The Great Hope & the Great Weakness: Sun Opposite Neptune

Hey everyone, this is Acyuta-bhava from Nightlight Astrology, and today we are going to take a look at the sun's upcoming opposition to Neptune. The sun is in the sign of Virgo, and it's making an opposition to Neptune in the sign of Pisces. This is happening as we go into the weekend. But it's something that you have probably been feeling all week and may notice as the weekend continues, so the transit actually perfects on Friday the 16th. But again, maybe you're feeling this already this week. And you should be feeling it into the weekend, at least three days, say by Sunday, Monday is starting to fade a little bit, but you certainly should be able to feel this one.

So we're going to spend some time talking about that trends today. But before we do so, don't forget to like and subscribe and share a comment or two in the comment section. It helps the channel to grow when you share a few thoughts and give it a big thumbs up. Appreciate that you can always find a transcript of my daily talks on my website nightlightastrology.com. I also want to take you over to that website right now @nightlightastrology.com to show you my new course. So every six months, we have a new cohort that begins the first-year program Ancient Astrology for the Modern Mystic. It's a one-year program in ancient astrology. You can learn more about the program by visiting the course page on the website. You can learn there's a video there; you can check out what some of the alumni have said. The course contains 30 live webinars that I lead over the course of a full year, plus 12 guest lectures. We also have group forum discussions staffed by tutors that are there to answer all of your questions. They always answer within a day; we have you can email me anytime. We also have a tutoring staff that leads breakout study sessions for people who need a little extra help in between our major units of study. So it's chock full of really great information.

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So all that being said, let's take a look at the real-time clock so that we can get a good understanding of this transit. You're going to see that this is here; we can see the sun in Virgo; this is Friday, September 16, there's Neptune, and the two are opposing one another. So we're going to see the sun moving through this opposition throughout the day on Friday. And if we move it forward one day, you'll notice that by Saturday morning, it's starting to pass by. Now, it's interesting that at the same time, basically over the weekend, we're getting a last quarter moon, so it's interesting because Sun Neptune have some things in common with the last quarter moon, the potential to be letting go of things or to be at an important turning point that's moving us toward the conclusion of the moving into the third and final act, you could say, of a segment of our lives or an area of our life that we're something's been developing for a while. So that's usually what last quarter moons do. And then, on top of that, we've got this interesting Sun Neptune opposition. So I'm going to want to look at three themes today and three lessons that go along with those themes. And I think these will be helpful for us to consider as we go into the weekend, especially.

So the three themes. Sun opposite Neptune. Let's start with what I'm just calling the great mirage. Now, one of the reasons for this is that one of the things that Neptune does, broadly speaking, is whatever Neptune is contacted was contacting whether it's Jupiter or Merck through your Venus or whatever planet it's contacting, it tends to cast a light upon that archetype, covering it in the, in the robes of divinity. Like, if it's Venus, then you know, the person that you're falling in love with is God, you know, or the person that you're falling in love with somehow takes you to this, this very refined place of ecstasy in an imaginative reverie. There's Neptune's very beautiful in this respect; it's so imaginative, and it has such an ability to capture the romantic energy that lives within each soul. The soul is, by nature, very romantic. This is something that James Hillman pointed out a lot that the soul is a romantic being. It likes to fall in love with just about anything. And that's kind of what defines romance as like a genre or a mood.

The problem is that depending on what it's contacting and how it's contacting that planet, for example, an opposition is an aspect that is of the nature of Saturn and tends to present hard dualities. And so, depending on what Neptune is actually contacting, it can create within us a sense of a tremendous romantic ideal, like something that's, you know, close to divinity itself. Eden, you know, perfection, the, you know, ecstasy, bliss, and but when it's in opposition with the planet, it will present those qualities sometimes in stark contrast to the qualities of the other planet.

It could be, for example, that with Venus, when Neptune opposes Venus, the ideal of Neptune is somehow pitted against the quote-unquote reality of Venus. And I say reality in quotes because it's not that Venus is practical, and Neptune is romantic. It's that when the two meet in an opposition, it's as though wherever we find Venus, she might be caught in the feeling of longing and desperation for some ideal that feels unreachable. Polar opposite from wherever Venus feels like she stands currently in our lives. The opposition from Neptune can present Venus with this feeling of an impossible love or a sense of divine failure or weakness relative to romance or sex, or beauty. So sometimes the opposition, in particular, has this kind of saturnine duality behind it, where, when it opposes a planet, especially again, it can present like a hard option between something Edenic and sort of perfect or ideal, and then something that, you know, that maybe pales in comparison.

