Another day light on planetary activity, though the buzz that began yesterday afternoon continues with Moon still in Gemini, needing to be the smartest one in the room. Who, what, when, where and how? Ideas can flow easily and with feeling as you wake up this morning, courtesy of a smooth connection between Moon and mental Mercury.

Today is your last chance to experience a full day of nebulous Neptune in Aquarius — and here, I mean the last chance in your lifetime. On Friday at 1:52PM ET, Neptune enters Pisces, the sign it rules.  Neptune energy can be challenging for people who live in a material world, as it prefers the immaterial and ephemeral to the material and permanent. Neptune tends to dissolve whatever it touches, leaving you with the feeling that you’re standing in quicksand. Or in a fog. It doesn’t strike with a lightning bolt, like Uranus, or blow things to smithereens, purging and/or transforming, like Pluto. Its effects are much more subtle, but no less powerful.

Here are a few key words for Neptune:  intangible forms (wireless communication including film, photography, telepathy, intuition, spirituality, rarefied art forms, including music), oil, dreams, drugs, blood, alcohol, poisons, viruses, water, oceans, seafood.   A few key words for Pisces: surrender, empathy, compassion, collective consciousness, belief, martyr, saint. We can anticipate with confidence that headlines over the next 14 years will reflect these keywords with increasing levels of intensity.

It takes about 14 years for Neptune to travel through one sign of the zodiac; the last time Neptune entered Pisces was in 1847. Thanks to astrologer Steffan Vanel for bringing my attention to a post by astrologer Adrian Duncan noting some key developments during Neptune’s last transit through Pisces in the mid-19th Century. Note that the “social democratic demonstrations” (e.g., the “Year of Revolutions of 1848” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848), coincided with Uranus and Pluto hooking up in the cardinal sign of Aries. Note also that Uranus and Pluto are four months away from a three-year long series of seven exact challenges to each other (and that we’ve been feeling the build-up for over a year) in Aries and Capricorn, respectively. Note also that when Uranus and Pluto do make contact, the effect is one of upheaval. But I digress. Here’s the bit on Neptune’s last transit through Pisces:

“This was the period when Charles Dickens wrote his novels of social realism, and social democratic demonstrations shook the capitals of Europe. This was also a time when painters like Renoir, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Cezanne and Monet made their impressionist paintings, expanding the world of fantasy and imagination. On the scientific front Darwin’s theory of evolution completely undermined Christian tradition. The first photographs were taken, ultimately leading to the coming world of the movies. Anesthetics were used for the first time in hospitals. Opium became a socially acceptable drug. The accepted reality of the day was undermined and new spiritual, emotional and political realities took form.”

This year, Neptune in Pisces will affect you most strongly if you have a birthday — or a planet, rising sign or midheaven in the early degrees of Pisces, Gemini, Virgo and Sagittarius. On the plus side, there is potential for a spiritual awakening or transcendence; artistic and/or romantic stimulation and/or success. On the down side there is the potential for bewilderment or listlessness. Consult your local astrologer for further details on how Neptune is likely affecting your own personal horoscope. Meanwhile, you can watch Mitt Romney in action as one example of how Neptune can completely fog up efforts of personal projection as it challenges his Gemini Ascendant. Here’s what happened yesterday: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/opinion/collins-mitt-speaks-oh-no.html?hp http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/us/politics/poor-quote-by-romney-seized-on-by-his-critics.html?hp  Bewildering, eh?