N€PTUN€ - Mother of

Myth*. Glamour & Utopias

by Dana
Among the great amount of new terms enriching the French vocabulary in the field
of psychology, one new word is very descriptive and valuable: mythomane. We should
adopt in our ordinary speech its American equivalent, "mythomanic." One applies this
term to individuals whose imagination is very active but rather uncontrolled and who,
consciously or not, deceive people around them (and often, in the end, also themselves) by
inventing events which have not actually happened — in other words, individuals who
constantly "tell stories."
This term, mythomanic, would apply particularly to adolescents who, because of inner
psychological pressures or fears, try to evade issues, to refuse facing the new facts of
human relationship which adolescence has brought to them. Because of this, they often
project upon others what they themselves feel, what they have wanted but were afraid to
do, what they yearn for vaguely and imagine, then come to believe actually did happen.
Very young children, of course, have a most fertile imagination; they invent playthings
or even playmates; they live in a subjective world which touches, but often does not
penetrate into, what adults call — perhaps rather self-consciously and pompously — the
"real" world. They too, can be called "mythomatic" if their imaginations are caused by
psychological tensions and they try to make other people believe in the factual reality of the
imaginary events.
It should be evident that many grown-ups also are mythomatic, whether being actually
deluded — they insist naively on other people believing what they claim to be facts — or the
telling of stories is deliberate and for the conscious purpose of self-aggrandizement and of
building up prestige for their ego. This activity of the imagination often occurs in the
borderland where the conscious shades into the unconscious. There is no clear line of
demarcation between the deliberate lie of an adolescent facing a difficult situation, the
nature of which he or she does not really understand, and the imagination of the confused
girl whose half-conscious need for love makes her invent events placing on some person the
responsibility for an imaginary love-making scene, events which she herself dimly believes
to have occurred.
Is it not at times the same with persons who believe themselves to be the recipients of
occult or spiritualistic "messages," who have "visions" and perhaps very slightly twist or
"interpret" factual events to give the impression that some great, mysterious thing has
taken place? Nevertheless, who, in many instances indeed, can say positively and
objectively that a person has imagined or made up entirely a certain unverifiable episode?
Who can say that what seems to have been, as we say, "entirely dreamed up" is not the
reflection — perhaps the anticipation — of something that is "real" somehow or
somewhere? Can one always separate the real from the imagined?
We tread, thus, when we speak of "mythomania" on very delicate and difficult grounds.
We enter a zone where psychologically motivated lies can be seen as not too greatly distant
cousins of the visions of true prophets and mystics, of the anticipations of poets and even of
statesmen. It was the French diplomat of the Napoleonic period, Metternich, who defined
politics as "the art of the possible"; but is not all human living essentially the art of making
what is only possible (or potential) actual? In this process of actualization, does not the
future draw the present state of feeling and thinking — and the actions — of men toward
itself?
The past, alas, tends also to compel the present to duplicate and repeat the old
patterns of behavior; indeed, this action of the past is so strong that were it not for what we
have to call the attraction of the future, the present would repeat the past, the children
would unconsciously feel compelled to repeat the behavior of their parents and
grandparents.
The "attraction of the future" — what can it actually mean? Very simply, it means that
there is always, in contact with us, that which — on one plane or another — represents
what we might become, what is possible for us because it is latent in us. Students of
"deeper thought" are familiar with the old statement, "When the disciple is ready, the
Master comes." What this phrase signifies is merely that when any person has the
imagination necessary to think, feel and yearn for that which it is possible for that person to
become, ahead of his or her present condition, someone or something will confront him or
her with what this "ahead" actually and concretely is. Stated differently, it means that as
soon as one is ready to go beyond the past and toward the future, this futurity takes form in
his personal experience.
It may "take form" in a variety of ways. This taking form is, nevertheless, always
represented, in essence, by Neptune. A new "value" emerges for you out of the Neptunian
sea of possibilities, out of the infinite "womb of futurity" which this remote planet
symbolizes. In Greek mythology, we find that Venus (Astarte) was born out of the sea, for
Venus is essentially the symbol of "value." To become what constitutes the next step in our
evolution as in individual human being is to "mate" with the new possibility which confronts
us. It confronts us pure, naked, as Venus, borne by a large open seashell (an ego "open" to
the future) appearing out of the unfurling wave of time and reaching the sandy shore of our
conscious mind ("sandy" because sand is the remains of the ancient past of life, just as our
intellect is the product of our culture, remains of the thinking of generations of ancestors).
