Modern astrology gives Neptune the significations of dissolution, imagination, mysticism, compassion, illusion, deception, intoxication, film and the sea, and commonly assigns it the rulership of Pisces in place of or alongside Jupiter. The associations were built up by astrologers working in the decades after the discovery, notably in the theosophically influenced literature of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and were shaped by the name, which was chosen by the astronomers for the sea god and not for any reason connected with the planet's character. That is a general caution worth stating: the modern outer planets acquired their symbolism partly from the mythological names assigned to them at discovery, so the myth did not generate the meaning but the naming committee did. Traditional practitioners who work without the outer planets take the same view of Neptune as of Uranus.
The discovery itself is the most remarkable thing about the planet and is worth setting beside the symbolism. Neptune is the only planet found by calculation before it was seen: Urbain Le Verrier predicted its position from the unexplained residuals in Uranus's motion, John Couch Adams reached a similar result independently in England, and Johann Galle at the Berlin Observatory found it on 23 September 1846 within a degree of Le Verrier's figure, on the first night of looking. Galileo had recorded it as a fixed star in the winter of 1612 to 1613 and noted that it appeared to have moved, without pursuing it. Its orbit takes about 165 years, so it spends nearly fourteen years in a sign.