Whatever You Do Don’t Stand Out: Mars Retrograde Squares Neptune

This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology, and today we are going to take a look at one of the big aspects of the week, which is Mars is retrograde, moving back through the square with Neptune. This is something that I visited multiple times already in different videos, but it's worth covering from as many different angles as possible because this is really the aspect that tones the entire Mars Retrograde period.

Mars pulled through the square as it was slowing down to station, was still in the square as it stationed and turned retrograde, and is now moving through back through the exact partile or exact square to Neptune through retrograde. Eventually, it'll come back through direct motion; we'll revisit all get it all over again. Last week, I took a look at this aspect through the lens of a recent trip to Disney World that my family took. Today I want to read for you my favorite passage ever written on Mars Neptune by Liz Greene from her book on Neptune, which is called Neptune, The Astrological Neptune in the Quest for Redemption. It's a pretty brief little passage. So unlike you know, sometimes I'll read longer passages and try to let people know if I'm going to do that. So this is a little shorter passage. But I think from this passage; we'll be able to extrapolate some really nice themes to consider and work with as the week goes on. And as we see, this transit perfect.

Before we get into it, don't forget to like and subscribe, and share your comments in the comment section. All of that really does help the channel to grow. Um, you can always find a transcript of any of my daily talks on my website, nightlightastrology.com. I'm also excited to announce that later this week, we will be soft launching the 2023 Kickstarter campaign. So at the end of the year, for the last 40 to 45 or so days of the year. I fundraise to support this channel. So if you enjoy this work, there'll be a link later this week. And I'll point you to it. We're trying to raise last year; we got 1607 backers from this channel, which was fantastic. So we're just every year we try to beat our, our previous year's backer total, raise as much money as we can to support our staff and all of our goals that we have for the year ahead. So there are some really cool new goals I'll be telling you guys about. And when you donate, you can pick a variety of different rewards, exclusive talks, and an astrological calendar for the year ahead. Tons of cool stuff. So there are some readings, and you can pick up a reading for the year ahead. All sorts of stuff, and all of my classes are over 50% off too. So I will be sort of soft launching that right later on this week. And then we'll be sort of in full go mode starting next week, trying to beat our backer total from last year. So I'm just letting everybody know in advance. That's coming up. So anyway, thank you guys so much also for just supporting my channel throughout the year.

I can't believe it's that time of year again when we're kind of moving into the last days of the year before the winter solstice is coming, and reflecting back on the astrology of this year together will be fun in the days and weeks ahead. It's just something I like to do toward the end of the year too.

So anyway, today, let's get into it. We have on the 19th, and Mars Retrograde will square Neptune. Let's take a look at it on the real-time clock. Okay, so here's where you can see the aspect right here. Here's Mars' retrograde in Gemini. And then we're going to draw a little line straight to Neptune in Pisces. So you can see that they are exact November 19. That's Saturday. But what I want to tell you is that this is an aspect that has been and will be in the air all week. And beyond that as well. If we advance this chart just a little bit, take a look at Mars sitting at 22 degrees all the way through the 21st because it's moving relatively more slowly. And so if we give it a three-degree range, with Neptune taking Mars down to about 19 degrees, whereas Neptune is at 22. That takes us all the way to November 29. And you could actually November 30 still there. So it gets to separate about four degrees out you really will feel that it's dying down a little bit more. But this is here with us for the rest of the month of November it is, and it has been with us all the way since Mars moved into the three-degree range, which happened a long time ago.

So let's go back a little bit and just see how long it's been. If we go all the way back to Mars's first square to Neptune. We're looking at that happening right around October 11, 12, 13, and 14. Right in there, and if we give it the three-degree range on the other side, then we're looking at about September, late September to the 29th, the 30th, something like that. So you're, you know, this is something that the end of 2022 is just completely toned by this Mars Retrograde square Neptune. Really fascinating.

