I happened to watch CNN this afternoon while I was at the gym as they were discussing the appearance of President Obama at the commencement address.  Raymond Arroyo was a guest on the program, and he was shocked, SHOCKED! that President Obama had reversed his position on abortion from what he promised during the campaign.  Arroyo said that many Catholics voted for Obama because during the campaign Obama said that he wanted to see the number of abortions decrease, saying that this meant that Obama was against a woman’s right to choose.

Obama was very clear throughout his campaign that he was a pro-choice candidate, and he was endorsed by NARAL and other pro-choice groups.

This is an excellent example of how Obama’s natal Neptune/Sun square creates a Neptunian fog and illusion that can make it easy for others to see in Obama what they want to see.  This doesn’t make him deceptive; it simply means that he is an easy hook for others to hang their projections on.

I wrote about this phenomenon in an earlier post and compared it to my own natal Neptune/Sun and my experiences of being a target of the confusion of others.  There has been considerable hysteria among the astrology-savvy about Obama’s Neptune/Sun square that trickled down even into the comments of this usually very reasonable blog, especially during the election.  ”Obama is like Hitler.”  ”Obama is the Deceiver.”  ”Obama is Satan.”  There is already a full-length movie called “The Obama Deception.”

Astrologer Barry Perlman wrote eloquently last year about this phenomenon:

But when the Leo Sun squares Neptune, however, that purest light of ego-self (Sun) is interfered with by a mystifying cloud of fog we can only partially see through (Neptune)… leaving us to fill in specific blanks with what we wish to see, or what we wish not to see. Individuals born with a Sun-Neptune square often possess a hard-to-read quality, their sense of self somewhat obscured by context–who they’re with, what they’re trying to get across, how they’re feeling that day. Neptune, after all, seeks to dissolve ego boundaries, causing it to become less clear where another person actually ends… and where our own investments in who we imagine them to be (the good or the bad) begins.

There’s an inherent glamour and romance to Sun-Neptune people, in that we may pin our most idealistic imaginings onto the mysterious blank-slate in front of us. They appear larger than life (especially with a Leo Sun), able to rise above the common fray… and we wish for them to lift all of us up, too, on the wings of the faith we place in ‘em. Neptune promises such blissful transcendence from our daily woes, if only we can keep our faith intact.

Just as significantly, though, Neptune also tempts us to flirt with our own self-delusions. And as such, Sun-Neptune individuals often attract our suspicions just as readily as our admiration. Those not instantly drawn in by the promise of who the Sun-Neptune person might be–and unwilling to proceed on faith alone–may instead sleuth for hints of them being something wholly different than who they appear. Their sympathetic slipperiness of self is so quickly misunderstood as active deception, creating anxiety or paranoia aimed squarely at them… though, again, not necessarily based on who they actually are.

This kind of paranoia over the Neptune/Sun square is itself Neptune at work, creating confusion, illusion and delusion.  With Neptune square the Sun there is often a desire to sacrifice the Self for the good of the collective and this aspect is often found in the charts of people who dedicate their lives to the public,   Franklin D. Roosevelt , Bobby Kennedy and Sir Thomas More all had a Neptune/Sun square, and so did Maximilian Robespierre, engineer of the French Revolution.  It is also found in the charts of people who destroy themselves through their own illusion, such as Chris McCandless who wandered Into the Wild of Alaska and lost his life due to a romantic idea of survival.  The late River Phoenix and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, who lost a large part of his life to mental illness, both have Neptune square the Sun.  But so did Franz Schubert and Jonathan Winters.

Planetary aspects manifest in an infinite number of ways, which is why a “cookbook” approach to learning astrology can only go so far.  One person with the Sun square Neptune will behave in one way, and yet we will find something completely different in another.  The Neptunian fog, however, does make it easy to project all of our hopes, dreams, and fears onto the Neptune individual which makes us the dangerous ones, not Neptune.