Mercury and Neptune Are Bending Realities

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

Today, Mercury and the sign of Cancer is moving into a square with Neptune and the sign of Aries. We're going to take a look at this square. I'm going to give you a list of five things to watch for, and we're going to explore the archetypal combination of Mercury and Neptune.

Most of the time, we just say mystical stuff, don't get ungrounded, or there's some danger of losing your footing, running off into fantasies and otherworldly mystical thinking, and all of that is true, but there's actually a lot more to say about Mercury and Neptune, and so I hope I'll provide you with some new and perhaps interesting insights today about these two planets that will help you recognize and work with them in your experience.

Before we get into it, as always, remember to like and subscribe, share your comments, your reflections. You can find transcripts of any of these daily talks on the website, that is nightlightastrology.com. I want to send a big shout out to all of the people I met at NORWAC.

I'm just back home and recording this, obviously I record in advance, so as I'm recording, I'm just back from NORWAC, and I was really, really thankful to meet a lot of Nightlight students, a lot of people who listen to the podcast, a lot of brand new people that maybe are now listening to the channel for the first time, so hey, it was good to meet you, and yeah, thanks for thanks for it's nice that there's real humans out there, you get to meet anyway.

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That's a little bit better for us, but whatever works for you. Hope you'll enjoy the book. It is a book about the stories that weave astrology into our life prior to our having the actual language of astrology. Most people I meet say that there were a strange series of events or synchronicities that actually led them to astrology, and to me this is what I wanted to write a book about, and do it in a way that anyone could relate to.

So, I hope you'll enjoy this book, it's right from my creative heart. We have a book release party, but I'm waiting to schedule it until the Mexico retreat is done, so probably be later in June. I'm going to have a night of talking about storytelling, memoir writing. You can ask questions. I'll probably read an excerpt from the book.

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We have Mercury moving into the square with Neptune. Today is Wednesday, June 3, and if I take this forward just one day, by tomorrow, Thursday, June 4, the exact same time, it's in the afternoon, Mercury will be just past the square, so between today, Wednesday, June 3, and tomorrow, June 4, the square is coming on.

Now, if you back this up just a little bit, Monday, of course, Mercury entered Cancer, and so we're talking about if you spread this out to about three degrees of separation. Today's a Monday through Friday kind of transit, so this is a Mercury Neptune week. I figure we might as well land on it right in the middle of the week and talk about it that way.

Neptune's in the superior square. We're not going to focus on the superior inferior aspect today with these two planets. I wanted to focus a little bit differently today, rather than the technicalities of the aspect details. I'm going to focus on the archetypal combination.

Now, it's true that when you get these two planets together, probably everybody who knows a little bit about astrology goes mystical stuff is on your brain, like just Mercury, Neptune. But then part two might be don't get ungrounded or don't drink too much caffeine or alcohol or something about losing the plot mentally or rationally or emotionally could come up, and yes, those are like, you know, really reliable interpretations of Mercury and Neptune psychologically and archetypally, but I want to go a little bit deeper into this today and provide you with some things to think about that could really help with the transit, apart from the usual mystical, perhaps ungrounded Mercury-Neptune dynamics.

So, here's the first one. This is important, because intoxication is a Mercury Neptune theme. Neptune in general can lead to intoxication, but what does it mean to be intoxicated? I want to spend just a moment and look at the etymology of the word here.

Let me pull it up, so it derives from the ancient Greek word toxon, which actually means bow, but toxicon was shorthand for toxicon pharmacon, meaning a poison for smearing arrows. If you poisoned or smeared a weapon with venom, then you were that was where this idea of intoxicon intoxicant comes from.

So I think that's fascinating, because what it suggests is that there's something very like a psychic arrow, many spiritual traditions on planet earth, especially indigenous people who believe in spiritual realities, meaning that there are spirits, there are other dimensions that are ripe with spiritual entities that work with us, that come in dreams, that we have protector spirits, that we have antagonizing spirits that live in us that literally are part of the ecosystem of what you might call your own psyche or your body, actually, you know, just like if you call a lake a lake, it's also an ecosystem for a lot of things that live in it, even though it's also this thing called a lake.

Well, actually, we're like that too, according to a lot of spiritual traditions around the planet, we are an ecosystem, and we house spirits. There's spirits that live in us, spirits of ancestors, spirits of things that we pick up, spirits of things that we drink and take into our body. Literally, alcohol is literally called spirits.

So, this aspect is really good when it comes to understanding when I say what intoxicates us. There's two ways of looking at this in my mind. One is what arrows have hit us and brought spirits in that aren't good for us, that can live in our emotional body, our mental body, our physical health, can live in our relationships, live in our jobs, can live in our self-talk, but sometimes this transit can really help you realize that they're not your own.

That doesn't necessarily.. I'm not trying to say, you know, this transit will help you know who to blame. I don't think we're looking to go blame things in general, but to become more enlightened, to become more illumined from within means to understand what poison arrows have hit us, and what little darts have found their home in us, and then have given rise to an ecosystem of spirits and spirit entities.

