This week we attended a fantastic workshop that provided a glimpse into the archetype named Neptune. The title of the workshop was: ”The Odyssey of Neptune Aspects and Transits: The Art of Being Lost at Sea While Making the Journey Home” by Jason Holley. That’s he and I in the picture.

In this workshop we explored the archetypal meaning of Neptune viewed through the portal of Odysseus and his 10-year-long journey home to Ithaca from Troy. We learned that there’s no way to box in or place boundaries around Neptune. That there must always be a sense of mystery and wonderment. To tap into it’s potential is to allow yourself to let go and surrender into the open seas. Those waters are filled with monsters and mermaids and siren’s calls and other imaginary creatures incongruous, sublime and even divine.

But those creatures are not real in the sense of a movie monster. They are the monsters that we deal with inside ourselves. They are some of the stuff that make up our unconscious psyche. Those areas of ourselves that we often place in a dark corner or lock up in a closet. And maybe that’s the best place to meet them. Alone and inside of a dark closet.

There were many takeaways from this workshop. I’m not sure I’ll ever understood Greek Mythology the same. It’s so much more than what I was taught in classical Literature. Each story is in touch with archetypal content that touches on human experience both realized and unrealized. To read mythology is to read an early understanding of the psyche and how we relate to the cosmos. It’s much deeper than what we taught to see as children.

I have known that when Neptune dynamically contacts our Ascendant or Midheaven, even the Sun or Moon, that there can be a sense of an ego wipeout. But why? The answer appears to lie both tangibly and intangibly. Tangibly, in so much as the psyche can even be tangible, to correct the illusion of the “false” self and intangibly in an unknown clouded “glass seen through dimly” mystery of preparing or taking us where we need to be. It’s something that we must experience and maybe, at the other end, well have a glimpse of what it was all about.

I realize that I will never completely understand what Neptune is symbolically trying to say. Yes I can guess at the illusory and coalesce it and try and shape it into something seemingly tangible. But Neptune is the ultimate shape-shifter. When you think you’ve figured it out it disappears and reappears as something else. Never insignificant! Almost always about what was not seen coming more so than what could’ve been anticipated. Perhaps the best thing we can advise ourselves and our clients is to surrender and trust that it’s a necessary journey and perhaps the only way to finding our way home.

If you have the opportunity of seeing Jason Holley in a lecture or workshop please don’t miss it! A listen to Jason is well worth the investment of time. It might just be the beginning of a new journey, one that will help you find your way home.