Neptune’s influence in direct motion is subtle and hypnotic. This planet will enchant you into feeling or thinking in new ways.
But its influence changes while it’s retrograde.
When Neptune retrogrades, its influence is erosive and dissipative. This planet will do everything to help you break down some of your internal barriers.
In this text, I want to explore some of the meanings and manifestations of Neptune retrograde.
I’ll do so with the help of Erin Sullivan’s Retrograde Planets: Traversing the Inner Landscape.
This is the table of contents:
Let’s go.
Neptune Retrograde: Effects and Manifestations
Every time Neptune retrogrades, there’s an underlying intent. This planet wants to gently help you dissolve the boundaries of your known universe.
When Neptune is retrograde, this planet will smoothly dislodge your mind from an attitude or perception you were certain about.
Neptune retrograde will put you in a primordial sea of doubt, confusion, and possibility.
Fantasies of a perfect world are created and gradually undone when Neptune transits a house of your birth chart. Its retrograde cycles perform the untethering ritual.
Related: The House of Your Natal Saturn and Its Role During Your Saturn Return
The annual Sun-Neptune opposition is an ideal day to conduct an untethering ritual. This aspect marks the period in which your ego loses much of its grip, and boundaries blur.
In 2025, this opposition occurs on September 23rd at 08:53 EST. The Sun in Virgo opposes Neptune retrograde in Pisces at 0°45’.
Neptune surrounds the house it transits in your birth chart with an aura of the exotic, romantic, and elusive. This is why this transpersonal planet is frequently associated with deception and illusion.
Related: Astrology Basics: Your Birth Chart States of Consciousness
Neptune’s influence is not always sinister and hallucinatory. This planet will also heighten your sense of the divinity present in all.
This occurs because Neptune exemplifies the unity-in-all that is experienced in the womb. Neptune is related to the pre-conscious state of life, when you are one with the source of life and nurture.
Neptune retrograde is an invitation to return to the womb state to incubate and eventually be reborn.
The seductive characteristics of Neptune retrograde can color the most sordid experience with luminous hues.
Even the most rational individuals will find their perception of reality seriously challenged when Neptune retrogrades.
A positive result of Neptune’s retrograde transit is the erosion of false values and fantasy goals.
When the planet turns direct, you’ll be armed with a more realistic and practical attitude towards life.
When Neptune’s retrograde cycle starts, you may experience feelings of suspension and paralysis. If you’re usually decisive and controlled, you can become flaccid and ambivalent. Your judgment may become influenced by others whom you perceive to be clearer.
But this situation is ironic. Your perceptions of others are likely to be just as distorted as your perceptions about yourself.
Ultimately, the long-term intent of Neptune’s retrograde cycle is to expand your perceptions.
The ideal result is to move those perceptions into dimensions of the supernatural, which are real but intangible.
When Neptune moves backwards, the illusory feeling subsides and is slowly replaced with a new way of perceiving reality. Your mind is open to receive, but not process, information.
Once Neptune turns direct again, you’ll understand what happened while it was retrograde.
Your mind relaxes and becomes easily permeable to new sensory perceptions. It may even consider previously inconceivable alternatives.
Neptune retrograde is a passive time. This is not negative. It is a necessary transit to pause while the boundaries between the real and the apparent seem to become thinner.
Let’s review some of the most common manifestations of Neptune retrograde.
Neptune Retrograde and Boundary Dissolution
You have boundaries between yourself and the world, and also between several layers of your nature. The second type of boundaries helps us separate the parts of ourselves that we don’t like from those that we embrace.
When Neptune is retrograde, the boundaries within your inner selves disintegrate. This may not be apparent immediately. When Neptune is involved, nothing is.
Every time Neptune retrogrades, illusions are swept away and new ones are installed. The solid world of what appears to be real shifts and morphs.
You’ll become richer with new and more elaborate images of what you perceived the world to be.
The dissolution and resolution cycles are part of the ever-evolving perceptions that we have of life.
However, the erosion of boundaries between yourself and your known world can be frightening and disorienting.
The blurring of boundaries creates a condition in which previously hard-edged definitions of yourself experience a mutation.
Ultimately, when Neptune is retrograde, you’ll become less arrogant. You’ll assume a more humble role within the different aspects of your personality.
But this has its dark side.
The insecurity and malleability that this retrograde period can cause may render you highly susceptible to manipulation and coercion.
Your conscious mind won’t be the source of true wisdom during a Neptune retrograde transit.
Neptune serves your deeper Self, the core essence of your nature, which intuitively “knows” what is meant to be born.
Neptune Retrograde and Relationships
When Neptune is retrograde, it is common to require another person as a mirror of yourself.
The need for another person occurs because Neptune undermines the ability to trust your judgment.