However you want to think about that, you don't have to take it literally. I think spirit entities can be thought of as thought patterns, they can be thought of as choice or perception habits, but whatever way we choose to look at it, what has intoxicated us, and then simultaneously the things that have intoxicated us are often the shape of the arrows that we project at others, so if you drink and have a lot of emotional conversations while drinking, and you're shit talking, and you know all this stuff, you're going to develop some mental and emotional habits.

You're going to have sent out some darts into the world, and those all have ramifications for us karmically. This is why gossip is warned about, and the evil eye is warned about, and envy and gossip are warned about in most traditions around the planet, because we've allowed something to come in and penetrate our shield, resentment, envy, anger, disappointment, you know, all these things that we let fester into little arrows that we then unconsciously end up projecting outward, so it becomes a really wonderful transit for being able to see the shape of some of those things, how they're harming us or how we might be harming others.

So, when we say what intoxicates us, I think sometimes we just think about it, it becomes like a bland throwaway phrase for Mercury Neptune, intoxication, like ha okay, watch out for fuzzy thinking, but we have to actually think about it, like, well, what poison arrows have come in, and again, I'm not like the Buddhists say, don't try to figure out who shot you and why, get the arrow out of your leg, so I'm not here trying to say, hey, figure out, you know, who's the real up, but more like, hey, you know, what have I allowed through my shields? This transit, not surprisingly, is often associated with things that penetrate our immune systems and become like contagions and viruses that spread, so anyway, that's number one.

Number two, mental and emotional independence. What does that mean? Well, we have Neptune in Aries, very independent. We have Mercury in Cancer very interdependent or dependent, so the two squaring off can bring up questions about mental and emotional, Mercury in a water sign, independence, Neptune in Aries, and questions about the two things. What do they actually mean?

We love self-congratulatory psychology, right? I got bad people out of my life. I set clearer boundaries. I loved myself more. I am more fantastic. I am more capable. I am more empowered. I am more sovereign, and obviously, like, I'm poking fun at all of that, because it can get a little selfish. The other side of that is, if you have become all of those things, do your relationships prove it?

Have you become kinder? Have you become more compassionate? Have you become more capable of being emotionally honest and receptive? Are your bonds stronger? Is your capacity to give of yourself deeper and more profound, not just because you're setting boundaries, but because perhaps you know how to give from deeper, better places within yourself. That's the push in the opposite direction, and it's a direction that we don't always go far enough in, because we tend to be very black and white.

We think if I give too much, then the answer is probably to just be like, you know, push off giving and emphasize being hyper independent, but these two planets challenge us to think about what mental and emotional self-sufficiency mean and look like. Mental and emotional self-sufficiency are meaningless without the other, because there is no self without another. There is no other without a self.

And so, when we're looking at this combination, and we think about what does it mean to have a healthy, strong emotional sense of maturity and independence, it means nothing more than how that shows up in meaningful relationships, where your word is your bond, where your bond is your responsibility, where your love is your commitment, where how you show up with others, not just what you think about yourself, is just as important, and I say that only pushing in this direction a little bit, because we tend to just be so focused on the independent part, and you guys have heard me say this on the channel several times before with Aries transits since the Neptune-Saturn conjunction, but we tend to think, well, you know, I can only be as happy as I am happy within myself.

Yeah, that's great if you exist at the top of a mountain alone, you know, but we don't. We live in the valley, the valley called reality, and there are mountains and there are high places, but they exist in contrast to the valley, the peaks and the valleys, right, they are inseparable from one another. The mountain leads down to the valley, and the valley leads up to the mountain, and the two are connected.

And there are so many interesting texts that come to my mind in the I Ching, where the sage is called off the mountain and into the world. The Bodhisattvas return to be in the world. If you think you are above or better than other people because of your independence, then you are not independent, truly, and that's a subtle thing that an aspect like this can call us back to look at.

It's so funny to me, we now have language for this in relationship theory, you know, anxious attachment and avoidant attachment styles. Well, you know, thanks for giving us words for some of these things that have been archetypal for thousands of years. Really helpful to have some theory around them, because they've given language to something that is so human and so common for how we bond with each other, but all we're really talking about in these bonding styles and the secure attachment style at the center is just how well do you manage being an independent being that is also by nature simultaneously a relational being.

Yes, but the point is that these two will call into question, what do you really mean by mentally and emotionally independent? If that has nothing to do with how you perform at a heart-based level in relationships, not like you're getting graded or something. I don't mean to make it sound like performance; what I mean is, like, well, if you're feeling strong and capable in yourself, that is not something that bears out in the people that you love and are with, and if they don't see it and feel it and appreciate it, then how real is it?

This is something that these two planets, especially in these two signs, can bring up. So, watch for the tensions between those things and the interesting conversations that might be taking place right now. It's good to figure out how to get our own needs met. That's a really important part of it. It's also really important to know how to meet other people's needs, so that we can get our own met, because how you give to others, and the quality with which you give from your heart, is intimately connected to your ability to receive.

