Neptune in Aries: Outgrowing Your Shell

From the diary of a shell seeker

I have spent the last eleven years living under the intensity of southern Florida sunshine, but my skin looks like any pale woman would, living in a place where it rains most days. Let’s just say I am careful with my sun exposure and two years ago, I was shocked to learn I had skin cancer. The damage done to my skin began back in the late nineteen sixties and early seventies in New England, when every summer my family and I took a beach vacation for three weeks. It turns out no amount of caution now could undo what was done then. The first week of our trip included an uncomfortable night of chills and a stinky room full of vinegar, which was used to treat my inevitable vacation blistered burn. To this day, I hate the smell of vinegar. When I first found out about the skin cancer, I went into complete sun lockdown. My daughter, my angel, helped me through it all. She encouraged me, slowly, to get back out and into it again. After almost a year, she got me to take a walk with her on the beach on a bright sunny day, and it changed everything.

What started as something necessary in order to get my health back suddenly became something joyful. Walking became treasure hunting and I became a shell seeker. Joy replaced my fear, one shell at a time. I made a wind chime out of the first set of shells we collected as a wonderful reminder of a day well spent. When I take my beach walks now, I do so for purpose and pleasure. I listen to the ocean and admire the sun dazzling across it like diamonds as I scan the shoreline for treasures. Besides the obvious benefits of exercising for my body or the healing effects of the ocean, including lowering blood pressure and mood elevation, the real hidden gems in all of this healing are shells. 

Sea shells have an incredible spiritual connection. The same geometric ratios found in them can be found in our DNA, flowers, storms, vegetables and even in the calculation of distant galaxies. Shells help us understand the interconnectedness of all things and divine order in a seemingly random life. Shells are used for healing, protection and for spiritual connection in many cultures and religions. In the Bible, the Scallop shell is a symbol for spiritual journeys. The pattern of the Scallop shell represents the many paths man takes to finding God. Scallop shells are carried by Catholic pilgrims on The Camino de Santiago, when they retrace the steps of Saint James whose body was said to have been discovered covered in them after his death when a ship brought his body to Spain for burial.

We know that the moon’s gravitational pull is responsible for the tides, but it also has a direct impact on shells, specifically the Nautilus, and others with a center spiral. When the moon is full, the gravitational pull helps stretch the shell outward in order to add another section to it, which in turn allows the creature inside to grow. Shells are born in the ocean, which in astrology is ruled by the planet Neptune. It is a planet which is connected to dreams, spirituality, religion, and the space between what is seen and unseen. I believe that when a shell seeker, like me, collects a shell from a creature who either outgrew it or dies, it is a spiritual experience connecting us with the cycles of life and helping us better understand our own evolution. Each shell brings with it the healing power of the ocean and God.

I remembered a connection to shell seeking I have that goes back to 1987 when I first read the novel, The Shell Seeker by Rosemunde Pilcher. I read it at age twenty four and decided to revisit it again just recently at sixty one. I didn’t remember much of the plot but I knew I liked it, and title alone was enough to pique my interest. After almost purchasing a paperback copy that would arrive overnight via Amazon, I changed my mind and decided to track down a first edition from the year I first read it. The authenticity of the experience was important to me as was supporting a small business. I landed on a book seller in Boston and when the book arrived a week later, to my surprise, it was wrapped in a beautiful paper covered with bluebirds. This gesture and extra step meant quite a bit to me. It almost took my breath away because my mother and I agreed that she would come back to me after her death in 2009 through the bluebird.

