Why You Feel Tired, Confused or Inspired — Mars Square Neptune Explained

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/].

Today we're going to take a look at Mars in the sign of Sagittarius squaring Neptune in Pisces. This transit is coming through in the next couple of days. We're going to prepare for it today by talking about why.

Bizarrely, people talk about this transit, any Mars Neptune transit, as either completely exhausting, defeating, weakening or intensely inspiring. Why do those two things seem to come with this transit? What can we do to enhance our experience of it or get the most out of it? I'm going to give you some things to think about today. We'll unpack a list of five things to watch for, and I'll give you some tips for working with us as well. So that's our agenda for today.

Before we get into it, remember to like and subscribe. We have done some research and found that a lot of people, far more people, watch this channel regularly that are not yet subscribed than are so if you watch regularly, take a second click the subscribe button. It helps us tremendously. We really appreciate it. We're seeing if we can't get to 100,000 subscribers on the channel by next summer.

Transcripts of any of these daily talks can be found on the website, which is Nightlight astrology.com right now, as you know, we are in the midst of our 12th annual Kickstarter campaign. You'll find the link to the Kickstarter in the description of this video or in the comment section pinned to the top.

Head over there, and if this channel supports you in your day to day life throughout the year, if it is a place of spiritual inspiration, astrological insight, there is a ton of work that goes into producing this free content year round. It means a lot to us if you give a small donation and support the channel in the year ahead, and when you do so, there are a ton of really cool rewards that are there for you to receive.

I'll take you over to the Kickstarter briefly and show you what it looks like when you head over there. You're going to see on the right hand side the support make a pledge, and then all of the available rewards. At the end of today's talk, there's a video explaining all of the rewards. So if you want to know exactly what different gifts you can pick up when you donate, I'll explain all of it, the astrology of 2026 talk I just finished about an hour and a half long, breaking down all of the major transits of 2026 there are some guided meditations that I've written.

There's also year ahead horoscope readings that break down all of the major transits of the year ahead for your sun or rising sign. These are all exclusive to the Kickstarter, the best deal, of course, are our class passes and class bundles. You save 50, up to even 75% off classes. When you bundle them, get two, three or four class passes. So I'll explain all of that at the end of today's talk.

Really appreciate your support. There is, again, a ton of love, about three hours every day that is spent prepping, organizing, delivering, editing, disseminating these talks year round, seven days a week. So again, we just ask that if you get something good out of this channel, and it is a positive source of astrological and spiritual support in your life, that you consider supporting us and the whole team of people here at Nightlight that make this work possible.

All right. Well, on that note, as always, let's turn our attention to the real time clock. Part way through today's talk, I'm going to also remind you that next Thursday night I'm giving a talk on the 11th house for my monthly webinar. I'll I'll sort of promo that a little ways in today to break things up.

So as we are sitting here on Thursday December 11, we can see that Mars is at about 20 set with big arrows out. Mars is at about 27 degrees of Sagittarius, within three degrees. We always care when it moves to within three degrees of Neptune at 29 Pisces. So if we take this forward to tomorrow, we're getting into about a degree and a half. By Saturday, we see that they're moving to within less than a degree.

And by Sunday, the square will have completed, and the two planets will start to separate. And then Mars enters its exaltation in Capricorn on Monday. So the sequence of events, especially the entering of its exaltation on the flip side, where it also moves into its chariot and becomes protected from the combustion of the sun, a very important sequence of events for Mars, where you could say that Mars is turning a pretty significant corner in its Synodic Cycle, as well as receiving the chariot protection, while receiving that protection right After a Mars Neptune square.

What could that be about? Right? That's a really peculiar turn of events that I think should catch our attention and our imaginations. As astrologers, I've got a list of five things to watch for that I want to give you now that really get at this strange dichotomy. On the one hand, Mars Neptune transits are frequent. Associated with periods of confusion and exhaustion, but on the other hand, they are also frequently associated with great moments of inspiration.

