We’re at the beach with Rich’s family this week, and this morning I took a long solitary walk along the coastline, the only human out so early in the morning. It gave me a wonderful opportunity to let my mind wander, and I happened to think about Neptune, the god of the Oceans who is currently opposing Saturn, Lord of Karma.

The symbology of Neptune has very little to do with the god Neptune/Poseidon and everything to do with his domain: the domain of the sea. From one drop of water to the endless ocean, the sea is eternal, flowing, the body into which all life eventually flows. Water may attempt to take form in ice, but eventually the ice melts and flows into the sea. This is the urge of Neptune: to dissolve the form that we build in life into the boundless ocean of consciousness.

Saturn, on the other hand, seeks to build form where Neptune dissolves it. The rocks along the ocean edge offer resistance to the flow of the waves, but ultimately they too begin to erode; their edges becoming soft in the face of the endless flow of water. Still, the rocks form the foundation of our life on earth. They provide a base for us to construct the homes in which we live and the structures through which we earn our living. At the beach there is a constant tension between the impulse of the ocean to dissolve and erode and the necessity of form, and this is the very thing which the Saturn/Neptune opposition teaches us to balance in our own lives.