This Venus, this new value, this new realization of what our life means and could
become — is it a reality or a dream? The adolescent, still enveloped in the psychic veils of
her family life and her parents' love, dreams of the "great love" that will take him or her
into the world of freedom and creative self-determined action. The adolescent usually
"projects" this dream upon some "other," who somehow seems fascinating enough to
become a bridge between the dream and the concrete factual reality. The "other" often
turns out to be no bridge at all and refuses the "projection." The result is despair; or else
once more Venus rises out of the Neptunian sea mist, seeking to incarnate into some new
person.
At one level or another — whether in the field of love, of politics or spirituality — we all
have dreamed of an ideal situation and believed that somehow it can, miraculously
perhaps, become a fact for us to experience and in which we will reach our fulfillment as a
person — or even as a "soul." Is it wrong or foolish to dream in this manner? Of course not
— provided we are not deluded into thinking that this ideal is not already the reality in
which we are living this very day or night, provided we do not force the dream upon the real
persons or circumstances surrounding us and become self-deceived and deluded into
confusing ideal and reality.

The "Great Dreams" of Humanity

In politics and sociology, the word "utopia" is well known; and we speak of a person with a
great dream of human brotherhood as a "dewy-eyed Utopian." About one and a half
centuries ago, several such Utopians arose in Europe. They believed in an idealistic type of
Christian socialism or communism and tried (with sad results) to form communities in which
"love" would be the one commandment and social law. This was the Romantic period, in the
midst of which Neptune was discovered in the sky — Neptune, the cosmic symbol of the
"great dreams" of our imagining, as ideal, the next step in our psycho-spiritual
evolution.
Man, the Utopian — yes. Because we can be this Utopian, we as humans. Very likely,
the ant does not dream of an ant Utopia; the ant's next step in evolution is not a vision in
the ant's mind, for, after all these millions of years, that vision would have begun to take
shape — there is presumably no "next step" for the ant as an ant. But humanity advances;
we advance because we can dream of Venus rising out of the Neptunian ocean of new
possibilities. With Neptune, all things are possible; but troubles come to the person who
deceives himself in confusing "possibility" and "actuality," the dream and the reality,
tomorrow (or some day after tomorrow!) and today. We can be so fascinated by the vision
of Venus rising out of the sea as to rush into the sea, blind to the fact that water is not
earth — and we drown.
Neptune is, in that case, the very symbol of glamour. We need glamour in order to
orient our todays toward our tomorrows, instead of letting one today repeat our, and our
ancestors', yesterdays. We need being drawn toward the sea of new possibilities in our
human and personal development; and it is always some glamour which draws us —
glamour of love, of sexual fulfillment, of the beautiful form and the resonant or tender
voice; glamour of "peace on earth and goodwill toward men"; glamour of equality, liberty
and fraternity; glamour of social fame or wealth, of luxurious living, of happy abundance for
our children. Glamour has an infinity of aspects; but always glamour impels, and often
compels, us to do what otherwise we would not accomplish. Glamour fascinates us out of
laziness or routine; there is a spiritual as well as a physical laziness! The refusal to be
fascinated can mean stagnation and a slow fall into senility.
Neptune is also the source of myths. A myth is the "transposition" of a particular event
which stirred some human beings into a mode of universal significance. We hear, for
instance, of the "solar myth" which transforms the life of a particular heroic person (a great
chief or leader) into a series of events paralleling the yearly journey of the Sun; the man
has become the Sun; the human events have acquired the universal significance of a cosmic
process upon which millions of future individuals may model their lives, identifying
themselves with the mythified personage. But we may apply this myth-making faculty
(which is also presumably characteristic of the human race, homo sapiens) to our personal
life. We may give a "mythical" meaning to some event of our youth, to a special encounter,
an idealized love ending in the death of the loved one, an experience which, after a while,
has acquired a mysterious glow and, thus, is conditioning our approach to life and our
expectation of similar or sequential experiences.
Thanks to the myth, we see our life and its factual happenings as if every event were
invested with a universal meaning — perhaps an "eternal" meaning, beyond space and time.