Let me try to explain why that is the case. First of all, we have Mars, the god associated with will. It's a very creative planet. In so far as the planet represents desires and the actions we take on behalf of the attainment or achievement of our desires. Like I'm hungry, so I'm going to go hunting in you know, the 30,000 years ago, I'm hungry, I'm going hunting. But today too, it's like, I if I want to get fit, I go to the gym and I work out.

If I want to achieve something, I set out. I persevere. I work hard with determination, kind of competitive spirit. I push myself. That's all Mars so where there is will and ambition and desire driving things forward in life, which we all need a healthy relationship to otherwise we couldn't get out of bed in the morning, right?

So I find, not surprisingly, that when Mars gets to Neptune, and I'm sure many of you are familiar with this, all of a sudden, that will, that motivation, that ambition, is just gone. And the reason for that is that Neptune, one of Neptune's actions is to dissolve. Neptune can take something that is solid or tangible and just kind of drain it it.

Neptune is like taking will or ambition and direction and motivation and covering it in fog, covering it in sleep, covering it in a sort of wet blanket of heaviness. It can be that sense of exhaustion or fatigue that Neptune brings to Mars when they're combined, that make many people feel quite sapped or drained when this transit comes around.

Now, on the other hand, we have this very close connection to Mars and Neptune with peak moments of inspiration when Joan of Arc hears the voice of the angel telling her that she this is her mission. It's a very Mars Neptune like moment when you suddenly get the a vision, an imaginative, creative vision that motivates and fills you with a new desire.

That sense of imaginal and the fantasy of Neptune imprinted on Mars can also be about providing Mars with a new action, a new ambition, a new desire. And so Mars Neptune combinations can be visionary, transcendent and highly motivated. These are inspired states, the warrior, receiving their commission or their their mission from the gods.

The hero. You know, it's like, it's like the premise of many hero movies, something happens, someone weak is in need of saving, or someone or something needs a hero, and that cause greater than oneself sets the hero in motion for the attainment of glory that can only be bestowed upon someone when their will does something on behalf of someone or something bigger, someone weak or in need of help or saving maybe that's even ourselves.

I've seen Neptune to Mars transits come about when someone gets the motivation to go to rehab, get sober and save themselves from the worst. So what a dichotomy. If you're feeling tired or confused right now, this might be why this archetype is sort of in the psychic air. Now, on the other hand, if you are feeling inspired or getting a new vision or an imaginal new possibility for action, setting something in motion, also very fair.

Mars is a God of inceptions, which means beginnings. Mars initiates activities. This is why It rules the sign of Aries, for example, that is at the start of the solar year. But it also rise rules Scorpio, which is one of the most powerful points of the initiation of endings death and the transformation of death in the autumn season, symbolically so the initiation of change through like a spring, like energy or through death and destruction.

They're they're powerful catalyzing forces, the Mars ruled signs. We have Mars connecting with Neptune, which initiates new activity, or can be, in a sense, connected to a destructive force that's fueled by fantasy or visions or imagination. This is why, for example, sometimes when Mars and Neptune get together, people become delusional and violent, where a. A terrorist or and I hate to even say that, but someone fueled by religious visions of grandiosity or delusional fantasies can act like they think that they're a hero, or they think that they're acting on behalf of something bigger, but they're just doing something violent and delusional and deranged.

Very Mars Neptune. So because of that dichotomy, there are some ways of approaching this philosophically that I think if we, if we look at and remind ourselves of we're going to stay, we're going to stay in the right place, in the right kind of awareness to work with this transit in the best way.

All right, let's go through it. Number one, exhaustion of will, and I think about Taoism, but also all different kinds of ancient philosophical systems that said that our exhaustion of will. You know what? I'm just realizing there's this new feature. It is so annoying. Sorry, guys, give me just a second. This is, I mean, I'm going to pause.

Okay, I apologize. There's this weird new setting where the banners just disappear and you have to turn it off for every single banner. It's so annoying anyway. So let's go into the first one in all of these ancient philosophical systems, will and the exhaustion of will are archetypal and tied to an opposite. How do we experience mercy? How do we experience grace.