So, if you're giving yourself love, but it has nothing to do with the love that you are learning to give others, it's really very empty. That does not mean, on the other hand, that we should pour ourselves out endlessly and have no boundaries, but it's interesting to me that we tend to default in the opposite direction, right? There's selfishness underlying that tendency, so something to look at with this for all of us, anyway.

Number three is tongues of fire. I mentioned glossolalia in a video toward the beginning of this year, which is that phenomenon of suddenly speaking in languages foreign to your own without knowledge of the language. There's also instances of people who suddenly become able to do things at an extraordinary level, having never done it before, like play an instrument.

They suddenly.. I don't remember what this is called, but it's an actual thing. People wake up and just are able to play the piano or speak another language, and this happens to people. There's other interesting realities like this, and the tongues of fire is just a way of pointing to strange transmissions.

There was a story I saw recently about someone who is in a coma, and they were living another life, and in that life they had a child, and all this stuff, and when they came back from the coma, and they had to leave all of this behind, this parallel world that they were in, in the coma, they came back and were totally dissociated, and completely heartbroken, like it was a real other life they were living.

What is this, you know? Like, oh my god, what is going on here? So the point is that with Mercury and Neptune, there are strange transmissions that come through parallel timelines. When we say mystical states, we really do mean some very strange phenomenon, you know, that stream of consciousness, that writing of a song that pours out of you.

I know, for me, the only thing I can really think of is writing. There are certain chapters in my new book that poured out of me in some pretty inspired states, and it's almost.. and I'm sure other people can relate who are creatives. It doesn't feel like it's even you who's doing it. It just feels like you go into some kind of altered stream, and it just comes out, and you feel like a medium, you feel like a channel, and without getting high on any of those things, but I just mean that this is a transit that can connect us to some very otherworldly phenomena, and things where we almost become witnesses to mentally or emotionally far more than we're controlling something.

That state of flow or transmission, those are good words for it, so watch for that, because it can.. I don't even know what to do with that, just you might notice it, so I thought I'd include it.

Number four on my list is deception, gossip, and boundaries. This is one of the most notorious transits for demonstrating poor verbal mental boundaries, or yeah, just almost like not being able to contain speech or words at the same time that you may find yourself in some kind of trance state, writing the next chapter, producing a podcast, playing an instrument, you know, writing a magnificent stream of poetry.

This can also be, you know, running your damn mouth. You can just shoot off, pop off, trip out into gossip, and then often there will be karmic consequences. Those are the formation of the arrows we were talking about earlier. You have to be very careful because becoming deluded by something, not seeing something clearly, lying, deceiving, gossiping, you know, these are emotional and social parasites that can be very subtle, so you have to be careful about them. Boundaries become very important.

Now, this leads to finally number five on my list, which is what attracts the mind. In the yogic tradition, it is said that one of the key steps we have to take on the journey of enlightenment over many lifetimes is that the mind has to start becoming attracted to higher truth and higher subjects. This is good news for all of us who are into astrology, because astrology is considered one such subject within the Vedic tradition.

Even people who are running around being like, "Oh my god, like, what do you think about Tauruses?" or just the most annoying kind of astrology to me. "Oh my god, you really think Leos are all assholes? No, they're the most fantastic. Why?" All of this is still better than people just like, I don't know, snapping into a Slim Jim or something.

Oh my god, that was weird. So, anyway, having things on your mind that are of a higher nature is important, and I'm not here to tell you exactly what that is, but you know what that is. You know what it is within yourself when your mind is attracted to the light, whether that's the people you hang out with, and the kinds of conversations that those hangouts lead to, if it's meditation, if it's what you read, if it's what you write, if it's who you associate with.

What the mind dwells on orients the soul. The mind is like a mirror and a spotlight; it helps us look at things and see them clearly, and then, through seeing clearly, it directs, it points a light. This is called booty, the light of higher intelligence and discernment in Vedic philosophy, but the gist of it is that this is a transit that can help us recognize what is actual substance, what is actual nourishment, what is actual light and clarity and refinement of my mind.

I believe deeply that astrology approached in a fun way, for sure, for entertainment, for sure. I'm not trying to be a jerk, but also, you know, with a focus on the cultivation of love, peace, passion, humility, tolerance, and patience. If astrology isn't being done in a way that directs our mind toward the cultivation of these things, then what are we doing?

And I have to ask myself that all the time. It's something I'm constantly recalibrating in myself, especially when I go doom scrolling, doom scrolling the transits, which is easy to do if you have some anxiety and you know a bit of astrology, you know, a bit to be dangerous to yourself. But anyway, long story short, pay attention right now to what is of a higher nature for your mind, because this transit can point the mind toward divinity, and that's very beautiful, and we can take note of that, and then we can say yes, that's where I'm aiming my mind, that is the way home.

So I will leave you there, and I hope that these thoughts bless you. I hope that there are good things in these thoughts. I hope there's silly things and fun things, and I hope you're having a good day. And next, I'm going to tell you about the year one program, in case you are interested in coming and studying with us. Have a great day, everyone. Bye.