So, when it's with the sun, if you think about the sun as our heroic sense of ambition and purpose, this is how ancient astrologers talked about the sun in part, as a planet that points us toward our ambitions and the ideals in terms of our life journey. If our life is a plotline, then the sun is telling us what motivates and drives the character to act and move the plotline forward. Well, when that sun is presented with an opposition to Neptune, it as though the path becomes unclear what I'm doing, and the path I'm on feels obscured or confused, or like I'm searching for a higher, Edenic, or you know, blissful and romantic sense of calling or purpose, but I'm lost and confused. And so the great Mirage can be; you can look at it two different ways; the great mirage of a sun Neptune opposition can be that sense that what I have been following the dream or ambition that I've been pursuing, and this doesn't have to be my whole life, it could be just for the past couple of weeks or for the past couple of months. The thing that I've had my eyes set on, I've suddenly lost. I've lost the Pole Star, I don't know where it is, I'm lost the transcendent sense of purpose and meaning, and I need to recover it, but I don't know where to look. And maybe there's another kind of calling or another image that stirs up my heart and soul, but I don't know where it is. So the great mirage can be the feeling; what have I been doing wherever I've been going? And it can be overwhelming.

Usually, for a transit like this, it doesn't last very long. It's not like Neptune transiting the sun in your birth chart, which can last a couple of years. But it is maybe a very acute sense of longing and desperation and a feeling of confusion. What have I been through doing, you know, what is it all meant disillusionment a great mirage. On the other hand, when we can be presented suddenly with an impossible ideal, oh, what I'm doing is pointless look at this, this great quest, this great heroic sense of purpose. And that can fill us with a sense of ambition, but it may be a kind of impossible longing. You know, I think a little bit of Don Quixote with the sun opposite Neptune.

You know, not to say that Neptune in many other aspects and relationships, as we should always just think of Neptune as fantasy or illusion. I don't agree with that at all. But in an opposition, in particular with the sun. I think that the contrast between heroic grandiosity, and a simple, humble, but true north, there's a fine line between those two things. Sometimes it's like, I need to find my true north, and that's the sun opposite Neptune crisis. But also, you know, the romantic illusion of greatness, you know, that's perhaps just as much a possibility.

Number two, the great hope, very similar, this can sneak in the great mirage might be, again, like the grandiose calling, it can also be the sense of where have I been, or where am I going, but then the great hope is slightly different. The great hope would be less about something I'm doing and more about an ideal. The sun was called the noetic light, a planet related to gnosis to that higher sense of knowing. This is not knowing, as in I know stuff in books. This is knowing as in the illumination from within real understanding. And so as that gnosis is filling in our lives, we have a sense of understanding.

And so there's the great hope you could also put it like the great knowing or something like that. It's like an idealism that comes in around a subject or a topic, or it could be political or religious, or ideological in some way, something that we are compelled by because we believe it represents higher truth, and then it calls us like a missionary to go and proselytize or evangelize or emit or radiate that truth to other people. So I will be the great bringer of light, I will be the great messenger or the great bearer of truth. The sun opposite Neptune is, you know, sometimes related to the challenge to pick up our cross and follow the, you know, the Christ, or it's the challenge of taking up our, you know, our spiritual path and leaving the world behind there. So these kinds of archetypes can play out on bigger or lesser scales, the great hope is the great idea, the great knowing, the great knowledge, the great teacher, the great wisdom, and the sense that it will lead us towards salvation.

These are the archetypal tensions that are built into the sun opposite Neptune, especially when these knowings or truths lead us to a feeling that there is something higher and that sacrifice or decision or splitting between world and heaven or material and matter and spirit are somehow a part of the process. So I call it the great hope, but it's kind of a religious sentiment that can come in, and it can be impossible, idealistic, and eventually damning, or even condemning of the world or of the body. And so you know, it's something to be careful of as much as it can galvanize our faith or our sense of belief.

Number three would be the great weakness. Now the great weakness is similar to the great Mirage, and the great hope it's implicit in it. It's the feeling that something that we have thought of as heroic and strong and noble and proud and regal and kingly and authoritative and powerful. The sun is now dissolving. For example, sometimes the sun opposite Neptune shows up when solar figures, fathers, leaders, often men or CEOs, or anyone who has this kind of regal position is ready to pass or fade away or die, a king or a queen or something like that. Or, you know, they're there; there really are not many kings and queens around these days.

