This transit activates the area of the Map associated with philosophy, travel, and higher education. When Neptune transits this House, we may feel drawn to a religion, philosophy, or belief system, hoping to find the means of our salvation: we place our faith in faith, that is, we feel that not only being able to find something to believe in will we be saved. While many people may have positive experiences along these lines, certain problems and hidden pitfalls often accompany this transit.
Neptune can confuse us in our search for higher truths and principles to guide us in life: we are eager to merge with something greater than ourselves, often through devout adherence to a philosophy, religion, cult, or guru. But, as is usually the case under this transit, we may not know who to trust.
Irresistibly drawn to anyone – or anything – that promises us enlightenment and redemption, we are likely to find ourselves involved with rather strange groups. The main danger lies in giving too much power to the other people who lead these groups. If they tell us to believe or do something, we obey, convinced that they know much better than we do what we need. There are cases of people who during this transit were mistakenly led astray in this way, and will be psychologically damaged.
Placing our faith in a guru or cult only to be disappointed can be an inevitable, and even necessary, lesson under the influence of this transit. Of course, not everyone ends up getting involved with charlatans or con artists. There are also many teachers of great integrity who have much to offer those who venture on a spiritual path. The problem may not be so much with the guru or the group as such, but with our own clumsiness, which leads us to distort their teachings.
With Neptune in the 9th House, a religion or belief system can become an obsession. We may believe that the truth we have found is the answer for everything and everyone, or fall victim to the “Buddha disease” and emulate the teacher to such an extent that we do not eat, think, decide or do anything that he (or she) does not do. We mistakenly believe that imitating an enlightened being is the path that will lead us to enlightenment.
However, there is a flaw in this way of thinking. Acting as we think a realized being would act is not the path to enlightenment, nor is consciousness a byproduct of behavior. When our consciousness changes, only then, and in the most natural way, will our behavior change. Things do not work in the opposite direction. At some point in this transit we may feel unsure of what we believe.
The dissolving effect of Neptune can result in a philosophy or worldview that we once relied on and respected no longer serving or seeming valid to us. Then we find ourselves adrift, not knowing what to believe or how to orient ourselves in life.
We may try various philosophies, hoping that one of them will be able to replace what we have lost, but suddenly we feel disappointed. We need to take the time to mourn our lost beliefs, and to grieve for the illusions, about ourselves and life in general, that we must now relinquish.
Ultimately, during this transit we may have no choice but to live for some time in a state of uncertainty and ignorance, until the time comes when we formulate or discover a new way of giving meaning to existence. But even this “unknowing” can ultimately be perceived as something akin to a state of grace: without vain illusions, without the need to verify one’s faith or to see it demonstrated by logic or experience, we can approach life free from the burden of preconceived ideas and expectations.
Neptune will also influence travel. Some people embark on a pilgrimage to places that have special significance for them. These are generally good times to absorb another culture, and we may be attracted to go live in a foreign country. However, unless we learn to keep our eyes wide open, we can be victims of deception while traveling. Commonly, Neptune’s transit through the 9th House opens the mind and inspires the imagination. We are awakened to an interest in what Maslow called “the wider range of human nature.”
We are eager to realize and expand our potential, and we enroll in courses or seminars that promise us greater satisfaction and self-realization. In one way or another we find Neptune in the halls of the university: we fall in love with a married professor or we start having problems with alcohol or other drugs. This transit may coincide with a period in which our vision of life and the future goes from the extreme of static optimism to total despair. And perhaps in these oscillations we discover a more valid sense of our potential and a deeper understanding of the nature of reality.
When Neptune transits the 9th House, it fulfills its purpose by raising clouds of confusion in the mind and creating doubts about one’s own opinions of success, morality, religion, philosophy, law, and abstract subjects in general. This planet symbolically expands the frontiers of the mind, creating dissatisfaction with things as they are. Vague worries, consciousness, discontent, and confused dreams can cause disturbance. Understanding the real meaning and value of one’s vital relationships may be out of focus, whether with other people in general or with intimate partners in particular. The problem may be due to extreme idealism, or because abstract principles seem more important than real people. One’s own judgment may be too hesitant or too vague, or based on factors related to one’s own religious or spiritual faith. Absurd situations can arise due to superstition, fanaticism, religious or scientific prejudice.
In the 9th House, Neptune dissolves mental limitations creating a yearning to get lost in vast theories, psychic phenomena or exotic ideas. Images of the collective unconscious can arise insistently through powerful dreams. The expansion of consciousness can also come through a journey through foreign lands or contacts with strange people or ideas. These same things can also cause deceptive conditions and confusion.