AK Reader: “Neptune at the Midheaven” (1999), A Personal Journey

This essay, written as a column for the Winter 1999-2000 issue of Sagewoman magazine (I was a columnist there for 20 years), addresses the subtle subject of Neptune, and how it affects a person when positioned on one of the angles (the four points at the tips of the horizonal and vertical lines of a birthchart). As a seasoned astrologer, I can say with little doubt that any soul who chooses to be born with a planet on one of the angles does so with great precision and deliberation. For these angles, correlated with the daily rotation of the earth, move only one degree every four minutes. So, if you placed Neptune on one of the angles, then, I would say, your soul definitely wanted that particular assignment in this life. But what is the assignment? Read on.

Neptune, “the blue planet,” and my favorite color.

 

Neptune at the Midheaven (1999)

by Ann Kreilkamp

For years now, whenever anyone asks me, “What do you do?” I respond: “What level do you want to talk on?”

That usually stops them cold. They mumble some excuse and back away. A few are stimulated, intrigued: my response makes them wonder about themselves, what they do. What level do they want to talk on? The ice breaks. We have wonderful conversations.

I started this practice because I was so frustrated with that question, “What do you do?” What I “do” has no value in the world of the usual person who asks it. So why throw pearls before swine? My question to them effectively screens out all but kindred souls.

Back in junior high school, we were once assigned a homework report for Social Studies, on “what-I-want-to-be-when-I-grow-up.” The textbook list for what were considered female occupations — secretary, nurse, bookkeeper, clerk — looked dreary, but then, I was no proto-feminist, because so did the so-called male occupations. Nothing looked good to me. Reviewing the list of possible occupations made me unaccountably depressed.

At that young age I had no way of understanding what had triggered my depression. Not until I was 31 years old, and began to study astrology, did I recognize that incident as an early clue to what I would now call my “Neptunian” path.

In astrology, the planet Neptune governs all matters spiritual. Through Neptune, we experience divine discontent, that gnawing emptiness that can not be filled with material things. Neptune is the space between the lines, the mysterious invisible energy residing above, beyond and within the material world, that “in which we move and have our being.” In scientific terms, one might identify Neptune with the (unfortunately discredited) “ether,” a subtle, all-pervasive fluid flowing through and linking all things that appear as separate into one undivided whole. Neptune is the universal solvent.

While all of us are called to Neptune, few are chosen. Most fall by the wayside. In an attempt to satisfy our longing for Spirit, we substitute “evil spirits” — out of a bottle or in a joint, food and liquid “treats” of all kinds. Or we accumulate more and more educational degrees, amass more and more money, build bigger and better houses, fill them with things, buy bigger and newer cars, boats, computers, TVs RVs — you name it, all in an ultimately fruitless attempt to fulfill the soul’s hunger for meaning, to drown out that ever-present inner voice that whispers “Is this it? Is this all there is?”

Take me, for example, I have Neptune within only two degrees of the Midheaven of my natal chart. The Midheaven at the top of the chart is what one is reaching for, one’s path or destiny, the role one plays in public. Thus, my path in this world is a spiritual one. I cannot escape it. Any attempt to deflect my energies from Neptune’s direction meets with disaster. (Think about the word “disaster,” dis-aster, and its meaning: to turn away from the stars . . !)

Not all are called to blend spiritual and material concerns so directly. Most people can, without violating their natures, play out roles in society that already exist, and for which they are more or less equipped, or can become so with training. Teacher, lawyer, doctor, chief — all are necessary, and each of us is usually naturally equipped for some niche that society offers.

There are some people however who, like me, are weird (from wyrd, means destinyand in a later rendition, “unearthly”): we have the signature of what astrologers call “outer planets on angles.” For us, one or more of the three outer planets (Uranus, Neptune or Pluto: those with cycles longer than our lifetimes) are on the Midheaven or the Ascendant (the horizon), or on one of the two points opposite them. To have an outer planet on one of the four angles of the chart is to be called to a life that is decidedly not normal.

In the case of the Midheaven, what is affected is the path. My path has been one that, since I was 30 years old, is consciously Neptunian. The deciding event? September, 1973, when I was suddenly fired from the only normal job I ever had, full-time college teacher, branded as “too experimental” for that northern California experimental college.

This event was life-changing, and of course devastating. A terrible blow to the ego. I had been on a professional career track, aiming to be a college professor. I had even attained my Ph.D. from Boston University the year before, succeeded in shepherding through a dissertation that called into question the entire foundations of western philosophy. I “got away with it” that time, shielded from failure by my mentor, a university gadfly who, himself in the throes of his own midlife crisis, had utilized me and my “highly unusual” dissertation as his tool for needling the academic world.

But I didn’t get away with it the year following that. This time I had no shield, no mentor. I was on my own. “Free to be me.” My ego ran rampant. After one year fomenting extreme havoc at New College of California, then a fragile start-up only two years old, I was fired, summarily, by the trustees, who told the president (who had supported me): “Fire her, or lose your endowment.”

Afterwards, a fellow teacher whom I had admired very much during my one year there said something to me which stung at the time, since I had assumed that at least he would support me: “You,” he said, “are the most intuitive person in this school. But what you have to teach you are too young to know.”

Fifteen years later, when I was 46 years old, I founded Crone Chronicles: A Journal of Conscious Aging. It was as if this man’s prescient remark had returned as an echo, to tell me that now was the time to begin the Neptunian work for which I had been born.

Or, I should say, it was time to begin the next phase of that work. For I have been working with Neptune ever since the New College of California fiasco. That firing was what fired me into becoming an astrologer. Within only months of my demise there, I was staring at my birthchart, wondering whether it really was a map, whether it could help me understand the horrible thing that had happened to me.

