I, too, have Neptune conjunct my Sun, so I understand a little of the challenge you face, but my Neptune is in Libra in the 3rd....thanks again for the reading from the Answer Deck, it was fun and a little spooky too! That dark-haired man card gave gave me a psychic whack right in the abdomen!!!
....but it made me wonder if there's a card for "light-haired man", red-haired man", etc
quote:
Neptune in the 12th HouseIn the 12th house, Neptune comes home. In the waters of its own templum, we may observe it uncontaminated by the outer world and the things and people in it. The 12th house, like the 6th and the 8th, has had a hard press. It is also like Neptune, defficult to define. Traditionally known as the house of imprisonment, confinement and self-undoing, it is a source of anxiety to astrological students who discover natal planets placed there and, having availed themselves of older textbooks, draw dire conclusions.
On its most underlying leve, the 12th house…represents the urge for dissolution which exists in each of us – the yearning to return to the undifferentiated waters of the womb, to the original state of unity.
Because the 12th describes the individual’s personal experience of the source, it is concerned with inheritance. But it is not parental inheritance as described by the 4th and 10th. Our 12th house legacy takes us much further back, into the realm of what the Chinese call the ancestors. Here lie our deepest roots, in terms of race, religion, national origins, and the culture out of which the family line has sprung. Even if we repudiate this longer past, and identify only with the present and the life we have carved for ourselves in the world, the 12th house is always there to remind us that we are the inheritors of images, myths, traditions, feelings, and dreams which belong not only to our parents but to our grandparents, great-grandparents, and the “stock” from which we have sprung. From the 12th, the ghosts of the distant past come back to haunt us – the family “skeletons in the closet,” the forgotten religious orthodoxy of a great-grandfather, the long-suppressed story of the great-aunt’s suicide and the great-great-grandmother’s “second sight,” the poverty of the immigrant, and the religious persecution of two hundred years before. The daimons of forgotten places inhabit the 12th as well – the country left behind long ago, the folk tunes, the ancestral totems of the tribe. And further back even that this lie the primordial myths of human origins and human development. To all this, planets placed in the natal 12th house are attuned. It is not surprising that, uneducated as we are about the reality and power of the unconscious collective psyche, the 12th house gives us so much trouble.
Neptune in the 12th is a transmitter of the richness, darkness, and light of that which came before us. The 12th is the house of pre-birth, and therefore also describes the period of the mother’s pregnancy, when we were contained within the uterine waters. As a medium for the archetypal themes of the ancestral collective, Neptune in the 12th is particularly attuned to feelings and images of suffering and redemption. Religious issues which belong to the family inheritance are likely to prove particularly powerful, and it is important for the individual to learn something about his or her spiritual hertage; if these themes are dominant in the family psyche, they will not leave the individual with Neptune in the 12th alone. If unconscious, Neptune in the 12th may prove compulsive and overwhelming, threatening to engulf the ego with the power of its yearning, which is really the power of many long-dead individuals each contributing his or her own longing to an ever-increasing psychic imperative. The power of the imagination, and the capacity to express images in creative form, may also be an urgent theme of the family inheritance, and artistic vehicles may need to be found for fantasies which are older and larger than those of the individual. It is not surprising that this house is called the house of self-undoing; if we are unconscious of this vast ancestral longing to go home, we may ensure that we are dragged home in spite of ourselves.
Ebertin mentions “mysticism, reverie and artistic pursuits…the inner or psychic life is open to external influence…a craving for drugs and narcotics.” An inclination toward retreat, reverie and mysticism is what we might expect when the individual experiences the primal longing unadulterated by any surrogate. The gift of receptivity to such powerful redemptive images is also the gift of the artist. Commitment to a religious or spiritual path may offer consolation to Neptune’s melancholy and world-weariness, and may provide a means of redeeming not only one’s own loneliness but the victims of the past. Neptune in the 12th may shoulder the burden of redeeming family sin and unhappiness, and is particularly prone to identification with the suffering saviour. For this reason, the individual with Neptune in the 12th, if unconscious and unformed, may become the scapegoat or vessel for family conflicts which go back over many generations. Certain forms of mental and physical disintegration, which embody an accrued family background of misery and difficulty, may be connected to Neptune in the 12th if the individual cannot contain his or her inner experiences. It is in the context that we may link drug addiction to the placement of the planet.