All right, so the aspect perfects on the 19th. And what I'd like to do today is I want to read to you this passage from my favorite book on Neptune by Liz Greene and a section she just labels Neptune Mars aspects. So this could be any Mars Neptune aspect, but she tends to focus on conjunction squares and oppositions, and after I read it, I'm going to just reflect on a few of the themes that I've noticed as a native Mars Neptune person, it's a little bit of a broad separating opposition in my own chart. But I feel like I've noticed some themes of Mars Neptune in my own life. And I would say that over the years, I've taken an interest because I think it's easier when you're an astrologer to take an interest in some of the aspects that you have in your own chart in the lives of students and clients and so forth. So, I've just gathered a lot of stories over the years about Mars Neptune, so I'll just reflect on what she has to say afterward as a way of preparing us for Mars's square to Neptune this week. All right, here it is.

Neptune Mars aspects. I will a round unvarnished tale deliver of my whole course of love, what drugs, what charms, what conjuration, and what mighty magic. For such proceeding, I am charged with all. I won his daughter. That's from Shakespeare's Othello. The contacts of Mars and Neptune have been much maligned and astrological literature. Everteen mentions weakness as well as sickness, addiction, dislike of work, and fanaticism. He concedes that inspiration might be a product of the benign aspects, but it is clearly reluctant to find anything pleasant in this complex pairing of planets. The hard aspects, in particular, are associated with sexual abuse and black magic. The creative dimension of Mars Neptune is sometimes described but is usually limited to the actor or musician, and the contact is often seen as dangerous to be fought against or transcended. There is no doubt that Mars Neptune can manifest in problematic ways. So can any Neptune aspect or, for that matter, any planetary aspect at all, but we need to look beneath Mars Neptune's behavior patterns to the meaning of the core. To understand why this contact appears with regularity in the charts of those with serious drinking or drug problems, as well as serious physical disabilities of the Neptunian kind. Mars is the sun's fighting arm. The functions of aggression and desire are fundamental to independent physical and psychological life. By wanting something and becoming angry if frustrated, a child begins to separate from the original fusion with the mother and forms a sense of his or her own body identity and personal potency. In this sense, Mars is like the Babylonian fire god Marduk, who battles the sea mother to create the world.

We become ourselves first through what we want, and our primary desires, our physical passional and life-defending long before solar consciousness transforms raw libido into what we call goals and aspirations. Talking about identity on an abstract level is insufficient. Sooner or later, one will be called upon to make a stand and fight for one's autonomy in outer life. If the function of Mars is ailing, one cannot properly separate, and one may experience difficulty in actualizing whatever goals and wishes emerge in adult life, or one may dissociate altogether from desires and aggressive feelings, pushing them into the unconscious where they fester at leisure. This buried rage may then be expressed covertly toward others or internalized against oneself. Blaming parents for creating this problem is too simplistic an approach. Although the childhood environment may exacerbate Mars conflicts, seeds must fall on fertile soil in order to sprout. Mars Neptune inherently avoids any overt expression of the will because of Neptune's longing for fusion. Eden is a world without Mars, for anger and oneness are mutually exclusive.

In paradise, the animals do not eat one another, nor is individual initiative the natural outgrowth of desire welcome in the garden. It is construed as disobedience. The fusion is broken. The Original Sin is committed, and expulsion from the garden follows inexorably from this transgression. Oedipal desires are sin in Eden not because of the erotic fusion they demand but because mother or father will not countenance competition. Mars Neptune will therefore seek to fulfill its desires while ensuring no one is offended.

Neptune's receptivity to collective feelings transforms Mars instead of the thuggish warrior of Homer's Iliad; he emerges a subtle magician who understands the power of participation mystique and the enormous appeal of the word We. Mars Neptune can enter other's dreams and longings, expressing, I want with such delicacy that it seems that everybody wants it. This can be a great gift expressed most typically in Neptunian arenas, the art in the therapeutic field. It may also be a greater a great asset to the politician and the military leader. In all these fields, the ability to invoke participation mystique is necessary. The actor must be attuned to the audience, and the therapist or counselor must have compassionate identification with the client, as well as the ability to draw out feelings and insights in a subtle and nonaggressive way. The political or military leader must inspire the hearts of his or her followers. Without this, the imposition of discipline will only provoke rebellion.