The cycle of Neptune is 165 years. Since such a cycle is longer than the experience of one lifetime, we will never, ever, understand its full meaning. To fully comprehend Neptune, one would have to undergo its entire cycle: the meaning of any planet is its cycle. Since we cannot fully incorporate the cycle of Neptune into our lives, it follows that we cannot control the way this energy functions. Neptune is a power larger than we are, and its subtle energies work through us in mysterious ways. All we can do is surrender. Surrender to Love. Surrender to the work of the Spirit as it seeks to move us in directions which we know not, but which, when followed, bathe us in mystery, beauty and awe.

People with outer planets on one of the four angles are difficult to understand. Either their personality (Ascendant) is strange, or they pick strange partners (the Descendant), or their home life is strange (the Immum Coeli), or, as in my case, their path itself is strange (the Midheaven).

Moreover, especially in the case of an outer planet on the Midheaven, whatever happens in the life becomes publicized. Life is not lived in private. The fogs and delusions and addictions of Neptune are as public as any eventual conversion to a spiritually-based life.

One man I knew with Neptune on the Midheaven, an English professor at the local community college, routinely came to class drunk. His students preferred him drunk, as only then did his wildly dramatic side entertain them. I don’t know what happened to him. Whether he was ever able to let go of the demon rum.

Another man I know, also with Neptune on the Midheaven, when only 20 years old decided to seek help for alcohol and drug abuse — something his fraternity college classmates indulge in routinely as “partying.” That young man, by separating himself out from the crowd and seeking help for his addictions, took the first step towards the spirit, and the spirit’s path.

In my early 30s, even after my wake-up call at New College, I was addicted to everything I could get my hands on. The only question, when I woke up in the morning, was: what shall I smoke first, a joint or a cigarette?

As Neptune is present at the onset of addiction, so it is present at the release of addiction. Neptune puts us through delusionary, illusionary, foggy, confused states; ultimately Neptune dissipates our energy, to the point where we finally must surrender, give up, give in to the spirit’s call. The illusory satisfactions of money, things, co-dependent relationships, substance abuse of all kinds — all dissolve into the subtle, all-pervasive power of the planet Neptune.

Because our society encourages addictive behavior, when we surrender to Neptune’s call we find ourselves alone. The initial steps in the many stages of surrender to the path of Spirit are solitary. Solitude is a test. A major initiation. Can we let go of the seductions of the world? Can we move down through the layers of personality to uncover the soul? Can we stop everything, really stop, and listen to our heart’s song? Can we cease our continuous restless movement and sense the shifts in the breeze? The turning of the tides? The phases of the Moon?

Eventually, we do come to rest in the still quiet center of ourselves, the eye of the storm, the turning point of the world. Nestled securely within our own center, we plunge into the present moment — and lo and behold, the moment expands! What was a mere glimpse dilates into a wide-angled view; the trickle swells into an ocean. We are not alone. We are surrounded, surrendered to the oneness, the All and Everything, the pulsing heart of a cosmos that connects us not only to our own soul’s joy but to the tender interior of one another. The solitude that we embraced as fate transforms into communion, the mystical body, the silent symphony of souls.

About Ann Kreilkamp

PhD Philosophy, 1972. Rogue philosopher ever since.
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4 Responses to AK Reader: “Neptune at the Midheaven” (1999), A Personal Journey

  1. Anthony says:

    Hi Ann,

    Very interesting, what a planet on the Midheaven can do. That bit about addictions is especially interesting. I remember the article you wrote telling about when you finally gave them up, so it is heartening to know that one isn’t always a slave to birth circumstances, once one becomes aware.

    My Midheaven is at 18 degrees Aquarius and I have Saturn on the same degree, within 8 minutes. So your discussion of Neptune on the Midheaven is fascinating to me. I’m pretty new to astrology but the more I see, the more I am convinced that Astrology (and possibly Numerology) really ARE the codes of life. Always appreciate your insight!

    And I have a question: I agree that the meaning of a planet is it’s cycle…but: for an outer planet, such as Pluto or Eris or Sedna etc., one with a cycle so much longer than a human life, could the meaning of such planets be in its DISCOVERY? The reason I ask is this:

    https://www.space.com/40642-space-rock-generates-planet-nine-excitement.html

    I ask because I personally wonder if these ‘discoveries’ are being announced in ways favorable to the ruling elite, such as may have happened with Eris…because those with a contemplative conspiratorial nature, with Saturn on the Midheaven, want to know!!

    • Ann Kreilkamp says:

      Love your questions. As for discovery dates, astrologers often try to divine the meaning of a just discovered heavenly body by taking note of what was going on during the time of its discovery. An astrologer who focuses this question and others having to do with outer planet energies is Richard Tarnas, in his Passion of the Western Mind. Re: Saturn in Aquarius EXACTLY at the Midheaven: how do you read it? Your life is indeed a test! Need to be very focused, clear, and determined, as I imagine you are. Not at all sure about discoveries being announced in ways favorable to the ruling elite. Can you send me a url? We do have to guard against thinking the Saturnian patterns we see actually lock up reality. Patterns are as endless as is human creativity . . .

  2. Kieron says:

    Fittingly, I see glimpses of myself here, and through this lens, I think I see what may be slowly developing in my spiritual life. It was hinted at more than once, so this is a welcome path marker. My Desc is at 3 degrees Sag, and Neptune is at 4 Sag. Seeing what I want to see in others, vs what’s really there? Check. Choosing strange partners? Yup. Just *being* strange? Old hat, that. But the gift of knowing your own wiring is immeasureable, because you can guard against your pitfalls, to some extent at least!

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