Downloads or Delusions — Mercury Meets Neptune in Aries

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

Today we're going to talk about Mercury meeting up with Neptune in the sign of Aries. We're going to talk about why this is such a mystical transit, and why sometimes this transit gets associated with things like delusions or illusions and fantasies, sort of taking the steering wheel.

It's a really exciting transit to me as a spiritual seeker, because this transit has, traditionally in my life, coincided with many, I don't know, epiphanies and real, tangible insights that changed the course of my life. I've tracked these out among a number of other astrological combinations throughout my life.

Over the past couple of years, I've taken a real interest in looking back at some of them, and I've found that Mercury-Neptune combinations have been at play in some of the most significant insights and realizations that have really changed the course of my life. I'm going to share a few stories about those today as well, but for the most part, we're going to take a look at this archetypal combination from the standpoint of my list of five things to watch for. So that's what we're up to today.

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Let's head over there right now for a couple of promotions before we get into it. First of all, every day at Nightlight, free morning meditation. You want to come and meet up with a group of people. Sit quietly. Learn to meditate if you've never done it before. We just sit in quiet. There's no dogma or doctrine. You can join through the Zoom link. It's free, so I hope that you will take advantage of that. We meet seven days a week. It's a way to join the study of astrology to a spiritual practice and spiritual self-care. That's really a core value of mine at Nightlight.

Next thing I want to tell you about are the so on the readings tab, you're going to see there's a new tab called readings with Adam. I have new readings available, which I'm really excited about. I was taking a break for several years while I was writing a book and focusing on developing curriculum and giving myself a little break after, you know, 13,000 readings. So it was a nice little sabbatical of sorts from readings. But I'm back now, and I want to give you a little update, because the response so far has honestly been overwhelming in a really good way.

I'm really grateful that so many people are interested in getting a reading. What I'm going to have to do, though, to make this manageable for myself is I'm going to be opening readings in waves. I'm going to open about 30 to 40 spots at a time, and once that has been reached, I'm going to have to close shop until I can catch up, give the readings the time and care that they deserve, and then I'll reopen again once I'm caught up. I'm going to be closing readings this week after Friday. So when you get to Friday night, midnight, whatever it is, Saturday morning, purchase of readings will close down, except for horary readings. Horary readings will always be available. They're a little easier for me to fit into my schedule.

I also want to be transparent about this. After a few cycles like this, probably over the next couple of months, the price for my natal readings will increase a bit. Horary will stay the same. But right now, you could think of this current rate as something like an introductory window, while I'm easing back into doing things. I want to make sure that this stays accessible. I also have to be realistic about what an enormous amount of time and energy this is for me in an already very busy schedule. And that became apparent to me right away in the first two weeks of just getting totally slammed with readings, which is a great problem to have. Again, I'm very grateful.

But for the sake of accessibility, if you see these and you're like, this is out of my price range, even for the desire to work with the person over Zoom, these are recordings that I create and readings that I create and send to you. But you can also go to the need-based astrology readings and get a reading with one of our staff, meet over Zoom, and there's affordable, tiered pricing there. So I just want to make sure that people feel like there's still a lot of accessibility in our price points at Nightlight, despite what I have to do with mine. So anyway, thank you everyone for your overwhelming support and interest in these readings. It's really cool.

Next thing I want to mention to you is the monthly webinar. Go to the monthly webinars under events. On April 23 I'm giving a talk on the astrological meaning of the sun from the ancient philosophical and metaphysical standpoint. All the stuff you've heard about the sun, I guarantee it doesn't hold a candle to the flame of this ancient philosophical meaning. So we're going to really shed some light on the sun. Anyway, if you can't make it live, you get the recording after when you register.

Finally, go to the annual retreat. You're going to see that there are several spots left available on the retreat. There is a need-based tuition price. We can hook you up with that if you email us info@nightlightastrology.com. If you're someone who would like to come but can't afford the normal rate, we have a few of those spots left. That retreat is happening in Mexico. It's going to be very, very healing and immersive. I'm super excited about it. So all right.