How do we experience support or pardon or forgiveness, or wherever there is something that we are able to receive, it's often specifically tied to places where we fail or we are exhausted or we can't do something so mercy, grace, pardon, forgiveness, compassion, miracles, blessings frequently come in at precisely the time where we say, I just I can't do it.

I'm done. I'm exhausted. I'm fatigued. It's sort of not my will, but thine kind of moment. Well, I I've gone as far as I can go, but, you know, I'm down for the count. And it's interesting that some of the the best things we can receive again, mercy, forgiveness, compassion, patience, tolerance, blessings, they often come specifically when we give up, when we say, Look, I've tried, I've tried to get something, I've tried to do something, I've tried to express my will.

I've tried to get what I want. I've tried to follow my ambitions, but I'm out of energy. I failed. I can't do it. I can't complete the mission. I can't complete the test. It's in specifically those moments where some greater gift of the cosmos. Call it whatever you want, comes in that is specifically a Mars Neptune archetype.

And so sometimes when we feel tired or taxed or confused or exhausted, or we feel fatigued, or we feel like we're just a failure under such a transit that is specifically the time where you might be ready to receive something very inspiring, something that you weren't expecting, but it's so closely tied to your ability to say, I'm done. I tap out. I am exhausted. I give up.

Number two, exhaustion of energy is therefore tied to surrender. How do we experience the blessings of surrender, surrender, as an act, carries so there are so much there's so much like, what do I want to call it like, creative potential that comes in when we surrender, when we surrender, we often are allowing some other creative forces or intelligence to come in and help and guide things and provide things.

It's the same thing if I, if my willpower is exhausted, and I've done as much as I can, and I just say, look, I failed. I can't get it done. Or I I give up. I'm drained. Same thing is that when, when we when energy is exhausted, there is an opportunity to surrender our lives and our direction to something else.

Well, that was my best shot. That was what I wanted. But I don't know, maybe there's something else help me out here, see when we get to that point of like, well, I did my best now I have to surrender because I'm exhausted, or I'm drained, or I'm disillusioned, or I'm not sure where I'm going, that act of surrender is fundamentally tied to something bigger, starting to put wind in our sails and direct us.

And it's interesting, because from all appearances, it would seem that there is a kind of co creative. Co participatory meaning making that's happening in the cosmos between all living beings, such that it's not as simple as just saying, Well, I'm not an actor here. I have no agency. I have no creative participation.

But it's not as simple as saying, My will is the measure of all things that I will just shape and mold the world to the shape of my will. No, it doesn't. It's, there's, there's a conversation and a dialog between I'm trying to direct things, and then I get to a point where my ability to do that it just breaks down, or my faith in why I'm doing it or what I'm doing just breaks down.

And I go, Okay, fuck it. I'm done. I can't, I can't. I don't know where I'm going. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm sick of this. I don't even know if it's good. I might just suck at what I'm trying to do. When you reach those points, there's an opportunity to say, Dear universe, I surrender church on Sundays, just give it up.

And because we surrender, we get to experience a different kind of intelligence coming in and saying, Great, you've made some room for me. Now we're going to look at what it what it might feel like to be co creative, not just willful, but co creative. And let me tell you, as much as I'm sure many of us already consider ourselves to be, like, well, I'm trying to co create with the universe, yeah, but if you're like me and we're all kind of like each other, I think we get into periods of time where we try we were white knuckling.

We're gripping the steering wheel. We come under the illusion that we're in control and we're directing everything. And isn't it, it's not surprising that at some point that part of our psyches will just hit a wall, because it's simply not true. We're not in control of everything. We're not directing everything. Doesn't make us bad people, but it's part of how our awareness of the co creative relationship with God, divinity, God's goddesses, other beings, takes place.

We try to do the best we can to direct and control things on our own, because that's part of what we're here to develop and learn. Is I'm a creator. How do I develop that skill, that ability? And then you hit these walls, and you learn the art of surrender, and the surrender becomes essential to growing inspiration, growing intelligence, growing vision, growing creative potential.

