Mars-Neptune from the Soul’s Perspective

Hi, everyone; this is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology. Today, we are going to continue our exploration of Mars's upcoming conjunction with Neptune in the sign of Pisces. We're going to talk today about how the Mars-Neptune conjunction can be looked at from the standpoint of the kinds of spiritual lessons the soul is learning as it navigates this lifetime. 

 

It has likely navigated many lifetimes previously and may have more to come. And so, from that standpoint of looking at the eternal soul, what opportunities for spiritual learning and growth does a Mars-Neptune combination provide us with? So that's going to be our agenda for today. 

 

Before we get into it, as always, don't forget to like, subscribe, and share your comments and reflections in the comment section. We'd love to hear from you guys if you have a good story. Always use the hashtag #grabbed or email us your story grabbed@nightlight astrology.com.

 

 You can find a transcript of today's talk on the website nightlightastrology.com. Got a few promos today to go over with you guys. I'm going to take you over to the website. And, of course, I want to point you guys to the upcoming events. Go to the live talk and speaker series to see which live events are coming up at nightlight. These are live webinars that we host. 

 

You can see that on May 16. I'm doing a sneak preview of Neptune into Aries and what we can expect from that archetypal combination. And then in June, I'm doing a talk on the 12th house. This will be really good for looking at the healing potential contained within the 12th house of your birth chart. And then we're going to be talking about Uranus in Gemini as another sneak preview of an outer planetary movement that's coming up. 

 

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Anyway, today, we're going to take another look at Mars and Neptune. We want to talk about Mars and Neptune on the soul level. What I mean by that is that when I say the soul level, it is really just how we can understand the various lessons that might come with this archetypal combination. Thinking of the soul as a learning, growing, evolving being from lifetime to lifetime, we're slowly growing; you know, wings in our consciousness are always changing. 

 

Of course, I don't like to think of our consciousness changing in terms of levels and accomplishments and hierarchies and things like that. But I do notice in my own life, and I noticed in the lives of so many people that I work with, that it's just a kind of spiritual fact of life that we grow and that we become more illumined in time through the ups and downs. And through the work that we put in spiritually. And I know so many of you out there are doing that work to that work of growth. It's not easy. And it's not that life is all about work either. Right? 

 

It's also, in some ways, the hardest thing to do, which is to let go of the idea that we are not somewhere we need to be and just abide in life. But for many of us, that still constitutes an important spiritual milestone, right? So, there are so many different ways in which we can grow. 

 

Anyhow, Mars Neptune is on the soul level. Let's review the basic features of the transit first. So, we can see quite clearly that Mars and Neptune are coming together in late Pisces. And we're going to see that this is Thursday today, so we're going to go back on Thursday, April 25. Roll it forward. And now two planets are Coming Together Sunday, April 28, into Monday, April 29. And then Mars shoots into the sign of Aries by Tuesday, April 30. So their conjunction is in front of us. 

 

We talked about it yesterday; we're talking about it again today. This will be something you will most likely feel unnoticed anytime between now and the course of the weekend. But it's something that's also been building. Mars and Neptune have been co-present for a long time now. And there are some really important things that we can say. And I wrote down some notes that I wanted to make sure I touched on today. And so I'm going to bring them up one at a time; these aren't in any order of importance; they're just three notes about Mars-Neptune and what these contacts tend to bring up or what kinds of lessons they tend to bring with them as the soul is learning and growing. And, you know, it happens across this combination, like, let's say, Neptune, is transiting your natal Mars in your birth chart. 

 

Or in the case of something like this, Mars and Neptune are coming together in the sky, and maybe it's landing in a prominent place in your chart or aspecting another planet in your chart. And even if not, you could still notice these things coming up, maybe not as loudly as if they're hitting something, you know, in your chart in a big way. 

 

Nonetheless, the first one is inner strength. And I'm going to call on the lessons of a couple of hexagrams. These are hexagrams that have come to mind this week as I've been writing about thinking and reflecting on these combinations. So, hexagram 60 is sometimes called regulations, and sometimes it's called limitations. Sometimes, it is called restraining; sometimes, it is called containment. There are also there are restrictive regulations, which is another way of putting it that sometimes comes up. So, let me just do one thing here. There we go. And so you have a variety of different ways that hexagram 60 is referred to, most of which have to do with something like discipline, regulations, restrictions, and structures that contain things like that. 