On that note, let's turn our attention to Nechep. So the guys are coming out on April 22 at 10am Central time, doing a live beginners tutorial on this beautiful new software program. If you want to join up for that, you can. And if you want to become a user of Nechep, use the affiliate link in the comments or the description of this video.

All right. Now you can see here what we're dealing with today. We've got Mercury and Neptune coming together in the early space of Aries, and my epic pen is not working. So some things you have to stick with because you just love, and the epic pen is one of them. So we've got the epic pen. Here's the deal. We've got Mercury at zero Aries, we talked about that yesterday, and it's coming into a conjunction with Mercury by Thursday, April 16. Fast forward one more day to Friday, and it's passed over. So you could say Wednesday the 15th through Friday the 17th. This transit is going to be most palpable, most active. By the way, we also have a new moon coming through in Aries. We are also going to be talking about that this week. I think we've done some meaningful work with the horoscopes this week too. So there's more to come, though.

But anyway, I've got a list of five things to watch for given this archetypal combination, and I want to start off by saying that one of the things that makes this archetypal combination so powerful for people like ourselves, I'm assuming that a lot of you are like me anyway, in the sense that astrology is a part of an overall theme of spiritual searching, of probing for meaning, of looking for answers, of trying to lead a meaningful life that pays attention to signs, symbols, omens, that considers spiritual self-care and the long path, perhaps of many lifetimes, and the evolution of the soul.

But whatever you believe or don't believe, Mercury's conjunction with Neptune, especially when they're fused together, their squares and oppositions are a little different because they tend to pit the rational and mystical against one another in a tense dynamic. When they're together, they are fused, and so that fusion tends to create some of the most powerful epiphanies and aha moments, realizations and insights.

Mercury and Neptune when they come together, let me just give you a few experiences. I had one of the most powerful altered states of my life while I was on pilgrimage in India during a Mercury-Neptune conjunction in the sign of Pisces. That was a while ago, while Neptune spent its long journey through Pisces, right? But the conjunction between those two planets on the day that it happened, the series of experiences, little synchronicities, insights, meditative experiences over the course of about 24 hours that I had while I was on pilgrimage in India in the Bhava Yoga tradition, changed the entire trajectory of my life and my practice. And without going into details, I'll just leave it at that. It was very powerful, very mystical and truly reoriented a number of things in my life, especially on the level of my work and my school and the curriculum and everything at Nightlight.

There was another Mercury-Neptune experience that I had when a dear teacher passed away, and I just very randomly happened to be going over to hang out. And when I got there, they were already in the hospital. He had just had a stroke, and I ended up being present at a wonderful, renowned astrologer's deathbed by chance. And the Mercury-Neptune theme, Hermes being the god of astrology, right? The patron of astrology itself, Hermes Trismegistus. Mercury-Neptune, in that case, was watching an astrologer pass through the body, leave the body and pass through the veil, you know, to the next life, or whatever happens next. And that experience and the juxtaposition of the mortality and humanness of an astrologer versus the title and intellect and everything else like that was another profound, life-shifting moment for me.

Those are just a couple of examples that I've mined from my past while doing some Mercury-Neptune research in the past couple of years. One of the ways that I become better as a teacher, at least I think I do, is by looking at historical versions of transits and what I've experienced. Thankfully, do you know the way I do that, by the way? In case you want to try doing that yourself, look at your emails. The easiest way for me to remember what was going on was to go back through my Gmail account, which has been, I guess it's been here as long as time has existed, you know, by now, God, I got like two decades or whatever in my Gmail. So anyway, I was able to track out those transits through Gmail records and be like, oh yeah, this is what was going on right at that time. So handy way to track, clever way to track in case you don't have a great memory. I think I have a pretty good memory, but that's a trick for you anyway.

So that is my favorite reason for tracking these transits, is that the insights, the life-changing ideas, the downloads, the thinning of the veil between worlds, the subtle, timeless, intangible, ineffable and mystical become so much realer and much more intelligible to my linear, funky brain. So I'd love it for that reason. However, there are things to watch out for as well. So now I have for you my beloved five things to watch for.

