It was a late morning in the spring of 1856. A misty fog was creeping across the planet. Not the kind of fog one can see with the naked eye, but rather a hidden one. This fog was capable of creating illusions and confusion but remarkably it also opened imaginative portals through which mystical and spiritual energies flowed freely. On this particular Monday, March 17, 1856, Jupiter and Neptune conjoined in Pisces, an event that only happens every 166 years. This will happen again on April 11, 2022.
The 2022 meeting of these co-rulers at 23 degrees of Pisces represents a spiritual family reunion of a zealous preacher and a mystical philosopher. The shared family value being a desire to dwell in the higher mind, the blissful Piscean Ocean of oneness. Jupiter is all about expansion and growth. Jupiter’s primary motivations lie in the promotion of philosophy, religion, law, and a broad-based pursuit of knowledge. Jupiter goes big in all that it does. There is an inherent optimism and enthusiasm, blended with frequent episodes of good luck. Jupiter seeks abundance and adventure.
Similar to all the archetypal energies of the planets as delineated by astrology, Jupiter possesses some undesirable characteristics. Because of its amplifying effect, things can get a bit overdone, taken to an excessive level. Jupterian zeal can sometimes lead to fanatical behavior, like pounding on the pulpit. At times recklessness overtakes prudence.
Turning to Neptune, Pisces co-ruler, we experience a higher-octave of the planet Venus. Both trafficking in the energy of love, but Neptune taking it to a more universal, unconditional place. Venus has an affinity for the beautiful, creative, and artistic energies of life. Neptune possesses the same affinity, but goes a step further, injecting an increased level of the mystical, imaginary and the spiritual into these same energies. Neptune is a significator of dreams. The elicitor of compassion and empathy. The guardian of the abstract, illusions, fantasy, and altered-states. Neptune is the great dissolver pushing for transcendence after our delusions are released.
When these two meet in the familiar waters of Pisces and don their native attire, the energies being ushered outward to humanity are those of an expanded awareness of the collective unconscious, and a deepened sensitivity to the subtle and sublime. This kindles a passionate revival in the arts, music, poetry, photography, movies, and writing. The collective also turns its attention to spirituality, creativity, escapism, and sometimes grand delusions and fantasies. High expectations will likely gain fuel igniting a quest for oneness and unity, but potentially mixed with careless and anesthetic-like idealism. An uber chloroform of sorts.
It takes a little less than 12 years for Jupiter to revolve around the Sun, and during these 12 years, Neptune moves nearly one whole zodiacal sign; thus, the conjunction of these two planets occurs in each sign successively at intervals of about 13 years. The Jupiter-Neptune cycle of 166 years is the only cycle which gives us a very regular sequence of two planets' conjunction in every successive sign of the zodiac. This fact alone draws the Astrologer’s eyes to this event as noteworthy and highly dynamic in its influence. The Jupiter-Neptune conjunctions activate one zodiacal sign after another every 13 years, each carrying the quality of the energized sign.
Every 13 years-and, even more, every 166 years — mankind should take a step forward, even if only a tiny one. It should be a step ahead of our past traditional social, cultural and religious sense of human relationship. Unfortunately, such a step tends to lead at first to confusion, disarray, dismay, perhaps temporary blindness and panicky escape "back to the womb" of what may be thought to be a secure and familiar institution or religious organization. However, progress is only through the confusion and the glowing mist over the hills, yonder. There is no way ever of going ahead, except through!
Dane Rudhyar
When we look at the events in and around 1856, we can gather some intel as to what areas of life and societal affairs may be influenced by the upcoming reunion of Jupiter and Neptune on April 11, 2022. The major Piscean themes that showed up were—spirituality, creativity (artists of all kinds), escapism, addictions (think drug-trafficking), chemicals, health and healthcare, hard to diagnose diseases, and geopolitics. Here is a summary of a few noteworthy examples from this period which encompassed the years from 1856-1869.
Wikipedia lists 39 new religious organizations established in 1856, and states that there was a…
· ‘Fourth Great Awakening’ is likened to pentecost, the sixteenth-century reformation and the eighteenth-century awakening in colonial America. After the annus mirabilis each of the evangelical denominations could report huge accessions: of the largest bodies, the presbyterians (old and new schools) added almost thirty thousand members by examination, the major baptist churches baptized almost one hundred thousand new members, while the two main branches of methodism reported a staggering net increase of nearly one hundred and eighty thousand, a growth of sixteen per cent over the previous year.”