 

One thing that's really interesting about Mars-Neptune combinations is that they tend to coincide with the development of strength. However, this is not a strength like the Mars Saturn that we had in Pisces earlier this year; I think it was at this point in the early part of April. Right after the Eclipse, Mars-Saturn has to do with strength and the setting or establishing of boundaries and limitations. But there's a really interesting teaching that comes with hexagram 60 when it comes to the cultivation of strength. So it's a hexagram that talks about the need for anything; for anything to grow, you have to have some parameters around it. 

 

For example, you know, as you think about the container of a plant, you know, it needs a container, if the container is too strict, and if the container is too constricting, right, it'll the plant won't be happy. If you know, and then eventually, as the plant grows, it needs a different container. So, one of the lessons that comes with HexagramHexagram is 60 is about knowing what kinds of rules, structures, disciplines, and boundaries, or what kinds of structures to put in place so that something can become strong, but also so that the regulations or structures don't become constricting and kill the development of what's on the inside. 

 

There's this really interesting dynamic with Mars and Neptune, where if Mars and Neptune are anything, they represent something like the beautiful and sort of unstructured expression of power or strength, or will it be fluid and boundaryless with Mars, Neptune? However, the highest expression of that kind of power is almost never cultivated without some form of discipline or structure. Right? 

 

So think, for example, about yesterday, my daughter had a graduation for her next karate belt; she's five was a big deal, you know, and we were there. And we were watching these older boys test for their black belts. And, I mean, it was like one test of a number, I guess, that they had to do or something. And those boys were just so fluid in the moves that they were making. And I mean, it was just beautiful to behold sincerely. 

 

And I just thought to myself, Okay, for them to look that fluid and powerful and easy, you know, an enormous amount of discipline. When an enormous amount of practice went into it, and so there's a weird way in which the things that look the most fluid, the most natural, have been born from the right amount, and the right kinds of discipline at the right times, think about music, think about the great, you know, jazz players are the great improvisational guitar players or whatever, how much discipline and practice goes into ending up doing something and making it look so effortless. 

 

The same thing is true with astrology; I can sit down now with people and maybe have looked at their chart for 30 seconds, right? And I can perform a pretty solid reading. I don't mean to toot my own horn, it's just, you know, when you've done it for 14 years, and you've seen 13,000 charts, of all different kinds, horary, you know, so many different kinds of charts over such a long period of time, you can do things very, very fluidly, and make them make hard things look very easy and simple. And a lot of the students, you know, coming through the program, when they see chart demos and stuff like that, they'll say, you know, you make it look so easy. And I'm like, actually, it was never like that up until you just had a certain amount of time, experience, and practice. And you just keep practicing and, you know, having some structures in your life, and then all of a sudden, it looks effortless. So, hexagram 60. And this idea of inner strength is really fascinating. 

 

Because Mars-Neptune is about how I can be effortlessly strong. How can I be effortlessly powerful? How can I be fluid? And and, you know, and and get things done? How can I get things done with the flow, you know, in a strong, powerful way? I exercise my will, and things just get done. And I don't mean that in a maniacal way. I just mean, like, how do you be? How can we be effective and fluid? 

 

I mean, everyone wants that, in a sense, you know, it's like you just want to flow through life getting shit done. And like having fun and feeling strong and wonderful as you go, you want to be effective. But that comes from so much chopping of wood and carrying of water now. Okay, so that's the basic truth, right? This HexagramHexagram 60. Mars-Neptune can have a hard time with that in two different ways. 

 

One, you can think to yourself, Well, I'm all intuition. I don't need any discipline; I don't need any practice. I don't need any tradition, and I don't need to rely on any external authority teachers, you know, approaches, methods, techniques, tried and true practices that have come before me that can teach me how to get to those effortless plays. No, I don't need it. Because I'm already a Jedi. You know what I mean? 

 

And so Mars-Neptune can be about the arrogance of thinking that, you know, you're just God, you know, and your will is somehow divinely aligned. And you there's no, there's no discipline or practice or cultivation. And so that can be one thing that Mars-Neptune struggles with. On the other hand, I think this is probably far more common, at least in what I see and in the people that I work with. 

 

And this is the other thing: you can also think to yourself that you can also become too restrictive. And you can end up emphasizing the restrictions more than the thing that you're cultivating on the inside. So let me give you an example. Let's say, for example, that you need to set a boundary with another human being, okay. 

 

And you need to set that boundary in terms of what kinds of interactions you need to have, or how much time you spend, or, you know, you there are parameters, and you get clear about the fact that you need some boundaries with a certain person, it doesn't have to be someone you hate or anything, it's just like, Okay, there are certain boundaries I need with this person. You set those boundaries, and you're doing so really with the intention from the standpoint of hexagram 60. 

