Mercury-Neptune

Merging with something greater


In astrology Neptune is the desire to go beyond the self and merge with something greater. It is the urge to lose ourselves and dissolve all boundaries, to be one with all life. Neptune breaks down barriers and can overwhelm us by flooding our conscious selves with images of the unconscious, and unseen. Under Neptune we feel that there is a deeper emotional connection to the world and have empathy for all people no matter of their class, race, or religion. Neptune represents our universal feelings and it is primarily the ruler of water, this element in astrology symbolises all that is emotional, feminine, and mysterious. Water has the ability to flow through, over and round objects, it can wear away anything which gets in the way, water can create new life in response to it’s own inner urgings.

Spiritual Rebirth

Deep water can signify being out of our depth or entering into our own subconscious. The “spiritual rebirth” is represented by the cycle of water, and the sea represents our cosmic consciousness, the original chaotic state in which all life emerges. Inherent in that state is all knowledge & completeness, although it may be obscured by our fear of it’s depths. The rise and fall of the tides is to be conscious both of the passage of time and of the rise and fall of our own emotions.

Lost

Often Neptune can have a dissolving effect and can wash away all personal identity, motivations, clarity, ego. Under Neptune either natally or by transit often describes a feeling of being lost and hopeless in the great sea, especially if we cannot stay on land and live in our physical reality. Neptune rules the 12th house & the Zodiac sign of Pisces. There are 12 zodiac houses in the horoscope and Aries being the 1st house symbolizes the beginning of our identity, the first emergence of physical being into the world. The 12th house belonging to Pisces and Neptune symbolise the pre-birth waters of the womb, before we are separated from the source. You can see why it is so difficult for Neptune to have personal definition when the planet is concerned with the realm we least know consciously. Thus Neptune is the most difficult planet to rationally understand, thus you can see the difficulty of this pairing as Mercury is the planet of the mind and how we mentally and rationally understand the mundane world.

Early education and the workings of the mind:





The Gifts

1. Mercury in combination with Neptune gives the child a powerful imagination. The storyteller.
2. The minds sensitivity & receptivity is enhanced.
3. There is often an interest in the spiritual and the occult.
4. A deep appreciation of art, music, and beauty in general anything which uplifts the mind. May favour fictional writing especially of the mystical kind.

Childhood Memories/My own personal creativity

In school I was told off by the teacher’s for drawing the same picture over & over again. I always used to draw a house. My school teacher thought me to be unimaginative which was not actually the case.



I thought drawing a house was a pretty common theme for all children. The meaning of a house obviously has it’s level of meaning focused on security and safety, and it has also been said to represent the protection of the great mother. The symbolic meaning of a house refers to the soul and the way we build our lives, the way we are in the world. Children’s early drawings are a form of non-verbal communication. I was terribly shy as a little girl and my head was filled up with all sorts of images I could not communicate, and so drawings are often expressions of a child’s personality, and also a child’s emotional state, which can be analysed through the use of colour in pictures, by using art therapy. I think if we let our minds look a little deeper at the Mercury-Neptune aspect it could indicate that the individual is learning the “art” of communication on many levels, through communicating a symbolic world that is difficult for many minds to reach, this may through literary pursuits such as storytelling, poetry, spiritual subjects, anything where the imagination is allowed free rein, or it may simply mean overcoming emotional complexes and sensitivity around communication.

The Challenges

1. The mind can be distracted from the ability to focus or concentrate by the need to escape. Listening can be difficult, especially if the child is not interested in the subject or the person.
2. Thinking may seem vague and unclear.
3. A sensitivity to drugs, and may have problems with substance abuse.
4. Learning difficulties can sometime be indicated, speech and hearing problems, dyslexia and other related conditions which may refer to confused or disorganized thinking.

By Liz Greene:
The feeling of being in a fog or constant state of confusion can mean that on a deeper level the individual is refusing to deal with mundane relaity . Mercury/Neptune can at times be confused by external matters, like forgetting to pay bills, or losing objects, to experiencing misunderstandings in communication. If we look at this from the view of psychological astrology, we realize that the outer events in the Mercury-Neptunes life are simply mirroring the deep mental disorganisation inside.

Is anybody there?

The individual with this aspect may be in a room of people but not seem present, they are physically there but not mentally in the same room, it’s like their lost in thought someplace else. This is mainly due to lack of grounding with Neptune. Mercury/Neptune can feel weakened and lethargic as Neptune has a way of dissolving and wearing away the mental capacity. The level of clarity can become decreased and the individual can become abnormally forgetful and detached from reality. There is often a feeling of literally ”spacing out”. I personally have had moments where my mind feels cloudy, and it’s very difficult to keep focused. This mental confusion and lost feeling indicates that inwardly we have lost the ability or motivation to make clear decisions in life, lost direction. Often the planet Neptune symbolizes the search for enlightenment, but in spiritual terms we do not know what we have lost until we have found it. Ultimately to reach a state of wholeness in communicating with Mercury-Neptune we need to repair the bridge between thinking and feeling, and between conscious awareness and unconscious motivation.