· Also around this same time was the birth of Blues as a music genre. Blues sprung out of the Mississippi Delta region and is believed to have originated from African spirituals, African chants, work songs, field hollers, rural fife and drum music, revivalist hymns, and country dance music.
· Another interesting observation from this period was the misinformation, facts being swept under the rug to maintain the temporary short-term happiness, and general ignorance of the eventual consequences of unsustainable cover-ups. An example of this is that there was a strange disease (diphtheria) going around killing many people at that time. Remarkably the disease spreads in the same way as COVID-19—by direct contact or respiratory droplets. Leon Litvack wrote about Charles Dicken’s account from that time:
“Misinformation about the epidemic was rife: boarding houses and travel companies continued unreservedly to advertise Boulogne as a holiday destination. Even the hotel where À Beckett died covered up the true cause of his death.”… “As a journalist himself, Dickens was highly sensitive to fake news. In his letter to Olliffe, he observed: "We have had a general knowledge of there being such a Malady abroad among children, and two of our childrens’ little acquaintances have even died of it. But it is extraordinarily difficult … to discover the truth in such a place; and the townspeople are naturally particularly afraid of my knowing it, as having so many means of making it better known.”
· Composer Richard Wagner completed his famed score for Die Walküre on March 23, 1856, just six days after the exact conjunction. Brittanica.com states that Wagner was a: “German dramatic composer and theorist whose operas and music had a revolutionary influence on the course of Western music, either by extension of his discoveries or reaction against them.” It's also of interest from an astrological perspective that Wagner was composing this opera between 1854-1856 as his marriage was dissolving (think Neptune the dissolver) to Minna Planer, while he was composing an opera that explores a love that transcends the norm and is filled with the higher themes of destiny and passion; boundarylessness.
· Probably one of the penultimate tales reflecting a deeply Piscean trope, is the imaginative and at times hallucinogenic story, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. This book was published in 1865 and began as an extemporaneous whimsy meant to entertain three little girls on a boating trip in 1862. But Lewis Carroll was not the author’s real name. Charles Dodgson was the author. On May 1, 1856 he made a decision to adopt the pen name Lewis Carroll while on the same day he took up photography. Both decisions drip with Piscean energies. Opting for a pseudonym, connected this decision with the Neptunian propensity to create a nebulous, camouflaged, and blurry persona that couldn’t be clearly identified. And taking up photography connecting with the Piscean attributes of visions, imagery, and being adept at the vivacity of things.
We won’t have Neptune in Pisces again in our lifetime, so the intensity of this conjunction will be the once in a 4 generations experience. It will no doubt lead us into more enlightenment and oneness over the next 13 years. But as I have cautioned in recent blogs, the time we find ourselves in also includes a plethora of other powerful planetary alignments that are seeding this epochal stretch of history with a convergence of factors that will create some turbulence in the waters we are dwelling in. Those are specifically discussed here:
The upcoming 13-year cycle which gets kick-started by a Jupiter and Neptune conjunction at 23 degrees of Pisces will be a time of potential deceptions, delusions, and treachery. This could come in the forms of new technology or extreme ideologies being offered by charlatans making fantastical promises. Escapism could reach epic levels. But it will also be a time of greatly heightened spirituality, compassion, and new found empathy. Fellow astrologer, Ray Grasse says this about this upcoming period:
With Pisces being the symbol par excellence of the great “ocean of being,” as it were, I see this as signaling a potentially extraordinary opening up of the collective unconscious, a time when the proverbial “veil” thins and we suddenly can enjoy easier access to subtle ideas, concepts and creative impulses — perhaps even contact with intelligences beyond the veil. At the very least, it should be a time when the human imagination will be especially rich in its offerings, when ideas can be plucked from the collective mindstream like low-hanging fruit.
Do not fear the change that is coming, for change is the thing of which this life is made. The upcoming transformative times will offer an especially rare opportunity to draw on the creative, imaginal, psychological and spiritual energies of the cosmos, whether that be through art, poetry, music, writing, photography, meditating, dance or traveling. We are in a time of transcendence. It is time to get that surfboard out and ride the upcoming Piscean wave into promising new shores with optimism and a belief that we can do better. Hidden among the delusions and confusion will lie the keys, long since hidden in a sunken treasure chest covered by layers of deception and deceit, layers that must now be removed. As that treasure chest is pried open, and those keys begin to float up through the mystical waters of Pisces we will all have a chance of a lifetime to banish this confusion. These keys will open the door to the next phase of humanity’s evolution. Be flexible, be adaptable, and trust that it is all in divine order.
Comments