 

And from the standpoint of, like, a Mars Neptune lesson, so that internally, you have honored your intuition, you have honored where your actual strength is at, right, I can't, well, I if I don't set certain boundaries, then I get drained by this person, or I lack discernment, or I, on my own, I am not strong enough to be in this relationship in a way that is most conducive to my health or happiness. And so I have to set some boundaries. But the setting of those boundaries is meant to help develop that inner strength. Right? 

 

And eventually, you want that inner strength to be strong enough so that in maybe other relationships in the future, you can operate without having to rely so intensely on various artificial boundaries that you put up rules and so forth. Because here's the thing, if you if, let's say, let's say in the situation where you have to set up some rules and boundaries with someone, well, that gives you the space to cultivate something that you're lacking, right? But if you then make the mistake of thinking that the boundary is the answer, then what happens when a difficult situation arises with that person where your boundary has to be compromised? 

 

You'll get, you can become too black or white about it; let's say that you have to call that person up. And generally speaking, you prefer to talk to them in person, you're like, you know, once I get them on the phone, they talk to me for two hours. And so I only like to meet them in person; that's my boundary. I can't get into phone calls with this person. Okay, but maybe there's an emergency or very particular circumstance that arises. And all of a sudden, you go, yeah, you know, well, I don't talk to them as a rule on the phone. And so I can't do that, sorry. 

 

That would be an example of what Hexagram 60 says, which is an engagement in rest restrictions that have become too hard. And so you're not actually helping the thing inside, the strength you're actually trying to cultivate is not going to be cultivated, if the, if the boundaries that you have in place to help facilitate the development of that strength are so rigid, that they don't allow for, you know, certain flexibilities or exceptions. And, like, you have to break the rules here or there. And so, you know, there might, in other words, you might need to call that person and be like, you know, what I'm going to call them, there's something very specific. And then, after 25 minutes, you have to put yourself to the test and say, I have to get off the phone. Right? 

 

I mean, how would you ever learn how to develop, you know, the strength to do something difficult if, at some point, rather than totally relying on rules and boundaries, you're put into a situation where you have to be put to the test, I'm gonna give you another example. So this is something that comes from someone I know who has been in a 12-step program for, like, decades, right? There came a time when they had to allow themselves. First, it was like, I can't be with alcohol, near alcohol, I can't be around people who are drinking, and it was very restrictive. And they had to do that, right, as an addict. 

 

They had to say, okay, like, I am cultivating this inner strength. And for now, the only way I can cultivate it is by setting these boundaries. But then you get into a situation where, at some point, the testing of that strength needs those boundaries to be a little bit fluid. Because otherwise, you haven't really grown strong on the inside. That's hexagram 60. It says, at some point, you may also need to put regulations on regulations, which is a way of saying that there needs to be times when you can soften. Then, you can reengage with the firmness of a boundary. At first, the boundary needs to be really firm, right? But then, in time, like if you can't ever be flexible with a boundary, you haven't really tested or cultivated the thing that the boundary was supposed to be cultivating on the inside, the inner strength. 

 

That's Mars-Neptune. How do we feel powerful and fluid, intuitive improvisational with the use of our will? For most of us, that doesn't come without a tremendous amount of work effort and boundaries. At some point, if you don't learn how to, if the boundaries can't be softened, and you can't then learn how to put them up, you know, and make them harder and then soften them and make them a little bit more porous. You're not really learning strength. That's the point. So we all know this. This is like super intuitive. I don't think I'm saying anything that's mind-blowing. But isn't it interesting that for the soul for the evolving soul, this is like a really difficult recurring lesson? 

 

So many times, we have to learn how to be disciplined but not so disciplined that we believe that discipline becomes more important than the thing that discipline is actually trying to cultivate. Now, again, you could go in the opposite direction, and sometimes people do, which is where they think that they can be all-powerful. And there's there's no need for discipline. And that's a kind of rebellious Mars-Neptune complex as well. But I see the opposite problem, which is that people don't know how to work with boundaries, structures, limits, and disciplines. Without it being too restrictive and without emphasizing the restriction more than the thing the restriction is trying to help us develop.

