*
SECOND
HOUSE NEPTUNE
The
House of Possessions - The field of prosperity
Sense
of values. Earned income. Basic security. Money and worldly
goods. The physical substance of the body. The desire to accumulate personal resources.
Income
keeps coming in, but frequently it is "fairy money" which evaporates
like the morning dew, owing to a multitude of petty obligations. Too often the
budget is like a leaky vessel which no amount of bailing can salvage. Good or
bad, the financial situation is never quite what it seems. The subject should
avoid risky or speculative enterprises and confine their investments to the
most reliable and conservative concerns.
An
afflicted second-house Neptune shows a distinct danger of loss through fraud,
deception, and unrealistic hopes. Beneficially aspected, it gives generosity
to the point of sacrifice.
Astrology, the Divine Science
*
The
following is excerpted form
Liz Greene's
The
Astrological Neptune, and the Quest for Redemption
You
see me standing here beside you, and hear my voice;
but
I tell you that all these things - yes, from that star that
has
just shone out in the sky to the solid ground beneath our
feet
- I say that all of these are but dreams and shadows:
the
shadows that hide the real world from our eyes. There is a
real
world, but it is beyond this glamour, and this vision,
beyond
these ‘chases in Arras, dreams in a career,’
beyond
them all as beyond a veil.
-
Arthur
Machen,
The Great God Pan
The
house in which Neptune is placed in the birth horoscope is the arena of life
in which we seek redemption - the ‘real’ world beyond the veil. If we wish
to understand Neptune’s varying expressions through the houses, we need to
bear in mind its archetypal core. Every planetary symbol portrays an essential
meaning, distinct from that of any other planetary symbol, and consistent
whatever the level of expression - physical, emotional, intellectual,
imaginative - in outer and inner life. Neptune portrays our longing for Eden.
This longing renders the individual’s ego-boundaries porous, and the ocean
of the collective psyche seeps in. Through Neptune we seek fons
et origo, Paradise lost and Paradise to be one day regained.
In our yearning we also sense our danger, and fear the devouring Ti’amat-mother
who will intercede for our sins.
Where
Neptune is placed in the birth horoscope, we are both redeemer and redeemed.
We may identify unconsciously with those who are helpless victims, and fail to
recognize the secret link between the victim and their persecutor. We may seek
to save these victims, who are secretly the same as our own wounded selves,
from a destructive power in the world outside which also lies hidden within
our own souls. And we long to be released from suffering by a redeemer who is
in fact the property or our own souls. In the sphere of life described by
Neptune’s natal house, we find ourselves in a hall of mirrors, healer,
persecutor and victim all at once - while perhaps glimpsing, through the
experience of compassion, a sense of unity which offers redemption from the
lonely prison of our mortal existence.
Where
we meet Neptune, we are inclined to lose our objectivity and our sense of
separateness. We are both blinded and blinding to others, deceptive and
deceived, but always pursuing the goal of fusion at the end of the road - even
if we deny such feelings. We cease to be individuals, and merge with the
collective sea. Both the opening of the heart and the emasculation of the will
can occur with the loss of individual boundaries.
Sacrifice,
often concrete, may be required; but ultimately it is our dream of redemption
which must be sacrificed before we can begin to differentiate between our
cherished fantasies and what is really out there, and cease our
self-victimization. This is the great challenge of Neptune. Projective
identification - the attribution of bits of ourselves to another and then
experiencing fusion with that other on an unconscious level - is the natural
process of Neptune. And because, in Neptune’s world, we do not distinguish
between I and thou, we may not recognize our longing for redemption in the
objects and people with whom we have fused.
In
this earthy realm, Neptune can be awkward and difficult. The issue of material
autonomy stands in total contradiction to Neptune’s lack of boundaries. The
beginnings of individual identity in early life arise from the body’s
sensations, the first of these being hunger and its satiation. The body is
thus the primary building block of the independent ego. It is useful in this
context to consider Freud’s extremely un-Neptunian theory of anality - that
stage of a child’s development in which the ability to control the muscles
of the sphincter, and the newfound sense of control which arises from
voluntary rather than inadvertent defecation, lay the groundwork for later
feelings of self-control and self-sufficiency. The body provides us with our
sense that we can contain the chaos of our emotional needs; it keeps us safe.
Knowing that we can stand alone generates self-respect and the confidence to
cope with material life.
Neptune
in the 2nd house is generally associated with financial difficulties. Many
individuals with this placement chronically struggle with the simplest
material demands. They are often creatively gifted yet somehow unable to
“make ends meet,” or lose what they have earned though a kind of blindness
or disregard for managing the money they earn. But money problems are only a
symptom of the Neptunian sea of feelings and longings that lies beneath.
