I don’t quite know how this one snuck up on me, although it does make sense considering Neptune is so elusive and my natal Chiron is in the 12th house of hidden and subconscious things. Perhaps I should have noticed when the stability I had been enjoying since my Saturn Return seemingly morphed into what feels like several months of PMS. I was feeling SO emotional, but couldn’t cry. I even resorted to watching the sad parts of kids movies and Thai life insurance ads (the saddest ever) just to force the tears to flow.
Neptune in a difficult aspect is a lot like a big dissolving/yearning/dream/delusion/spell which can feel impossible to live through and chiron is all about being wounded and healing, so there are some obvious emotional ramification here, but because this transit surprised me, I googled it to see what else the internets could tell me: not very much and came across a Saturn Rising post of an interpretation except (not sure where from) that resonates deeply:
The deeper meaning underlying the depressed emotional state
you are likely to experience is a need to face, understand, and
let go of the pain of the past. You may be clinging to hurtful
experiences in ways you have not realized, storing them up
and nursing an unconscious sense of grievance and mistrust
which may be secretly affecting many of your decisions and
responses to other people. It is not that your past experiences
are unimportant, or that your unhappiness is or was unreal.
But right now you are being challenged to find the capacity to
forgive life for not meeting your expectations. If you can see
where your idealization or unrealistic expectations might have
led you into disappointment, you could go a long way toward
healing these past wounds. Also, you may need to learn to
accept life as it is, rather than as you wish it could be. The
proverbial choice of perceiving a glass of water as either half-empty
or half-full applies to you now. If you see life only in
terms of its unfairness, you will become bitter, cynical and
martyred. If you see it only as wonderful, or maintain spiritual
convictions which are too simplistic or naive, you will be
disillusioned when life turns out to be more complex than you
thought. But if you see it as a mixture of dark and light, and
can be flexible enough to accept both, you will be able to find
the resources to cope with the dark while enjoying the light.
Despite being a glass-half-full person already, I could make some more ground with forgiving life. Faith is something I found, as a child, out of desperation. I was raised as an atheist, and got lost in the forest when I was eleven and prayed to every god I had ever heard of. I found Jesus at camp a few months later and converted to Christianity, then dropped it in favor of polytheistic paganism in my teens when I needed magic the most. Gradually, I let that go too, as I found my own power and needed gods and goddesses less and less. My spirituality evolved into an experiential one, moment to moment, interconnected with everything. The beliefs I have now, I am less attached to, they are lenses: tools for gaining clarity, wisdom and understanding… and yet, over the past few months I have felt this tugging absence of faith.
Feeling confused about my life, anxious about not knowing what the hell I’m doing, I have been intellectualising too much – trying to think my way out of feelings of powerlessness. Feeling frustrated with Uranus on my Midheaven, squaring Pluto in my seventh house, I have been going around in circles into brick walls trying to figure out what to do about my ambitions and relationships… I have been getting stuck on “how?” – the impossible question, when one is walking in the dark. I have been willing myself to have faith. I have been trying… but I don’t think I can find faith in desperation anymore… I think I have to find it in letting go… in forgiving life.
When I was fourteen I chose to write my school speech about forgiveness. It seemed like an important thing at the time, I remember a quote I found in my youth bible: “resentment is like a hot coal in the palm of your hand – the longer and tighter it is held, the deeper the burn, bitterness will leave a scar than even time cannot heal.” – That was when I was learning that forgiveness isn’t about letting someone/thing off the hook, it’s about releasing yourself from pain. I have been progressively seeking out and releasing pain from old wounds, releasing myself from depression, working towards forgiving specific people, but I haven’t yet framed it in terms of ‘forgiving life’. Life is hard and often painful; it’s complex and beautiful and joyful; it can be agonising. Life is full of injustices and unfairness, of vulnerability and betrayal, of being hurt, of fear and powerlessness. Life is a big thing to forgive.
Neptune is all about dissolving, and combined with Chiron there is a great opportunity to both dissolve into pain and woundedness and to dissolve from it – to release it. Towards the end of my last Neptune transit I started writing a poetic journal: “The art of dissolving.” I think I will go back to that now, especially as Neptune is also opposing my Venus and I need a positive creative channel to avoid getting lost in a lower-Neptuanian ocean of spaced-out yearning. In these moments of unreasonable despair I will allow this emotion to come up and affirm the thought that is bringing in light and space right now: forgive life.
Living in the Forest 
Though this was written in 2015, thank you for writing it because someone like me needs it! I am going through this transit and your post was highly helpful. I appreciate you.