 

Okay, anyway, as the soul goes from lifetime to lifetime, Aren't we trying to learn to walk by the spirit rather than the letter of the law? I mean, when I think of the Christian tradition, whether you like it or not, and whether you take it literally or not, right? There's a great teaching that Jesus emphasizes over and over in the gospels, which is that there's a law, right? And there's like the letter of the law. And then there's the spirit of the law. And to walk hand in hand with those people who want to destroy the letter of the law because they feel like it's restrictive. 

 

There's usually something impatient and immature about that. But on the other hand, people who can only live by the letter of the law are suffocating others and themselves spiritually. So, how do you live by the Spirit of the Law? There's a dance that happens between the structures and the rules, and there is the need to also know when to use them and when to soften them. Okay? Number two is called on my list is hexagram 61, which is called inner truth. And it follows on hexagram 60. And I would talk about this as an inner authority. 

 

So with Mars, Neptune is a very similar idea, right inner strength, feeling strong, feeling capable, feeling like you can perform and do things at a high level, but also very fluidly. The dance between inner strength and structure and discipline and inner authority is interesting. Because to whatever extent, like let me back up and just say this hexagram 61 says something like this, it's sometimes it's called faithfulness in the center. 

 

Sometimes, it's called conforming; sometimes, it's called inward confidence. And sometimes it's called Central sincerity 61. Okay, so let's just say that it's very similar when it comes to learning how to feel the Divine Presence and learning how to align yourself with something like the Tao or something like the Divine Will, whatever we want to call it. 

 

The creative force of the, of the of the universe, different ways of conceptualizing it. And there's no way that you can align yourself with that energy unless you have recognized it as a creative force that is bigger than yourself. It doesn't mean better than yourself. That is the place where most people struggle to develop a sense of trust and inner security. 

 

Surrendering yourself to intelligence, a will, in a way, bigger than yourself, is really hard. Because one of the things that it does to us immediately is it brings up the idea of authority, someone that has authority over us, right, or some someone or something that might be greater than us or better than us, and we're, we're subject to its will, or something like that. 

 

That's, you know, that's really challenging, especially if you've had any, you know, encounters with authority figures who have abandoned, disappointed, or directly harmed. If you have had a father or mother that has harmed you, if you've had a religious authority figure that's harmed you know, a school authority figure that's harmed you, you know, anything where your trust was to be placed in someone who was guiding you. And they were guiding you maybe through a variety of different things, or what am I trying to say? 

 

Like, like features that allowed them to have that authority, like, okay, my, my professor has a PhD, or, you know, my dad is a parent, or there's something that in life tells us, okay, this person in the posts that they hold, as they have the qualities, or they have the experience of the background that should allow me to inherently just place my trust in them, my faith in them. And then my will is being surrendered to their guidance or their example or something like that. And if you've ever been in that situation, and it's been messed up, then a lot of the times, what happens is we become self-reliant to a fault. 

 

It's like it's become hard to trust again. But there's this interesting thing with Mars-Neptune, always where it's like, the ability that you have to develop and cultivate the strength of your own will is almost entirely dependent upon finding and getting in contact with the greater creative forces of the universe, God, the Tao, and the examples of that force in people in places and things and actively in trust and faith surrendering something of your will and your way to its way we tend to make the same exact mistake, which is like, well, if I have to surrender everything, and then I dissolve my individuality. And because we sense that it's true that there is something greater than me, and I need to trust and faith and, you know, surrender, and there will be something that will carry me, it's like, we sense that there are currents of water flowing beneath us, and we're on an inner tube drifting down a river, you know, we can feel that. And so we know that we're supposed to learn how to, you know, surrender something of our nature and our will to the divine way and will. And I see this all the time, like, I'm sure most of you have that kind of faith on some level, that there's something bigger going on, and that it's trustworthy, and that it's difficult and a little bit scary, but that we should learn to. 

 

But along the way, what happens is we do the same thing we were talking about with strength, where it's like, well, I'm going to surrender myself so fully that I lose my agency or my autonomy. And then I ended up in a religious or spiritual community that's somewhat fanatical. Or I ended up with a guru or teacher whom maybe I learned some good things from, but I ended up having to extricate myself from the relationship and retain something of my own individual nature because I just went too far; I surrendered too much. You know. 

 

The opposite can be true as well, where someone with Mars-Neptune is like, Oh, I'm playing this by ear; I don't need any training, you know, I don't need any musical scales to play. I don't need anything, anything, because my own will is sovereign. And there's a kind of god complex that comes with Mars-Neptune, where we think, well, and unless you explain to me exactly why I ought to do what I ought to do in every single case, and unless I perfectly understand everything, you know, I'm not going to do anything that anybody tells me. I'm not going to have any examples that I followed by faith. Um, because to me, you know, I'm sovereign, right? And so there's this very, it's tricky, though, because, like, can you blame someone for not wanting to completely lose themselves and drink the Kool-Aid and lose their own will, their own identity, their own sort of sovereignty? 

