As the farthest known planet from the Sun in our solar system, Neptune, the 8th planet’s astronomical description is entirely appropriate to its astrological. It’s the densest giant planet and it moves very slowly. In astrology, it rules Pisces and is considered the planet of deception, spirituality, illusion, and addiction. It’s not all bad, though- as with other things, the flip sides are the good sides and intuition, dreams, sensitivity, mercy and compassion also fall under its auspices.

Interestingly enough, you also can’t see Neptune without help and its discovery wasn’t by way of actually seeing it: it was actually found using math. Alexis Brouvard started to notice that Uranus was behaving a little funny so he shined a flashlight in its eyes- no no, actually, what happened was he noticed there were some changes in its orbit people hadn’t really expected. He recognized this was likely due to it being in close proximity to a planet they had yet to discover- and Urbain Le Verrier predicted a position that might explain this from there.

Then, in 1846, Johann Galle whipped out a telescope and went looking- and he found it within a degree of that exact position. Technically speaking, Galileo probably did discover it much earlier, but at the time he did so, he just assumed that it was fixed star.

Neptune is known as something of a reality altering influence- which probably explains why it rules drugs and addiction. That said: are all drugs bad? No, absolutely not. Is escaping reality bad? Have you SEEN reality lately? That said, it’s really kind of difficult to change a reality you cannot face- which is where the problem with Neptune tends to lay. It makes it a little more difficult to decipher facts when feelings are involved and the lies we tell ourselves often change our perception more than any mind altering substance could. Except for maybe mescaline. I’m pretty sure mescaline might beat out bullshitting yourself.

Still, there’s definitely something said for the power of hopes, dreams, and being able to see things in an almost naive light from time to time.

The Retrograde

We get one Neptune retrograde a year but it lasts for a little over 5 months. If you have had areas of your life where you’re not being quite as honest with yourself as you should be- you might be getting your cognitive dissonance thumped pretty hard. I have, however, seen enough of these cycles come and go to recognize that like all those types of things: cognitive dissonance thumped often just gets even stronger for it. Kind of a shame really.

What should happen, rather is that those things which obscure the truth, whether you did it or someone else does it clears away. Reality knocks, you answer the door- maybe sometimes this sucks, but ultimately, it beats continuing to believe something that’s simply not true.

Lies, no matter how many people tell them, no matter how much you try to convince yourself otherwise: are not the truth. Neptune retrograde is usually a time when the truth comes stomping on in and whether you sit down and look at it or not is entirely up to you.