Neptune into Aries — An Ancient Magic, An Ancient Danger

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

Today we're going to talk about Neptune's upcoming entrance into the sign of Aries, from the standpoint of the first decan of Aries. If you're not aware of the decans, they are a really fascinating feature of ancient astrology that I'll tell you more about today. They include alchemical images for each 10 degrees of every sign and those alchemical images have a long standing tradition of being associated with certain Tarot cards as well.

This is part of the kind of occult magic tradition of astrology and relates all the way back to an Egyptian magical tradition. Anyway, the decans are part of my upcoming Master Class series for the year ahead. So I thought since the master class starts this week, I'd also show you a little bit about what the decans are.

In case you're interested in joining us, this will be a really fun way of looking at part of the meaning of Neptune in Aries between now and the end of the decade, which is about the length of time that Neptune will spend in the first decan, or the first 10 degrees of Aries, where it takes on some of the meaning of this alchemical imagery and symbolism of those first 10 degrees of Aries.

So anyway, that's our agenda for the day. Before we get into it, remember to like and subscribe. There are a lot of people who watch the channel yet are not yet subscribed. It helps us a ton when you take a second to subscribe.

Transcripts of any of these daily talks can be found on the website, which is Nightlight astrology.com. Now when you head over there, I'm just going to promote a couple of things. Go to the Courses page if you are interested in joining us for the Master Class series.

You can check it out right there and join us for a walk through the decans this year that we're taking, one season at a time, three signs at a time, three classes at a time, 12 classes on the year. Lots of really great content for you if you're interested in the decans.

The other thing we have coming up is our third year course is just starting, and our new guild membership is also beginning. So those are things to check out happening early in the year. If you go to events you're going to see. Check out the Silent Sundays if you want to join us for free meditation once a month.

Those are free. The links to join those meetings are there. And you can also see the upcoming Speaker Series, which is coming up at the end of this month. We have Rod Chang, Stormy Grace, and Alexandra Blair giving some fantastic talks that I'm really excited about.

Those are free. You can join those now. You get the recordings if you can't make them live. And then finally, if you go to live talks, you're going to see that my webinar for the month takes place on January 22. I'll be talking about the ancient meaning of the 10th house and the degree of the midheaven.

In ancient astrology, there is a very distinct use of the degree of the midheaven versus the whole sign 10th house. We're going to explore that in this talk, because it's something that people often get confused. So anyway, if you can't make that live webinar, you get the recording as well.

All right. Well, on that note, as we do, let's turn our attention to the real time clock. Now, what I want to bring your attention to, I was playing around here, and let me get my real time clock set up.

We are rapidly approaching the entrance of Neptune into the sign of Aries, which is taking place right around January 27. Neptune in the sign of Aries. If I isolate that planet, I want to show you how long and remember, Saturn is going to be joining it in this decan.

And we'll also spend a significant amount of time in the decan, not to speak of their conjunction in this decan. So this decan that we're exploring today, the first decan of Aries, takes on a lot of meaning right now in general.

But if we speed this up, you're going to see that Neptune, in the sign of Aries, slowly progresses through the first 10 degrees. That's the first decan space between now and about 2031 gives us like six years worth of Neptune in that first decan where the symbolism we're exploring today will be applicable.

So this is kind of a 20,000 foot view episode in terms of looking at one of the major archetypal influences of these first 10 degrees of this sign of Aries, and specifically how Neptune and Aries might get on while it's in this space of the zodiac.

So what I have for you today is a couple of images that I want to show you as I'm reading a written meditation and reflection that I've created, and I'll put them up on the screen as we go.

The first image that is associated the most kind of classic image, and I have to shout out Austin Coppock, hold on. Let me grab something. These are two of my favorite reference books that I used that inform the work that I'm doing.

I like to be sure I say that. T. Susan Chang's 36 Secrets, Austin Coppock's 36 Faces. These are, in my mind, some of the best work out there on the decans. There's a lot of other good resources too, but certainly these are good starting points if you want to read more on your own or come study with us, because, you know, I've slowly but surely developed my own take and experience with the decans that informs the way I'm teaching them.

But like many things in astrology, I really do like to take my time getting to know things before I teach them. Anyway, the image, the alchemical image that has been long associated with this first decan of Aries, is the AX.

So you can see this image, very appropriate for a Mars ruled fire sign, the sign of the ram and so forth. But there's another image that I'm going to put up on the screen here for you to see that is also associated with this decan, and that is the two of wands.

