Mercury-Neptune
Mercury-Neptune combines Mercury's association with thinking, learning, writing and communicating with Neptune's association with dreams, visions, spirituality, idealization, and the imagination.
This combination may be reflected in tendencies that include, but are not limited to, thinking (Mercury) in a way that involves nonlinear impressions (Neptune), or thinking (Mercury) through dissolved boundaries (Neptune) in such a way that one can read minds, or the ability to communicate (Mercury) the enchanting vision (Neptune), or communication (Mercury) that is hazy or unclear (Neptune).
Below are examples of famous people born with this combination in their natal charts (natal chart is another word for astrological birth chart, or pictographic representation of the sky when they were born). When we witness how this combination shows up in the lives of others, we can become more self-aware of how this combination shows up in our own lives. The more we are conscious of the ways astrological alignments (otherwise known as “aspects”) show up in our lives, the more the archetypal tensions involved can become integrated in our lives, thus revealing inherent strengths to us.
Please note that the tension of this archetypal combination, as illustrated in the lives and creations of the famous people in the examples below, may be demonstrated in ways that are more integrated or less integrated.
The GZA, founding member of the hip hop group, Wu-Tang Clan, was born with Mercury and Neptune aligned. Mercury is the archetype associated the mind, thought, communicating, speaking, and writing. Neptune is associated with the spiritual and the ideal. Neptune as the archetype of the ocean has no center. For this reason the archetype of Neptune tends to dissolve ego-centrism and bring about altruism and compassion. With Neptune in aspect to Mercury we would expect to find compassionate (Neptune) communication (Mercury). Indeed, in “I Gotcha Back,” GZA speaks of two children on their way to school:
“Little shorties take walks to the schoolyard, trying to solve the puzzle to why is life so hard. And as soon as they reach the playground, shots ring off, and now one of them lay down. It’s so hard to escape the gun-fire, I wish I could rule it out like an umpire.”
The mid-1990’s, when the GZA recorded these lyrics, saw the glorification of gun violence as a trend among MCs. Yet the GZA states his opposition to gun violence and his compassion for the victims. As well as being associated with the spiritual and compassionate, Neptune is also associated with the ocean of images that is the imaginative faculty. The archetype of Neptune is also aligned with rituals and substances that create either authentic or quasi-authentic spiritual experiences. The GZA’s rhymes are often imaginative and visual to an almost hallucinogenic degree. In “Reunited,” the GZA rhymes,
“Where I come from, getting visual’s habitual, you’re more safe walking on hot coals in rituals. I splash the paint on the wall and form the mural; he looked and saw the manifestation of it was plural.”
Neptune’s association with the ideal can be seen in the GZA’s moniker “The Genius.” Here the idealization principle of Neptune is associated with the mind (Mercury). Of the GZA’s mental prowess his fellow Wu-Tang members say on the track “Can it Be All So Simple,”
“The GZA, the Genius, is just a genius. He the head. Let’s put it that way: we form like Voltron and the GZA happens to be the head.”
The Mercury-Neptune combination can be seen in the idealization (Neptune) of the voice (Mercury) in a number of singers, such as Sinead O’Connor, Christina Aguilera, Amy Winehouse, Jeff Buckley, and Amy Lee of the band Evanescence. The lyrics of songs by musicians with this combination often speak of (Mercury) dreams (Neptune), such as in the song “Wildest Dreams” by Taylor Swift, or particularly in the song “Running Down a Dream” by Tom Petty, because of Mercury’s association with the movement of walking and running.
The Mercury-Neptune combination in the chart of Rudolf Steiner is demonstrated in the author’s tendency not only to write (Mercury) on spiritual topics (Neptune), but also in his ability to communicate (Mercury) spiritual (Neptune) messages (Mercury). “…One must carry the knowledge of the spiritual world within oneself after the fashion of geometry ... [for here] one is permitted to know something which the mind alone, through its own power, experiences. In this feeling I found the justification for the spiritual world that I experienced ... I confirmed for myself by means of geometry the feeling that I must speak of a world 'which is not seen'.”
The Mercury-Neptune combination in the natal chart of Frank Herbert, author of the Dune series of science fiction novels, can be seen in his depiction of “The Voice,” a skill demonstrated by highly trained individuals who can hypnotize, mesmerize and enchant (Neptune) others using their voice (Mercury). For a theatrical rendition of this skill, check out this clip from the 2021 film Dune, in which the main character Paul Atreides demonstrates this skill on his mother, Lady Jessica: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05HwmTIGkw4 (Interesting, actor Timothy Chalamet, who demonstrated this skill as character Paul Atreides in this scene, was born with the Mercury-Neptune combination in his birth chart.)
The Mercury-Neptune combination in the birth chart of author Stephen King can be seen in his memoir, entitled On Writing, in which the first sentence of the section titled “What Writing Is” reads “Telepathy, of course.” He then goes on to describe a scene in which a rabbit with the numeral 8 in blue ink on its back is munching on a carrot stub in a cage on a table covered with a red tablecloth. He argues that he has just placed an image in the mind of the reader across time and space. Neptune has an association with infinite planes which transcend the limitations of time and space. In this example we see him using writing (Mercury) to place an image in the minds (Mercury) of his readers in a way that transcends time and space (Neptune).
Additionally, telepathy figures prominently in his work. In The Stand, a novel about a super-virus wiping out nine tenths of the human race, several of the main characters demonstrate telepathic capabilities, and all of the remaining members of the human race share the same recurring dream sequence. Similarly in his novel The Shining characters also experience a telepathic capability known as “shining.” In Greco-Roman mythology Neptune was the god of the ocean. The astrological archetype of Neptune is associated with that which dissolves something. In these examples we see an ability to dissolve the boundaries (Neptune) between minds (Mercury).
Neptune is also associated with the infinite well of images and inspiration that informs the human imagination. In King’s novel Lisey’s Story an idyllic place called “Boo’ya Moon” harbors a body of water that contains all thoughts (Mercury) and images of the human imagination (Neptune). A seductive escape from reality, “Boo’ya Moon” mesmerizes viewers, rendering them catatonic.