All right. Number one is when subtle becomes gross. Now here what I want to talk about is a bit paradoxical. I'm sound my mind, because just last night, I was sitting in the closet with my daughter reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. This makes it a perfect environment in which to read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: a closet. My younger daughter has not heard them yet because she had the temperament of a chipmunk when it came to reading them to my older daughter. She couldn't sit still, right? She was just too young. So now she's a bit older. She's seven, and she's totally vibing with Narnia. You OG listeners remember the Narnia poster I had on my door back in like 2020, I guess. Anyway, so she and I were sitting in the closet, and she asked me that question that I think all spiritual parents dream of their kids asking at some point, and then, you know, you realize, oh, by the way, kids have very short attention spans, so they're asking this profound, metaphysical question, and you've got like 15 seconds to answer. So the question was, Dad, do places like Narnia really exist? Right?

I was like, well, I'm going to save a conversation about ayahuasca until she's a little bit older, not quite ready to tell her about daddy's experiences on jungle pilgrimages with psychedelic medicines. But I said, well, you know how daddy meditates every morning? She said, yeah. Mommy does too. Mommy does before she gets up. Has a little different morning schedule than me. And I said, you know how we meditate? And she said, yeah. And I said, well, when I just sit and I close my eyes, I go to all different kinds of worlds, and I think of them in the same way that you could think of a dream world. The dream world is very real when you're in it and it has a real impact on you. In the morning, you might get ideas from the dream world, or you might process things. And we talked about, she had a dream that her teeth were falling out. She's losing her very first teeth. And of course, have you ever had that dream? Your teeth are falling out? It's kind of wild, but for her, it's like literally happening as she's losing her first teeth. And so I said, you know how we were talking about the dream and what that might mean, and you see how it's like, it's not fake, it's not real like this closet is real. It's a different kind of real. And that was about all I was able to get out, right? Because, again, you have about 15 seconds and you're sitting there being like, you imagine when these questions come up that you'll guide them into a little classroom, you know, you'll put on a little professor's hat or something, and you'll be like, no, let me explain to you quantum mechanics and astrology, and let me tell you all about entheogens and perception. Nope, you have 10 seconds, and they don't care about you. It's so true. They just, they're like, it was a profound question. You've talked too long. It's 10 seconds. That's all you get. I'm just kidding.

Look, that's the thing. When Mercury and Neptune get together, these subtle worlds that we all know are real, the dream world, meditative worlds, imaginative states that have a real impact on the more tangible, gross material plane, the reality of those worlds and our sensitivity to them ramps up. It gets really big and bright, and that's really profound, because sometimes I think we forget in our rationalist, dualist, market-driven, consumerist society, I'm unhinged today, that we forget that these worlds are actually real, that they have an ontology, meaning they have a beingness. There is something real about them, in the same way that the spirit world exists and the dream world exists, in the same way that subtle planes are real. They're not just figments of our imagination, not in the cheapening way that we talk about imagination like that's just imagination. I actually love the word imagination, but you get what I mean. So sometimes those worlds, we need to be reminded that they're real, that in some ways they're realer than what we take for real in our everyday, gross world. So that's one of my favorite things about this transit.

Number two, meditation and mysticism. It is not uncommon for altered states, mystical states, and things like meditation or mindfulness or interest in spiritual topics to dramatically increase or grow in importance during the span of a brief Mercury-Neptune conjunction. So watch for that, because these openings, when acted upon, when you sort of carpe diem and seize the day and grab the moment, it changes everything. And when I look at those moments that I had in those little windows of time with the astrologer I knew was passing or I was in India, those insights were profound. I easily could have just not done anything about them and been like, wow, that was awesome. It was like being stoned, or you know what I mean? I could have really cheapened it. But when you get an insight, it doesn't mean anything unless you say, got the message, hang up the telephone. If we're just addicted to altered states, it doesn't mean much at all.

