The Vanishing Sun — Neptune’s Fog at the New Moon

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

Today we're going to take a look at the sun's upcoming square to Neptune. The sun is in Sagittarius squaring Neptune in Pisces. And this square is taking place just after the new moon, which means that, technically, our new moon is also configured to Neptune.

We started off by looking at the new moon in terms of its underlying rulership of Jupiter and the upcoming series of oppositions that will happen in the midst of the next moon cycle, from planets in Capricorn to that Jupiter in Cancer.

Today, I want to shift our view of this next lunation cycle and look at it from the standpoint of the opening square to Neptune, which is another important signature of the lunation that I thought I would break apart and sort of look at separately.

Today, I'm going to give you some things to watch for from an archetypal standpoint, and then I did something kind of special today. I wrote a guided meditation. And I'm going to try this out. As you guys know, I like to try things on. So you'll have to tell me what you think about this after we get through the kind of normal philosophical and archetypal breakdown.

I'm just going to read something that's meant to be a little bit more experiential and bring maybe a little bit of embodiment to the way that we're doing things. And if nothing else, it's a nice meditation for for a lunation cycle that's coming at the solstice too, which is a good time to do a little visualizing.

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All right, so on that note, let me shift our attention, as we always do, over to the real time clock. Now here we are, Thursday, tomorrow. I want to remind you a couple of things. Tomorrow, I have a live stream taking place at 10am Central time. That's 11am Eastern. And I guess that would be what, 8am Pacific.

That live stream is going to take a look at Venus's upcoming square to Saturn. We have all of these planets in Sagittarius, squaring Neptune and Neptune and Pisces and Saturn in Pisces. So we're going to take a look at that tomorrow. It'll be a nice, long Venus square Saturn treatment and horoscopes and some Q and A so join me live for that tomorrow.

But in the meantime, look at this right here. We have our new moon forming. Let's get that new moon. I'm going to move it by the hour so you can see just how close it is. So when the new moon forms, what I want you to notice is that that is just one degree off from an exact square to Neptune.

That means that the lunation cycle ahead really does feature that square to Neptune as a big part of not just the next couple of days, but the entire lunation ahead is toned by this whatever is taking place at the hour of a new moon in astrology, we know is going to be part of what sets the mood you could Say for the cycle ahead.

Now, I have five things to watch for today, given the Sun and the Sun square to Neptune, alongside of the fact that it's a new moon square to Neptune, that we're dealing with a New Moon in Sagittarius, a very particular archetypal domain of the Zodiac, squaring Neptune in Pisces, not. Other domain of the zodiac.

They both happen to be ruled by Jupiter, by the way, which is why we spent so much time yesterday looking at Jupiter's rulership over the cycle. That also plays a big role. So if you haven't seen that video that'll give along with this one, can I give you a full take on this very powerful new moon cycle?

So all right, but what to watch for let's get into it now. Oh, you know what this silly thing? There's this new thing on on the streaming platform that I use that really is so annoying with the banners, and it just messes them all up. Sometimes I feel like people, you know, in these programs, they like they they try to build in helpful things, but then, in building something helpful, they make something that's easy and intuitive unnecessarily difficult. Oh, well, we're all just human.

So all right, five things to watch for, I guess I want to say a few like we should say a few introductory remarks before we get too far along here. One is that Neptune has this amazing double meaning that can be a little frustrating. So it's an amazing double meaning, but also can be frustrating in the way we experience it.

On the one hand, Neptune takes things that are, let's say that are false and or let's put it this way, Neptune can create illusions of certainty where there really is nothing so substantive to stand on, but we can feel like we're really certain or confident or clear about something, and there's an illusory quality to Neptune.

On the other hand, Neptune can be a dissolving agent, and so where there is confidence or faith. Sometimes we lose faith, or lose some sense of trust or certainty about what's real. We can also experience a kind of overwhelm, like Neptune floods as well as dissolves. So it's very watery. In that respect, Neptune is frequently compared to something oceanic and sort of title in the way that it can, like, reshape the landscape of something physical, like the shape of the sand on the beach, kind of constantly getting re, shuffled around and reconstituted by the waves.

