Neptune Transits: 12th House

When Neptune transits the 12th house your need for transcendence and imagination influences how you deal with the subconscious and spiritual realms. Neptune inspires new dreams and dissolves old structures and represents your need to spiritualise and refine this area of your life.

When Neptune transits the 12th house you may experience inspiration and confusion with unconscious complexes, secrets and karma, depth psychology and the need for spiritual retreat or healing. Neptune dissolves your boundaries making you more sensitive to the forces of the unconscious which is disorienting because you can’t be sure what’s real and what isn’t.

The effects of this will vary but you may feel disillusioned with your life, as if something is missing or has gone wrong. This could be due to an event in your outer life or just a feeling that creeps up on you.

Buried feelings and unconscious emotional complexes may return into your awareness and demand attention. This may feel overwhelming as the hard shell of your ego is eroded, or smashed to pieces, and in pours all the things you’ve been repressing. So what happens will depend on what you’ve been avoiding and for how long. At worst, you could experience a psychological breakdown or be overtaken by fantasies and delusions that seem real in your disordered state.

But you could also be inspired by a spiritual awakening or breakthrough that reveals insights into your psyche through dreams, visions and synchronicities. You could explore your inner world using meditation, active imagination, and psychedelics, and it may be a good time to work with a therapist, especially if you’re struggling with challenging emotions.

The point of this transit is to dissolve your old identity so you can be reborn when Neptune crosses your Ascendent and enters the 1st house. That means lost parts of yourself need to be retrieved and healed so you can sort through what to keep and what to release – although the process isn’t usually as orderly as that!

You will need to make time for yourself to turn inwards and listen to what’s coming up from the depths. By doing this you can learn to trust your intuition and grow in self-acceptance and compassion. You may discover positive gifts and talents that have been hidden, as well as heal old wounds from childhood and make peace with yourself and others.

You could have mystical experiences of oneness or visionary insights into the nature of reality that inspires a renewal of faith. But this desire for oneness could also become destructive if you try to escape reality through drugs, alcohol or suicide. These are really misguided attempts to connect with the divine and there are life-enhancing ways to do this, like meditation, prayer, or communion with nature.

The 12th house also relates to institutions, such as hospitals, prisons, museums, libraries, care homes, charities, and so on. You may want to work in one of these areas to care for those who are suffering or disenfranchised, or you may spend more time in these places yourself.

Possibilities with Neptune transiting the 12th House:

Spiritual awakening and visionary experiences
Increased psychic sensitivity
Exploring your inner world
Dissolving old identities and healing the past
Communing with nature
Working for institutions or charities to care for others

Watch out for:

Disorientation and confusion about reality
Losing yourself in fantasy or delusions
Overwhelmed by past karma
Addiction to drugs or alcohol
Mental breakdown or emotional instability
A stay in hospital or prison

My notes:

Neptune transited my 12th house from 1990 to 2003, from age 19 to 32, and it coincided with Uranus and Saturn both transiting this house as well making for quite an intense experience. Saturn was there first in Dec 89-Feb 92, while Uranus was there in 1991-98.

Just before this transit I left home and moved to Newcastle to study music at college and the experience began well. But as soon as Neptune joined Saturn in my 12th house things started to unravel. I was drinking too much and feeling confused about why I was there because everybody else was so much more talented than me.

Gradually I realised that I had no idea who I was – I looked within and found nothing. My sense of self imploded and I started having panic attacks and hearing voices and periods of amnesia that were terrifying because I couldn’t remember where I’d been or what I was doing. Typical Neptune.

There were also moments of intense connection when I felt vividly alive but these weren’t enough to overcome the void I’d fallen into. The psychotic break peaked when I almost killed myself but was saved by grace and my first direct perception of my true nature – although I didn’t understand what it was at the time.

This set me off on my spiritual journey and over the following years I slowly rebuilt my identity and explored the feelings that had been flooding my psyche. During this time I felt guided by a part of myself that seemed to know exactly what I needed and I learned to trust it and follow its promptings. I learned to meditate and studied psychology, philosophy, and astrology in order to understand my psyche better.

Later I did a counselling course with a charity and worked with people struggling with drug and alcohol addiction, and then returned to college to make my dream of becoming a sound engineer real. By 2001 I was working for the local council (a public service institution) as a sound engineer recording a talking newspaper for the blind and partially sighted.

But Neptune was approaching my Ascendent and I could feel something bubbling up from the depths. I tried to drown it out by hitting the booze but just ended up depressed and frustrated. I was dimly aware that I needed to accept the mystical side of myself but was still running away from it.

Change was coming and I was scared of what was about to be born because I didn’t know what to expect. It turned out to be satori…