We can witness the Romantic reaction and this expression to the Saturn-Neptune combination not only in Romanticism proper but in various other distinct artistic movements and periods: the brooding sense of foreboding in the landscapes of Mannerism, the exaggerated and distorted sense of the surreal and dystopic in German Expressionism, the haunting disquietude in the Gothic novel, and the druggy anxiety and tension in the contemporary music genres of “Illbient” and “Trip Hop” (with Massive Attack, Portishead, and DJ Shadow as being prime exemplars).  Saturn, in the Romantic equation, makes the attempt at artistic recovery of the transcendent serious, single-minded, heavy, and darkly morose. Neptune’s addition in the combination is quite obvious to elucidate: the archetype brings in the sense of the enchanted, the sublime, the mystical, the imaginative and otherworldly. The combination, although difficult, gives definition to what we most often call gorgeous and beautiful—the meeting place of the utterly sublime and the painful lack thereof.

Existentialism, upon cursory appraisal, appears to have nothing to do with the transcendent, spiritual, or otherworldly. With its assumption that only the loneliness and alienation of existence can be the truth of the human condition, Existentialism appears to suggest that any sense of spiritual salvation, redemption, and transcendent truth is but a mere palliative in a cruel, harsh, tragic and often absurd world. Although it is true that the brutal, bare facts of the nakedness and vulnerability of the human condition are emphasized in Existentialism, the philosophical position still stands in dialectical tension with spiritual, metaphysical, and transcendent factors. That is, Existentialism derives its strength as a critique from the negation of the spiritual and transcendent. Existentialism both negates and subsumes the spiritual and transcendent; in astrological language, Saturn is the factor that denies the Neptunian sense of the imaginal and ideal, but Neptune also is included within the Saturnian. That is to say, Neptune gives Existentialism its powerful emphasis on dark feeling and subjective factors. Neptune gives the alienation and suffering of the human condition in Existentialism its sense of almost mythological importance. As the writer Camus eloquently put, “there is sacredness in absurdity.” 

Unlike the message of the popular The Power of Now, with its emphasis on happiness and contentment while remaining in the here and now, Existentialism’s core sentiment maybe more accurately stated in the nausea of the now—the sense of life as being a cruel penitentiary with the only certainty being an entropic increase in despair, the tragic, dread, and suffering. The redemptive quality of Existentialism, however, can be seen in its adherents’ noble efforts to lead a life of authenticity despite life’s ever-increasing sense of the absurd and tragic. In the language of The Matrix, when faced with the red and blue pill, the Existentialist will unhesitatingly choose the red pill, the pathway to disenchantment and truth. And like for The Matrix’s Neo, the truth may set him free but the truth is not pretty. Neo finds the truth of his condition is the “desert of the real”— that his reality is a barren, desolate, ugly situation, but it is authentic. In the Existentialists’ valorous attempts at stripping bear illusion from reality, we see yet another facet of how Saturn works on Neptune. Although Neptune may symbolize higher truths and possibilities, the planet in astrology also suggests illusion—the veils of comforting fog that keep us from feeling pain and the sting of truth. As Saturn enervates and strips as an archetypal influence, it negates the soothing delusional enchantments and illusions of Neptune, creating a dark, dried up wasteland out of which was once a plentiful oasis, albeit an artificial and non-nourishing one.

Perhaps the great existential figure was Antonius Bloch, Ingmar Bergman’s knight errant in the masterpiece, The Seventh Seal. Here we see the dignified attempt at living with the Saturn-Neptune condition in an all too human fashion. In Bloch, we observe the man who is caught in a vicious chess game of paradoxes and imponderables and who has no option but to play out the pieces of his circumstance. Neither being able to rid himself of the spiritual nor able to eliminate the tragic despair of life around him, Bloch can only proceed in a state of angst-ridden dialectal tension. As Bloch confesses, “Why cannot I kill the god within me? Why does he go on living in a painful, humiliating way? I want to tear him out of my heart, but he remains a mocking reality.” Bloch’s sentiment perfectly captures the existential “no exit” of the Saturn-Neptune dilemma. No answers are found, no escape is permitted, but Bloch is, in a sense, tragically redeemed by the living of a decent life given the absurdity of it all.