Neptune in Sagittarius

You once bought a one-way ticket, or wanted to, on the strength of a book you had read.

Seen and not recognised

In December 1612 Galileo, looking at Jupiter through a telescope, drew a faint star beside it. A month later the same faint point appeared in another drawing and noted that it seemed to have moved. It was Neptune, more than two centuries before its discovery, and Galileo did not follow it up. Seeing something wonderful and not yet knowing what it means is a Sagittarian kind of faith. Sagittarius, Jupiter’s fire sign of belief and long travel, gave this generation a longing for the horizon.

The seekers

Air travel got cheap just as these children grew up, the backpacker trail opened across the world, and Eastern religions, yoga and meditation arrived in Western towns. They studied abroad, took gap years, worked abroad, and came home with a faith assembled from many sources. Their photographs from those years are all horizons, and their address books ran to several alphabets.

Their ideal was freedom of belief: every tradition respected, none imposed, the truth found by going to look for it.

Dreams of meaning

This Neptune idealises the teacher, the guru, the far place, the philosophy that explains everything. Its generation filled bookshops with self-help and spirituality, and sought meaning more openly than any before it.

Lost on the road

Neptune clouds belief as easily as it inspires it. The seeker can become the wanderer who never arrives, the believer can follow the wrong teacher, and the dream of somewhere better can keep a person from seeing what is good where they are.

A family legend

In their families there was a trip that became a legend, a bookshelf of philosophy and travel, and a view of the world wider than their own parents could have imagined.

Still seeking

The longing does not fade with age. It turns into a quieter, more personal faith, built from everything they learned on the road.

Every family has a story about a relative who went too far away, and theirs is the one told with the most pride.