Neptune has this ability to take things that we're confident about and make us uncertain, or it can make us certain about things we ought not to be certain about. Neptune can also provide us with tremendous inspiration, faith, vision, imaginal insight and artistic inspiration, romantic inspiration, all of which is not unreal. It can be very substantive and truly inspiring. But on the other hand, Neptune can have us wearing rose colored glasses.

So this is the kind of double meaning of the planet of fantasy, the planet of fantasy and imagination, of inspiration and illusion. So what becomes interesting about a cycle like this is all of the potential for those double meanings, inspiration or illusion. You know, dedication or delusion, we will sometimes find that there's a sort of thin line between the two, or that the boundary is very porous.

We might be doing things that are truly inspired, but tilt into becoming a little ungrounded. So all of these things we have to consider now when the sun comes into contact, we're talking about one of the primary agents. Like we've been talking lately a lot about Mars. We had a Mars square to Neptune. We had a Mars square to Saturn. We talked about Mars as a planet of desire, that Mars leads action through action, impulse, through desire.

The sun is very similar, except for that in a way, Mars. Mars's desires, instincts and impulses are, in a way, acting upon desires that are rooted in archetypal ideals. The archetypal ideal is the sun. This is often why the sun and Mars are paired together. And you'll hear people say that Mars is the Right Arm of the Sun.

What's meant by that is that the sun provides the almost platonic sense of an ideal, and Mars is the desire connected to the realization or achievement of that ideal as a goal. So we talk about the sun as plot line, ambition, purpose, direction, calling, but what we really mean in a way. And Vettius Valens talked about this when he called the sun Daimon, and said that the Daimon stirs up human souls for undertakings because of the attractive images he plants in their mind.

That's all him talking poetically about the sun, but also metaphysically. So the sun has so much to do with that sense of calling purpose. It's very. Heroic, if you think of Joseph Campbell's the hero's journey. Very solar, when the sun gets into contact with Neptune, it's not totally different than Mars in Neptune, where we might be provided with ideal images, desires, inspiration and an otherworldly or transcendent sense of calling or purpose.

Very Sun Neptune, on the other hand, we may find that our faith or confidence is being undermined by uncertainty or doubt or existential crisis or despair or depression. We may find that we're overwhelmed and adrift at sea in the midst of fog, the sunlight can vanish from our view, and we go, you know, where did the sun go? Where did my sense of direction, purpose or calling go?

So we're taking those dynamics and putting them together. You may find inspiration, you may find total deflation, you may find delusion. You may find an ideal that's worth following, or some combination of the two, which is not uncommon either. Now, place that at a new moon. And we're talking about these themes coming together and toning the lunation cycle.

So I have five things to watch for. I'm going to just give you some of this now. Today was I am turning my wheels on writing a book about astrology. This is I just finished a book. So this is another book that I'm working on. I don't have a working title yet. I'm still playing with titles, so I have no elevator speech for you. I have nothing.

However, it's been helpful for me to use daily content creation as a place to do some some writing. So what follows are five things to watch for with just a little bit of a written voice in the delineation. It's been a good like I said, it's been a good time for me to sort of practice some writing connected to astrology and astrological philosophy.

So anyways, we might so first thing to watch for is that big sense of what it all means and where it's all going. So I wrote this a Sagittarius New Moon, ordinarily asks us to locate ourselves within a meaningful arc. Sagittarius is concerned with orientation, not just where we're going, but why direction matters. Think of that Archer and his arrow.

Sagittarius, New Moon wants coherence. Narrative and a sense that life is meaningful, intelligible and has a direction that's being aimed at when the sun squares, Neptune at the very moment of the New Moon in Sagittarius, that intelligibility is challenged, not destroyed, but challenged. Neptune does not argue with meaning. It dissolves the conditions that make meaning feel stable.

Beliefs that once worked may begin to feel thin or hollow, tearing at the seams. Philosophies that once inspired may suddenly sound rehearsed or empty. They may fall flat. The danger here is not confusion. Confusion is honest. The danger is the reflex to escape confusion by reaching for explanations that soothe rather than illuminate, stories that close questions and uncertainty prematurely in these moments, meaninglessness can feel seductive as well because it relieves responsibility, while false meaning can feel seductive because it relieves anxiety.

I think this lunation asks for something subtler, the capacity to remain ethically present inside of uncertainty, without rushing to either despair, hopelessness, giving up, falling into a victim mentality or dogma, false certainty. That's number one thing to watch for on my list. All right. Number two, Vision versus projection. Sagittarius is a visionary sign, a sign that see it did it again. This is driving me crazy. It automatically, like, turns off your banners. Okay, here we go.