I think of this very specifically. When I was working with ayahuasca, I was 10 to 11 years into working with it very regularly, and I just got the message that it was time to hang up the phone and go spend a lifetime taking what I had learned and seen and grown with, that this was not going to be a permanent thing, and that it never was intended to be that way. And I was like, that's okay. This chapter is closed. If it opens back up, because God's Spirit, the universe, my guides, daimons, whatever guides me back to it, then I'll listen, and I'll be receptive, because I was receptive to this path to begin with, and have seen nothing but growth and thankfulness in terms of the challenges and the blessings of the path. So I'll return to it if I'm meant to, but now it's time to close it. I need to walk the talk of what I've seen.

Meditation and mysticism are things that are meant to be for most of us, because most of us don't have the karmic prerequisites in the universe of life to just be monastic. So most of us are going to be like in the world, living and growing through worldly experiences, and very few of us are naturally drawn to going to the monastery. So because of that, we have to take mystical insights, and as soon as we've received them, we have to commit to heart to doing it. Now, sometimes it's just a process of trust and faith. I've seen something, I trust that it'll integrate and just find a way of playing out in my life, and that may be natural as well. But also, you know, if something comes up for you that really shifts your consciousness, do something about it. Don't let it pass.

All right. Number three, this is Aries speaking too, by the way. Number three is tongues of fire. So I've actually made reference to this when I was talking about Saturn, Neptune and Aries earlier. Maybe it was in January. I was talking about glossolalia, and I was talking about inspired speech. Inspired speech, whether you think about it in the Pentecostal sense of speaking in tongues, which is certainly just one archetypal variation of the theme, but it's really about being able to articulate something in a language that's not necessarily your own, or understanding something through a language that comes in and speaks though it's not your normal one. That could be cultural. It could be a type of movie that you never really watch, but you watch, and suddenly something totally outside of your normal genre preference really speaks to you.

The idea here is for something sudden to seize and illuminate your consciousness and awareness, and it feels inspired because of how random and unexpected it was. There's that bursting, initiative quality in Aries that can storm the castle of your normal programs and operating systems in perception and intellect. So allow tongues of fire to inspire you, help you see something in a different way, or maybe articulate something in a different medium. But either way, inspired speech, inspired ideas.

Number four would be conviction. These are all sort of together for me: conviction, aggression, passion, compassion, and guardianship. Mercury and Neptune together. Remember, this is not too far away from a next conjunction with Mars and Saturn. So Mercury is going through a lot. Mercury is also a morning star right now, so a little bit more fierce than a fire sign. I am acting on conviction and a sudden need to act on convictions and principles with passion. Passion means to hold something while it burns your hands, so to speak. Obviously that's not a good idea, but there are things we carry in life that burn us as we carry them, and that's why we love it, and that's why we do it. We carry things that include a fair amount of suffering, sacrifice and intensity.

This for me, astrology, one of the reasons that I think people are partly drawn to the way I work with astrology, I'm going to be completely honest, is that I suffer a bit carrying this. I can't tell you why. It's just a lot. Astrology is a lot. If you live a life with astrology, I'm not trying to sit here and toot my own horn, guys. If you're out there and you're like, hey, I listen to astrology all the time. I walk with this in my daily life. It creates perception of how I live, but it can also alienate me, and it can actually enhance and increase my awareness of suffering and karma and the scope of millions of lifetimes of spiritual evolution that I'm taking place in right now. All of that being enhanced within you is not necessarily comfortable. It can enhance the sense that you are carrying experiences that are fiery and like a hot potato. But to me, that's, I just don't know what else is worth living for. If there's not passion, count me out now. Don't get me wrong, I'm a Taurus rising. I like some ease. I like flow. I don't like drama 24/7, but give me passion, please. You know, and life is filled with it. But Mercury-Neptune will really say, hey, what are you passionate about? Because a life without passion means a life without loving things that aren't at least proximally related to suffering, and they sort of have to be to be worth it. I think you know what I mean. If you're a parent, a lot of parents love their kids, but they suffer being a parent, but you wouldn't do away with that suffering either, right?

