neptune

Neptune was officially discovered 164 years ago today by Le Verrier, Adams, and Galle.  After Neptune’s erroneous first birthday announcement in August (1) I was thinking about the Ruler of Illusion, Deception, Cloudiness, and Unreality.  As I live just a six-minute walk from the Bluffs overlooking Lake Ontario, I decided to sit high above the lake to think and meditate about Neptune, as ey are my least used, accessed, and understood planet.
Between the mistaken birthday announcement, the contention over who really discovered Neptune, and the three discoveries that didn’t establish Neptune as a planet, ey certainly seem to live up to the rulership of Illusion and Deception.  Sitting high above the Lake with the dark roiling waters spread out to the horizon I began a minor invocation of Neptune.  Slowly the roar washed over me and I felt submerged in the energy of Lake Ontario and Neptune, it may seem punny to use these terms but it is how it felt.
I came to understand another side of Neptune during this experience as I lost myself in the sights and sounds of the Great Lake.  Illusion and Deception are right, they are easily part of the Neptunian current but that takes such a pessimistic view of what Neptune rules.  Like a sand castle too close to the water’s edge I felt the waves slowly breaking down my definition, the hard lines separating me from it.  Neptune is about becoming lost in something bigger than your own self, about dissolution into something greater.  The drop of water experiencing the ocean.
Dissolution and Expansive experiences versus Illusion and Deception, it really seems to be the same experiences just understood in different ways.  If you experience Dissolution and get “lost” in the experience you can get caught in an illusionary reality.  If you have an Expansive experience and misinterpret its meaning you end up deceiving yourself, believe you are something or somewhere you’re not.  Without the wisdom and control to navigate the flows of Neptune these expansive experiences become something else, an illusionary quagmire.
This insight reaffirmed my association of Neptune with Daath.  Daath resides in the Abyss (to simplify matters), and a Magickian that fails to cross the Abyss properly or handle its energy becomes lost in delusion.  They commonly believe they have reached a state of false achievement, that they have transcended human consciousness and are embodying something higher.  On the other hand, if a Magickian conquers Daath they have achieved this goal, stepped past phenomenal consciousness and human understanding to a consciousness beyond.  The first is the Illusion and Deception side of Neptune, the second is the Dissolution and Expansive experience.  This idea bridges the two “opposed” images of Daath between Ceremonial Magick and traditional Jewish Qabalah, and perhaps I’ll expand on that at a later date.
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(1) Space.com Neptune Nears The End of First Orbit