The Venus-Neptune pairing has its spiritual side, and it is often this manifestation that receives the most attention in astrological literature. However, there is a more prosaic and indulgent side of the Venus-Neptune equation that is as significant in its manifestation. One does not normally equate Neptune with a sense of worldliness, but as a complex archetype, Neptune has many sides, many faces. Even though Neptune may be considered a transpersonal archetype, this does not necessarily equate to higher ideals or higher paths. Rather, Neptune may symbolize where we fall into the allure of illusions, enchanted enticements that promise false riches and false truths. The Hindu concept of Maya, the sheaths of illusion that keep us from ultimate truth, is often compared to the astrological Neptune.(1)

Like the Hindus, the Greeks also understood the power of image as seen in their gods and goddesses. The myth of Narcissus warns of the vanity and corrupting power of one’s reflection. It is from Narcissus that we derive the English narcotic, the class of drugs that produce sedation and temporary well-being. Both Narcissus and the drugs that were named after his myth are involved with a state of stupor, the unconscious dream-like state. Within astrology, Neptune’s archetypal powers are often involved in creating profound enticements that have all the stability and rigor of a reflection in the mirror. Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is a modern adaptation of the myth of Narcissus, only in Wilde’s rendering, a crueler and more realistic fate awaits the man who so idealizes his own physical beauty.

It is often a manifestation of the Venus-Neptune individual to fall in love with their own image. However, beyond a narcissistic preoccupation with their own likeness, possessors of Venus-Neptune contacts can idealize the image of another as much as their own. Thus the veiling imagination of Neptune enters into the realm of amorous love, symbolized by Venus. Arguably more than other combinations, the Venus-Neptune individual is more prone to fall in love with the smoke and mirrors of image rather than the substance of the heart and soul. When the tides of “falling” in love recede, the individual with Neptune and Venus in the birth chart is faced with the confusing and disorienting situation whereby the reality of the individual and the idealized version they once held become two—the dream and the actuality of the situation are rendered separate. Love is often slippery stuff for the Neptune-Venus individual.

When Venus and Neptune combine, the physical beauty and artistic sensibilities of Venus combine with the allure of the imagination associated with Neptune. With this combination, beauty becomes intoxicating and physical ornamentation allows one to transcend the mundane and commonplace elements of this world. Thus, the lower end of the Venus-Neptune equation is the full-on decadence of glamour. As Liz Greene notes, “Glamour enchants us; the word itself is a corruption of the Middle English gramarye or magic, which holds us in its spell.”(2) Thus, magazines such as Vogue and Cosmopolitan are the bibles of the Venus-Neptune combination, their pages containing homage to the gods and goddess of enchantment and intoxication.

Fashion is the fingerprints of the Venus-Neptune combination; how we dress ourselves, how we accessorize, how we change appearance is the subtle ebb and flow of the imagination as it weaves itself in this world. Photographs through the decades are the still frames of the projection of the world dream created by the archetypal Neptune. String photographs of the ages together like a kaleidoscopic zoetrope, and one can see the evolving flux of Neptune wash through time. As Neptune traverses the signs, the fashion of the times is inflected by the sign’s archetypal energies. In the 1960’s, when Neptune transited Scorpio, the carnal, primal look of the sign came to the fore as women like Raquel Welch and Ursula Andress exuded a sexuality and wildness. Scorpio’s chthonic nature and primitiveness deconstructed the idealized “Donna Reed” look that epitomized the Neptune-in-Libra generation of the 1940’s and 1950’s. With Neptune currently in airy, ethereal Aquarius, a more waif-like ideal appears to have grabbed the collective imagination. What better example of this then the rise to prominence of Paris Hilton, an Aquarian with Venus also in Aquarius.(3) Hence, what we uphold as a fashion ideal is often reflected by the movement of Neptune through the Zodiac.

When one surveys the star-maker machinery of the last one hundred years, one sees that icons often possess significant Neptune-Venus aspects. These individuals are immortalized by image, and in an age where image is everything, they, more than any other type of personality, become deified in the collective imagination. A short list of icons with Venus-Neptune aspects include: Madonna, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Pam Anderson. Beyond their mutual affinity for the camera, these individuals are able to take on the sheaths of fashion—the maya of an age—and incorporate it into their physical beauty.

Pam Anderson (Neptune square Venus)

The story is now almost the stuff of legend. A young woman born in a quaint Canadian fishing village was discovered when her image appeared on a jumbotron at a football game. Thus began the saga of Pam Anderson’s longest sustained romance—between image and herself. With Anderson, we observe the strange partnering of herself and the cult of celebrity. She is both an example of the exploited and exploiter of her own image. Holding the record for most magazine covers worldwide for any star of her generation, Anderson is one of the most recognizable celebrities. Like Madonna, who also possesses the square between Neptune and Venus, there is a sense with Anderson that there is a compulsion around the propagation of her own image. And in both instances, controversial image has only served to bolster their fame, even at the expense of some personal integrity.

Brigitte Bardot (Neptune conjunct Venus)

Arguably more than any other role, Bardot’s turn in And God Created Woman intimated the sexual revolution that was to come to full flower in the 1960’s. With that particular film, Bardot was launched as an international star. Staring in films of little renown and creating music recordings with little imagination, Bardot would nonetheless be catapulted to iconographic status. Known as “Helen of France,” Bardot was considered to be the idealized version of beauty, the type that initiates epic battles as in Greek antiquity. Unlike Anderson and Madonna, Bardot did not enjoy the fame and publicity that was thrust upon her and retired from filmmaking at the rather young age of thirty-nine. In the 1970’s, Bardot’s legendary fame was cemented in stone as she was nominated as Marianne de France, a national symbol of France representing democratic ideals.

Marilyn Monroe (Neptune trine Venus)

Like Bardot and Anderson, Monroe’s career was launched by the camera. Approached by a cameraman at the end of world war two, Monroe and her image would serve to boost moral for troops at the end of World War Two. After the photo session, Monroe left her job as a parachute inspector and headed for Hollywood. Arguably more than any other woman of the twentieth century, Monroe was the icon of sexuality and attraction. Monroe’s ascent to the firmament was quicker than any other star in Hollywood history. After making her film debut in the late 1940’s, Monroe would be the top female star in the world by the middle of the next decade. The classic shot of Marilyn Monroe's dress blowing up around her legs as she stood over a subway grating in Manhattan is the archetypal image for the Venus-Neptune combination. Monroe’s craving for fame was one contribution for her ultimate demise.

Andy Warhol (Neptune conjunct Venus)

Following suit of typical Venus-Neptune individuals, Warhol got his start in his career through fashion, creating drawings for Glamour. If the 1950’s saw the rise of a new type of icon—Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, and Elvis Presley—then, in the 1960’s, Warhol revolutionized and intensified the entire concept around fame and celebrity. Warhol both initiated and epitomized the growing trend toward postmodernism, an era where style reigns over substance, where superficialities and surfaces take precedence over soul and depth, and where the boundaries between mass production and commodity blur with high art. With a Venus-Neptune conjunction in Leo, Warhol stated, “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind.” (4) With Warhol, the public imagination increased its reliance upon image, celebrity, and surfaces.

(1) In what can only be considered a self-conscious irony, one of the most popular and powerful software available for the creation of 3-D graphics is called Maya.

(2) Greene, Liz. The Astrological Neptune and the Quest for Redemption. York Beach, Maine: Weiser, p. 258

(3) Currently, fashionista Hilton is receiving the once-in-a-lifetime transit of Neptune conjoining her Venus.

(4) Strickland, Carol. The Annotated Mona Lisa. Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel, p. 175