And the two of wands, you see this man standing on the top of kind of like a tower, maybe the top of a castle, looking out with two wands, wands being the suit of fire. And then there's also a couple of hexagrams that I reference in today's reflection, hexagram 25 and hexagram one.

Those hexagrams are the creative. Hexagram one is called the creative and hexagram 25 is often called innocence. When I refer to those, unless you have prior background in the I Ching, those are hexagrams you may want to look up and spend some time with on your own.

I mentioned these things in advance because, as I'm reading Today's reflection, these sort of these pieces of symbolism play a role in today's reflection, and I want to make sure that you're aware of the imagery and some of the other symbolism, because understanding the decans and the way that they shape astrological symbolism is subtle, dating back 1000s of years prior to the advent of horoscopic astrology, when some of the first work with the Zodiac as we know it was being done in different places in the ancient world.

The Egyptians assigned meaning in 36 sections of the Zodiac by 10 degree segments, and there were alchemical magical images and rituals and rites associated with those 10 degrees in a practice that's referred to as decanic Magic.

That practice of decanic magic is essentially grafted onto the early system of Hellenistic astrology because it was pre existing and popular in the ancient world, and so we still use it today as a way of understanding symbolism as planets move through 10 degree sections or are placed there in your natal chart.

The purpose of the master class this year is to explore those things together. So I hope that this will just give you a taste for what they are and kind of what we're working with in our Master Class series this year.

So I've called this Neptune, the ax and the creative fire at the beginning of things. I hope you'll enjoy this reflection today, and think about it in terms of what Neptune and Aries is providing us, not just at the end of this month, when it enters that first decan, but as it progresses slowly through this decan over the next, you know, six years.

So here we go. There are moments in astrological time when something old is stirring at the edge of a new beginning, something ancient feels like it's ready to appear again. I think this is what it feels like when a planet as slow and old as Neptune is ready to once again, enter the sign of Aries and enter it for the first time in any of our lives.

It's a kind of moment where the world feels as though it's standing and looking out at a new horizon where the Horizon has not yet been crossed, but it's approaching us. The first decan of Aries is a place where the world starts over.

Or it's like a reset button, and that's not because everything in the past has been cleanly settled. It's not because we've finished anything necessarily, but because the future and the roaring fires of newness are insisting upon asserting something right now, and it feels like something that has an ancient precedent.

This has to do with the way in which the Zodiac moves in circles and cycles and Pisces being the very last sign of the zodiac, transitioning into Aries can feel like the end of something very, very old.

When an outer planet crosses that barrier, that boundary, psychically, as Neptune prepares to enter Aries and settles into the first decan for the next five or six years. It's a kind of initiation that begins with fire.

This isn't a brief transit, right? It's five to six years. It's not going to be just a passing mood or a passing thing or a passing fad. Psychically, this is a sustained immersion into the mystery of beginnings and beginnings, for as exciting as they are, are also dangerous.

The ancient image I mentioned associated with this first decan of Aries is the ax. You think about different weapons, and you think about a sword, it's a very fine, precise tool. You think of skillful warriors that skillfully wield swords, or similarly, you think of surgeons that skillfully wield a scalpel in a surgical procedure or operation.

But an ax, an ax splits, it cleaves and it hews. It separates things, one from another, and in this way, it is a tool of creation. It's a tool of creation and it's a tool of destruction at the exact same time.

And this is the peculiar and dangerous creative dilemma of this first decan of Aries. Remember, in this sign, Mars rules and the sun is exalted. This is solar fire and martial force. It's life energy that doesn't know what it's going to be, only that it has to become something.

It's being forced forward. It's like an atom splitting, pretty nuclear image. It's a seed cracking. It's the bark giving way, splitting. And now we have a planet we'll talk about Neptune for today, a planet of Oceans and waters and dreams and devotion and longing and dissolution and illusion.

Stepping into this fiery terrain of the creative, destructive act. Neptune doesn't arrive with clear, rational agendas. It's more like fog at dawn as the sun is coming up. It's like salt water seeping through dry things.

It's dissolving boundaries, even as this first degree, these first degrees of Aries, are demanding creative assertion, and this is where the tension lies. Neptune in Aries is going to look and feel very different from Neptune in Pisces.

If you think about Neptune in Pisces, we're thinking about words like drifting, dissolving, unmooring, returning to the great ocean of oneness, endings, dissolution, drifting, imaginings, longings, romance, yearning.

