasizes that we are at a tipping point — globally, nationally, locally and personally. Change is in the air, and decisions we make now will have long-term repercussions. Fortunately, this chart offers much-needed inspiration, energy and opportunities to improve our connections with others. We are heading into a challenging Winter — but we will be given the opportunities and wherewithal to make a difference. Thoughtful, skilled use of the cosmic tides of energy and change will help us steer ourselves and our world toward a better future.

I expect that most of my readers do magic, meditate, pray, or have some spiritual practice they engage in regularly. There’s plenty of energy to light a fire under your practice in this chart, and I hope you will use it, because the world needs all the positive vibes we can send it right now. There are deeply destructive forces — patterns of thought and emotion — that have woven themselves tightly into the fabric of our culture, and it will require clear, focused work on the energetic/astral/magical levels by those who are capable of it to unravel and re-weave ourselves into a strong, sustainable, global society.

...
Last modified on

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

b2ap3_thumbnail_door-into-space.jpg

A book I’m reading got me thinking recently about some of the deeper issues of the current, ongoing Mercury-Neptune square, as Mercury has been retrograding over the degrees of the aspect, dragging out what is usually a very short encounter.  The square aspect generally presents as what a friend of mine called A FOG — Another Freakin’ Opportunity for Growth. (It’s never easy, might be painful.) Both arms of the square have ideas and approaches to problems that must be brought together into a workable synthesis, ‘cause nobody’s backing out of this fight.

...
Last modified on

b2ap3_thumbnail_crossroads-in-woods.jpg"I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult." – E.B. White

Full Moon charts are generally said to be in effect only for the two weeks until the next New Moon. But a chart is a single moment in time on the restless sea of planetary movements - a moment that lets us get a reading on where we’re heading, and make any necessary course corrections Used wisely, the course that is set in that moment can influence our lives far beyond the next couple of weeks.

...
Last modified on

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

b2ap3_thumbnail_154494_10151337343351322_1797131129_n.jpgTake your ordination in the rains from heaven and the winds of change that have gathered around us. Let it come, this new world. As I have written before–these are the times we are made for.
~ Byron Ballard
 
The Virgo New Moon happens tomorrow, August 25th — you can find the chart here. Before I get into the analysis, I want to emphasize again that lunation (New and Full Moon) charts can be worked with on an individual level to bring out the most positive characteristics of the planetary alignments, even if the chart has numerous difficult aspects. On a wider, country-wide level, however, on the larger social/political/economic stage, we are likely to see the difficult aspects manifesting in difficult ways more often than not. When a chart is cast for an entire country — as I do with these lunation charts, which are cast for the USA — you’ll see the issues highlighted in the chart reflected in the news, in the national conversations, in your life and the lives of those around you, but in differing degrees and in different ways.

Obviously, not everyone is going to be equally affected. For instance, in my post on the recent Full Moon, I said there would be widespread flooding in the country, as indeed, there has been — widespread and record-setting. But not everyone has been flooded out, and some people are more strongly affected by these events than others. I also spoke of the need to deal with anger in that same post, and you may have experienced feelings and/or incidents  of anger in your life, or seen it manifest in the lives of those around you. Certainly anger has been at the center of the national conversation around Ferguson, MO, entrenched racism, and the militarization of the police. Much depends on the birth chart of a person, or even a town. (The incorporation chart of Ferguson, MO, for instance, is being strongly aspected by current transits and lunations.)

...
Last modified on

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

I’m going to change the format of this blog, as of today. Instead of the “Magickal Monday” updates, I’ll be looking at the upcoming transits once a month, just before the New Moon. The other three weeks, I’ll be writing on other astrological and astro/magickal topics. I particularly want to investigate how Pagans, Witches and other magickal people can understand our own birth charts well enough to time personal spiritual and magickal workings, and determine how the current astrological “weather” affects us on both a spiritual and a mundane level.  While astrology is a complex and many-layered topic, the basics are no more difficult to learn than Tarot — maybe less! — and learning to use your own chart as a tool for spiritual and magickal growth is an investment of time that pays off generously.

