Entranced vs Enchanted
On enriching your relationship with Neptune during these chaotically creative times.
Last week, I was stirred awake with this phrase at the edge of my waking mind: IT’S ALL RELATIONAL. I love it when I wake up like that because it feels like I’m being given an idea from the dream gods to mull over. (A very Mercury/Neptune experience.)
This got me thinking about how, in many myths, our hero or heroine faces challenges because of not honoring the deity in question. One that comes to mind is Odysseus, whose very name now means a long and complicated journey because he both failed and angered Poseidon (Neptune). That cost Odysseus a decade to get home, for a trip that could have taken ten days. One just shouldn’t anger the gods.
Back to the idea: it’s all relational. We’re in a relationship, conscious or not, with forces beyond our awareness, but that often beckon our attention through subtle means: feelings, events, thoughts, ideas, and people in our lives. It’s as if beings (i.e., deities, gods/goddesses, archetypes, or any other name you want to call them) want or even need to be in relationship with us.
Perhaps their very existence also depends on our, albeit limited, ability to be in this cosmic dance with them. They also need to be seen, witnessed, engaged with, and taken as real, even if, for our limited thinking, we can’t comprehend their existence. Even God from the Old Testament would sometimes behave like a friend we just dissed and acted out in a dramatic way, causing havoc to anyone close.
Take this to your personal life. Think of a time when you’ve felt unseen by your loved ones, disrespected even, or perhaps minimized as ‘just….’ How did it make you feel? How did that affect your behavior?
Nobody puts Neptune in a corner
We need to be Patrick Swayze to Neptune’s Baby in the corner from Dirty Dancing and that quintessential scene. We need to give our oft-misunderstood planet some respect. Otherwise, we shall be engulfed by the siren call of illusions that will drown us in a collective nightmare. Personally, I have a beef with so many astrologers reducing Neptune to mainly negative keywords: illusions, lies, addiction, pie-in-the-sky schemes, and betrayal, to name a few.
Yes, those are facets of Neptune, but I want to call your attention to its power to help us experience awe, magic, dreams, and enchantment, which lead us closer to our imaginal sources. This allows us to be in right alignment as co-creators of a soul-fulfilling life. Thus, create a world that isn’t walking all crookedly, leaning too heavily in the machinations of our Left Brain - to which I highly recommend checking out the work of Ian McGilchrist.
“‘Our talent for division, for seeing the parts, is of staggering importance – second only to our capacity to transcend it, in order to see the whole’. ”
We mustn’t forget our ability to see the whole and our relationship to our imagination, which is how we’re connected to something much bigger than this ‘reality’ right here, right now.
Think of it this way: Saturn, the principle of what’s ‘real’ in this physical world, only makes things take shape and form once the imagination of Neptune impregnates it.
Saturn is the vessel that receives the magic of Neptune.
They may be strange bedfellows, but they work together.
We need to acknowledge and be in a relationship with both. We have overemphasized Saturn, even corrupting its gifts to give us the misguided sense that we’re gaining more power by focusing on what’s ‘real’ to the detriment of the magical, enchanting, and imaginative.
Thus, we put Neptune in the corner and dishonor it. And what do we get from it?
It will come through the ‘backdoor’ of our unconscious compulsions, get a footing in our lives through our addictions and put us under a trance of doomscrooling, swallowed up by whatever they’re feeding us through the many teets that we’ve attached ourselves to, as we suck hungrily but never not being truly nourished.
We are ever more entranced by addictive illusions, while failing to honor and be in right relationship to Neptune. And we all have Neptune somewhere in our birth charts, and that’s where we must start.
“…to live an enchanted life is to pick up the pieces of our bruised and battered psyches, and to offer them the nourishment they long for. It is to be challenged, to be awakened, to be gripped and shaken to the core by the extraordinary which lies at the heart of the ordinary. Above all, to live an enchanted life is to fall in love with the world all over again.” - Sharon Blackie
Reclaiming enchantment in our lives
I feel the key word in Sharon Blackie’s quote from her book The Enchanted Life is: NOURISHMENT. Much of what we’re being fed is the equivalent of soul junk food, that keeps us lethargic, soul sick, and impotent, lacking in vitality and lust for life.