You may feel helpless, childish, and in need of support from a mother figure.
This mother figure takes the form of a lover, friend, adviser or anyone who will shield you from the harshness of the world.
Relationships can be complex to form or maintain during the duration of the Neptune retrograde cycle.
The intent of the Self is towards giving birth to an aspect of itself rather than connecting with another person.
Since birthing your new self is challenging, you may be tempted to distract yourself with a relationship.
Instead of focusing your attention where it needs to go, you may want to fall in love.
The function of idealization and sacrifice plays a strong role when Neptune is retrograde.
During this transit, you might find yourself giving up a significant portion of personal freedom and integrity. You may become lost in the ideal of the relationship rather than using the available energy to find yourself.
Being enmeshed with another person during a Neptune retrograde transit can be a rich source of self-examination. There’s an element of narcissism involved.
The transits of the transpersonal planets with your birth chart need manifestation on the concrete.
This manifestation can occur through direct contact with people or events that are related to the symbolism of the planet.
You attract that which you are experiencing internally.
Related: The Astrology of 2025
When Neptune is retrograde, you may gather around Neptunian types.
These are slippery, elusive, mysterious, and intangible people.
The fusion with others expands your experiential realm. You are genuinely in others’ shoes and become implicated in all their patterns.
Although your experiences stem from the environment, they are actually mirrors of an internal aspect of your nature. This aspect may be brought to consciousness for the first time.
It is possible to experience your “not-self” when Neptune is retrograde. You can feel completely at the mercy of others, caught up in their realm rather than your own.
When you experience a dissolution process brought to you by Neptune retrograde, you may lose your sense of individuality. Instead, you may believe you are an extension of, or even the same as, another. There’s a seductive folie à deux involved.
The powerful empathy between yourself and those who are helpless is a mirror of your inner helplessness.
What you really hope in the process of helping others is to help yourself.
Neptune Retrograde and Spirituality
Neptunian realities are indiscriminate. Since everything is blended, when this planet retrogrades, it often provokes exploration of spiritual and psychic experiences.
However, finding religion or spiritual solace under a Neptune retrograde cycle is frequently disappointing in the end. This doesn’t occur due to the religion itself.
Instead, it happens due to the supernatural powers attributed to it, thanks to Neptune’s influence.
This does not mean that true spiritual nourishment is not found under a Neptune retrograde period.
It means that you must find the spiritual strength within yourself, rather than being “saved” from yourself.
It is possible to be a temporary channel for divinely inspired information. At the same time, it may be challenging to use the information for self-help.
The principle that dissolves the boundaries between the conscious mind and the unconscious is the same that dissipates your energy.
You may feel extremely creative, yet simultaneously depleted.
Neptune Retrograde and Your Feelings
In contrast to Uranus or Pluto, Neptune has no opinion. It has moods, feelings, sensations, images, fantasies, nuances, hints, and visions. It pours insinuation.
When Neptune starts retrograding, you may perceive that something mysterious is going on. At first, it’s concealed from consciousness.
Simultaneously, an angst may permeate your consciousness. The kind of anger that Neptune puts you in contact with is global and undifferentiated. It is virtually impossible to label it. Therefore, and more often than not, it turns inward.
You may feel angry towards yourself for being so gullible in the past. The rose-colored glasses fell off when Neptune retrogrades.
You may also experience a free-floating sensation of worry with no specific location.
Then, you become suspicious. Those suspicions can be well-founded, though remaining elusive at first.
In the initial stages of Neptune retrograde, it is essential to maintain a grip on what the perceived reality is.
Paranoia is a heightened and dark state of awareness. It can develop when Neptune is retrograde, and it can only be dispelled by substantial doses of truth and reality.
You can also suspect that you are paranoid and are not. It is essential to determine when you’re actually listening to your intuition and when you’re merely becoming suspicious.
Usually, your inner voice is often much stronger and more assertive when Neptune is retrograde. It’s far more correct than the conscious mind.
Even though angst and paranoia are possible manifestations when Neptune is retrograde, it rarely provokes rage.
Sadness or longing are far more common occurrences.
There seems to be nothing to fight when Neptune untethers the ego. Acceptance is the only way out.
What Happens When Neptune Turns Direct Again?
By the time Neptune turns direct, your entire reality is likely to have shifted. It may now include philosophies and beliefs that were foreign before the transit.
You can be returned to your primal state and reborn through the experiences you had during the retrograde phase.
Your view of the world softens and becomes more accepting. It also becomes much more peaceful after Neptune turns direct.
Next year, in the next iteration, Neptune retrograde will soften other areas of your psyche.
Are you ready to keep dissolving your beliefs? Or will you resist the process?
First Saturn Return 
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