So, more practically speaking, it's like, You know, oftentimes it's your father with the Neptune opposites on our grandfather, some image of the lion, the strong patriarch or and I don't mean that in the, in the everything is corrupt with the world patriarch. There's that thing too, but right now, I'm talking more specifically about just a strong father figure, you know, and like side by side with the matriarch, so to speak. So, you know, the great weakness is the dissolving of some great solar image or heroic person or, you know, anyone that represents a solar figure and that dissolving of their, their stature.

And this can also be the dissolving of our own ego, that is something we've taken pride in, that suddenly is dissolving a feeling that we're helpless or that we're not as strong as we thought we were. It can be very humbling. Of course, it could also be exactly the kind of experience that facilitates ego death and mystical union. And so the great weakness would be that the facing of our mortality, the dissolving of our control, the dissolving of the body, and entropy and death in impermanence as a truth that we have to grapple with. So the great weakness is another quintessential sun opposite Neptune theme.

Now there are three lessons that go along with this that, in my opinion, can only help us. And there are some caveats for these because I don't want to make them sound anti-Neptunian. My friend, my dear friend, Shawn Nygaard, who's like the world's best advocate for Neptune, would be so upset with me If I made it sound like Neptune is a problem. Here's how to watch out for the Neptunian delusions. Now, to me, living a life without Neptune would mean living a life without romance. And as someone who is a student of bhakti yoga, that's not possible, right? I consider myself a romantic, and you know, I have a strong Neptune placement in my own chart opposite Mars. So I love romantic crusades, you know, but don't get trapped by the romance.

What this means to me is that sometimes with Neptune, there are certain images that we can get stuck in. For example, I'm just going to I'll tell a story from my youth. My parents used to have a circle of people that played music together was like, a lot of like Martin guitars, and, you know, bearded people singing Crosby, Stills, Nash music on my porch as a kid, like my dad played guitar, and there was always a group of people who had a great love for the music of the 1960s, especially folk rock, Neil Young, you know, this kind of thing, right?

So. And I would sit and listen to them. And I was learning to play guitar, and sometimes I'd even get to join in; it's pretty exciting. And as I would listen to them talk, and sometimes, you know, like, drinking a glass of wine or something, and I would hear them become more and more nostalgic for the 1960s as though everything that meant anything happened in the late 60s and early 70s, when most of them were, you know, kind of coming of age and, in college and stuff like that. And it was to me; I grew up thinking, everything good happened back then, you know, everything good must have happened during the late 60s and early 70s. But then it was interesting because, as you know, as I got older, and I watched some, I sometimes watched that same group of people in different places and settings, aging and still holding on to that. There was something in me that felt like, you know, you're getting stuck in a moment in time, and you've lost the spirit of that time. Like the spirit of the time can stay alive in you in any time. And it doesn't have to be so literally connected to the clothing or the music or the memories or the nostalgia of just that moment in time. So living with the spirit of a time is very different than being captured by the romantic nostalgia of a period of time. Similarly, with music. Oh, I love this musician. No one's ever made music like Led Zeppelin, no one's ever, you know, this music is the best or something like that.

And, you know, what I've learned about Neptune is that it's really important to differentiate between the particulars which are beautiful and they should go on your shelf with your record collection and your maybe your posters in your room or the kind of art you have on your walls and maybe the kind of clothing you wear. But the point is to find that same spirit constantly new as well because as soon as you try to get stuck in just one thing or one type of music or person or clothing or era or whatever, it actually becomes kind of saturnine. The sun opposite Neptune can be just like that because the opposition is of the nature of Saturn, according to the ancient astrologers. And so you don't want to get trapped by a romantic image, the spirit of romance is ever free and moving, and it fills all different kinds of images, but it has to keep moving like a river. Neptune is fluid; it needs to keep moving and expressing itself. It's fertile. Like water, it needs to breed new things, new experiences, new albums, you know, and new music, and so forth.

So, and I had that perception as a kid, and it was like, it kept me from wanting to be too much like them because I realized, well, I can't. I'm not from that time and era, and the spirit of that I get, but there's something about the literalness of it that feels like a club I can't ever enter. And the thing about the sun opposite Neptune is that it can also be that that the same kind of energy that is there in Eden, you know, it is somehow present in the fall, you know, and the Eden eventually dissolves. It's archetypal that we fall from that place that, you know. What was Joni Mitchell's singing, you know, "got to get myself back to the garden." That's it. That's the archetype, but the same truth lives on, and every generation and new music and new things. And if you get what I'm saying, so be careful not to get trapped by the specifics of the romantic spirit instead and then setting up dichotomies. This is romantic; this is fantasy; this is imagination; this is beautiful; this is good; this is true. This is the really ecstatic thing. And that's the plain, boring stuff, you know, the 60s was where it's at, it's, you know, be careful of getting trapped by the romance. Neptune is implicated in many periods of genocide. There is an ironic level of intolerance in the planet Neptune that a lot of Neptunian types don't always recognize.