Mars Neptune, like Dionysus, is a seducer, but sometimes as a collective, we need to be seduced. This longing lies at the core of religious worship as well as the catharsis of the musical or theatrical performance. It is a feeling of shared aspiration without which we are abandoned in the wasteland, alone and without hope. In the world of Mars Neptune, the ecstasy has a goal. The dilemma lies in the integrity of that goal and how it is pursued. Mars innately self-centered desires, when deluded with Neptunian waters, must include others if the individual's needs are to be fulfilled. Thus desire is purged of sin because it is ostensibly aimed toward everyone's salvation. This is the spirit of the crusades in which appalling barbarity was sanctioned in the name of redemption and in which the face of Tiamat is visible beneath the holy trappings. Yet it is also the spirit of Alexander Dubcek who had Mars sextile Neptune. Fighting selflessly for his country. Heroic martyrdom has many faces, some of them closely allied to terrorism and genocide and some of them deeply noble. If other aspects in the birth chart suggests deep feelings of inferiority and inadequacy, usually represented by a troublesome Saturn or Chiron than Mars, Neptune's magic may be enlisted by the infant and becomes both a means of avoiding rejection and a means of acquiring power, without shouldering either the responsibility or the consequences.

Aggression may then be masked by apparent docility, and the rage which lurks beneath the surface may become the chief factor behind drug and alcohol addictions, which reflect anger and vengeance against life as much as the desire to escape life. When a well-lit channel cannot be found for Mars Neptune's romantic heroism, political, military, scientific, and artistic, it may be sought in darker waters. Mars Neptune may also elect like Charles Manson, who has them in exact conjunction to play the anti-hero who destroys others and himself rather than endure the dreariness of a decent but unglamorous life.

For Mars Neptune, aggression and desire cannot easily be directed outward into life. Because of the fear of separation, this invokes it may seem better not to desire at all. Sexual disinterest and general apathy are common accompaniments to alcoholism and drug addiction. The Death Wish is obvious in these expressions, and so is the element of masochism. If one merely wants to exit the stage, one can find less painful, drawn-out means. Mars Neptune is also linked with sexual masochism, as well as it's reverse, the desire to inflict pain. This confusing medley of inverted desires, guilts, longing for fusion rage, and impotence reflects a powerful but thwarted identification with the heroic Redeemer victim. It arises not from any intrinsic Mars Neptune evil but from a personality that is too infantile to meet the challenge of expressing the myth and creative and life-enhancing ways.

Impotence can breed cruelty, as any rapist knows. The same may be said of Mars Neptune's black magic. It is difficult to define this term in any sensible way, for one is reminded of a Dennis Wheatley novel with incantations to Asmodeus and the remains of sacrificed chickens in the basement. If there will always be people who are happy to avail themselves of Neptunian mass vulnerability to achieve the power they want. Most politicians dabble in a little of it one way or another. Although usually without the chickens. Political slogans are a form of incantation, and political symbols are a species of amulet. Black Magic may be observed in anyone who, because of his or her own wounds and insecurities, manipulates the unconsciousness of another to achieve the primal omnipotence which Neptune secretly craves. What differentiates Mars Neptune black magic from Mars Neptune white magic is the consciousness of the individual and the personal integrity which he or she has managed to build.

Idealization of sex may also be a Mars Neptune preoccupation. There are many deities and myths, both male and female, who do not merely procreate, but who, with their immense glamour and fertility, generate races of heroes and are irresistible to mortals and Gods alike. These images tell us something of the sexual fantasy world of Mars Neptune. Sometimes if combined with wounding Saturn, or Chiron aspects to Mars, Venus, or the Moon, Mars, Neptune can reflect the Don Juan of either sex perpetually seeking sexual conquest to affirm his or her divinity. More often, it reflects the constant fantasy of such conquest, which can generate a sense of discontent and frustration, and personal relationship. If the fears and insecurities are great enough, the individual may experience such a vast gap between fantasy and reality that sexual satisfaction on the earthly level ceases to be attractive at all.

