Almagest

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Neptune conjunct Neptune

the transiting Neptune's return to conjunct its own natal place, a return the tradition holds does not complete within a human life, or one person's Neptune conjunct another's in synastry

What the tradition reads

A natal chart cannot show Neptune conjunct itself, since a single body cannot stand at an angle from its own degree, and in Neptune's own case the tradition adds a further limit: Cafe Astrology's transit page for Neptune states plainly that the planet takes approximately one hundred and sixty four years to come full circle, too long to complete a cycle through a natal chart in one lifetime, and the source's own account of Neptune's returning aspects to its own place accordingly has no entry for the conjunction at all, unlike the sextile, square, trine and opposition it does describe. Between two charts, a conjunction from one person's Neptune to another's is read through the same dissolving, idealizing character the tradition gives Neptune generally, an instinctive alignment of imagination and belief; because Neptune moves so slowly, partners of a similar age already carry very close natal Neptune placements, so a synastry conjunction of this kind is, for most pairings, simply the ordinary case rather than a distinctive one.

The story

A conjunction fuses two natures at the same degree, sitting outside the four mutual configurations Ptolemy's chapter on the signs measures by fixed distance; Wikipedia's own summary calls conjunctions the most powerful aspects, since they mutually intensify the effects of the bodies involved, their character as easy or hard depending on which planets meet there. Neptune meeting Neptune has no myth of doubling to draw on. Neptune's own page instead gives his single story: son of Saturn and Ops, and, in the Greek-inspired tradition the page also names, a brother of Jupiter and Pluto with whom he presides over heaven, the earthly world and its underworld, and the seas, the sea and fresh water falling to Neptune as his own particular share. His festival, the Neptunalia, fell at the height of summer, when water ran shortest. A return of transiting Neptune to its own natal place would ask a hundred and sixty four years, longer than a human life allows, so Neptune meeting itself this way belongs to the god's own myth rather than to any life the tradition can actually observe.

Written from

Corpus key aspect:Neptune:Neptune:conjunction.