This is a totally different kind of spiritual Neptune. If we had to put it into question form, I think Neptune in Aries would ask something like, what do you believe strongly enough to act on decisively, boldly, courageously now?

What vision are you willing to risk a lot for? What dreams insist upon becoming flesh, becoming real? And not just contemplative or in thought or imagination. The fire of Aries is always a fire that wants to do something immediate.

It has a very impulsive quality behind it, but this first decan, as it has been taught to us for 1000s of years, is a raw fire that is untested, unproven, unshaped, unformed, does not yet know exactly what it's becoming, where it will go, what the cost will be, what responsibility is required, what is realistic or not.

And Neptune is not necessarily going to soften Mars. It's not going to make Mars gentler. They're going to provoke one another. We can see surges of idealism that are immediate, bright, passionate, impulsive, fiery and absolutist.

Movements can arise very quickly, burn brightly like comets, and believe themselves to be true By virtue of their intensity or their passion alone. So when a personal calling feels holy, urgent, inescapable, undeniable, and yet it's untested, it's unproven.

It's somewhat fragile, because it hasn't endured the trials and tribulations of becoming something. This is the tension that most astrologers have talked about with the first decan of Aries. There's a kind of extraordinary creative power paired with the extraordinary newness, or naivete of being at the start of something.

You think about this image I'm going to see. If I can put it back up on the screen. Give me just a second here. I'm going to put this. This guy, our two of wands player. Here we go. So the Rider-Waite Two of Wands that's associated with this decan shows a person standing really between worlds.

One hand is holding the globe and the other is holding the staff. Many commentators have suggested that whatever is behind him is what's already been built, and in front of him is possibility. This is about that kind of liminal space between everything that's come before and some kind of new horizon.

This is an image that captures the dilemma and the raw potential of that first decan of Aries. It's the moment right before you commit to a vision. The vision is forming, the possibility is ripe and present.

But there's two wands there. You have some resources, but everything is relatively fresh, and you're not going to be able to in order to move into this new horizon, you have to leave the structure you're standing on behind.

At some point, there can be this overconfidence, because it feels like you have the world in your hand. But like, I think, for example, the image of early, I don't know, pioneers heading out west, set aside any of the you know, problematic images of imperialism or colonialism for a second and just purely heading into the wilderness, you may have a sense of I've got some resources.

I've got my wagon, but the wilderness, the frontier, you can't possibly anticipate what it holds for you. Even if you feel confident, prepared, bold, and you have a vision and you're going to follow it, you just can't be prepared for what the wilderness of that creative journey will confront you with.

There is a feeling in the first decan just like this image suggests that there's a path and a vision and a sacred fire leading you forward, and you do have some resources that can carry you into whatever this new vision or new path is.

But vision without grounding, very Neptune in Aries becomes fantasy. Naivete without patience, it might become even tyranny or foolhardiness. Without some element of containment and structure, creative fire can become very destructive for ourselves or others.

Neptune in this sign can enchant us with creative allure and potential and Aries is not going to hesitate, but it may forget to listen deeply. The first hexagram is one that in my upcoming master class I've creatively on my own associated with the first decan of Aries.

The first hexagram is all Yang. It's just pure creative force, the force of heaven, heaven above, Heaven below in the hexagrams, and it shows in the imagery associated with the lines. It depicts a dragon rising up from the deep.

This is an image in the I Ching the very first hexagram, all Yang, the dragon rising up of something being born, something coming into creation. And that dragon is a magical image, a very powerful, raw, libidinal and instinctual image.

And this is Neptune in Aries. It can feel instinctual, transpersonal, transcendental, visionary, mystical, otherworldly, but also very raw, very creative. And you know what I would liken it to, honestly, this is off script for a second, off the script of my written path, but just jumps into my mind when a young couple decides, let's get married, let's have a baby.

It's so deeply, it's so primal, it's so ancient, that impulse, and you have no idea how powerful and overwhelming the path of that impulse will be that doesn't make it wrong, doesn't make it bad, but there's an inevitable way in which you're just completely naive to what you're getting into.

This is the first decan of Aries, and especially when that imaginative, seductive force of Neptune comes through. The hexagram, the first hexagram all creative heaven over heaven, the dragon rising, talks about the necessity of knowing when to rise and when to stay hidden, when to the appropriate timing for creative impulses.

The shadow of this Decan is premature revelation or creative action. You declare yourself awakened or spiritually realized, or you give yourself some kind of spiritual title. You take a couple workshops. You think you've arrived somewhere.