The collective unconscious, with its endless fertile stream of archetypal dreams and fantasies, may also become the symbol of redemption for Neptune in the 12th. One may become addicted to the creative powers of the psyche, retreating from relationships with the outer world in order to partake of the universal waters of the source. The individual may see himself or herself as a Christ-figure, come to save the suffering world. This is not the ideology of the 11th, with its vision of a perfect society, but rather, absolute emotional identification with life’s victims. Because politics can sometimes provide an arena through which religious feeling may be expressed, Neptune in the 12th may contribute to a political philosoply which champions the underdog, because the family inheritance has unconsciously compelled the individual to redeem a hidden past. It is useful to recall the birth chart of Tony Benn, the Labour MP, in this context. Neptune is placed in the 12th house with the natal Moon, and both are square to Saturn. In his repudiation of his inherited peerage in order to serve the political left, Benn made a gesture that is not merely political. It is also a statement of a profound obligation to redeem something within himself, whose roots stretch back well before his own birth and into the family history.
The line between Neptune in the 12th as a visionary, artist, and healer, and Neptune in the 12th as an addict, invalid or psychotic, is very fluid. Neptune placed in this house teaches us a good deal about our extremely limited and sometimes downright stupid definitions of sanity. The mystical or “oceanic” peak experience is not uncommon with Neptune in the 12th, and it can be redemptive and life-enhancing. Yet the individual may also be so overwhelmed that he or she indentifies utterly with being God’s mouthpiece. This may, in certain contexts, be appropriate; Neptune in the 12th is more likely than most to recognise the essential divinity in the whole of life. It is only when primary narcissism dominates the stage, and no one else is granted the same status, that we may begin to worry. Neptune’s apparent madness may be eminently sane, although attuned to the inner rather than the outer world. But there are some individuals with Neptune in the 12th, particularly if it forms stressful aspects with important personal planets, who are unable to maintain their boundaries against the flooding of the collective psyche. They may act out the tradtional meaning of the 12th house, and spend their lives permanently or intermittently confined.
The individual with Neptune in the 12th may not consider himself or herself in need of help, and may in fact not need it at all, unless he or she is a danger to others, or is the victim of compulsions beyond personal control. Neptune’s eternal enemy is also Neptune’s eternal friend, and a little Saturnian realism can go a long way in assisting a 12th house Neptune floundering in deep waters – although too much Saturn may provoke the very flood the individual is seeking to avoid. Perhaps equally important is the function of Mercury, the natural ruler of the 6th house. It was Jung’s belief that, when working with those inundated by archetypal images and compulsions, an understanding of the symbolic nature of the material could prove remarkably healing in assisting the individual to navigate the currents. Even if a breakdown occurs, the person’s capacity to use the experience constructively may depend in part on comprehending what happened in clear psychological terms. Understanding is especially important for those with Neptune in the 12th and a chart in which air or earth is emphasized, because, as the fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin tells us, knowing the name of something demystifies it and renders it approachable. Mercury, in his mythic role as guide of souls, can offer a system of support for Neptune in the 12th which, although intellectual in nature, provides a very useful form of ark.
Howard Sasportas comments that “Neptune is strong in its own house.” The challenge lies in containing and working with its strength in ways which allow life to proceed rather than disintegrate. Definitions of normality and sanity need to be carefully questioned in relation to this most receptive and imaginative of Neptune’s house placements. Sometimes periods of withdrawal, or even a kind of dissolution, may necessarily alternate with periods of active involvement with the outer world. Only the individual can decide what balance is appropriate. But Neptune in the 12th, because it reflects an ancestral inheritance much greater than the individual, will not tolerate suppression. The Neptunian longing for redemption and return to the source of life has probably been suppressed or denied for so many generations; and, as Harry Truman once said, for the person with Neptune in the 12th, “the buck stops here.”
Our Own Heart, And Not Other Men's Opinion, Form Our True Honor.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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posted March 27, 2005 11:31 PM
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