Jupiter-Neptune Conjunction in Pisces!
watch the full video of Marvin Gaye's 1983 national anthem here.
Bear with me on this one.
It continues to be Aries season, but Pisces is now the major theme. This is especially centered around the exact Jupiter-Neptune in Pisces conjunction happening tomorrow (Tuesday) April 12th at 6:43 am PST, followed later this month by a conjunction with Venus in Pisces (followed closely by Mars).
This is occurring in the midst of the tense Mars-Saturn in Aquarius conjunction we’ve been experiencing. These are two configurations that are at odds - on one hand, a wildly idealistic and emotional dissolving of boundaries and the self; and on the other - agitation in the face of limitations, oppression, depression, and responsibility. The image that comes to mind is that of a moody teenager coping with the trapped confines of their home by converting their one personal corner, their bedroom, into a floor-to-ceiling holy site honoring their current idol.
Pisces is a spiritual and highly creative sign with oceanic expanse and depth. It is co-ruled by Jupiter and Neptune, so to have these two planets in their home sign at the exact same degree gives it extra power. Wherever this conjunction takes place in your chart is an area of your life that has potential to be deeply replenishing and inspiring. Start dreaming up possibilities.
Jupiter is the planet of unlimited enthusiasm, expanding in all directions. It has a gift for theatrical storytelling with an optimistic long-range view. It can at times tend toward over-indulgence and fanaticism - wanting to feel good forever - but more than anything it’s the part of us that has faith, wants to believe. Neptune is also very spiritual. It is the realm of collective unconscious, dreams, projections, trance — all that is not immediately understood with language. It can be transcendence that fuses your sense of self with the divine or it can be a hypnosis that leaves you without your guards, vulnerable and confused. Misty and mystifying.
Joining together, these two have the potential to exacerbate misinformation and/or to be inspiration incarnate.
This conjunction in Pisces last happened on March 17th, 1856
and won’t happen again until 2188!
Conjunctions are like new moons. They’re a seed for a new cycle to emerge, and when a conjunction involves two outer planets like Jupiter and Neptune, it describes a particularly cultural shift.
The last Jupiter-Neptune conjunction we had was in Aquarius (a sign ruling technology) in 2009. Instagram was launched in 2010. Aquarius and Pisces are both signs concerned with interconnectedness, but Aquarius does so in an intellectual way and Pisces is an emotional/spiritual way. Through Instagram we all learned more about each other’s lives (and lifestyles), We started developing a language about identity and how we all belong or don’t belong with each other. But just as with any over-intellectualization, we may start to feel empty and a little alien, hungry for more soul. This is where Pisces comes in. . .
So what happened in 1856? It was a moment on the heels of Realism - an attempt to ground the huge swell of Romanticism (and its side effects: Idealism, Nationalism), and answer to a rise of the working class and industrialization. There had been another Jupiter-Neptune conjunction in Libra in 1792 that could’ve been the fuel that accelerated Romanticism (and the French Revolution—There was the September Massacre of 1792 and Marie Antoinette & Louis the XIV were beheaded in 1793.
1856 seems to be the seed of Impressionism. In 1855, Courbet showed his painting, The Painter’s Studio: A real allegory summing up seven years of my artistic and moral life, laying out the “common folk” on the left and the elite on the right; artist, muse, and kitty cat in the center. Several early impressionists were inspired by this painting —including Manet, who first opened his studio in 1856.
The invention of the collodian process in photography also allowed for cameras and photography to become more accessible. Everyone was soon obsessed with figuring out how to capture what was unseeable
William Wallace Denslow, the illustrator of the original Wizard of Oz books, was born under Jupiter and Neptune in Pisces in 1856. L. Frank Baum, the creator of the Wizard of Oz series was born 10 days later. Even Victor Fleming, who later directed the film, was a Pisces Sun.