This oft-attributed Albert Einstein comes to mind: “We CANNOT solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
We’ve got lots of big collective problems, with lots to go around, and this can be a good thing—an opportunity. Each of us can focus on what stirs our hearts and imagination and activates our sense of purpose—the inherent gift or medicine we each bring to the world. Remember this is a COSMIC POTLUCK and you get to bring whatever is yours to bring: a bag of chips, casserole, or dessert. But bring what you’ve got, it’s all needed, and it will ripple out further afield than you can imagine.
To paraphrase rapper Ice-T and his famous 99 Problems song: We have 99 problems, but lack of imagination shouldn’t be one of them.
We need to cultivate our imaginations by seeing the world around us through the gift of Neptune's enchantment, while not falling into the siren's entrancement that will drown us if we’re not wise.While the Sun is your CEO, it does have its court.
The other planetary archetypes have their gifts to share and ways to help us on our business journey. The birth chart itself, be that your own or your business’ natal chart, illuminates even further how you can understand the inherent archetypes of your life and business and how they intersect.
All other planetary archetypes serve as our branding and marketing team, each playing a specific role that benefits the whole. It’s always wise to see the entire chart and how the planets relate to each other to get a complete picture. My invitation to you now is to start with your Sun Sign (or the Sun Sign in your business chart) and see how it’s showing up in your business branding.
Like any exercise regime, we first get sore as we leave our comfort zone and get out of our routine—physically and mentally. The classic to-do list applies here: watch what you’re taking in, information, ideas, conversations, people, and the things you always see. Perspective is about looking closer, so we have to look at something closer to change it. And getting closer is about creating a relationship with it. Remember, it’s all relational!
So, how are you relating to what you’re consuming? Can you get out of your comfort zone and ‘try to see’ with eyes of awe and enchantment?
Start by not using the word CONSUME - consume news, social media, food, TV, movies, etc. The reduction of ourselves to CONSUMERS kills the power of being a HUMAN CITIZEN. Ditch that word in the rubbish bin.
Consuming is never nourishing. Right now, we need nourishment for our imagination so that we can create new solutions.
This may be crass, but think of NOURISHMENT as the Viagra for your imagination to create.
As consumers, we’ve become impotent, flaccid, and powerless. Plus, it’s taken us so far away from the spectrum of a more affirming relationship to Neptune that we've fallen prey to all of its negative associations - entranced, but not enchanted.
To get you started, here are some questions to ask yourself as you go about your day:
Does this (whatever you’re doing, looking, scrolling, etc.) bring me joy?
How do I feel in my body right now? Alive? Activated? Diminished? Drained? Small? Apathetic? Powerless? Etc.
What did I do in my youth that gave me joy and energy?
What things now bring me joy, but I’m not giving them the time of day?
What are my small pleasures?
What experiences or aspects of your life story feel nourishing to you?
What is one nourishing thing you can do daily?
One of the many gifts I see Neptune’s transit through Aries is a reclamation of our zest/lust for life.
Think of the Fool card in the Tarot: off on an adventure, carrying only what is necessary and trusting that the world will receive them wherever they go. There’s an inherent belief that the world, the Universe, is in relationship with us - co-creating, listening to us, and awaiting that we also listen to it.
There’s more to say about how we can have a more nourishing relationship with Neptune, for it’s as vast and deep as the seas, which it rules. But for now, let’s start with making room for our imagination, paying attention to what gives us nourishment and joy, not as consumers, but as CREATION MAKERS. Because in creatively chaotic times, what is needed is CREATION MAKERS.
So what is yours to create and bring forth?
Enjoy & Thrive!
Vanessa Couto