Sagittarius is a visionary sign. I want you to think again about the fact that at the end of the sign of Sagittarius, we're turning the corner into the return of light. This is, in a way, a very future oriented sign that introduces the progressive return of light in the solar year, as symbolically seen from the northern hemisphere.

Sagittarius is a visionary sign, a sign that looks to the future and asks, What direction will I take? What direction will lead and light my way? But vision is not the same thing as desire projected forward in time under a sun Neptune squared, the distinction becomes critical. Neptune blurs the boundary between what we Intuit and what we hope. It softens the edge of perception until longing can speak in the language of Revelation.

This isn't a moral failure. I think it's a human one. We all want to believe that our desires are meaningful and that the future will certainly validate the shape of our longing. But astrology, when practiced honestly, reminds us that not every image of the future or desire is a calling. Some desires, hopes, wishes, aspirations, directions that we long to take, that we think will fulfill us are actually just mirrors for learning under this new moon.

The question is not, what do I believe is possible, but what part of me needs this belief right now. Vision that's rooted in reality tends to unfold very slowly, very quietly and often without emotional fireworks, intensity and certainty. Projection, on the other hand, demands urgency and certainty. So the work here is discernment, not skepticism, not dismissing your dreams or not having them at all, but humility in the face of our own longing, letting the longing be a teacher, regardless of what may happen without expectation of future result

before we continue. I want to remind you that tonight I am giving a talk on the 11th house. By the way, if you want to talk about dreams, hopes, aspirations, wishes, most people don't know that the 11th house was a house associated with happiness and pleasure and with the realization of dreams and wishes and social validation and even popularity.

Why? Of course, this house has a long standing tradition of being associated with groups, but if you come to tonight's webinar, you're going to learn about the ancient history and roots of the 11th house, which will help you understand it more in your own chart. So you can check that out on the events page of the website at Nightlight astrology.com when you register, you'll get the link to attend live, and if you can't make it live, you get the recording later. Can't wait to see you guys tonight.

All right, let's keep going. Number three, the humbling of the hero. So Sagittarius is often associated with the archetype of the seeker, the pilgrim, the one who seeks out truth with confidence and faith. But Neptune can complicate this archetype. It may erode the myth of progressive progress, at least as a straight line, and It questions the assumption that the journey must culminate in arrival somewhere when the sun is squared.

Neptune at a new moon, we can find that the story we've been telling about our life the one where everything is building towards some clear destination begins to unravel. This can feel disorienting, it can feel frightening, but it can also be liberating. There are moments, I think, in spiritual development, and I've noticed this over many years with my clients, where a heroic narrative that we have built about our life, where there's nothing wrong with having such a narrative, but we've built one.

Nonetheless, it has to soften so that something more relational can emerge, a way of being that's less about conquering and goal orientation, even conquering truth or even conquering spirituality, and it's more about participating in a life where spiritual fulfillment is measured in love, intimacy and connection. Not every phase of life is about forward motion.

Some are surrendering the need for explanations and goals altogether, and this lunation may mark such a threshold. You okay, let's continue faith without guarantees is the next one on my list to watch for in this lunation cycle, because Sagittarius is a Jupiter ruled sign. It is a sign frequently linked with faith, as well as the loss of faith, the rediscovery of faith, the I was once lost, but now am found.

Kind of faith is often misunderstood in our moment in history, I think as confidence in outcomes, Neptune challenges, that definition of faith, I'm confident. I know where I'm going. I know where we'll get get to. I just stay confident and faithful, and then we get there. Under this square, I think faith becomes less about certainty and more about orientation. How do you live when you don't know what's going to happen next?

This new moon doesn't favor belief systems that promise protection. Success or clarity. Instead, it asks whether we can act with integrity in the absence of reassurance. Can we tell the truth without knowing how it will be received? Can we remain compassionate to ourselves or others without knowing whether it will change anything or not?

In 12 step programs, we often talk about doing the right thing as being the thing that we most need, not as the thing most likely to change another person. This is a sobering but mature form of faith, one that does not bargain with the future. It is faith as practice, rather than belief as a posture that we assume in the moment, rather than something we do because we think it will guarantee a kind of outcome.