Mars Neptune may reflect the celibacy of the monk or nun, not only from a sense of spiritual vocation but also because union with God is preferable to union with flawed mortal flesh. Equally, Mars Neptune, because of its extreme sensitivity to deeper psychic currents, can be an exquisitely sensuous and sensitive lover able to conjure the delights of Eden. Sexual pleasure rather than earning expulsion from the Paradise Garden becomes the chief means of return to it. When Mars Neptune goes wrong, it can go horribly wrong. Yet without its white magic, we would have a sadly impoverished world, for there would be no artists to bring us our Dionysian ecstasy nor imaginative leaders, teachers, scientists, or healers to help us achieve our collective dreams.

Well, that is just an absolutely beautiful passage. And I wanted to read it to you because I just don't know who puts it better than that. In some ways, I feel like that. You know, if ever someone would say what Mars Neptune is about, I would say if so many people have said it better than I could but check out what Liz Greene had to say in her book on Neptune when she talks about Mars Neptune aspects.

I want to reflect on some of the themes now from my own personal experience as a Mars Neptune native. And I really would love to hear your stories as well. If you have any kind of Mars Neptune contact in your own chart, or maybe the charts of someone you know or love. A partner or a sister, a friend. Any experiences that you have this week, anything you have to share along the lines of transit experiences, we'd use the hashtag grabbed, or email us your story right at grabbed@nightlightastrology.com. The ancient name for the planets in Indian astrology was a Graha, which means to grab or to grasp. And so there's a way in which all that we're doing is meant to help us be more conscious of the planets in our lives. Because when we are unconscious of them, they tend to grab us and move us around like crazy puppets. So it's good to stay in touch with these themes.

So she talks early on in the passage about the relation between Mars Neptune and sexual violence and even abuse. I wrote a book, it was published in 2010, about Ayahuasca and my journey. Many years of drinking Ayahuasca and some of the healing process from addiction. One of the things that I talked about in the book that Ayahuasca really helped me move through, I guess you could say, which also happened as Pluto was moving across my Mars Neptune opposition. So Pluto was activating the Mars Neptune opposition in my chart, and it was as though there was a purgation of some of the themes around Mars Neptune that happened when I was drinking Ayahuasca in ceremonies. This is around 2005. One of them was reliving in visionary experiences of a series of sexual abuses that I went through when I was a little boy, about four and five years old. And so reliving those things was a part of what I went through in an Ayahuasca experience and brought a lot of healing to those experiences in my life; in my psychology, one of the ways that that abuse played out is I remember it in my earlier childhood, which is also very Mars Neptune, by the way, in terms of what Greene says, was the fear to express my will.

You think of Mars in the birth chart in connection with the Personal Will, and many people who are listening to this may have had similar experiences; if you've ever been through abuse, it can become very difficult later to get the courage up to assert yourself. And this was a challenge for me earlier in life; there was a lot of fear that I had to work through and overcome. And thankfully, I had very supportive parents who were also aware of what had happened, and my mom, in particular, was a very wise score; she's a very wise Scorpio who ended up being a psychiatric nurse practitioner and really, really was a very supportive presence for me as I grew up and had to overcome some of that trauma, I guess you could say. But one of the things that happen with Mars Neptune is that you can feel like your will is taken away from you, like the feeling of something happening against your will.