Or else, every event is understood as constituting a particular phase of a vast cyclic
process; thus, the small occurrence becomes integrated into a cosmic whole. Likewise, the
individual consciousness may be felt — and perhaps may experience itself — "resonating" to
an immense divine mind in which this consciousness is believed to "live, move and have its
being." All such processes of universalization transposing particular facts of existence and
making of them myths are Neptunian processes. Some of them may acquire a negative
value; others are most positive and constructive facets of psychological, mental and
spiritual development. It all depends upon the use we make of them. The example of, and
our identification with, the mythical hero, or the "Master," may make us overcome our
laziness and surpass ourselves; or else we may be so bent on worshiping the myth as to live
in a world of financial ideals which blind us to the value of the banal actions of our factual,
everyday life.
I should include in this category of myth many a metaphysical or "esoteric" concept,
vast in its overwhelming generality, which so fascinates our mind that it also unfocuses this
mind and destroys our capacity to pay attention to particular events and to deal
wholesomely with very limited and strictly "personal" situations.
Neptune can, therefore, be said to have two opposite aspects. It may tend to destroy
or even to make impossible the integrity of the person in its function as an individual self
existing in a particular place and at a particular time in a particular community; but it is also
this power that enables man to surpass himself by imagining himself ahead of himself —
and, in most cases, by identifying himself with someone or some "power" that represents
for him an ideal toward which he is able to move just because this ideal has for him
glamour and an irresistible fascination.
This seems to be the reason — as far as man can see — why "God" incarnates as man,
for the divine manifestation, incarnation or avatar so "fascinates" the men of his and
succeeding generations that they are willing to leave all their past, their family and their
little loves, all comfort, all particular (i.e., "earthly") reality in order to "follow Him." The
God-man is the Neptunian fascinator, the great emoter. At the sound of Krishna's flute, all
the maidens fell in love; at the sound of Jesus' words, multitudes followed entranced until
his death shattered the fascination and led to a terrible awakening to the apparent reality of
the crucifixion. But the Apostles saw thereafter the great Neptunian vision of the
Resurrection and the Ascension; and the fact that had seemed to have shattered the dream
of a "King of the Jews" was reinterpreted by Paul as the keystone of a much more
universalistic vision. Christ, alpha and omega of the entire universe.

Neptune in Zodiacal Signs

When we refer the position of Neptune to the birth of an individual, we must realize that the
planet remains 13 years or more in the same sign. As zodiacal signs are alternatively
"masculine" and "feminine" (Aries, masculine; Taurus, feminine; Gemini, masculine, etc.),
the passage of Neptune through two signs lasts the period usually said to constitute "one
generation" (i.e., 25 years). Neptune reached Gemini in 1888, coming then close to the
momentous Neptune-Pluto conjunctions of 1891-92, at 7°- 8° Gemini. As these
conjunctions marked the beginning of a 500-year period (which we may call the Atomic
Age), we can well start from the entrance of Neptune in Gemini the count of generations.
Thus, the first generation (Neptune in Gemini and Cancer) ended in 1915.
A new one (Leo and Virgo) brought us to the end of 1942; a third one (Libra and
Scorpio) began around the time of the first controlled atomic chain reaction (December,
1942). We are now in the "feminine" Scorpio phase, which will end in 1970 — it began in
1956, while Neptune was square Uranus and sextile Pluto.
In 1942, Pluto was still not far from the beginning of Leo; and we can date from this
entrance of Neptune into Libra the start of the sextile aspect of Neptune to Pluto. Neptune
in Libra witnessed the building of atom bombs and the "civil war of man" which so far we
call the "cold war." As Neptune reached Scorpio, the "satellites era" began, with Russia
taking the lead with Sputnik in 1957 — and indeed this race for what we call outer space or
the Moon is steeped in Neptunian glamour and surrounded with the Utopian halo of the
possibility for mankind to send its surplus population to other planets.
However, it is also powered with man's enthusiasm for ever-vaster adventures, with
the fascination of taking a new collective evolutionary step out of the Saturnian boundaries
of the gravitational field of the earth.
Such a collective glamour and enthusiasm may not affect a particular individual at all.
Most persons indeed have only a mediocre capacity for positive response to what Neptune
represents. A few, on the other hand, are strongly marked by Neptune, particularly if this
planet is near one of the four angles of their birth-chart or in close aspect with a planet
occupying an important place in this chart. Here, as in the case of Pluto, the individual
reaction to the planet is expressed mainly in terms of Neptune's position in one of the natal
houses or in terms of planetary aspects — such as conjunction, square, opposition.