Exhaustion of faith or direction is therefore tied to vision, which means when your vision, when your ideas, when or mine, break down and don't work, or we can't seem to achieve them. It's a great time like that prayer of Thomas Merton. I shared it, I think a week or two ago, where it's like, God, I don't know where I'm going. I don't know where I don't know if my vision is the right one or not.

We can have all the conviction in the world. We can have all the confidence in the world. But sometimes our confidence and sense of faith or direction will simply break down because it's natural and healthy and okay for it to happen. It's just like the trees lose their leaves, they turn brown, and all the energy goes inward.

There are times where our confidence tree just needs to shed its leaves. Our faith tree, our hope tree, our optimism tree just needs to wilt. When we allow for that to happen, we don't think, gosh, there's something wrong here, because I'm a faithful person. No, you're not just a person. We're all just beings, right? And we cycle through seasons of faith and doubt, despair, cynicism and tremendous hope.

And when we allow that process to happen, we don't fight it. We surrender to it. That exhaustion of faith, that exhaustion of ambition, that exhaustion of direction, seamlessly ties to being in receipt of a new vision. But we have to let it happen. We can't, can't fight it. I'm not saying I don't fight it. I fight it like hell.

That's why I know you're all lying. If you say you don't, I'm just kidding. Okay, number four, inspiration and motivation tied to imagination. The other thing that's so important is that we during a transit like this, if you're not someone who has anything that you go to as a source of inspiration or imagination, you may find that such a transit makes it clear that you need something like that, because this transit is awful for people who are bored.

When people are bored by this transit, they often become destructive. They drop into some kind of malaise or melancholy, or they say, what's the point? Or they get sort of nihilistic, or they despair, and they throw their hands up, and they turn in the victim card and all of it, you know, not saying there aren't times where we can't really feel that way, because we do, and it's terrible to feel that way, but one of the easy ways out is to have things that we find inspiring.

Maybe it's reading, maybe it's art, maybe it's music, maybe it's learning something new. Maybe it's a podcast, maybe it's friends, maybe it's sports, whatever it is, what turns the creative wheel? You know, it's like a water windmill. It's like. The wheel, turning the windmill, or whatever, we have to put ourselves in something where there's movement of emotion, movement of mind, movement of spirit, going for a walk.

For many people, does that honestly, it can be very simple. But the point is that if you're not moving the currents of ideas, thoughts, feelings. And this will be a transit where you start to feel that it's funny, because Mars is motion. Neptune dissolves motion. So if you fall into this malaise, get moving. Because that it's not so much that the moving cures everything.

As much as it is that the movement provides motion and the the motion turns things, and that's where generative ideas and visions come from. Psychically, number five, sacrifice and mission tied to heroism. Most of us need the hero archetype at work in our lives. Even though you've heard me on this channel say many times that I feel like our modern world is hero obsessed, and we're sort of drunk on the Kool Aid of the hero archetype.

But that being said, it is an important archetype, the feeling that you are Living Courageously into things, purposes, causes, legacies, things that will live on after you die, that you feel like you've contributed to. We need to feel that way as we're living heroism is a part of how we find purpose and how we find some sense of completion or resolution.

However, don't forget that often in hero movies, at the end of the film, the hero is bloodied, mangled. There's an arm dangling off. They're barely alive, you know? And so if you're shocked that hero mythologies eventually tatter you and break you down and exhaust you, then you haven't learned the Mars Neptune lesson about heroism yet, which is that the sacrifice of wanting to be a hero, of wanting to be successful, of wanting to be ennobled, of wanting to be a chivalrous knight who has everyone's best intentions in mind, all good things, right?

But they also tend to drain you and beat you up over time, and the biggest salvation is sometimes just going back to being a normal citizen who's not Superman or Superwoman. So sacrifice and mission, though, are tied to heroism. And what that means is that sometimes for us to feel satisfied by that hero within, to feel like we're connected to it in a meaningful way, we need a mission, and we need to be sacrificing something on behalf of that mission.