Now, the reason for that is that Neptune can act as this overwhelming force that's larger than your will. And so when we think of Mars, Neptune, in the heroic sense, we say, Not my will, but thine. And we have some heroic sense of a mission larger than ourselves. However, when you think about something like sexual violence, or abuse, or assault, you also think about your will being taken away. And you think about an overwhelming force that strips you of the ability to have some kind of sovereign use of your strength or will. And so that's something as a Mars Neptune native that I, you know, had to work through. I think one of the other things that happened was when I was raised in the church; there's a lot of suspicion, as Greene mentions in the biblical narrative, you know, not my will, but thine, is sort of one of the great Christian mottos. And so, if I also grew up in an environment, not that I was in a super, I was in a pretty broad-minded, like a very open-minded religious community, for the most part, was very accepting of different religions and faiths and people and orientations and stuff like that. But still, you know, there's there were certainly elements of this growing up, which was, it's your personal will is tends to be seen when expressed as potentially transgressive. So your will. It shouldn't offend anyone, and you shouldn't stand out too much. Because, you know, we're, we're in God's army. Do you know what I mean? I'm in the Lord's army. Does anyone remember that song from Vacation Bible School?

Yeah, so there's this sense of it being somewhat inappropriate to have anger or willfulness or individuality that stands out in some way because there's a suspicion around that; remember, I was raised in the church people over at my house all the time as a preacher's kid. And so that sense of Mars Neptune as don't stand out, be part of a collective be part of a web, but standing out or a part is potentially dangerous. So that was also something that as I grew up, and specifically, as Pluto was activating the Mars Neptune opposition, Pluto is going through Sagittarius and activating the Mars Neptune opposition in my chart.

In Ayahuasca ceremonies, I found myself quite frequently in the middle of the ceremony, literally expressing will and anger and standing out in the group in ways that were absolutely, like unconscious stuff, just flooding into the ceremony. And I'd be pounding my fists on the ground, and you know, like, and this was not, you know, in my conscious control, and it was absolutely mortifying to me and yet so healing, so healing to be like, it's, you know, it's okay to be a human with a will and with anger and to be able to assert yourself and Mars Neptune can repress that.

I think that's, that's one of the things you often find Mars native people or during Mars transits that we're working through is, how do I express my will, granted that I'm a part of something larger, I don't want to upset the equilibrium too much. But I also don't want my will to be, you know, washed over by waves and to feel like weak and as though I'm not okay as just an individual. Being an individual as apart from a collective is a Mars Neptune. Dynamic? Well, Mars is in my chart. Neptune is currently squaring Mars natally, and I've gotten so many nice emails from people saying, hey, you know, thank you for sharing what you've gone through recently in terms of leaving the religious group that you were a part of. And people have asked me about that. And what do you think is going on astrologically? Could you unpack it a little bit more? I learned so much from it. I've kind of, you know, my MFA is in memoir writing. So a big part of my channel, although I know I'm sure it drives some people crazy, is that I like personal storytelling, but I like your stories as much as my own truly. I love to share stories I love, and I try to use stories in a way to illustrate the astrology.

So that being said, you know, this move away from religious community is happening as Neptune in Pisces is now squaring my natal Mars in Gemini. So I have natal Mars in Gemini. And so this, this square that's been in the air, has also been activating my own natal Mars Neptune configuration, and transiting Neptune is squaring my natal Mars. So it's been really interesting. And I found myself in this moment, realizing that as this tension of the transit has been building, I've been revisiting that same feeling that, you know, my own will or, let's call it, my own sense of what I want or desire, something Greene mentions quite a bit as well, should not or cannot be apart from some kind of religious collective. And if my will and my desires are subsumed by a religious collective, then they are safe, and I can't offend anyone. And you know, like that.

And as this transit has grown, I've realized, oh, wow, you know, that's been a pattern over and over. And although I no longer want to be a part of this community, the main reason that I'm holding back from leaving is because of the fear of, you know, what, what will people think if you do your own thing, if you if your individuality somehow asserts itself against the grain of wonderful religious tradition, what will that say about you, you're some kind of rebel. You no longer have the spiritual commitment or integrity or, you know, something like that. This is so much at the heart of what Mars Neptune transits are about. You will find that you are being challenged to assert your needs or your identity or your desires and your will in some way that is not always going to be liked or understood by some kind of group represented by the tendency that Neptune has to represent collectives. Neptune is like a body of water. And, you know, Mars is more like a concrete object, you know what I mean? A sword and water.