This week, I want to look at an ongoing flowing relationship between Saturn, Neptune, and Pluto in the upcoming year that is worth considering carefully, so we can weave its energy into our lives in a creative and beneficial way. Here’s what’s happening:

  • Saturn in Scorpio and Pluto in Capricorn are in mutual reception (each in the sign the other rules)
  • Neptune is strong in its own sign, Pisces
  • Saturn is trining Neptune and sextiling Pluto three times over the next 10 months

Now, what does that all mean? As always, a planetary configuration like this heralds a process, both culturally and individually. We can look on the progress of Saturn through Scorpio over the next 2 ½ years as an initiatory undertaking  — a deep, transformative time when, if we will discipline ourselves to fulfill the requirements of the body and the Earth, we can create with power, insight and spiritual awareness.

But there needs to be knowledge and intention to leverage the energy of these aspects. They are flowing, easy aspects that offer us a harmonious way of managing the profound, shocking energies released by the Uranus-Pluto square, but, because they are easy, they don’t force anything. We need to make a choice to tap into their energy and use it to help us navigate through the times ahead. So, here’s how to grab the brass ring…

Last modified on

Well, I think it might be time to take a look at Mr. Romney’s chart. After what is being billed as “Romney’s Hell Week” — now turning into “Hell Ten Days” as I write this — it would be most instructive to check the astrological aspects that are in effect in his natal chart (click here for the chart). As usual, I'll bold my conclusions, so those who are not interested in the astrological details can cut to the chase.

There are a number of astrological approaches one can take to understand and predict current and future events in a person’s life. I mostly use secondary progressions, solar arc directions, and transits to the natal chart. I sit up and pay close attention when more than one of those areas are suggesting essentially the same thing.

Let’s look at what’s been going on in Mr. Romney’s chart over the past couple of weeks and what will happen between now and the election.

We’ll begin at the end of August, with the last Full Moon. Recall that the Full Moon generally is influential over the following two weeks — until the next New Moon. This Full Moon conjuncted Romney’s natal Mars, and in the chart of the Full Moon, Mars is squaring Romney’s Midheaven/IC axis. Mars rules, among other things, conflict, arguments, and impulsiveness. The Midheaven is one’s public presentation, as well as the career. Two days before the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, transiting Mars squared Romney’s Pluto, which co-rules his 6th house of public service, and the day before, his progressed Moon opposed his natal Neptune. Neptune is the dispositor* of his natal Mars, Mercury and the Sun.

Last modified on

Neptune was running wild through the Republican convention last week, and all the security in the world couldn’t stop it.

Saturn and Jupiter are the planets that we look to for governance — Saturn offering the discipline, organization and infrastructure, while Jupiter provides the legal structure and underlying philosophies and ideals. But politics is not governance, and a candidate’s campaign promises are frequently honored more in the breach than in the observance. Political campaigns use persuasion, illusion, and even glamor to acquire material power — and that’s where Neptune comes in.

Neptune is a planet of transcendence, spirituality, non-physical realities, myths, mysticism, fantasy, fusion, illusion and disillusionment, devotion, utopian ideals, and compassion based in a recognition of ultimate oneness. It speaks in symbol, metaphor, visions and dreams. It rules the oceans, fog, and all things watery, as well as the oceanic depths of the unconscious, and altered states of consciousness. When this expansive and transcendent energy is yoked to the service of Saturn, of material reality, what we frequently end up with are states of delusion, deception, glamour used to manipulate, addiction, confusion, escapism and ambiguity.

Thursday morning, the news was full of Paul Ryan’s acceptance speech the previous evening, and the commentaries on the speech were full of phrases like “profoundly dishonest" "hypocritical" and "appallingly disingenuous”. All those phrases reflect a negative manifestation of Neptune. (The NY Times parses the speech here, and the Atlantic also gives a good overview.) 

Taking a look at Ryan’s chart (see it here), we note Neptune prominently placed conjunct the Ascendant, the closest aspect in his chart. It is also inconjunct his natal Mercury (communications) and trine Mars (aspects between Mars and Neptune often denote charisma). At the time of his speech, the transiting North Node was conjunct, and transiting Neptune within one degree of a square to Ryan’s Ascendant-Neptune conjunction. Neptune’s influence was strong indeed.

Last modified on

Additional information