InnerSelf.com

Astrology Alphabet

by Bernadette Brady

Continued from Part II

Neptune

• Key Principle: loss, confusion, the world dissolving, boundaries disappearing. Lost at sea.

• Rate of movement through the zodiac: about 1? to 2? per year.

• Time to travel through a chart: about 165 years.

• Use in predictive work: generally for its ability to make transits and receive progressions.

• Figures: the grandmother, the wise old women. The victim or martyr. The visionary or spiritual.

The first sign of a Neptune contact is a sense of loss, despair, hopelessness, or confusion. Many people instinctively use this as a time to travel, a time to live on the surface of cultures, to escape from their own world and drift through someone else's. For others, there can be times of indecision instead of decisiveness, confusion and dreams instead of clarity and logic. This may or may not be a difficult experience.

The dream world can become more vivid and intuition is highly tuned. This is a time when the boundaries of Saturn are once again challenged, not by the frontal attack of Uranus but rather by slow erosion. The structure crumbles--not because of weakness but because of a massive failure of the foundation.

Methods of coping (Saturn) no longer work, people are Usually faced, in this time, with inactivity. They can take no action to solve their problem, they must wait for the problem to dissolve.

The following are some guidelines to the transits of Neptune:

• Neptune-Sun: confusion about one's role in the world; desire to escape, travel, or recluse while one reconsiders--possibly on an unconscious level--the way in which one exists in the world.

• Neptune-Moon: a visionary, drug-sensitive, spiritual time where the individual experiences the dissolving of emotional responses. Time out from the world to unconsciously reorganize one's emotional reality.

• Neptune-Mercury: awaking to the metaphysical. Art, poetry, spiritual ideas. Daydreaming. Inability to carry on with study, loss of paper work, disconnecting from the world of paper work, and so on. Being deceived.

• Neptune-Venus: illusions in love relationships; romantic love which may be wonderful or may leave the individual to deal with cold realities after the contact has finished. Confusion in financial matters; being conned.

• Neptune-Mars: loss of motivating energy; energy draining away; loss of libido. Normal focus energy becoming unfocused.

• Neptune-Jupiter: idealism, seeking the guru that has the answer to everything.

• Neptune-Saturn: see Saturn.

• Neptune-Uranus: see Uranus.

• Neptune-Neptune: questioning spiritual beliefs.

• Neptune-Pluto: a large generational combination which should not be delineated on a personal level, as a few million other people will be having the same combination at the same time. Look for this transit's expression via the media.

• Neptune-North Node: finding one's spiritual path, finding a group or "tribe" with a basis in the arts; healing; drug abuse; the metaphysical which propels one into a new life direction.

• Neptune-South Node: loss in the "tribe" of an old wise woman; a restructuring within the tribe of the spiritual leader, or the visionary one in the family; meeting a person from the past with whom you feel a spiritual connection.

• Neptune-Ascendant: dissolving the image that a person presents to the world; change of personality, as seen from outside. These changes can be catalyzed by despair, or through the escapism of travel.

• Neptune-Descendant: dissolving relationships. Loss, being separated from one's parents when young; new type of relationship needs surfacing in the individual.

• Neptune-MC: letting go of a career drive; loss of social status, redirecting social status into a more Neptunian field. When young, it can also imply the loss of a parent or grandmother.

• Neptune-IC: confusion about one's role in the family. Moving from the home in a way that brings loss of family, relatives, or close friends, i.e., moving to another country, moving from the city to the country, or vice versa. Also, events concerning the grandmother's role in the family.

• Neptune-Vertex/Antivertex: encountering a spiritual, creative, healing, or victim-type of person who repels or attracts you.

Pluto

• Key Principle: transformation via the catalyst of deep emotional reactions. A storm in the harbor.

• Rate of movement through the zodiac: about 10? per year.

• Time to travel through a chart: about 248 years.

• Use in predictive work: for its ability to make transits to a chart and receive progressions.

• Figures: mother-figures, loved ones, family members. People connected with death and dying.

Pluto contacts carry the flavor of instinctive emotions such as grief, lust, protection of loved ones, and so on. These contacts are the instruments the Cosmos uses for changing the redundant patterns that Saturn has set up in your life. Feeling is the essence of the contact. Change will come about via intense feelings that cannot be rationalized away or forgotten. Pluto contacts are big. They bring into the life the gut-gnawing emotions that we know only time will resolve. It is the storm in the harbor. That which was safe, home, or inner is violated, torn down, pulled apart. The harbor has to be rebuilt.

