‘The Big Lie’ is a phrase that has been all over the news and as Neptune transits Pisces that is hardly surprising. I first wrote about Neptune in Pisces in 2020 and you may wonder why there is a need to revisit the planet of illusion as it transits through its own sign. The point is, however, that this is a transit – and a long one at that. All transits of the outer planets indicate a process – a period of slow change that is a gradual unfolding of information that impacts on our belief systems and understanding of our place in the world.
So, it’s probably a good idea to revisit transiting Neptune from time to time to assess where we are on that journey. Sometimes you need to raise your head above the clouds, though I’ll admit to being nervous about committing this post to the ether. However, there is an old saying I’m going to borrow from journalism – and it’s this. “When someone tells you it’s raining, your job is to look out of the window and see if it’s true”.
So, in this post, I’m going to look at how, when Neptune transits Pisces, it impacts our consciousness – and makes it possible for people to propagate – and fall for – big lies of all kinds.
Neptune Transits Pisces: The Illusion of Truth
First, I’m going to look at what we believe we know about Neptune and Pisces, what we thought would happen under this transit – and what is really happening under this transit. Jupiter’s temporary ingress into Pisces right now makes this a good time to look at this because Jupiter makes things so big that they simply can’t be ignored – though there is a certain irony in that because, where ‘the big lie’ is concerned, someone truly wants you to ignore something!
This is unsurprising as Pisces and Neptune are associated with illusion, delusion and things that are hidden. If Neptune is the planet that represents ‘alternative facts’, then in the sign of its own rulership, that alternative reality is going to know no bounds in a truly big way. I can’t help but think that Kellyanne Conway was giving us the nod about what we could expect as Neptune transits Pisces – yet we still can’t quite believe what we are seeing.
So, what did we expect with this Neptune in Pisces transit? Perhaps even Neptune’s spectacles would have been too rose-tinted, if we thought the next few years were going to be festival of love, peace and universal brotherhood. However, that’s the thing with Neptune – and particularly the powerful transit of Neptune in its own sign that’s gong to be with us until 2025. What may surprise you is that Neptune has been in Pisces since 2012. You didn’t notice? That’s Neptune for you.
Last year, I also wrote about Neptune in Pisces, and the thrust of that article was the Covid pandemic, because when Neptune transits Pisces, it’s the perfect moment for plagues and invisible enemies to cross borders, cross infect and overwhelm defences – largely because we don’t want to believe that it’s going to happen to us. There have been huge Neptune in Pisces themes going on here – from the disease itself, the denial from some quarters, the development of drugs to combat infection and the conspiracy theories that spread as quickly as the disease itself.
As Neptune transits Pisces in 2021, the greatest danger is not only the disease itself – don’t forget (Neptune) it’s still with us in a big way – but also the lies that are infecting the public realm. And the lies are infecting the body politic extensively without any apparent remedy. Now this matters, because when society gets ill, we all suffer. The problem we seem to have, is that there are those in our societies who are disinterested or unaware – and that is a classic Neptune in Pisces response. It’s like ignoring an illness – like Covid – until its too late.
Neptune Transits Pisces: Under the Gaslight
So, if no-one seems to care about truth, and if people are happy to believe lies, we need to ask why this is so. I’m going to begin by asking how do lies work – and what makes them so effective. First, a surprising truth. Almost all lies – big and small – have the same methodology (the same ‘MO’ if you like to think of it that way) and the objective – by liars large and small – is to make people deny their own reality. Neptune and Pisces are the signifiers of distorted reality so put them together and you have trouble you don’t see coming.
This process every liar uses is called gaslighting. Let’s think about that word for a moment. Neptune is associated with drugs, gases, clouds, fog, haziness – the things that make it difficult to see things clearly, or they alter the light, or our mind, so we perceive things differently. We see the things we ‘know’ in a different light – think about how the world you are familiar with looks different under street lamps at night – and you’ll begin to understand how gaslighting works.
Places you are comfortable with suddenly become frightening or appear dangerous. You lose your way because you don’t recognise things that would be familiar to you in the light of day. When you apply this to people – whether it’s in relationships between individual people or relationships between groups of people in society – gaslighting is a technique used to destabilise everything from individuals to the established social order and as Neptune transits Pisces, gaslight just went mainstream. And it works like this.
- You tell a blatant lie – and double down on it. It doesn’t matter whether the lie can be disproved – and they are usually easily disproved because the facts are verifiable. The important thing is to protect and repeat the lie. Until the moment the liar decides to…
- Deny the lie. That’s right. Blatant lies are often followed some time later by a complete denial – even if the blatant lie has been captured ‘on the record’. This process is important because it enables the gaslighter to…
- Create confusion. A state of confusion is essential for liars to begin to manipulate others, and confusion – a mental state long associated with Neptune – is a the point at which you begin to doubt your own sanity. It makes you weak and vulnerable and receptive to further gaslighting. Such as…
- The mismatch between words and deeds. Gaslighters manipulate people by making promises they never keep. It’s that simple. Whether it’s a ‘one on one’ relationship or the politician who makes big promises but never delivers.
- Keep the process going as long as you can. Why? Because it wears the victims down – and the victim can be anything from the individual who accepts a relationship based on lies and manipulation, or a society that swallows the big lie and keeps believing it – even to the point of enduring hardship because of it.