Number two is follow the breadcrumbs. So the breadcrumbs would be like this, and you have an image in your mind of something that you want or that you hope for. And I was talking, when we had some friends over the other night, we were sitting around the bonfire, and we were talking about this because we're all, you know, we're all dreamers. And you have an image of how you want something to go or what is possible. And then you try to move toward it, and you try to make that dream a reality. And often, so you know, sometimes it is, but then, you know, often it isn't, and then you deal with great disappointment, and sometimes a feeling of failure or weakness. So you have great hope, and then a great disappointment and these kinds of things. And one of the things that we were talking about as we were sitting around is the importance of when you have a romantic idea that the romantic image that you have in your mind. And the feeling of this is it this is what we're going to do might actually be like the, you know, Braxton Hicks before labor, it's the images are evidence that you're going into creative labor, that you're moving toward some imaginal image that's captured you, you know, some romantic intoxication has you, and it's going to take you on a creative journey that's going to really be profound.

But often, it's those initial images or ideas that we have in our head that we think that's the thing, but it's actually just the first evidence of contractions. And what we need to do is follow the breadcrumbs, watch for the signs and omens, be patient, and know that this early image might just be the first evidence that I'm going into labor with something, but I don't know what it's going to be. And I'm here to midwife it rather than to try to control it and steer it to have a preconceived image in my head rather, the preconceived image in my head is just the bubbling to the top of something that's starting to happen, and then we don't get attached to the images, and then we avoid you know, we avoid kind of like what do I want to call it?

Trying to think of something like an analogous birth image, almost like early labor or something like that or a miscarriage of the process. But we have to be patient and letting these things gestate and come about of their own intelligence.

Number three, you Get to know your weakness. When you feel that there's a great hope and a desire and a dream. And, you know, by contrast, something that you're living with that feels just inept or really disappointing. Or when something is revealed to be weak, a father is dying, or something that was an image of strength or beauty or certainty or authority is fading, and you're discovering that it's, it's weaker than you thought it was.

How often do we sit down when we're feeling weak or pathetic or sad or tired, or insecure? And just sit and without judgment? Listen very deeply and ask simple questions. Why are you here? What do you feel? Where's this coming from? Oh, okay, that's interesting. How long have you felt this way? Do you always feel this way? Is this really true? Are you exaggerating at all? No. Okay.

You know, if we spend a little bit of time with getting to know our weakness, I find that oftentimes there's this real false dichotomy that comes in with any kind of opposition. But with sun Neptune oppositions. It's like what, you know, suddenly, something has failed or fallen short. You know, something has fallen short of an ideal or a hope or a dream, or, you know, some we thought something would go a certain way. And then we have to sit with the failure. But how often do we sit with it and receive it like, it's a gift, like literally imagining that an angel has walked into your house with a very peculiar package. And it said, these feelings, these experiences, these insights, these images, these emotions, they're a gift. But you can only experience it as a gift if you sit down and very carefully unwrap the package. And after you do so, then you get this amazing process of discovery. If you go into those feelings and spaces, you'll find out that they're filled with wisdom, they're filled with insight, they're filled with mystery, and delight. So that's something we don't always have patience for when we feel something is weak or that it's failed the heroic standard that we don't take time with the weakness. We just say up well, I'll get back up and do better next time, and it's okay, and you know, we try to pump ourselves up with encouragement, which sometimes is dismissal, ignorance, neglect. Spend time with our weakness; that's a good way of dealing with this transit.

So that's what I've got for today. I hope that this was useful. Don't forget to like and subscribe, and share a few comments. If you are experiencing this transit. I would love for you to share your story. Use the hashtag grabbed in the comment section. Tell me how the planets, especially the sun opposite Neptune, is showing up for you over the weekend. Drop me a story so I can feature it in an upcoming grabbed series episode. And don't forget new classes are starting on November 12. You can sign up for the one-year course Ancient Astrology for the Modern Mystic at nightlightastrology.com. Check out the need-based tuition option if you want to take one of my courses, but you can't afford it. And hope to see some of you guys in that class soon. All right, hope you guys are having a great day. Talk to you again tomorrow.