I spent a few moments holding the book just to reconnect with who I was when I held it for the first time, when my mother was alive and about my age now. Shortly into the story, I discovered that my life caught up with the plot. The main character, a woman named Penelope, was facing mortality after a heart attack in her sixties. To say this hit home would be stating it mildly. My mother died of congestive heart failure, and I have heart issues now and have been reckoning with my own mortality. At its core, Shell Seekers is a story about a woman and her children. It is about what matters most, and who is there for you in the end. The Shell Seekers is the name of a painting Penelope’s father painted and a point of contention in the story because Penelope’s children, his grandchildren, want it sold. Penelope, close to the end of her life, doesn’t want to part with it. She is a bohemian free spirit, who lives a simple life. The painting means more than money, it represents a time in her life and a connection to her father. Since I began beachcombing, my house has turned into something Penelope would feel comfortable in. It is more of an art studio than a house. There are shells spread out across the kitchen table, buckets of paint brushes on the counter, clipped fishing line from the wind chimes all over the floor and projects everywhere. It looks like a joyful mess. It seems these thirty odd years have led me to a place very similar to Penelope, somewhere I couldn’t imagine I’d be living in at age twenty four. Circumstances have forced me to look further down than skin deep, to what’s underneath my own shell. All of the setbacks of the past few years have led me to a place which although uncomfortable to arrive at, has been closer to who I really am. As an astrologer, now part-time shell seeking bohemian free spirit, I couldn’t help but wonder what planetary transits drew me back to this book and to shells after all this time.

I looked at the planetary positions back then and found the nodes of fate transiting almost exactly where they are now. The nodes of fate have been moving through the final degrees of Pisces, along with Neptune, God of the sea. The Pisces story has been up and running in a big way for all of us, and for me, this transit was connecting with my fourth house in my natal birth chart which highlights home, roots, mother and the foundation of one’s life. Saturn and Neptune have been squaring both my ascendent and moon and I have been learning to move through difficult emotional changes in new ways. These transits through Pisces have impacted me, my body, my identity and who and where feels like home. One of the Shell Seekers plots revolves around where Penelope lives out her final years.

All of this reflection and time by the water these past few months reminded me of another connection I had to shells. Back in high school, somewhere in 1980, I had an English assignment that was to share a poem with the class that inspired me. The poem I chose was The Chambered Nautilus, by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. I went back and checked the planetary transits at that time and Neptune was having a major impact on my birth chart, transiting right over my ascendant and moon. I was dissolving the boundaries between who I was and initiating a new spiritual quest around my identity. As a girl of sixteen I couldn’t imagine where I’d be now, but at some level I guess even back then, I knew where I was headed. Now, as Neptune is waving goodbye to Pisces for the rest of my life, I, like the Nautilus, am moving away from the life I have outgrown.

The Chambered Nautilus

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,

Sails the unshadowed main,—

The venturous bark that flings

On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings

In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,

And coral reefs lie bare,

Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;

Wrecked is the ship of pearl!

And every chambered cell,

Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,

As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,

Before thee lies revealed,—

Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil

That spread his lustrous coil;

Still, as the spiral grew,

He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,

Stole with soft step its shining archway through,

Built up its idle door,

Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,

Child of the wandering sea,

Cast from her lap, forlorn!

From thy dead lips a clearer note is born

Than ever Triton blew from wreathèd horn!

While on mine ear it rings,

Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:—

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,

As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,

Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!

-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

The Nautilus shell fills the old chambers it once lived in with varying amounts of gas and water to enable it to float and move the way it wants to. Nothing from the past is wasted, instead it is used as fuel to propel it forward. Neptune moved into Aries on March 30th and it will stay there for the next fifteen years. The last time it transited in this same spot was 1861-1875. The Civil War was in full swing and human rights were in the spotlight. Astrology isn’t about magic, or woo woo crap, it is a language which can help us better understand our connections to God and the universe simply through the observation of planetary patterns. The sacred patterns and geometry around us can provide comfort and insight as we move through challenging times. The language of the stars helps us understand the past so we can do better in the present, not predict the future, but evolve in the present. The events of these next cycles will not replicate the previous ones, (hopefully) but they will echo them in some form. Neptune is a planet of divinity but also deception. Spirituality and religion will come into focus during Neptune in Aries, as we all define who we are and what we stand for.

Wishing you the best of luck on your journey as Neptune travels through Aries, with hopes that your passion will pull you outward toward even bigger dreams and that like the Nautilus shell, you can use your past to fuel your tank toward the future. Look at the Scallop shell this month if things get a little crazy for you or in your world. I found my healing through shells, but all they really did was remind me of the sacred geometry around me, within me and within you.