This page is about all Neptune-Mars aspects, like Neptune Conjunct Mars, Neptune Opposite Mars, Neptune Trine Mars, Neptune Square Mars, Neptune Sextile Mars, Neptune Inconjunct Mars. Hard aspects like conjunctions, squares, and oppositions tend to be more difficult than soft aspects like trines or sextiles. The closer the orb, the more intense the aspect.
We have a page about Neptune. I also recommend Liz Greene’s book The Astrological Neptune and the Quest for Redemption and The Book of Neptune by Steven Forrest.
About Neptune-Mars Aspects
Overview
Mars represents our drive, action, and desire. Neptune and Mars are not easy companions; Mars wants to fight for our autonomy while Neptune wants to surrender it. Neptune can dissolve motivation and avoid direct action, leading to frustration, covert rage, and manipulative behavior. A higher expression of Mars-Neptune is the spiritual warrior, whose will is aligned and directed in service to a larger mission. The work here is to own your needs, become conscious of your motivations, and align your desires so your will becomes an instrument for inspired action.
Gifts
- charismatic leadership
- tapping into collective emotions and aspirations
- persuasiveness through collective identification (”we want...”)
- artistic inspiration especially in performance arts
- courage in service of higher ideals
- sensual sensitivity
- ability to inspire collective action
- heroic selflessness
- fierce devotion to a cause
- protective instincts toward the vulnerable
Challenges
- passivity
- inability to act directly on your own behalf
- guilt for being “selfish”
- suppressing rage so it becomes covertly expressed or self-directed
- misplaced aggression
- addiction
- idealization of sex or conquest
- sexual disinterest or impotence
- sexual compulsivity
- martyrdom or victimhood
- manipulation of collective vulnerability
- frustration due to inability to accomplish goals and ambitions
- apathy
- avoidance of work
- fanaticism
- becoming an anti-hero
- masochism
- cruelty
- self-sabotage
- taking risks for the adrenaline
Lessons
- owning your right to act on personal desires and ambitions
- developing self-awareness and integrity around motivations
- healing insecurities that fuel destructive tendencies
- discerning between conscious use of power and manipulation
- finding safe intense experiences that are not addictive
- balancing physical passion with spiritual connection
- recognizing and integrating buried rage
- letting go of idealized fantasies of heroism
- finding a larger purpose to act in service of
Potential
- embodying the heroic redeemer archetype
- leading others through their own spiritual battlegrounds with compassion and strength
- becoming a channel for inspired leadership or artistic expression
- bringing compassion to traditionally Martian fields such as politics or military service
The Neptune Growth Journey
Neptune is the planet of dreams, imagination, and Divine inspiration. It is also the planet of delusions, addictions, and a forlorn yearning for the unattainable.When the Neptunian longing for transcendence and bliss fuse with unmet needs for love, belonging, safety, or self-worth, we can get lost in an emotional fog. We end up chasing illusions and sacrificing our real life for a fantasy. As painful as it is, disillusionment is the key to waking up from Neptunian confusion. We have to let go of what isn’t real to be able to build on solid ground.
Neptune shows us where we are attached, clinging to illusions, trying to escape our existence, or hiding from reality. When the illusions dissolve, we are left with what is real and what actually matters. We are left with the raw truth, and our real self. And that is where the real magic is found.
Faced with the truth we were trying to avoid, we finally have to take responsibility for meeting our own needs. We take off the rose-colored glasses and come to terms with life as it is.
As we make peace with reality, we find that it is where we can actually meet our needs. We can, step by step, find real fulfillment in the real world, which feels far more solid and satisfying than our fantasy.
Once we know how to meet our needs in a more Saturnian way, we can then access the imaginative and dreamy side of Neptune without getting lost in the fog.
The desire for transcendence doesn't go away, but we are able to direct our feelings of existential longing toward what is truly boundless: spiritual practice, creativity, and communion with nature. We become channels for grace, Divine inspiration, and the feeling of Oneness we wanted all along. We’ve finally become a vessel who can receive Neptune’s magic without dissolving or drowning.
