When Mars transits your natal Neptune, which happens once every two years approximately, the effect is about being motivated to either impact the world through your creativity or through your empathy.

It can blur the boundaries of your ambition, infusing your motivation with empathy and vulnerability and blurring the boundaries between yourself and others, or in can infuse your Mars energy with a diffuse glow of glamour, imagination, vulnerability and a quality of unreality.

Not a great time to try to accomplish fixed goals where you know the end in sight. Instead, it’s a good time to forge ahead and go where the wind takes you. The effect will last for a couple of week or so on either side of the exact conjunction.

Robert Hand says when transiting Neptune conjuncts your Mars, you could be subject to discouragement and malaise. Your energy level is low and it’s hard to accomplish anything in your own interest. You may be more vulnerable to infections, so be careful taking any foreign substances, even prescriptions because the effects can be unpredictable.

You can also be dishonest or devious without meaning to, thus damaging your reputation and the trust you may have built up with others, which can do lasting damage.

People with Neptune conjunct Mars in their charts tend to be idealistic, principled, penetrating and passionate. You’re inclined to overstep other people’s boundaries in pursuit of your own goals or your own desire to merge or connect. Neptune can either elevate Mars and be used as the impetus to make the world better through ideals put into action or it can dissipate Mars’ ambition into sentimentality and overcompensation or over-emotionality, in relationships and otherwise.

A difficulty in knowing where your boundaries end and others’ begin is common with this aspect. You can either be a torch of inspiration for others or you can overpower them with your zealotry. People with this aspect can be amazing symbols for a cause or goal, blazing a trail where others fear to tread, but it can be dangerous as well because these energies mix like fire and water… or oil and some explosive compound. Your success will largely depend on how strong Mars is in your chart and what other aspects it makes.

People with this aspect need to know their “why,” to have a realm where they can be evangelists or spiritual warriors. Being able to follow your ideals as a champion is important. But it’s also important to have a strong moral compass or you can get caught up in the wrong kinds of causes, devolve into illusion, paranoia or mania and use the sheer force of your charisma and the power of your belief to bring others down the road to ruin with you.

If you’re interested in Neptune or if you have Neptune aspects in your chart, an excellent book is Liz Greene’s The Astrological Neptune and the Quest for Redemption. She’s a brilliant psychological astrologer from the middle of the 20th century who was very popular in the ’80s and ’90s when I was learning astrology, and it’s well worth a read if you’re interested in advanced mythological studies of astrology. In it, she says “Mars-Neptune aspects, like Dionysus, can be a seducer but sometimes as a collective we need to be seduced. This longing lies at the core of religious worship, as well as the catharsis of a musical or theatrical performance.”

She goes on to say, “The dilemma lies in the integrity of the goal and how it is pursued. Mars’ innately self-centered desires, when diluted with Neptunian waters, must include others if the individual’s needs are to be fulfilled. [Otherwise,] aggression may be masked by apparent docility and the rage which lurks beneath the surface may become the chief factor behind drug and alcohol addictions, which reflect anger and vengeance against life as much as the desire to escape.

When a well-lit channel cannot be found for Mars-Neptune’s romantic heroism–political, military, scientific, artistic–may be sought in darker waters. Mars-Neptune may also elect, like Charles Manson, who had the exact conjunction, to play the anti-hero who destroys himself and others rather than endure the dreariness of a decent but unglamorous life.”

Lady Gaga (in Capricorn)
Jennifer Lopez (in Scorpio/Sagittarius)
John Lennon (in Virgo/Libra)
Yoki Ono (in Virgo)
Ryan Gosling (in Sagittarius)
Napoleon (in Virgo)
Charles Manson  (in Virgo)
Bill Clinton (in Libra)
Richard Branson (in Libra)