What Neptune indicates, at the level of individual psychology, is not so much the
taking of a new step in one's evolution, but the capacity to imagine it and to envision its
characteristic features. Neptune indicates the longing of the individual, the "great dreams"
which have made his inner nature, his feelings, his personal "soul" glow. He will, thus, seek
to project the dream, to find an object to incarnate the longing; and all else will seem quite
valueless, unexciting, dull and worthy only to be left behind as one goes on with rapt eyes
toward the ideal.
In this sense, Neptune dissolves all that once was made solid, limited, objective, safe
by Saturnian boundaries and Saturnian rules. Even the type of ambition which is energized
by Jupiter and Saturn and which, therefore, operates within strictly defined fields of
collective and social-cultural activity is dissolved or "unfocused by Neptune. Neptune yearns
for that which is "beyond" but not "within" the familiar and the (seemingly) solid categories
of the living together of men. There is what appears to be a Neptunian kind of ambition and
of human togetherness — and it may actually haunt the person who experiences it — but it
is the ambition to surrender oneself totally to the building of a new world, a new type of
human relationship.
There is a kind of Neptunian passion that tortures the soul which it possesses; it is the
mystic's passion for the transcendent reality, for a meeting of souls, minds, or even in some
cases bodies, which does not accept the rules, the preoccupations, the attitudes or types of
communication which are supposed to be "normal" for the still half-animal, half-awake
humanity of our day.
One cannot say that Neptune represents necessarily a longing for the formless, the
ecstatic or the escapists "artificial paradise." It may refer to the search for an escape from
all familiar forms or all traditionally structured behavior; but it can also represent the point
in the individual's life, the type of experience or of knowledge which leads him to the
discovery of a vaster, more inclusive, universalistic kind of form. To the villager bound to his
ancestral land and his customs, the shapes and the activities of a metropolis like New York,
London or Paris may seem monstrous and formless; yet they, too, have form.
Saturnian provincialism transforms itself into Neptunian federalism; in turn, the federal
structures, once they have become familiar and strongly operative, become Saturnian
bondage to the internationalist who seeks to establish Neptunian patterns of supernational
organizations like the United Nations or the new "Europe" that the truly progressive minds
of that continent are envisioning and yearning for — and slowly building step after step.
The men who were born close to the conjunction of Neptune and Pluto (1891-2) and
who are the top leaders of present-day nations often lack the perspective necessary to see
clearly the shape of the "great dream," even if working toward it because impelled by
economic or military "facts of life." It is, it should be, the second generation born with
Neptune in Virgo and Leo which ought to pave the way resolutely to a new order; but they
may be too individualistic, too marked by the tragedies of World War II — though I
personally am expecting great things from some men born around 1936-7, perhaps, in
February-March, 1937.
We may have in general to wait for the men and women born since 1942, particularly
from 1942 to 1956 (Neptune in Libra) to be the true world federalists of tomorrow —
perhaps the real conquerors of space who, we hope, will not turn into new conquistadores.
They are our teenagers of to day, quite a few of whom, alas, have seen their Neptunian
idealism prevented by the chaotic conditions of the society in which their parents caused
them to be born.

Neptune in Natal Houses

It is customary in astrological textbooks to state that Neptune in a house indicates that the
person will have certain traits of character or will experience a particular type of life events.
In any opinion, such statements can be quite misleading, for not only the indications given
by Neptune could as well be positive, but the presence of Neptune, perhaps more than that
of the other remote planets, may count very little or not at all in the life of people — or not
in a recognizable manner, except through its transits over important points in the birth-
chart.
If Neptune can be said to have an "influence" in the birth-charts of the majority of
people, it is when in conjunction (or perhaps opposition and square) with other planets; and
Neptune then acts mostly by unfocusing or giving an unusual character to the functions
which these planets represent. It is only when the individual is really attuned to the process
of metamorphosis of which Neptune is the operative symbol that one can really see how this
planet affects the field of experience (and, as a result, the type of exterior events or
circumstances) indicated by the natal house.
