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Neptune square Neptune

the transiting Neptune's passage in square to its own natal place, or one person's Neptune square another's in synastry

What the tradition reads

A natal chart cannot show Neptune square itself, since a single body cannot stand at an angle from its own degree; the tradition instead reads this key through transit, a station reached roughly a quarter of the way through Neptune's own approximately one hundred and sixty four year circuit. Cafe Astrology's transit reading describes this passage as temporarily disorienting, current situations emphasizing the ways a person has strayed from, or stands in stark contrast with, their own innate beliefs and ideals; the source notes that this can ultimately lead to positive change and improvement, but that in the meantime a person's path is not yet intuitive or straightforward, and some disconnection is likely. Between two charts, a square from one person's Neptune to another's is read through the same dissolving, idealizing character the tradition gives Neptune generally, but at odds rather than in step: one partner's shifting beliefs unsettle the other's sense of what is real, rather than reinforcing it; because Neptune moves so slowly, a real difference in age between the two partners is needed to produce this angle between two separate natal charts at all.

The story

A square is ninety degrees, a quarter of the circle, one of the four configurations Ptolemy names; Ptolemy's chapter on the mutual configuration of the signs calls it, together with the opposition, discordant, and Wikipedia's own summary places the square among the hard aspects, crediting it with a strong and usable tension, a turning point where an important decision is needed, often at some cost. 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. Neptune meeting its own natal place at this harder angle is read through the same fluid character that page gives Neptune, old certainties dissolving before anything has clearly replaced them.

Written from

Corpus key aspect:Neptune:Neptune:square.