If there is nothing in your life that is hard to do, you're not living the hero myth, and you won't find satisfaction in it. And then when these transits come around, you will often be confronted with a feeling of boredom, failure, angst, despair, hopelessness, or a feeling that there is no purpose. It's gonna be an incredibly nihilistic placement Mars and Neptune and so living for something beyond yourself, even if that means I want to live a long life so I can be around for my grandkids or my family.

So I need to take care of myself, so I'm going to do some hard things, because it's not easy to live a healthy lifestyle. It's just, it's challenging, but whatever it is, know that some degree of greater mission that's greater than yourself, that's not easy, that requires sacrifice, that's going to be necessary to feel the satisfaction of this archetypal combination.

And if you don't, you don't find the hard work, the mission and the sacrifice, these transits come around and they're going to make you feel like there's no point that that despair can be averted by having missions and making sacrifices. So at the same time, you know, remember, if you're going nuts with the hero archetype, these transits will come around and it'll be like the limb is dangling off, and you're like, why is this suck so much?

Well, because you're, you're drunk on the hero, you know, you know. And these transits can actually help you let go of that a little bit if you need to as well. All right, I have three reminders for growth, although this talk has already been filled with, I think, a lot of good philosophical reflection. These are some things that I have learned along the way.

I was born with Mars opposite Neptune number one, trust that recovery is important as effort. There are phases in life where working, building, developing, sacrificing, pushing is necessary. But just as necessary for the success of your ambitions are the periods of time where you rest, recover and do nothing goal oriented, you have to trust that those periods are exactly the same amount of importance for the success of the goal as the actual effort in pushing.

If you don't think that way, the sense of collapse and fatigue will eventually come and will be disheartening and may hijack your faith and your optimism and. Can make you cynical and bitter. So remember trust that recovery is as important as effort. Number two, trust saying that I didn't know that is a superpower.

I remember when I was younger, there was a specific phase of life where maybe like 1617, through like 22 years old. If someone said something like, Hey, did you know this? I would always be like, oh, yeah, yeah, because I was scared that if I admitted that I didn't know something that they were talking about, that it would make me look foolish.

And I didn't do that all the time, but it was like a pattern. Then I went through Ayahuasca ceremonies, and it was amazing, like, after, I don't know, a couple of ceremonies or a couple of trips to Peru, whenever it was sometime early in the process of drinking Ayahuasca, I remember people that same situation would come up, and I just found myself going, No, I didn't know that.

Tell me more. And it might seem like such a simple thing, but it was a huge shift for me to say, Oh, I didn't know that. No, say, say more. I want to there's two, two things that happen right away that you're instantly banking when you admit you didn't know something, or you admit you couldn't do something, or you admit failure or weakness, and you just admit it.

One, you're building a deeper kind of strength. That deeper kind of strength is the confidence to not have to know everything, to not have to be on top of everything, to have weaknesses, to have blind spots, to be someone who's a work in progress, the confidence that you have to say, I didn't know that, or I can't do that, or that I can't go that far, that's my limit, or whatever, the ability you have to say that every time you do that, it builds a deeper kind of strength than most of us can even imagine.

It's a huge it's a strength that's growing out of humility, that's growing out of not feeling like there's anything wrong with being exactly where we are, and still being okay with the potential to grow and get better at stuff. That's a that's a superpower. If you can do that, you're starting to develop a strength really deep inside.

The other thing that it does, very practically, is whatever is immediately in front of you that you didn't know about, you're going to get to know about. Because if I would say to these people, like, prior to my ayahuasca experiences, oh yeah, yeah, well, then I would miss the part where they could be like, well, let me tell you about it, and then I'd actually learn about something.

Instead, I'd be hiding and staying ignorant. So the other very practical benefit is that when something comes up and you don't know about it, or you don't know enough, or whatever, you admit it, then you get to learn more about it, and now you've developed the strength and confidence rooted in humility, which is awesome.