Sigmund Freud was born the day after William Wallace Denslow. He of course wrote whole books about the Piscean theme of the unconscious, and even experimented with hypnotism (though later stopped once frightened by the loss of boundaries his patients had with him when in a trance state.
Lincoln’s “lost speech” deriding slavery also happened in 1856. The lore around it being that it was so hypnotizing reporters put their pencils down and forgot to take notes, hence there being no record of what was said. This is likely misinformation (Mercury was also exactly conjunction Saturn on this day which suggests censorship). Lincoln had Mercury, Jupiter, and Pluto in Pisces.
So what do we make of this conjunction now?
Well, this conjunction is happening at the very end of the entire Zodiac cycle, in the last few degrees of Pisces. Pluto, another planet of profound cultural shifts, is also in the last few degrees of Capricorn —exposing the profound cracks and secrets of power in institutions, hierarchies, tradition, and authority. This surge of Pisces is a push to infuse as much vision as possible into a burgeoning new reality. Imagination has to happen before action (Aries).
By April 27th, Venus will be conjunct Neptune and Venus tends to help provide visuals for the fantasy. Venus in Pisces knows no boundaries in relationships and in art - which can be the most beautiful and imaginative when channeled properly, or the most horrific. This is not a judgment call on those who have Venus in Pisces (every sign has its beauties and its horrors), but the limitless magnitude of Pisces brings it into the extremes of divinity and tragedy, timelessness, and dissolution of the self (Pisces includes the realm of opiates and celebrity). Justin Bieber, Kurt Cobain, Selena, Diana Ross, Billie Holiday, Natasha Lyonne, Celine Dion —even Mr. Rogers and Jesus Christ have Venus in Pisces. So, too, do Hugh Hefner, Epstein, Weinstein, Marilyn Manson, Giacomo Casanova, Nixon, Reagan, and Bin Laden.
But I’ll go with a fable of one of the more more majestic Venuses in Pisces, Barbra Streisand, and her 2010 book, My Passion for Design, in which she says fun and somewhat delusional things like: “I always thought there should be harmony between the colors of a room and the colors of the clothes you wear in it."
The book’s main focus, though, is her Malibu estate — a project she decided to completely dedicate her money (selling all her other homes) and time to. It was there that she created an uncanny, but completely holistic fantasy-scape of her personal American dream. It included a faux-historical barn and mill house with a personal mall in the basement full of “shops” displaying her own doll and antique collections. There was even as a snack stand with a soft serve machine. She treated designing like directing a movie, often hiring Hollywood art directors rather than contractors. “I had made up a whole script in my head for this house. The idea was that back in 1790 (I had found an old sign that said 1790) there might have been a mill house on an old pond, grinding corn or wheat that was stored in a stone silo. Eventually this fictitious family that owned it built a little farmhouse near the silo. Several generations later, in 1904, a wing was added on either side. I picked 1904 because 4 was my lucky number . . .”
At the start of her introduction she says, “I liked the idea of building a barn where I could just relax” (hilarious), but once it’s all finally built, she never lives in it. “I don’t watch my movies after I make them. I don’t listen to my records after I record them. So why would I live in the house that I built?”
You have to put into context that Streisand grew up poor and Jewish in Brooklyn and here she is drawing from the colonial northeast and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, of all places. The moral of the story is that this is just her castle in the sky, a monument to the feeling of being inspired.
The pile-up of Pisces right now can promise an excess of delusion and confusion, but it can also promise a wealth of creativity. There has to be a faith in the possibility of abundance to start any process of letting go. Scarcity mindset keeps us hanging on tightly to the stale and draining. So how do you let go? You stop fighting the current and relax enough to float.
One of my favorite astrologers, Caroline Casey, says that this familiar ritual is a good one for Jupiter—to help have faith in what’s to come. It uses the four elements:
- Earth - write down anything you want to release
- Air - read what you wrote aloud
- Fire - burn what you wrote
- Water - dump the ashes into a living body of water