So, you know, some people said, Well, what transit do you think is that work? Well, of them, there are a few transits that are at work in my chart, but one of them is the same theme that I had to work through at a similar stage of my life with Mars, Neptune is being activated by Pluto, which was stepping away from the Christian community that I grew up in; I resigned as a youth minister and started to explore psychedelics and then this is also really interesting. There can be periods of time where Mars Neptune goes through challenges with addiction. So when you're when your identity is not sort of subsumed by some kind of collective, and you have to stand apart in some way, Mars Neptune will always tend to want to be consumed or subsumed or identified with something bigger or larger an energy or a group or it will want to merge with something outside of itself. And for a lot of Mars, Neptune people, including myself, you'll find that there are one of the temptations of staying with some kind of group or collective rather than standing apart is that when you stand apart, there is a tendency to feel isolated and alone and then the tension of wanting to join something or be subsumed by something grows really strong again.

That's, for example, when I left the Christian church in my early 20s and left my job as a youth minister. One of the things that happened, and this is right as Pluto was activating that Mars Neptune opposition on my birth chart, was that I decided to start doing drugs. And I was partying and having fun, and suddenly, that same impulse to not stand too much apart led to opiate addiction. Right? And then I went through the ayahuasca experiences, and those were the most transformative events of my life really in the sense of starting to show me because one of actually one of when I started studying astrology, which is in the midst of these Ayahuasca ceremonies, one of the first astrological configurations that I really started to understand in part because of what I was reading books like this Neptune book, as well as the archetypal visionary space of the ceremonies themselves was Mars, Neptune, it was like one of the first aspects in my chart that really got highlighted because that was, that's what I was going through at the time, Pluto activating it.

I just realized, wow, there's I'm always gonna live with this tension, that it's hard to stand apart Mars so individualistic, it's hard to stand apart without feeling like you want to be subsumed by some greater Neptunian force or substance or group or something. So how do you work with that? How do you be an individual while holding the tension of needing to be a joiner, you know, a drinker of some kind of Kool-Aid or beverage from the Amazon, or you know, some kind of religious group or whatever?

What I have come to realize over time is that if you're born with an aspect, especially the squares, conjunctions, or oppositions with Neptune and Mars, it's a tension that you're always going to have to be working with. And, and so that tension is something that I experienced in so many different ways. For example, when I was in high school, one of the things that happened was I really wanted to be part of a group, which, you know, previously had been sports. I was on the swim team; I played football. And I suddenly found that I was becoming more interested in like playing guitar and music and writing, and I was becoming more artistic. I got involved in the theater and arts community in my high school, and then was like, mercilessly picked on and bullied. And people were mean in my school anyway, to people who were in arts in general, like, it was just like, you just got picked on because everyone, like, Oh, they're weird, or whatever. So I remember going through this period of pretty brutal bullying, about a year and a half during high school, and then leaving.

I left my high school, and I went to you can go in Minnesota can go to community college early, and you can get credits that apply toward college and high school at the same time. And the state actually pays for it. It's a pretty cool program here. So I went into that program as a way of trying to, sort of like, escape and, and get out of the dilemma of being, you know, being picked on. This is something that Mars Neptune will also do from time to time, you'll be a part of something, and then you'll feel the need to sever or break from it because something about your individuality isn't being respected within the group that you're a part of or within the collective scene that you're a part of. And it's as though there's always got to be some kind of antagonizing force that does not allow for us to become comfortable identifying with a group. It says nope; you can't just hang out in the WE; something's gonna poke and pry and push so that you have to keep individuating and stepping apart from a collective.

I've realized at this point in my life that that is a dynamic that is that I'm born to experience. It's not a bad one. It's, it's recurring. And the more that I understand that dynamic, the more conscious I am about it, and the easier it becomes. For example, some people right away ask me, Are you going to join a new group where you're going to be a part of a new religious community or whatever. And my initial instinct, as I've been reflecting on all of this, has been no, I'm going to be very careful of that. It's not that I won't go anywhere. If I'm like, Nope, I don't belong anywhere, and I try to pull away too strong. Something, you know, will pull in the opposite direction with an equal force.