Life will have a way of making you realize that that was arrogance or hubris, and maybe innocent hubris. Nonetheless, that's the kind of thing we all go through. It's a very first decan of Aries kind of realization.

In many ways, the decans tell a story of how things evolve as planets move through signs. You can actually track this with transits. Hexagram 25 is another good one that I've associated with the first decan of Aries on my own creatively.

And if there are, I wouldn't surprise me if other people have made these associations. But these are not associations I've gotten from anything other than my own understanding of the I Ching. So 25 is called innocence, and that hexagram has to do with true creative power arising not from ego or overly conscious intentions or ambitions, but something that's just sort of innocent and pure.

Let me give you an example. When I am trying to write something and I have too clear a sense of where I'm going and a lot of control and investment and outcome of how it sounds and appears, usually it's not going to be good writing, as opposed to something rising up naturally and just following it.

And anyone who's creative knows what I mean. If you're overly contrived and premeditated in something creative and you're not following something, you lose the innocence of the work, which is its purity, which is its genius.

And so this first decan of Aries is also about the difference between beginnings that are contrived, that have to do with the investment of the ego to create something that grants it greater validity or power, and the innocent, creative, pure spark of creativity that we follow that will be tested and shaped and molded.

But the seed point, control, contrivance, ego, its investment versus following something a spark that comes through and we act like a midwife for it. Distinct difference in the feeling of those creative acts. These are distinctions that come up frequently in the first decan of Aries.

Over time with Neptune in Aries over five or six years in this first decan, we may see spiritual movements in our lives that come up quickly and demand allegiance immediately, swiftly, impulsively revolutionary ideals or ideas that are infused with a kind of mythic religious zeal or certainty.

We may see individuals, including ourselves, that feel called to embody leadership before they're actually ready. We have to be very careful about that. Creative breakthroughs that are paired with a deep confusion of identity and capability, deep inspiration of any kind, followed by disillusionment when, as always with Neptune, reality resists the fantasy.

These are refinements of our creative nature. Neptune in this first decan will ask us very specifically, can you wield fire without worshiping it or without becoming identified with it and identifying your sense of ego or power with fire?

It's tempting, too. It's very tempting. Great athletes have a way of pushing the credit aside. Trainers say, I got to stay present, because they know if I don't follow this thing, if I try to grab credit for it, that's when the gods of the arenas will knock me off my horse.

It's funny how deeply athletes are taught to think in this way, as though the act of competition is infused with a certain kind of magic that insists upon presence, not the claim of mastery over the creative fires of athleticism.

So here we are at the edge of a new era. Let's imagine this ax not raised up in anger or zeal or creative self righteousness, but held with reverence. This thing will make clear creative distinctions. It is my job to wield this powerful device in a way that is not destructive, that is not tyrannical or cruel or impulsive or hasty, because this is also a very destructive, dangerous device.

Every cut we make will reshape the future, and so every beginning carries responsibility. When I was a kid, I remember very specifically, I went backpacking quite a bit with my father and my church family. Our church did a lot of backpacking in the Boundary Waters in Minnesota, and we were taught how to use a pocket knife, and until you could demonstrate that you knew which direction to cut away from your body, how to hold it, how to put it away, if you demonstrated any kind of irresponsibility with it the adults wouldn't let you carry it.

We had to go through like a little training program as kids. This is a metaphor for the kind of training we all need with Neptune in this first decan of Aries. Every cut will reshape the future, every beginning will therefore carry responsibility.

Do you know how to wield a sacred blade? Fire is sacred precisely because it can heat, it can illuminate, it can warm, it can create, it can alchemize, and it is a destructive element. We need courage that is courageous enough to listen, conviction that is convicted enough to also question itself and creativity that will serve life rather than consume it.

We are stewards of a sacred fire. Try to possess it. It will burn us and most likely other people. And as we progress through the decans, what we will find is that the truest beginnings are not always the loudest.

They are the ones that will endure. A common weakness of the sign of Aries is being good at starting things, but finding it difficult to maintain, sustain and endure. A test of this sign, as the decans evolve, is endurance.

The truest beginnings are not always the loudest, but the ones that endure. Because we are caretakers of a sacred fire, we have to keep that fire fed, healthy alive, so that it may be passed on creatively, not destructively.

I hope that this has been a useful meditation for you guys today. It's been a joy to do some creative writing around these talks, and I hope that they you know that they're that they serve you and maybe also inspire you to get into your own creative bag.

So on that note, we'll end for the day. We'll see you again tomorrow. Bye.