Transit Neptune Conjunct Natal Neptune: The Return No One Lives

Transit Neptune conjunct natal Neptune, the so-called "Neptune return", never happens within a human life: Neptune takes roughly 165 years to travel around the zodiac. This page therefore describes a symbol rather than a personal period. Anyone searching for this transit in their own chart is most likely living through another Neptune theme, such as the midlife Neptune square or Neptune crossing one of the chart angles.

Why does no one experience a Neptune return?

Neptune spends about 14 years in each sign and moves only around two degrees a year. To come back to its birth position it has to cross all twelve signs, which takes longer than two lifetimes. The planet was discovered in 1846 and only returned to its discovery point in 2011. Everything astrologers know about Neptune fits inside a single orbit.

The return of a dream, not of a person

Symbolically, a Neptune return describes the completion of a generation's shared dream. The ideals, artistic language or vision of salvation held by people born in one era are reinterpreted when the same Neptune sign comes round again a century and a half later. A great-grandparent's hope may find an answer in a great-great-grandchild; a society's founding dream may be retold by a new generation in a different language. This is collective memory, not a personal transit.

The Neptune cycles a lifetime does hold

To understand someone's relationship with their own Neptune, it makes more sense to look at the aspects that fit into a life: the sextile around age 27–28, transit Neptune square natal Neptune between 39 and 42, the trine around 55–56 and the opposition in the early eighties. The house of natal Neptune and the houses beginning in Pisces show where in life these cycles are felt. For day-to-day tracking, the house transit Neptune is currently moving through gives the most concrete information.