Astrologically, this is a moment where meaning is not proven. Meaning is not guaranteed in the future according to some belief or action we take now, meaning is enacted now through love. And then finally, the ethics of not knowing is the last on my list, one of the most underappreciated dimensions of astrology, and I think of most wisdom traditions on our planet, more broadly speaking, is the ethics of uncertainty.

Not knowing is often treated as a problem to be solved rather than a condition to be honored. In the book I just finished, there's a chapter where I find myself embracing a very deep period of, you know, uncertainty that was kind of part of my teenage life, when some very challenging things were happening in my family. I know that I'm not alone in going through a period like that, where for long stretches of time everything feels like it's unraveling, and there is a lot of uncertainty, and there is a tremendous sense of needing uncertainty itself to be okay.

A lot of us find that in certain containers that hold uncertainty better than others, art, poetry, music, I think, good friendships, but not knowing in our culture is often treated as a problem to be solved rather than a condition to be honored, and the sun Neptune square exposes how much of our confidence is performative and how often certainty is used to mask fear.

So at this new moon, I think we're asked to examine how we relate to not knowing both in ourselves and others. Do we rush to explain? Do we spiritualize discomfort? Do we make conviction for truth. One of the things I can't stand is when people take pain and suffering and immediately try to reorient it toward meaningfulness. You needed this. This was part of your teaching. This was part of your evolution.

Can we not just give it a second to breathe and be what it is without constantly rushing it back into the conveyor belt of meaning, there is a deep ethical practice, actually, in allowing uncertainty to remain open. I remember my dad, who was a pastor, but did a lot of pastoral counseling, who said that in his he did a PhD in pastoral counseling, and he said that there was a lot of emphasis in his program placed on the ethics of listening, the ethics of listening would be like that.

It's actually an ethical choice to remain open, receptive listening and holding space, rather than to constantly counsel and guide with prescriptive behaviors. I mean, there's also room for that, but there is a deep ethical practice in allowing uncertainty to remain open. It creates space for listening, for humility, for genuine encounter in a Sagittarian context, this is especially important because, and I don't mean any offense by this, I've got Neptune and sag in my own chart.

I can be quite the preacher. As you all know, I came from a preacher. My dad has Mars in Sagittarius. I have a daughter with a couple planets in Sagittarius. My mom's a Sagittarius rising. I love my sagittaz, but this is important for Sagittarius, because that urge to teach, preach, proclaim, can override the quieter wisdom of presence. You don't have to be the Knower.

And in fact, many times when we have to be the knower, we're putting our foot in our mouth and we don't even know it. This lunation, I think, reminds us that knowing is not the opposite of wisdom. Often, it's the beginning not knowing. I should say, let me say that again, this lunation, this lunation reminds us that not knowing is is not the opposite of wisdom. Often it is the beginning.

And I think so much of Socrates. I mean, it's I was what 18, no, 17, I started going to a community college rather than my high school. And of course, I took the opportunity right away to study philosophy. Like, oh, I can take classes that I actually want to study. So philosophy was a first choice. Imagine my surprise when the first figure we started with started by saying, the only way you know something is if you don't know something. Socrates, right?

That, along the same lines in high school, got me interested in Taoism, because I had a professor who compared that Socratic kind of axiom of not knowing anything as the starting place of wisdom to that line in the Tao Te Ching that says the way that can be named is not the way. Well, Socrates and Taoism entered my life. You know, as a teenager, the first time I got to take a class I was actually interested in.

And I think that it stayed with me ever since that intellectual humility, humility of faith, that confidence is not necessarily an opposite to humility, either, but the way that we hold confidence with kind of this, this tension that we hold with humility at the same time. That's something that I have found is frequently a pressure point for Sagittarius, which is why the opposite sign is Gemini. You know, they pair with each other nicely.

Okay. Well, the last thing I want to let you know is that if you go back to Nightlight astrology.com, go to the events page, you're going to see that we have a winter solstice event this Saturday. It's free. It's in Minneapolis. It's at the grapevine collective, the new city center. We're meeting from six to 8:30pm we're going to do a little movement, a little meditation, talk about the solstice.

