Checks and balances…
What needs reviewing in your life?
Saturn has stationed retrograde in Aquarius and will remain in this perceived backwards motion until October 22 of this year. A retrograde planet, from our vantage point on Earth, appears to move backwards in the sky, all planets experience this at some point in the year and some more frequently than others. When a planet retrogrades, symbolically it can show up in our lives as delays, revisions, or a setback.
Saturn’s retrograde consumes nearly one-fourth of the year, it is a slow outer planet and the effects are not necessarily as immediate or obvious like a speedy Mercury retrograde. Mercury is a very swift moving planet and experiences retrogrades three to four times a year. Mercury’s retrograde can be a quick and obvious presence, appearing in electronic disruptions, communication blunders, and even delays in contracts and agreements. Saturn retrogrades can be viewed in multiple ways, but first let us discuss what Saturn can represent initially.
Saturn is the most distant planet in our solar system that can be viewed with the naked eye. Before the invention of the telescope, our ancestors could only see as far as Saturn. Furthest from the sun, it was attributed to lacking heat, isolating, limiting, constrictive in nature. Saturn in Greek mythology was associated with Cronus, and the Greek word for time is Chronus, the two both being associated with “Father Time”. Cronus is associated with the scythe that Gaea gave him for protection in the womb. Saturn has come to be associated with time and its fleeting life force, all that lives will eventually fall away to the cycle of time. Saturn has three rings surrounding the planet, associating it with boundaries, constriction, limitations.
Unfortunately, Saturn has earned a bad reputation and can initially incite fear in most clients chart. The ancients originally coined it as the “greater malefic” in the birth chart, due to its very distant, slow and cold nature. Saturn was assigned rulership of the northern hemisphere winter zodiac signs, Capricorn and Aquarius, when the darkness is more prevalent than the light. Winter cannot generate or sustain life, Saturn also reflects this in its archetypal nature. Winter months can be harsh, demand us to work harder and create limitations. All of this is associated with Saturn.
Saturn in the birth chart may be the “greater malefic," but it judges harshly with intention. The intention is for us to slow down, open our eyes, learn the lesson and grow again with greater wisdom. I have learned to re-perceive Saturn as the “great sage”. The hardest lessons in each of our lives demands great attention and awareness. If we fall asleep, Saturn will take his scythe to our fields and clear them, demanding revision. This of course slows us down or brings delay. If we are forebearing and wise in our repsonse, perhaps what grows in the barren fields when the light returns is a more fruitful harvest.
Our first Saturn return in our chart perfects around the age of 27-28 years old. Reflecting on our own lives, this is a cross-road moment where we find ourselves making the first really tough decisions with our life direction. A period where we experience a leveling up in our maturity. It could be marriage, a child, a first big career move, buying a home, moving to a new location. These can be isolating moments, decisions that rest solely on you to decide what path is right. It is a pivotal maturation point in most of our charts, and this also hinges on other planet placements in our charts. This is a period of individuation. Saturn effects our structures, whether it be physical or mental, our routines. When Saturn moves through houses in our charts, we can expect reflection, revision and perhaps renewal. Saturn demands us to work hard and fight for what we want.
Currently, Saturn has been in Aquarius since December of 2020 and will remain until early March of 2023. Saturn is in its rulership in Aquarius, and has a strong voice in its home sign. Aquarius is a fixed air sign, and can be attributed to the collective concern rather than the individual. Collectively we all have experienced great structural change as a society since 2020. In your own birth chart, the placement of Saturn will highlight themes of the house it is moving through. You may be experiencing a great revision and restructuring to this place in your chart, or just intense focus and hard work. There could be concern on how you as an individual are in relationship to the collective, this may need a change. Perhaps you are revising the work you do and how it relates to your family. An old structure that you put in place in your life may no longer be serving you, and it is time to tear it down and rebuild. It will solely rest on where Aquarius is in your own chart to decipher what themes are exactly surfacing in the last two years.
The retrograde period of Saturn may now ask us to review the work we have been doing? If we changed something in the last two years, this retrograde period may ask us for a review. Is it working? Are you content with this new direction? Does something need to be tweaked, discarded, revised? These are themes that may surface in the next four months. This may be a more intense period of inner work and reflection on the changes that we recently put into action. If Saturn has been demanding change and you have been resisting, perhaps you should reconsider your approach.
For myself, transiting Saturn has been moving through my sixth house, a place of hard work and service, and health-related matters. During this period, I have been juggling intense periods of work, study and service to others. Everything has been amplified. It is also during this time that I spent innumerous hours in hospitals, supporting elders who are in ill health, maintaining my own health more than usual, and lost my father during this period. This all culminated to major revisions of the work I am doing in this world, how it relates to my own health and family structure. I have essentially torn down every one of those structures to rebuild an ideal that resonates closer to my own inner truth and spirit, and also how I interact and relate to the collective. I know as this Saturn retrograde unfolds, I will have to repeatedly reflect on all of these changes and new structures I am putting in place. Are they still aligned with not only my values, but my families needs and values as well. This retrograde period is a time of checks and balances. There may be delays, setbacks and revisions, but this is Saturn in action. Demanding time, attention, and constrictions, but the gift is a deeper wisdom if we put the work in.
Free will is always present, but Saturn will remind you when a pattern in your life is longer serving. Not always pleasant in his reminders, but sometimes it is being locked out in the freezing tundra that makes us appreciate the warmth. Summer feels so much sweeter after a long cold winter.
Have you been in the process of revising your own life, work, structures, home? How has Saturn been showing up in your own life? If you would like to explore Saturn in you birth chart and how it is moving through your life presently, schedule a consultation. Together, let’s divine.