Neptune’s secret identification of victim with redeemer may underpin this
pattern. A baby rightly assumes the availability of food and physical
protection, for there is as yet no separate ego which can think in terms of
“mine.” But when an adult unconsciously carries such an assumption, many
material troubles may ensue. The compassion of Neptune may be equally in
evidence in the 2nd house, for the sense of unity with others may impel the
individual to give away everything if someone else is in greater need. And
there is often a profound sense of empathy with those who truly cannot cope.
A
2nd house Neptune’s willingness to freely share resources and substance is
both heartfelt generosity and at the same a complex enactment of the
mother-child bond. If those with Neptune in the 2nd wish to make the most
creative use of this challenging placement, the phrase, “I can’t help
it,” might fruitfully be banned from speech, to be replaced by the more
honest, “I won’t help it,” or, “I am afraid to help it.” Neptune in
the 2nd may generate financial difficulties partly because the individual does
not wish to have autonomy. Neptune longs to have the sins of materialism,
sensuality, greed, and envy (all aspects of the darker face of Venus)
expiated, so that the delights of Eden can be enjoyed without guilt. The
individual with Neptune in the 2nd may speak of needing to work at something
“meaningful” or “higher.” This is in many ways appropriate, for with
Neptune placed here one’s most valuable resource is an instinctive sense of
the oneness of life. Yet pursuit of a “higher” vocation often means that
money is scarce; the “meaningful” thing may be un-saleable, or, more
frequently, the person does not work very hard to put it into marketable form.
And lurking beneath may be a Neptunian feeling of weakness and helplessness,
and the deep-rooted belief that one does not deserve material comfort this
side of the grave.
The
2nd house is often described as the house of talents and resources, and
planets in the 2nd symbolize those natural gifts which, welded into concrete
forms, provide one with a living at the same time as a sense of personal
value. Neptune in the 2nd can manage this as well as any other planet, while
retaining its necessary contact with the oceanic realm; one does not have
remain poor to do it. Neptune speaks to the redemptive longing in all of us.
Translated into form, Neptune in the 2nd can reflect a capacity to develop
self-worth and material independence through the practical expression of the
imagination and the sense of unity with life. The creative capacities of the
Hindu goddess Maya - the shaping of “stuff” into forms of beauty - are
often innate with Neptune in the 2nd. The eroticism and sensitivity of Neptune
may find its way into such talents as music and dance, and Neptune’s
idealism may be best expressed through work which betters the lives of others.
But the Venusian earth of personal value must be weighed against Neptune’s
global vision; otherwise one remains a gifted baby in need of a caretaker, and
willing caretakers may be in short supply. The discipline of Saturn is also
essential to balance a 2nd house Neptune. How can a musician make music, if he
or she can not be bothered to learn the notes, the scales, arpeggios, and the
development of an individual style?
Neptune
in the 2nd house requires an honest confrontation with the old incestuous
problem of original sin, because Neptune so readily projects the visceral end
of its spectrum upon flesh, and the 2nd house is extremely fleshly. A 1st
house Neptune, badly in need of alliance with Martial assertiveness, often
manifests as illness or helplessness no a personal level. Neptune in the 2nd,
badly in need of alliance with Venusian self-appreciation, may express itself
as financial victimization and the pain of unlived or unrecognized talents.
Yet the individual is often as unconsciously devouring as those whom he or she
accuses of greed - Ti’amat manifesting in Taurus’ earth-world in the usual
Neptunian hall-of-mirrors fashion.
Some
extremely nasty divorce proceedings can arise from Neptune run amok in the 2nd
house, where the “injured” partner, who previously made no effort to be
independent, suddenly wants nothing less than everything in recompense. If one
is honest enough to face the challenge of balancing Eden and earthly reality,
then genuine financial as well as psychological autonomy can be built upon
those imaginative and empathetic gifts which are Neptune’s special province.
But it is not a good idea to be above such base things as money when Neptune
is in the 2nd house. This merely ensures that the responsibility for getting
dirty hands always falls on someone else, who may grow tired of paying the
bills. When Neptune is placed in any of the earthy house - and particularly in
the 2nd, the earthiest of them all - “spiritual” may not always be a
helpful term.
Even
if one earns one’s living through being a vicar or a psychic, the operative
phrase with the 2nd house is earning one’s living. One cannot achieve this
without recognizing that the Venusian realm of one’s body, one’s sensual
pleasures, and one’s material needs is no less sacred than the cosmic sea
which gave the body birth.
The
Astrological Neptune, and the Quest for Redemption
Mindfire