So it's as though, you know, this son of a preacher has learned this lesson throughout my life of how to stand apart while being a part of something. And I think that's a tension that is archetypal. I do not think I am unique in experiencing this at all. I have no doubt that many of you listening to this have experienced that same tension. It is an archetypally Mars Neptune kind of tension. The same exact dynamic can often pull us in To like there's a strong oblivion drive with Mars Neptune, I want to completely immerse my individuality within something bigger than myself, which could manifest in terms of someone riding big waves, Mars Neptune on a surfboard, that you know, like an extreme sport, it could lead to someone wanting like wild, intense sex, it could lead to someone drinking too much, it could lead to someone joining the army, and, you know, glorifying, you know, the romantic images of being a Navy Seal, or, you know, in so many other ways. We can't live our lives without something larger than our will feels as though it is a part of. Yet, for most of us, fanaticism and eventual rejection or disillusionment will be part of any attempt to identify with some kind of collective ideal or mission to the extent that we have lost our own separateness. So these are the struggles of Mars Neptune.

Anyway, I'm going to leave it there for the day. I hope that I've done a decent job of reflecting on some of these themes. Not surprisingly, when I looked one day, I looked at the I didn't even know that I had reviews on Apple podcasts. So I decided, Oh, well, I'd like to see what people are saying. And I read it was like, two, you can read them. And you'll see the same kinds of things. There's like two types of reviews. On the one hand, some of the reviews were saying, you know, you like that people liked my channel because they felt like they were a part of something, you know, and a Mars Neptune native is probably, you know, that I feel like that's one archetype that could lend itself toward creating a feeling like there's an individual here and he's got a personality, but what he's transmitting makes me feel like I'm a part of a community where I'm a part of, you know, the astrological world. And I think Mars Neptune has a bit of the magician in it and can be very creative. In fact, yeah, there's a lot of, like, I will often find that people that I'm very compelled by that who that were, their personality and their message somehow blend in a way that I'm captured by will be like Mars, Neptune people.

But on the other hand, you know, the criticism was, like, I can't stand that he talks about himself or that he shares personal stories. And, you know, that is like, it's always a little bit painful when I read those because I'm always trying to work the personal story in terms of a collective archetype and hold that tension. It's something that I try to do with some, you know, some degree of self-awareness and craft, but it's painful to hear that. You know, but one of the reasons it's painful to hear that is because when I was growing up, anytime that there was an opportunity to stand out or say or do something that was uniquely me, often in the religious environment that I was a part of, you know, it was frowned upon, and it was like, like, don't stand out don't say anything about yourself that you know that somehow that's inherently this transgressive, selfish thing that God frowns upon. So I think it's interesting that even in the reviews of my program that you'll see on Apple podcasts, you'll see that people are often split along the same lines of the Mars Neptune opposition that forms a part of my birth chart. Fascinating.

So, at any rate, the risk of talking about myself too much today, we will end here, and I will also encourage you guys please share your stories. This week Mars Neptune is very much, you know, in the air and perfecting. I can't wait to see what you guys have to say about this or any of you Mars, opposite Neptune people Mars trine or sextile Neptune people tend again, I tend to see the loudest dynamics in people's lives with the most vivid stories from the conjunction square in opposition, but I'd really love to hear where you guys are coming from and how your journey with that transit has unfolded. You can share your story if you have a transit story this week, but using the hashtag grabbed or emailing us your story, grabbed@nightlightastrology.com.

Eclipse season has been upon us. We are going to do a storytelling episode probably in the next week or so. They take a little bit more effort, so I can't wait to share another round of the stories that you guys have about some of the transits, including the recent eclipses. If you have one on Mars Neptune, feel free to drop us a line. I love hearing from you guys. Don't share anything that you don't want us to share publicly in one of my episodes. So that's what I've got for today. I hope you guys are having a great start to your week, and I look forward to more as the week goes on. Take it easy, everyone. Bye