Physical health and healing of the mind/My personal struggles in communicating

As a child I needed a minor operation on my ears and after the surgery I had to attend speech therapy lessons for some time. I am completely healed now, but I found it difficult communicating to people verbally. Maybe I still had an internal fear that they would not understand me, and through this I have always carried a deep intellectual inferiority as I found it difficult to effectively talk with confidence. This seems to be one of my greatest challenges. My communication is fine, but I seem to be blocked by my own emotional complexes. A lot of the communication problem’s may not be this evident with others. Mercury rules my Asc (chart ruler) and is powerful in my chart. I am very sensitive to people and the environment, maybe too sensitive at times and some of the the gifts of having such a strong Neptune doesn’t always seem to measure up to the high price I have to pay for the challenges it also brings my way.

Water on the brain

The hard aspects involving Mercury-Neptune are much more troublesome than the easy flowing aspects. When Mercury and Neptune come together we are bringing the conscious (Mercury) and the unconscious (Neptune) into conflict. Some of the effects of this can be quite disturbing to the rational mind (Mercury). Fear, doubt, and confusion can take over the mental reasoning. At it’s most extreme the Mercury/Neptune individual can feel as if they are losing their mind. Yet Neptune can add a rich quality to the imagination, and such great sensitivity and receptivity can prove to be of immense value to the individual, and it is well worth developing, but as always with Neptune if the ego is not contained or strong enough to handle the oceanic waters then there is inevitably a severe threat to the individuals sense of reality in everyday life. Strongly Neptunian individuals have to struggle in life with having unrealistic ideals, and having those dreams face harsh reality. The aspect if not channeled constructively can seriously disturb the ability to function in the world. Mercury-Neptune individuals therefore can have trouble organizing themselves, as Neptune clouds the conscious mind, rational thought processes can be taken over by emotional complexes which seem to be unconscious. There is often a need to escape from everyday reality through drugs or alcohol, or losing our minds in television & movies and letting our minds become absorbed (Neptune) in fantasies and daydreams.

The Collective unconscious/mending the bridge between the conscious and the unconscious



Neptune in astrology is called an outer planet and this means that the planet has a collective meaning for all, to explain this further I will reference some of Carl Jung’s work on the subject. According to Carl Jung the collective unconscious contains archetypes. Jung believed that important creative ideas come from influences greater than those in the mind of a single individual. The images, figures, and characters seem to be remnants of the experiences of our ancestors, it’s a place were all souls are connected and have been through the ages. These are the archetypes you find in stories, myths and legends. According to Jung this explains the similarities of the creation myths, the resurrection and flood stories found in widely separating cultures. Jung believes the collective unconscious was inherited rather than developed. It’s a knowledge we are born with a container of our experiences as the whole human race. Jung believes that whoever speaks in primordial images (Neptune) speaks with a thousand voices, he enthralls and empowers while at the same time he lifts the idea he is seeking to express out of the occasional and into the transitory realm of the ever enduring.

Jung believed that individuals tapping into the collective unconscious, are those most adept of high quality creative activity. Thus the many individuals with Neptune connected to personal planets in the chart (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars) or even Neptune on an angle or 12th house planets can have a connection to the collective unconscious where deep reservoirs of images and archetypes exist in a flowing motion. The aim of an active imagination is to find the middle position between “conscious” and “unconscious” having a quality of conjoined opposites. Jung also spoke of a transcendent function of opposites. A precondition for the success of active imagination is that it shall not be a pretext for flight from life. “Fantasies are no substitute for living” they are the fruits of the spirit which fall to him who pays his tribute to life. The shirker experiences nothing but his own morbid fear, and it yields him no meaning.

Our Collective dreams



The collective unconscious (Neptune) has been likened to a “world spirit” or a “world soul”. Something which flows from the divine into the human subject, the unconscious begins when emotions are generated. Jung put his hypothesis of the collective unconscious on solid ground and in reality by observing and investigating the dreams of modern men and women. Unconscious material is often repressed and forgotten, and it often appears in dreams. The individual with Mercury in aspect to Neptune when exploring the unconscious realms can have a difficulty in judging whether the conscious is predominating over the unconscious, or the unconscious over the conscious. According to Jung in coming to terms with the unconscious the ego takes the lead but the unconscious must be allowed to have it’s say.

The individual who won’t own Neptune



Some individuals with this aspect will deny the unconscious exists. There will be a deep fear of anything spiritual, psychological and what the person may call irrational. The intellect may be used to combat Neptune. The truth can be distorted in this area as the person holds on desperately to what can only be perceived as logic. This type of individual may accuse others of being gullible wishy washy fools for indulging in the Neptunian world of dreams, fantasy, art, music or the whole of the imaginable realm.

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