 

At the same time, there's no way to cultivate that sovereignty without also trusting in forces and powers that are bigger than us, that are not better than us, but that are stronger than us, or that are, you know, so there's a collective, there's a, whether that's, I have to trust in a group or I have to be part of a group or part of a tradition, or I have to be I have to trust teachers, or I have to take some things on faith that I can't perfectly understand. There's no way to cultivate that sense of inner knowing in life without having surrendered or knowing and trusting in things people process powers other or greater than ourselves. Right. So that's the other thing with Mars-Neptune, that's really hard. But the soul has to learn that otherwise, it never gets to really experience what it's like to be a co-creative part of God. It's like, you know, for us to realize, oh, actually, I'm endowed with the same creative nature as God. 

 

And I'm not better or worse than God, but I'm also not all of God, right? I'm just a little part of taking up that there's an act; there's actually an infinite amount of dignity and power in recognizing exactly who we are and being okay with it not being more or less than anyone or anything else, including the totality of everything, right? It's like, there's no way to get there to feel like we're co-creative, meaningful beings with a good amount of participatory power unless we do not feign to be the experts in every situation or humble. We have to, at times, surrender ourselves to the knowledge and advice of other people, where we have to develop practices of listening and aligning ourselves with, you know, the Tao is like each situation, oh, gosh, I don't know exactly what to do in this situation. I'm not going to pretend that my ideas, thoughts, opinions, and judgments are all perfect. I stand to learn a lot, you know, and if we have that attitude, it doesn't mean you're weak. 

 

So one of the things that are so interesting about hexagram 61 is it talks a lot about, you know, the kind of inner confidence that you have to have inner knowing, to know something to trust something to work with something doesn't mean that you are all powerful or omnipotent or omniscient. It means that there's confidence to take a step in a direction. Even if you don't know what's going to happen, there's listening, there's trust, and there's an ability to surrender the need to be all-powerful and to know where everything is heading. And the more that we trust that ability while also learning to exercise our own creative willpower. That is the only point at which we actually become influential. 

 

So, hexagram 61 has a lot to do with the humble means by which we develop an inner sense of knowing and power such that we have any influence in the flow of the dial, you know, any felt influence at any rate. I think that's fascinating because I would say like, again, one of the hardest things we have to deal with is we think to ourselves, unless I understand exactly, I'm not going to do something unless I understand it; what the opposite is, I'm going to do something so that I can understand, right? 

 

Or, you know, and, again, I'm going to stop laboring this now, but just the idea that if you've been wounded by, you know, being disappointed in authorities, or faith traditions or whatever, it can be really hard to develop this ability to listen and trust. But the mantra of hexagram 61 is that I can be influenced by even the lowliest of creatures. 

 

If I spend time watching a fish or a pig or animals referenced in this Hexagram, I can actually find out that they're very intelligent and that there are things they know that can inform and enlighten me. And so it, there's a sense in which we move from being in the position of the knower and the person with all of the knowledge and power to the person who really doesn't know anything. And yet, from that space comes all of the strength. The evidence of that is usually in our lives, do we have places where we really deeply listen, as opposed to always exerting what we think we know? You need to practice listening for all of these qualities. 

 

Anyway, the final one is not my will, but nine, which just means, in general, Mars-Neptune has to do with this evolutionary lesson that we're all learning, which is that the more that we surrender to the Divine Will, the more the Divine Will empowers us with understanding and participatory power. And we have there's so many different ways to to surrender. And we have to imagine ways in which the surrender of our will does not look like some kind of self-sabotaging weak sauce, you know, surrender in an intentional manner. The deliberate laying down of our sword itself is a very it's strong action. And we have to be able to imagine that strength can come through different kinds of actions and that surrender is one of the strongest. 

 

So anyway, okay, ramblings today philosophically, I hope they were useful, and they give you some ways of thinking about and relating to the upcoming Mars Neptune dynamic stick around after I sign off. I'm going to tell you about the first-year program coming up in June. I'd love for you guys to come study astrology at nightlight this summer. It's a great time to start with Jupiter and Uranus just conjoining, so I hope to see you there. Stick around and learn more about it. Alright, take it easy, everyone. Bye