Have some snacks together, some tea, hang out. I can't wait. It's free. It's something that we host as just a service to the community, to get together and have embodied time and community. If you're in the area, please join us. Bring a friend. It's not you don't need to be into astrology, even necessarily do to enjoy this or get something good out of it.

Now, what I want to do to close is I wrote more of a guided meditation to go back through our points today from the standpoint of something a little bit more embodied, maybe a little bit more somatic. I hope you like this. If it's not your cup of tea, no big deal. You can fast forward past it, or whatever.

But I invite you to listen to this even with your eyes closed, not if you're driving, of course, or on the treadmill. Don't need any broken teeth or cars. But I hope that you will enjoy this and that it can be something of even a solstice meditation, as we head into the solstice here, and regardless of which hemisphere you're in as well, it's a turning point in the story of the Zodiac that's worth taking a second to be with.

Take a breath. Notice how quickly the mind reaches for explanations. Notice how uncomfortable it can feel when the story falls apart, when the meaning that once held things together begins to loosen, quietly, without drama, without apology. Under this darkening Moon, the Sun pressed against Neptune's dissolving tide.

You may feel the urge to declare something, anything, just to stop the ache of not knowing. But pause here. There's a difference between meaning that arises and meaning that's manufactured to calm the nervous system. Let yourself sit in the open space where certainty has withdrawn. This is not a void to be feared. It's a threshold.

If meaning is meant to return, it will return. Changed, less rigid, less defended, less eager to be believed. For now, breathe. Let the questions remain unanswered. Let the silence do its work. Bring your attention to the horizon of your life, not the plan, not the outcome the horizon. Ask yourself, gently, what am I reaching toward? And why, under this new moon, desire can dress itself in sacred language.

Longing can borrow the voice of intuition and hope can masquerade as destiny, but true vision doesn't shout it doesn't hurry you, it doesn't demand. And belief, true vision waits if something feels urgent right now, if it needs you to act immediately, if it promises relief from discomfort, first, just hold it softly. It may be asking for compassion, not commitment.

Let your breath slow, let the future loosen its grip. What is real will still be here when any projections fade, notice the story you tell about yourself, the one where you're moving somewhere, becoming something, figuring it out. Sagittarius loves a quest, a purpose, a reason for the journey, but Neptune in a square to the Sun whispers a different possibility. What if the journey is not about arrival.

What if the role of hero, just for now, is being gently laid down, not as a failure, but as release? There are moments in life when the myth dissolves and what remains is presence, no mission, no banner, just breath, body awareness. If you feel disoriented now, you're not lost. You might be between stories, but rest here. Soul doesn't need a plot to be alive or Okay, let yourself feel the ground beneath you, even if it feels uncertain, even if it feels thin, this new moon does not promise clarity. It doesn't offer proof. It doesn't negotiate outcomes.

Instead, it asks a quieter question, can you act with integrity without knowing how it will turn out. This is not faith as optimism. This is not faith as a strategy. This is faith as presence, to speak truth without applause, to choose kindness without assurance of what you'll get in return, to remain honest when certainty could be easier breathe into that space.

If something in you is asking for guarantees, thank it and let it rest. The deeper faith doesn't ask to be rewarded, it simply asks to be lived right now, notice, how often we pretend to know, to protect ourselves, to appear steady, to avoid discomfort. Under this sun, Neptune square, the performance of certainty grows thin, and that is a real gift, because not knowing isn't a flaw, it's a shared human ground.

Let yourself soften the urge to explain, to fix, to advise. Let listening become the practice. There is wisdom in saying, I don't know, but I'm here. There's ethics in allowing mystery to remain alive, rather than closing it too. Soon as this new moon takes root, consider what it would mean to live more truthfully inside uncertainty, not as weakness, but as reverence. Amen.

Thank you, guys. I hope that that was a useful guided meditation. I wanted to do something coming into the solstice here. I thought this would be a unique way of approaching our content for the day. I hope it blesses you and that it's gives you something positive in your life.

Today, after I sign off right now, I'm going to tell you about the different rewards that are available when you choose to support the Kickstarter campaign. We still need about 1400 people to click over there to the Kickstarter and support the channel in the year ahead to meet our goal.

Thank you to everyone who has already contributed and can't wait to tell you about the different kinds of recordings, either a number of guided meditations I offer, and other cool things, massive deals on our classes. So check those out next. Have a great day. We'll see you again soon. Bye.