Of course not everyone will fall for the big lie – even while Neptune transits Pisces – but even those of us who contest lies will be subject to gaslighting techniques. Countering lies – and liars – is often difficult because they have well-rehearsed routines to fall back on. Try these for size…
- Projection. This classic tool in the gaslighter’s armoury is designed to deflect from their own behaviour by accusing you of similar – or worse – behaviour. It’s a neat trick used by the gaslighter against any kind of opponent.
- Sow the seeds of division. A gaslighter’s aim is to divide and rule – and isolate their victims. Gaslighters often state that their spurious allegations come from other people – not them – and this has the desired effect of deflecting from the liars behaviour and creating an atmosphere of mistrust. Just who do you believe? And that’s essential as the liar needs you to trust them above anyone else.
So, since 2012 we can see how, as Neptune transits Pisces, the waters of public life have become much more murky than usual. Was that the moment blatant lies – and liars – entered the public domain? Maybe or maybe not – but it seems to have been the time when it became not only essential but acceptable for politicians to gaslight society in their quest for power – and society has become more divided than ever as a result.
Neptune Transits Pisces: Who Lies – And Why
So, is it just politicians? Every lie needs a liar – and an effective liar is a habitual liar. This may surprise you but not all politicians are habitual liars – just the same as not all people are habitual liars. It takes a ‘special’ kind of person to lie for the sole purpose of well, whatever their personal motivation is for doing so. What is certain, no matter who the victims are – whether it’s you, me or all of us – The liar is usually one person.
And that person is usually an abuser, bully and a narcissist who lies to protect their own personal fantasy that they are in control, more powerful than everyone else, more intelligent than anyone else and so on. Grandiose fantasies are the mark of the liar, grifter and con-man down the ages and as Neptune transits Pisces, we have seen the emergence of fantasists on a grand scale. That’s not unexpected by the way, as fantasy is associated with Neptune and Pisces.
So, in recent years – as Neptune transits Pisces – the world has seen the rise of dictators (or ‘would be’ dictators) who present themselves as cult leaders or ‘charismatic’ figureheads whose ‘charms’ and simplistic, populist slogans often play on irrational fears to enable supporters to believe what they want to believe. This is like oxygen to any narcissist because, like Narcissus himself, the Neptunian fantasies of the narcissistic leader need to be reflected back at him from the Pisces pool.
Neptune Transits Pisces: Who Believes a Liar?
Every liar needs someone to fool and I’m sure many people ask themselves why people continue to fall for the big lie – whether it’s a friend, relative, or sections of society – because the relationship between liar and victim(s) is, after all, an abusive one. What makes a ‘cult follower’, or makes someone ignore the evidence of their own senses? What makes people believe lies are the truth and stick with those lies through thick and thin? This seems mystifying – but ‘mystifying’ is simply what happens to us all as Neptune transits Pisces.
The truth – if you want to believe it – is that when Neptune transits Pisces even the most sensible and rational people are capable of losing their senses. We see people who at any other time would dismiss liars as charlatans, now take them at face value because, at times like this, Neptune has worked to dissolve the lines between right and wrong, truth and lies, and facts and opinions. Truth is often obscured or misrepresented and false equivalence seems to be the order of the day.
So, while it may be difficult to explain why people become, for example, ‘anti-vaxxers’ or believe outlandish conspiracy theories, it’s far less difficult to explain how the conditions for such beliefs arose during the period of a Neptune transit through Pisces. As Neptune transits Pisces, mistrust, irrationality, illusion, fantasy and limiting beliefs permeate all things. It’s as if Neptune in Pisces, the most porous of signs, makes us, as a collective, even more vulnerable to those who would take advantage of us for their own ends.
Neptune Transits Pisces: The Jupiter Effect
So what can be done about it? There’s an image I have of society collectively wringing it’s hands and feeling rather hopeless about it all, making excuses like, ‘that’s just the way it is’ or ‘the other side is just as bad’. That same feeling engulfs individual victims too. That is exactly what gaslighters want you to think and feel – and hopelessness is, of course, another Neptune in Pisces standby.
We have recently seen the temporary ingress of Jupiter into Pisces for a short while. Jupiter is about to turn retrograde on it’s way back to a final stay in Aquarius, but has Jupiter in Pisces given us any clues how we can play this Neptune in Pisces transit – rather than be played by it? So far, I think Jupiter has simply made this transit bigger in its effects – ‘the big lie’ has gained more prominence and the liars are becoming more audacious in their claims.
However, when Jupiter returns to Pisces in late December, will it herald a new awakening in the new year? I’ll be writing about that at that time, but for now it seems several things are possible. Jupiter is the eternal optimist so, when Jupiter makes that approaching conjunction with Neptune in Pisces in Spring 2022, will the lies reach such a magnitude that they collapse under their own weight? That would be something we could all look forward too. However, I fear we will have to wait for Neptune to enter Aries before the fog burns away completely.
Further Reading
Neptune in Pisces: It’s A Seriously Bad Trip
Neptune and the Ocean of Dreams
Jupiter Conjunct Neptune: Inflation has no Boundaries
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© Sara Shipman 2021
Image Credit: OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay
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