So Mercury-Neptune turning up the volume on where we suffer, how we suffer, why we suffer. Do we suffer with conviction, with passion, or do we make other people suffer because our brains are on fire, our convictions, our principledness, our lack of flexibility, becomes aggression, becomes someone who is domineering. Do we become a bully intellectually? One of the reasons I've said this many times, one of the reasons I do not participate in mundane astrology on my channel is not because I don't have convictions or principles or things that I care about in the world, but because I deeply believe, having been in this for a long time, that social media is a place that mostly translates those conversations into divisiveness and aggression and fear and hostility and self-righteousness. I'm not interested. I'm not interested because anything that is worth being convicted about and passionate about is also worth being compassionate about.

Compassionate means that we suffer with others, right? How could you take that away from any of the great world religions, spiritual paths, whether it's the compassion of Mary or the Goddesses and the way that they embrace us and take us in and give us beauty and love and tenderness? The divine feminine is, I think, just like a cosmic bosom of compassion. But also, all of the great spiritual traditions tell us that to be aware of the fact that your suffering is not yours. You don't own it, you don't possess it. You're not entitled to your own suffering, because suffering just is. It's just part of life. And to see that means you're joined with others in it, which means that you share in the suffering with love and tenderness and empathy. So a root etymological meaning of the word compassion has to do with the sharing of suffering with other beings, and to do so with love and tenderness because you're not alone, they're not alone, we're not alone.

So guardianship is the last one, because it grows out of all of this. When you know that convictions can't come without compassion, when you know that convictions should not become aggression, when you know that passion has to go with compassion, then you are a guardian and a steward of good faith. Good faith is not a set of beliefs. Good faith is, hey, look, you can be trusted because you're not adverse to suffering. You join in it with others. You're convicted, but kind. This is a transit that reminds us of all of those principles, and those principles are like the GPS that help us gradually enlighten up.

All right. Finally, illumination and enlightenment, because it comes right out of this. Illumination and enlightenment as a basic idea here, this is the sun's exaltation. Aries is Neptune and Mercury in this sign are like a burning bush. And that could be something really basic. I don't want to make this seem like, oh, you know, burning bush is a little exaggerated and epic, right? But it's a metaphor that's appropriate for the kind of inspiration that brings us back to the real context we find ourselves in. Whatever context that we have that's mundane, it's our lives, it's our marriages, it's our jobs, it's society and all that comes with that. However, the greater context is universal God realization or spiritual enlightenment or oneness or return to source, whatever you want to call it. I can't think of, maybe apart from some of what the Stoics had to say, I can't think of any of the ancient groups that practiced astrology that didn't have this as the ultimate purpose and direction of reality itself, that reality facilitates the awakening of beings to divinity. All of those words are deeply mysterious to me, so don't mistake my confident, somewhat flippant use of them for understanding them. Okay, I don't. But I know that that's what my life is here for. I know beyond anything I could possibly, I guess I can't say I could possibly die. There's doubt. There will be doubt, I'm sure, but it's just I know this is where my life is aimed. In any periods of real doubt or despair, I keep dovetailing back to this path home, and remember that that context is what our lives are held in and made sacred in.

And this is a great transit, Mercury-Neptune in this fiery place of Aries, for remembering that, even if just for a few brief moments. But the most powerful moments of remembrance that we have in little spaces, little things that happen, little synchronicities, powerful dreams, whatever they might be, act on them. Let them write something on your heart and work from that space.

So anyway, this was a fun talk today. Hopefully I resembled some of the astrology. That's always kind of fun to try to do. I often find myself doing that even unconsciously. When I'm giving a talk on a subject, you get into the archetype, and then you just get lit on fire by it a bit.

All right, when I sign off, I'm going to tell you about the Year One program. Our Year One program starts in June. It is an awesome year-long immersion. And for me, what I would say is, if you are clearly moving from curiosity to calling, you're like, I've been curious about astrology, but at this point in my life, it is a call. It is a spiritual call for my practice. It is part of my spiritual path. Maybe I even want to practice it for other people. If that's you, check out the informational video next about the Year One program. I hope to see some of you there.