On hears it said also that Neptune when in one zodiacal sign tends to abnormalize the
functioning of the organs represented by that sign; but, as already pointed out, vast millions
of people were born with Neptune in Gemini and they did not all show special tendencies to
lung troubles or tuberculosis! It may only be that while Neptune passed through Gemini,
humanity as a whole — at least in the west — became more concerned than before with
lung trouble and tuberculosis. Likewise, the transit of Neptune through Leo may have
focused man's attention upon heart troubles. Most of these Neptunian — and as well
Plutonian — effects are collective. Relatively rare are those individuals who directly
respond as individuals to what these planets indicate as mere possibilities.
A person with Neptune in the first house, particularly if close to the ascendant, may
simply be especially receptive to the social-collective influences of his or her community and
its culture or religious outlook. Without that, one can not really speak of a precise Neptune
factor in his or her life. But if the individual is sufficiently evolved as a person to become a
focus for this Neptune factor, then the very individuality of this person may become
inundated with longings for a new state of consciousness and new feelings or shaken by
doubts as to who or what he (or she) really is — that is to say, a process of ego
metamorphosis may be expected. This process can, however, take a multitude of forms; yet
somehow they will all raise endless, questions as to the nature of the self and challenge the
integrity of the feeling of "I, myself." This can lead to pure mysticism, total confusion,
mediumship or simply a certain amount of indecision and a dream-like existence.
 If Neptune is really active at the threshold of the seventh house, it could indicate
peculiar deceptions in marriage or partnerships of a social and business character; but,
more deeply and generally, it reveals a tendency to idealize close human relationships as
well as to unfocus them. The person may be compassionate and very broad in his or her
associations but may "float" over rather than personally and intently "incarnate" into them.
Concerned by great issues and the quality and value of the contact with the partner,
the individual may be unable to give his or her full personal attention to this partner as a
particular person with very particular needs or requirements. Life may be lived as a poem, a
symbolic ritual, in terms of ideals, rather than as a series of ever-repeated meetings with
very normal and down-to-earth situations. The results can be both noble and tragic.
Similarly, a fourth-house Neptune can make of one's home a universe open to a
multitude of influences, a meeting place (or a marketplace) for the discussion of matters of
concern to a group of people or to a whole nation. From that Neptunian home (or
personality, in the broadest sense of the word), new values may be born, new myths may
arise. A tenth-house Neptune can correlate with a public function which takes at heart all
interests of a community, small or large, with a yearning to live as a public symbol, a
standard of value under which many trends can unite or work in harmony; but it may also
show a life dominated by a collective fate or a life generating a collective fate.
The problem which a truly active and significant Neptune poses is: In what field or life
dimension does your great dream lie?
If your life were to be immortalized, in terms of what types of experience which you
have lived through would you wish your own "myth" to be built?
Mary Baker Edch , founder of Christian Science, had Neptune and Uranus conjunct in
her first house (intercepted in Capricorn) and, to millions of followers, remains the symbol
of a new prophethood of self and truth organized into an institution or a church. Mussolini
had Neptune in his seventh house, but near Pluto, Saturn and Mars; and here we have the
Fascist Utopia, where "trains run on time" but human associations are under the yoke of a
narrow universalism symbolized by the Mediterranean world, maintained by violence and
fed on hatred.
Albert Einstein's natal Neptune is in his eleventh house, close to Pluto; and he
"reformed" modern physics by building a new "myth," the Theory of Relativity — a myth (an
interpretation of facts) which let loose awesome events, for myths, Utopias and those
transcendent abstract dreams of pure mathematics can indeed be fountainheads of
tremendous releases of power, physical or psychological.
All these individuals succeeded in focusing the power of human metamorphosis
symbolized by Neptune. Astrology as a whole is also Neptunian — and not, as many claim,
following a too-easy Greek mythology parallelism of name, Uranian — for astrology seeks to
reinterpret the human person and the events of his life in terms of the structure of the
immensely vast universe, in terms of vast analogies which indeed constitute the substance
of a myth.
 Astrology is, I wrote long ago, "the algebra of life"; and a birth-chart is the myth of
the individual, inasmuch as it is the dream image of what he might be. The birth-chart, as
image of the universe seen from the point in space time of the first moment of
individualization — the first breath — is man perceived in his Utopian self: man, as a
celestial (as an old Chinese would have said) — man, as a focal point on earth for a
particular personalized manifestation (an "avatar") of the whole sky.