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Neptune: Eternal Contexts

The six axes at a glance: on behalf of which whole do we live?

Pavel Medvedev · Published: · Updated:

Neptune concerns the idea that life contains contexts that form a sufficiently coherent whole. This is not about eternal values, but eternal contexts — about their existence. We are born and live not just in a field or a house, but within something larger.

That whole might be a lineage, the first of all: a person as part of a lineage. It might be a clan. A country. It might be a calling, a large context for a life: music, mathematics, physics, the sciences; things people study, draw strength from and practise; teachings of one kind or another.

They are eternal not because they never change, but because they are older than us and will outlive us. Your lineage was here before you; music will be here after you. Hence the phrase repeated across all twelve signs on this website: “the larger whole you are part of”. What follows is what happens to that larger whole on each of the six axes.

We choose some of the larger contexts we live within; others we do not. We do not choose the lineage into which we are born. It is the home we came from. Just as we do not choose our parents: it happened once, and that is that. The same goes for the country of our birth. After that, possibilities open up. We can choose a field, choose which whole we will be part of. Some people never choose at all.

The Hanged Man

Neptune’s symbol is the Hanged Man. Tarot tradition says he is waiting, searching, in an uncomfortable position, for an unusual view of things. But no, he is not looking for an unusual view. Or rather, he is looking for an ordinary one; sometimes you need to turn upside down to find it. He is looking for the whole in his life. Yes, for some people that is an unusual view.

Aries–Libra. The Emperor and Justice

On the Aries–Libra axis, he is looking for a whole: within which whole? You do not know what to do, you have reached a dead end, there is nothing to rely on, yet you must make the next move, take the next step. You have no options; they all lead to defeat. You search, and the first question is: as part of which whole will I take this next step?

Aries is the first step when nothing is there yet. Taking a step means declaring yourself: as part of which whole? Finding an answer gives a person strength, because they are acting on behalf of the whole, something enormous, far larger than themselves.

Then come the responses. Libra is the opposite sign. People will respond to that first step, and the person will have to respond to theirs. How? Libra’s idea is that your responses must contain value. The question is: what value should my responses contain? What whole should be present in them? The very whole on whose behalf you make your first move.

Once a person has settled this, no questions remain on this axis. But that takes real inner work: awareness, acceptance, a decision. Which whole am I willing to bring into my responses to other people’s moves, what value, and on behalf of which whole will I act?

Read more: Neptune in Aries and Neptune in Libra.

And then there are five more axes.

Taurus–Scorpio. The Hierophant and Death

With what whole will I fill the lives of the people around me? With what value? To fill their lives with it, I must live by it myself. So: what value will I attend to, keeping it alive in my own life? That is Scorpio’s task, opposite the Hierophant’s.

When you live by a value, you sow its seeds in people’s lives, like the Hierophant. And they take well. Because living things bear fruit. Only living things. But it has to live within you to bear fruit around you, to spread its seeds. A tree sows the ground around it not because it is trying hard, but because it is alive.

Read more: Neptune in Taurus and Neptune in Scorpio.

Gemini–Sagittarius. The Lovers and Temperance

The central idea here is what I will discuss, and with whom, including myself; what I will think about, including in conversation with myself; what I will argue about, including with myself. Which whole? A whole is present in our words, conversations, discussions and thoughts. Here, what matters is where it is going: the flow, the direction in which the whole is moving. In the language of the day, trends. What absorbs us, what we live by, where it is heading, how it is developing, why, what lies ahead, and so on.

Why do we need this? Because if we live within a whole, we need a map. We need it all the time; it needs updating, and it is always incomplete. But why update it? What is a map for? For making our way. The whole is moving. We live — have chosen to live — within it. So our own course, the events of our lives, what happens to us and what we do, also belong within that whole. We have to choose that course. How can we choose without a map?

Read more: Neptune on the Gemini–Sagittarius Axis, which also includes “The Map and the Road” and the poems.

Cancer–Capricorn. The Chariot and the Devil

This axis asks whom to join in a “we”. We need to join with people with whom we share a whole, so that the whole can live within our “we”. Synergy arises when people turn from a mere gathering into something stronger than the sum of its parts. When people who belong to the same whole come together, that whole is present within them and strengthens them: something larger than all of them. This is where the effect of synergy comes from; this is how it works. This is how they bring the strength of the egregore into themselves and act on its behalf.

In Capricorn, opposite Cancer, there is always a hierarchy taking shape: who is responsible for what, who does what, who looks after which resources and actions. An organization is built, a structure, a sense of what belongs where. And what belongs is always judged from the standpoint of the whole, as a part of it. Beautiful or ugly: the judgment comes from there. From the development of the whole we have chosen to be part of. A director who treats the school as a business has done the sums correctly — for a business. Tell him what we are part of, and the same figures fall into a different pattern.

Read more: Neptune on the Cancer–Capricorn Axis.

Leo–Aquarius. Strength and the Star

Leo means accepting the whole within yourself, letting it determine your role and your actions. Fixed fire: what you do day after day. Where do you get the strength for that? Nowhere. One reason the Hanged Man hangs there is to accept within himself a value that will become a source of energy and determine how it acts through him.

Aquarius, opposite Leo, asks whose rules to live by: the rules of which whole? A rule you follow without knowing on behalf of which whole it speaks is simply someone else’s rule. A rule of the whole you have accepted is your role written down for everyone. That closes the axis: in Leo the whole takes form in my role; in Aquarius, in a common rule. Both rest on the same acceptance. In carrying out your role, as in Leo, you allow the whole to realize it within the whole you have chosen.

In this sense, we belong because we choose a whole. And when we let its strength take form in us, that is where our strength comes from. The card, incidentally, is called Strength. It is the strength of the larger whole you are part of and have accepted within yourself — if you have accepted it in full. Of course, that takes some hanging there, some thought. It does not come all at once. The degree of it belongs to Jupiter, and can be developed.

Read more: Neptune in Leo and Neptune in Aquarius.

Virgo–Pisces. The Hermit and the Moon

The idea is that you fulfil a particular function within the whole. That is Pisces, Neptune in Pisces. You develop its presence in the world; you are yourself its presence in the world. You are a way for the whole to live — a slightly different way of putting it from everything said before. It lives through you; you fulfil a particular function within it.

And at the opposite end of the axis: of course you can fulfil a function in the life of a whole. But that whole, that work, must also be a valuable part of your own life. You must receive something from it too — not a little something, but the whole of it. Accept the entire whole as a value in your own life: learn to be glad it is there. Like Anton, who came for his friend and stayed for the music.

Read more: Neptune in Virgo and Neptune in Pisces.

When something is not quite there

If any of these twelve points contains a “not-quite” — not quite accepted, not quite aligned — then of course there are problems. Then you need to hang there for a while, think without moving, carry out this inner alchemy of joining the life of the whole.

Psychology has its own name for each “not-quite”: helplessness when the step has not been taken; burnout when there is a function but no value; an introject when the rule belongs to someone else; groupthink when there is a “we” without a whole; stagnation when what is alive is not passed on. Rogers called the general condition incongruence: a gap between what a person experiences and what they know about themselves. The Hanged Man hangs there to close that gap. The articles on the signs, at the end of each axis, show which name belongs where.

Again, living without a whole is impossible. You are part of some whole in any case: either you choose, or you are chosen. Deny all of this, and some whole will live your life for you. The only way to live a life you like is to choose it.

The six axes

Questions, answers and a guide to the twelve signs: Neptune: Questions and Answers.

All on one page, paired by axis: Neptune at a Glance.

Main article: Neptune: How We Give Life to Something Larger.