NEPTUNE’S PRIMORDIAL OCEAN
The remarkable healing qualities of lithium have yet to be fully explored, whether used in its natural crystalline form, or in lithium compounds which are prescribed for schizophrenia and manic-depression. However, recent reports have shown that lithium compounds used in medicine have a much lower success rate than previously thought and often produce severe side effects. While natural lithium, such as found in mineral springs, is highly regarded for its therapeutic value and people in areas fortunate enough to use this water are reported to have a significantly lower incidence of mental illness.
The dissolving and emotional qualities of Neptune are especially revealed in the balancing and healing properties of the various natural lithium crystals which, as Haroldine says, “act as a non-invasive method of achieving balance for the individual by removing barriers and blocks from the physical body wherein all incompleted emotional trauma is stored.”
NEPTUNE’S “DIVINE DISCONTENT”
Inspiration, imagination and intuition are the words given by astrologers to describe Neptune, ruler of the watery sign Pisces and the mysterious 12th House. Everything Neptune touches it refines and sensitizes. Often referred to as the love of Venus on a higher level, Neptune tunes us emotionally to higher and more subtle levels of feeling. It serves to awaken the spiritual nature, urging us towards other states of consciousness.
This visionary quality of Neptune relates to the pineal gland where the animating light or life force enters the body. When activated it opens the Third Eye, the organ of clairvoyance, enabling us to perceive the ocean of energy in which we live, the rhythms and currents of the subtle etheric web. So Neptune naturally rules mediums, psychics, occultists and healers, opening up a direct connection to the spirit world.
All drugs, alcohol and hallucinogenic substances are under Neptune’s influence, anything that frees the imagination from Saturn’s earthbound grip. It’s interesting to note that tobacco, the sacred Native American herb, contains appreciable amounts of lithium. From the most ancient times Neptune has inspired the use of psychedelic potions, magic mushrooms, cacti, and flying ointments. Every culture has its own traditional mind-altering substances including such Neptune-activated drugs as LSD which thrust a whole generation directly into the etheric ocean.
Both madness and illumination lie in Neptune’s dreaming depths from which the artist brings vision to film and poetry, inspiration to all forms of art, dance and music. It is the essential quality of art and music to speak directly to the heart, to lift our spirits and transport us into other worlds. Again lithium, showing its relationship to Neptune’s subtle universal energies, is said to have a “fundamental harmonic that resonates with every note of the musical scale.”
But when inverted Neptune becomes the instrument of delusion and deception. Unless the individual is well-grounded in Saturn’s hard reality before ‘spacing out’ there is always the danger of becoming psychically devastated, to be cast adrift into an ever-shifting sea of delusory images as the ego is dissolved in Neptune’s boundless ocean.
THE COSMIC STIMULUS
Powerful and naked, with hi& thick hair dishevelled, the sea-god Poseidon rides his chariot over the surging waves with his wife Amphitrite, the Nereids and other dwellers of the sea. At other times he stands on the water, swinging his trident and gazing out across his domain. Far below, hidden in the ocean depths lies his golden palace.
Early on, the Greek god Poseidon was identified with Neptune. With his trident lashing the sea into fury, he split the rocks causing horses and fountains to spring from them, but while he caused storms and shipwrecks he was also known as “The Preserver” and “supporter of the earth”; sailors and every occupation dealing with the sea were under his protection and temples were erected on headlands high above the waves in his honour. Horses and dolphins were especially sacred to him, and black bulls symbolic of the stormy sea were thrown alive into rivers to placate him. He was a lusty god carrying on numerous affairs with nymphs who bore many offspring, often wild and cruel.
We can only wonder how the massive pollution of our rivers and seas is affecting Neptune and his oceanic family. Do the Nereids still play in waters choked with plastic and miles of abandoned drift nets? Do the sirens still sing on slimy rocks above the splashing of raw sewage and industrial waste? And what has caused Neptune’s energy to turn against itself? Oil, sacred to Neptune, is now a major pollutant ~ with new spills reported like clockwork. Will Neptune raise his trident and send even greater storms and tidal waves to punish the desecrators of his sacred oceans?
Neptune’s three-pronged tool is also carried by Shiva, the Hindu god of ecstasy and dissolution. In the Qabalistic tradition Neptune’s phallic symbolism is attributed to Chokmah the second sphere on the cosmic Tree of Life. Called’ ‘Wisdom,” and’ ‘the illuminating intelligence,” Chokmah lies above the Abyss, above and beyond the world of form as’ ‘the dynamic force of life, which is spirit, that ensouls the clay of physical form.” It is “formless, being the pure impulse of dynamic creation; and being formless, the creation it gives rise to can assume any and every form.”14
It was this cosmic force the ancient pagan traditions celebrated with their phallic worship and ecstatic ritual. Dance, chanting and music, all of these aspects of magical ritual belong in Neptune’s sphere, and the ritual patterns, mandalas and talismans formed under astral and etheric influences. In the sophisticated cosmology of Haitian Voudoo these ritual designs or veves are described as “condensers of astral forces and ritual attractors of planetary powers.”15 Traced on the ground with flour or cornmeal the geometrical patterns of the veves give visible form to the etheric currents, attracting the astral planetary fluids and spiritual influences which the designer ‘captures’ in order to accomplish the magical work.
Although the symbolism relating to Chokmah is generally phallic in nature there is an ever-fluctuating polarity within Neptune’s boundless ocean; neither purely masculine or feminine but a continuous merging of one into the other.