Thanks for the feedback. Neptune transits take a long time and lot of processing. I thinking I’m still processing this one, letting go of unfairness and finding intuitive faith. Good luck with your transit 🙂
I’m going through this transit, But everybody’s sick, this time of year. The parents et moi all have fever… hopefully not cabin fever.
Hey Isa! You’re active! But you don’t blog anymore? When you look up your chart, what site is the most accurate for you? There’s so many sites and I don’t know which one is reliable.
Hi, I’m still here but have been taking an extended blogging break due to full time work, PhD completion and other commitments (Saturn is going through my sixth house and there’s lots of work to do). I usually use astro.com to look up charts because they are reliable and have lots of good options, progressed charts, composite, asteroids etc. When you sign up for their free membership they also store that charts you put in which makes it easy to flick between charts. I use an android app on my phone called Tropical Skies, because I can use it offline. It stores charts too, but only shows natal charts and current transits. 🙂
Thanks. This intense transit made itself known again In my Astro.com daily ( whick I haven’t checked at all this year, but decided to because I couldn’t reconsider with how angry I was about a particular injustice in my life. I keep going to gratitude, but it’s more of a defense mechanism that I use to put a bandaid on my anger, because the true byproduct of denying these feelings and focusing on how I should be greatfull for what I have, is just plain guilt.
I will focus on forgiving life. I love how you put it that way, because while I want to focus my bad feelings on one Individual or situation, it’s really more than that. It’s me as well. Understanding that does still leave me with some guilt, but I forgive myself and I forgive life.
I can understand how attempting gratitude can turn into guilt when you really don’t feel grateful but think you should.
This is a long transit and long slow learning. For me, it felt like I really had to lose my old forms of faith in life in order to let go and mourn all the injustice. The people who have hurt us are also suffering from layers and layers of injustice. It’s a lot to forgive!
This had buried me. I know all about healing but cannot pick myself up. All of the old boyfriends resurfaced and ask for pardon on all the wrongdoings. Too much ghost too much old wounds. And the last boyfriend disappeared with no trace in the midst of this process. . Hurts like…. It is hard to try to understand people`s point of views and to have empathy for people ATM. My life folded and turned into something I don`t recognize, and the amount of pain is making me unrecognizable. I feel like this one lesson is slipping out of my hands, and I am gonna fail it. It has been really rough? Any ideas how to keep up? Thanks.
My main coping strategies for this kind of thing are going for walks and journaling. Also – doing all the things I know that help me to take care of myself – which are not always the things that are easy and comfortable. When I am going through a difficult time I want to stay in bed and eat junk food but that leads to feeling worse! The problem with knowing all about healing is that you have high expectations for yourself and want to feel like you are progressing. The processes of healing often don’t feel like that. It can feel hopeless and hard – a big struggle with no clear light at the end of the tunnel. There are many symbolic journeys that feel impossible like this – for example Inanna’s descent into the underworld. Maybe it’s time for me to blog about this topic again. Thanks for your comment.
Thankyou for this.
I came across your post while trying to find some info. regarding my natal neptune sesquiquadrate chiron.
It can be surprising at times when I stop and absorb the sadness that seems to come from nowhere! However I have learned to sit with it and ask what it is trying to tell me.
It is my soul from eons ago.
The wise old one who has heard and seen everything.
It is my muse, the poet within.
It wasn’t easy growing up with this placement but it can add a layer of depth. Take care.
You wrote this a long time ago, but it is resonating with me now. Thank you for writing. Forgiving life feels like it might strip me of everything I am. Chiron is in my 1st, transit Neptune in Pisces is square it, conjunct my Jupiter and like your transit, opposed to Venus (which squares Ascendant). I have other major transits going on, too, including transit Pluto conjunct Moon, opposed Sun and Mercury, and transit Saturn conjunct Mars in 8th house Cap… natal Neptune in the 8th.
I feel like I am coming apart at the seams, but still maintain this front that I have it together. Every moment feels like I am on the verge of dissolving, but I fight it. It is like looking over the edge of an abyss and trying desperately not to fall. I am afraid of the moment I finally lose my balance.
Thank you for writing this. As transiting Neptune is squaring my Chiron, I’ve been looking for ways to understand/be with/move on from this state. Your words really resonated with me. I’m grateful I could come across your words.
How have things been for you, 6 years since?
Thanks for your comment. Things have been going well for me and I’m still paying attention to interesting transits like this but I have not been blogging much as I’ve been writing more novels instead! I do want to blog more about astrology though