And then simultaneously, you get to learn about whatever practical shits right in front of you. You know, that's up. That's epic. So the reason that I say this with Mars Neptune is that with Mars Neptune in particular, there are illusions of strength that we try to sell to other people or to ourselves, and it's a much greater strength, rather than selling an illusion to be strong and confident in exactly where you are, you know.

So remember that number three, it's a good so really good one for me. And I will tell you, by the way, when that occurred for me, Pluto was going over my Mars Neptune opposition, and I was learning to just admit what I didn't know, asking and waiting are creative activities. Look, when we feel fatigued or exhausted, or we're not sure where to go in life, there's uncertainties, or there's just a sense that maybe I'm not very good at something, or we don't have a sense of creative direction or purpose.

We can think that there's something I don't know, like, oh, I should. I should sit down and create a vision board and will and intend the next step. And while I have no problem with that, there's also this other thing 1000s of years old, called asking for direction, asking higher intelligences for direction, and not pretending that we can Will everything into existence.

So even though it seems like asking and waiting are sort of weak or passive or, you know, it's like, well, I'm not going to just wait for some higher power to tell me what to do. But this, you have guides. You have. You have a diamond, according to the ancient astrology, a soul guide that lives with you, that is there to provide meaning and guidance and higher intelligence on behalf of your authentic nature.

All you have to do is ask, right? And I forget this all the time. This is why I have an altar practice. This is why we have silent Sundays. You got to sit down, you got to ask, and you got to trust that asking and waiting for direction are not empty activities. They're not passive or weak activities.

They are fundamental to what makes us strong. What makes us strong is our ability to have relationship with stronger forms of intelligence than our own. It's the same exact lesson where it was, you know, part of. Saying, No, I don't know that. Now I get to learn something new, and it's okay that I'm where I'm at.

Now I'm becoming stronger because of it, when we don't know one of the best. And I'm not against vision boards, by the way, but there is, there's so much. There's so many vision boards, my God, asking and waiting are created by it's sit down and with your altar, or like, I'll just sit on my couch and I'll be like, I don't know where to go.

I don't know what to do. What's the vision where, what's the creative direction? And trusting that that is actually a very powerful creative activity that I sit, I ask, I petition, and then I wait to receive. And when I do that, what I'm doing is I'm strengthening, paradoxically, I'm strengthening a relationship with higher, stronger forms of spiritual intelligence that are my patrons that are here to help me.

Right? Why do we resist that so much, thinking it's weak unless it comes directly from me and my you know? Now, I'm not saying there can't be a very inspired way of creating a bit. Maybe you create a vision board through that process, right? It's not about vision boards, per se, as much as I'm just kind of poking at the tendency we have to try to be controllers and all powerful, sovereign creators and all of this.

What's really special for most indigenous traditions all around the planet, most sacred traditions from all around the planet is not how powerful you are, but how powerful the allies are that you develop that empower you because of your relationship and desire to serve them. These are the gods and goddesses. These are the spirits of the rain and the rivers and the mountains, powerful natural features of the Earth that we develop relationships with.

What does it mean to become a servant of the mountain? Right? That's a that's a real question in many traditions around our planet. How do I serve the mountain? And then the mountain empowers me. You see what I mean? So that these reciprocal relationships with higher powers are such a part of the Mars Neptune dynamic.

And if you put some energy into that relationship and say, Hey, guide me, direct me, empower me, and then wait for it to come, wait for the vision to occur. That's real strength. It's a different definition of strength, at any rate. So that's it for today. A little it feels like a little sermon from the stars, like a little Mars Neptune, preachy, preachy.

Get my, get my groove on. Hilda's like, all right, what do you think Hilda? You want to come see? You want to come say hi to everybody? Come here. She's like, I'm not coming anywhere. I'm just going to rest here. Alright? Anyway, after I sign off, there is a, there's a video telling you about all the rewards that you can choose from when you donate.

So donate, choose a reward, learn about all of that next. Thank you so much for supporting the channel. To everyone who's already pitched in. We'll see you again tomorrow. Bye, everyone.