At rare times the transit can also bring in unexpected success if the person is dealing with groups of people. However, there will still be emotionally churning events in the private life. The following are just simple guidelines for the effects of dynamic Pluto on a chart:

• Pluto-Sun: a threat to the sense of self; life-challenging.

• Pluto-Moon: emotional distress; issues with mother or mothering; issues with groups of women; stress on the emotional bonds that bind lovers/family together.

• Pluto-Mercury: obsession with an idea; tunnel vision; putting all your energy into a project.

• Pluto-Venus: intense, fated connections with an intimate relationship; forming a relationship which is "bigger then the two of you". The sudden and emotionally-packed ending of a relationship. Matters involving large sums of money.

• Pluto-Mars: anger and possibly violence; great physical exertion; large projects that take a great deal of energy.

• Pluto-Jupiter: desire for greater power, a greater field of influence. This combination, however, is often not that conscious and would be considered secondary to other major contracts.

• Pluto-Saturn: see Saturn.

• Pluto-Uranus: see Uranus.

• Pluto-Neptune: see Neptune.

• Pluto-Pluto: reassess emotional involvements.

• Pluto-North Node: Meeting a group with which you feel karmically connected.

• Pluto-South Node: intense emotional changes to your family or tribe; meeting something or someone from your past that strongly affects you.

• Pluto-Ascendant: change, by emotional events, to the personality of the person. The body, the name, the way in which you present yourself to the world can all be altered via a turbulent emotional period.

• Pluto-Descendant: emotional restructuring of personal or business relationships; emotionally- charged court cases. When young, this transit can also be a change to the parent's relationship.

• Pluto-MC: the dramatic rearranging of career or social status. The sudden claim to fame, or the emotional shock of an unwanted redefinition.

• Pluto-IC: Strong emotional events concerning home and family; issues with mother figure; changing of the tribe by birth or death; moving the home in such a way that there is no going back.

• Pluto-Vertex/Antivertex: Encountering an individual or place with whom you feel a deep karmic bond.

North Node

• Key Principle: groups, associations, that which the individual is trying to achieve in life.

• Rate of movement through the zodiac: about 20? per year retrograde.

• Time to travel through a chart: about 18 years.

• Use in predictive work: in the receiving of transits and progressions.

• Figures: The Dragon's head or Caput Draconis is named after the concept of a giant celestial dragon who swallowed the Sun and the Moon during an eclipse.

Article Source This article is excerpted from Predictive Astrology: The Eagle and the Lark by Bernadette Brady. Published by Samuel Weiser Inc., www.weiserbooks.com Info/Order book. About The Author Bernadette Brady is an astrologer who lives and works in Australia. She lectures internationally and is a contributor to many astrological journals. She was a microbiologist prior to becoming a fulltime astrologer. Predictive Astrology: The Eagle and the Lark was her first book. She is also the author of: Brady's Book of Fixed Stars. She can be reached at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

The nodal axis is entangled with events or people that seem fated. The North Node represents events placed in your future revealed by the passage of transits or progressions. The South Node represents events from your past--not just the past of this conscious life but also the past of your collective memories. The Hindus would say that the Nodes are the Dharma of life, the "truth" of life, the true meaning and pathway of life.

So the North Node is perceived as new things, new groups of people, new friends that have an impact on the individual, the making of memories which will later be held as important. In addition, the individual can become conscious of a required change to the life path as this point receives a transit or progression.

South Node

• Key Principle: the past, family, inherited material.

• Rate of movement through the zodiac: the same as the North Node.

• Figures: The Dragon's Tail or Cauda Draconis are other names for the South Node.

Since the North and South Nodes form an axis, progressions and transits to the South Node will also be occurring to the North Node. When a planet makes a conjunction to this point, better results are achieved if it is read as conjunction to the South Node rather than an opposition to the North Node.

Issues come from old family history, or things from the past. The past seems to swamp the present, old illness could flare up, friends one has not seen for twenty years suddenly appear. Lost or forgotten photos, paperwork, people, and illness can all come to the surface as this point receives a conjunction from a dynamic planet. DTja vu experiences, meeting of strangers that you feel you have "known before," can also take place.