TRANSITING AND TIDAL WAVES: Jupiter and Neptune in Pisces pt 6

As important and defining as it is, the Saturn/ Uranus square is not the only configuration in the skies that is performing symbolic passion plays and percolating in the shadow of the collective unconscious. Though no hard lines can ever be drawn between these things, it is useful to remember that the planets of the Day Sect, the Sun, Jupiter, Saturn and by extension Uranus (with Mercury as a wild card chameleon) are speaking to the conscious daytime world of visible reality.; meanwhile, the planets of the Night Sect, Moon, Mars, Venus, mercurial and shape shifting  Mercury, and by a similar extension Neptune, are busy moving things primarily in the dark subconscious, the emotional, visceral, close up world of the night. The 2 sects of planets are interacting freely with one another when they come into aspect with one another, and the celestial real estate of the signs are also impacting how the planetary energies emerge. Each sign is a form of either predominantly masculine territory, fire or air, or predominantly feminine territory, water or earth. Therefore, while the Saturn/ Uranus square slowly churns our daytime consciousness, we are also quietly basking in the energies of Jupiter in Pisces, along with Neptune in it’s 14 year magical mystery tour of deep weirdness and high strangeness. 

Jupiter entered Pisces on or around 12/28/21: herein, the Father Sky God is in his watery feminine domicile, which  manifests a harmonious or turbulent balance of expansive masculine energy merging with the deeply mysterious fertile feminine. The beneficent yet possibly destructive nature of this union of Jupiter with the watery feminine is coded into the dignity scheme of the zodiac: Jupiter rules Pisces and is in exaltation in Cancer, and Jupiter-Moon celestial relations are considered to be highly auspicious. In the Tarot, the Moon card is related to Pisces, which some consider to be mysterious: however, given the dignity that Jupiter has in Cancer, the Moon’s domicile, we can infer that Jupiter will receive the water loving Moon in Pisces with special honor. This further demonstrates  that the principle of gendered consciousness is essential to astrology as well as to the Tarot. 

Pisces’ potent symbol is 2 fish bound at the mouth. These 2 fish can be representative of Cancer and Scorpio, the cardinal and fixed water signs: as the mutable water sign, Pisces holds the potential for both the power of water emerging as a spring from the earth, the feminine, Lunar Cancerian image, and the highly directed and focused water running deep and powerful through dark channels, river beds and pipes, the more masculine, Martial symbol of Scorpio. Whenever there is duality, there is implication of gender to the minds of the ancients.

Universally, Sky Gods such as Zeus, Odin, Shiva, Ra, Agni, et al are depicted in myth as being very sexually active, even lecherous, but a psychological reading of ancient texts leads us to a non-puritanical, metaphorical meaning that coexists with the obvious and literal sex-crazed pagan god motif. These gods who are “spreading of the seed far and wide”, symbolize this powerfully active, seeking and penetrating masculine consciousness that must impregnate the fertile feminine to create more and more literal and figurative children- artful creations, ingenious admixtures, diverse ideas, expressions of the Greater Divine  Consciousness. The most sacred act is to create and procreate, to bring life into embodiment, to manifest in new and beautiful children who will carry the human experience into the future. Within each deity is actually 3 implicit parts, the Father, the Mother, and the Child, a numerological constant that permeates virtually all traditions and is the hidden basis of the Holy Trinity.  Of course in the Pagan traditions, this is procreative impulse is constantly causing not only amazing creations but also imbalance, drama, trouble and jealousy. The myths demonstrate the extraordinary creativity in the ways these gods and humans interact, often become obsessed, deceive and trick, find love, then deal with tragedy, and act to punish or protect, and memorialize their partners and their progeny. 

In the Eddas, a disguised Odin lectures Thor about women and the feminine, implying that the thunder god is “too heavy”,  too brutal, too clumsy when dealing with the (often dangerous and even horrifying) feminine, which leads him to futile battles- when in fact, negotiation, contemplation, clever trickery or seduction is appropriate; this prevents him from entering the higher realms that Odin accesses easily. These myths often show the dangerous or evil “hag” or ogre guarding, or even being transformed into the beautiful maiden through fearless commitment, through the willingness to confront darkness within oneself, through a figurative death to one’s own ego and selfless love for the maiden- a hieros gamos, alchemical marriage, as well as union to the actual other. 

When his hammer Mjolnir is stolen by a giant, Thor is humiliated:  he joins Loki in a cross dressing ruse to regain the weapon. He pretends to be Freya whom the thieving giant wishes to marry, and Thor impersonates her to enter the giant’s hall, where the giant  places Mjolnir in Thor’s lap. It is still a practice for the groom to place a hammer in the bride’s lap at the wedding, a symbolic penetration (emasculation in this case). Of course, upon getting his prized weapon back, Thor then uses the hammer to destroy his hosts, but his ritual humiliation is key to this victory. He is forced to take on this feminine role and only then finds justice. 

Thor is syncretized to Jupiter by the Romans, but as we can see, Thunar (Thor) is a different place in his mastery of masculine energy from thundering Jove. Roman syncretism was a political tool of diplomacy and assimilation and should be taken with a grain of salt with regards to our understanding of these archetypal figures: the actual texts must be our guide to understanding what lessons can be taken.  There are some allusions in Germanic mythology that connect Thor to the Moon as well.

 In the skies of 2022, Neptune co-present in Pisces brings Jupiter’s deep and unpredictable psychological journey toward unboundaried psychedelic dream scapes, and here we are forced to make Herculean efforts to discern  what is real and what is deception. Overt lies compound upon covert operations. Old lies and new lies beget a rainbow panoply of obfuscation and distortion from the deep mouths of authority figures in shameless theater of confusion; false virtue is painted in broad, messy strokes upon war mongering and seizure of power and assets, while honest protestation and assertion of sovereignty is vilified and infiltrated. Emotions are manipulated, streaming like the frothing tides rushing in on a blinding squall. Jupiter gives us faith that we can prevail and humanity can weather this storm of poisoned thought and  sheer lunacy, but it is hard to know what the landscape will look like once the flood waters  have retreated and the storm has passed. 

And so the question remains, who is Neptune, really?

This character in Greek mythology, the Titan Poseidon, is the ocean, personified, an active and masculine expression of feminine power. However, within a psychological framework, I believe we have enough experience to say that Neptune is as much this oceanic titan as he is the dream lord, Morpheus. 

But beyond either of these potent archetypes, I believe that Neptune is an event as much as he is anything else, and event that has forever changed human consciousness.

Neptune, I believe, is the Great Flood.