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Saturn calling…

On December 21, the winter solstice, when the Sun entered Capricorn, Saturn was waiting, having arrived there on the evening of the 19th.

We all knew this was coming, the co-presence of Saturn in his own sign at the potent moment of the Sun’s standstill.

Themes connected to Saturn’s significations would be apparent for many of us. I always keep a look out for Saturn transits: I was born at midnight and in the doctrine of sect, night births are particularly susceptible to Saturn’s more troublesome side. It is also the most elevated planet in the natal, opposite the Sun at the nadir.

I had a plan for where I wanted to be at the solstice. I’ve been missing my four siblings in New York and with Saturn entering my Capricorn 3rd house (Whole sign) I got a ticket to be in New York with them.

However, Fate entered: a close (male) family member passed away right before the solstice. I traveled instead to extreme Saturn country — way off the grid in the mountains of northern Idaho, a remote and beautiful 20 acres with a log home, constant snow (three feet when I left) and, like much of the country, frigid weather. I spent two weeks there — gorgeous, deep, solemn, silent, sacred solstice days — saying goodbye to my old and beloved friend (and tending to the practical tasks left for the living).

For more specific astrological details: I am in a profected 8th house year. Gemini is on the natal 8th cusp, so Mercury is the most important planet for me this year. The transiting South Node was at 16º Aquarius, exactly on my natal Mercury when my former partner died in December. Yesterday (with transiting Saturn making its first partile opposition to my natal Cancer Moon) I spent a good part of the day slowly writing his obituary.

Saturn delays but does not deny: I was able to postpone the trip and will get to N.Y. for my reunion with siblings and east coast family before long.

Due to its retrograde, transiting Mercury was conjunct Saturn on November 27 (27º 27′ Sag), December 22 (28º 23′ Sag) and makes its last conjunction to Saturn on January 12 at 2º 48′ Capricorn. We may have bounced against — and walked through — myriad walls and apparent obstructions as we have met Saturn’s slow deliberations during this cycle, but surely will come through to the other side more closely aligned with whatever is our next best step.

Here are a few other blogs featuring the “moving slowly” one, also known as the “Dweller on the Threshold” and “the planet of experience” Saturn.

At The Enquirer (Jyotish) website, Vic Cara writes Saturn Liberates the Sun. “Saturn enters to smack us on the face and wake us up. ‘See, everything you are striving for is foreign to you. You are permanent, but you are trying to enjoy situations that are temporary. Wake up! This will never work!'”

Angela, the Ohio Astrologer, discusses Saturn in Capricorn — Success and Failure: “Saturn and Capricorn are disciplined and employ authority, rules, structure and caution to sustain that discipline. Think of driving a car on the highway versus driving a car in one of those amusement park rides – it’s much easier to drive when there’s a track or guardrails. In the free open space of the highway, discipline is much more difficult to maintain.”

Christina at The Oxford Astrologer has some links to What Astrologers Are Saying About Saturn in Capricorn. (She links to Steven Forrest, Jessica Adams and others.) Christina’s introductory remarks include:

“It’s been a long, strange trip around the Zodiac for Saturn over the last 27 years, but at last he’s come home. Yesterday, he arrived with the dust of the road clinging to his clothes, in Capricorn, the sign which, by tradition, he rules. Perhaps, he heaved a sigh of relief to be back in this cool, winter palace.

He left this place in 1991, and like Odysseus coming back to Ithaca, Saturn returns to find his house topsy-turvy in 2017. He has a few of years to sort things out — until 2020. But he is strong here, he knows how things work in this rocky region, and he is the king.”

Onwards, everyone. Have a good week.

5 Comments

  1. Thank you Mary. You write very poetically. The depth of your sojourn into the solstice is palatable.
    I was wondering how and why I am so slow these days. Everyone is talking about the energy of these amazing conjunctions and sextiles we have this week. I have made a nice long list but have not made much progress. As I am Always a Mercury child. I think you are a very correct in noting that Mercury is finishing its retrograde cycle and hopefully when it picks up speed. I will too. Love you.

  2. “Saturn delays but does not deny.” Wonderful!

  3. The question for each of us is, “how is it that I will be structuring this area of my life, in a slow and thorough manner?” Looking back at this period of Saturn transiting Capricorn in my first house, I returned to university after a career in accounting, organization and systems analysis. Returning to university, I left my career and business world behind with no regrets. Though I was studying mass communications at the master’s level, I was scanning the “current events books” at the university library and came across Dan Rudhyar’s “An Astrological Mandala”, Robert Hand’s Planets in Transit, and various other books on astrology. I even incorporated, “structured” what I learned into my thesis. I was structuring my new identity as an astrologer. A couple of years later I came across “Numerology and the Divine Triangle,” by Faith Javane and Dusty Bunker, which added to the inclusion of numerology to the astrological decans and included the tarot deck.
    The point is, I have lived in my current home for 43 years, so at that time, Saturn was in opposition to my residential sun. I’ve been including charts in my life for my marriage (now 53 years) and property with my natal chart. The number of the first decan of cancer is 42/6, which is the number of astrology, fulfilled, nonattached, financial, knowledge, and resources to name just a few. All of these words also correspond to my own married name. Therefore, at that point in time, my revised identity has included the fulfillment of that new journey.
    So, now at a very youthful 71 in Feb, I will again be redefining my identity and the structure of my life. Hope this helps others with a greater understanding that Saturn’s role is to give us what we want! Thoughout my life my question has always been “why”. Saturn has given me the answer through the studies and disciplines of not only astrology, numerology, but the various spiritual traditions around the world and their connections to these same disciplines.
    Further, with all of the profound scientific innovations in our lives that have touched our lives these past years with Uranus through Aries, we must understand that it is the universe that brings into our lives the necessary changes for broadened, advanced, and shocking experiences to provide greater variety to all aspects of our being.

  4. Saturn

    Solar Arc Saturn – Lord of Doorways

    before the madness
    you watched
    having already detached us from normal
    you offered us books
    tree pulp as food pressed flat
    inked with symbols of your intellect
    squished insect bodies

    using solar arcs as a timepiece
    you gifted us with madness
    once the trees where all eaten
    but was it really madness
    you just opened the mind
    suddenly
    pulling one bandage
    off the big wound of form

    the wind and tide of Pisces poured right in
    overwhelming the floodgates of Aquarian perception
    adrift and fearful
    in a sea of all things
    yet in those things
    a unity
    conflated
    confusing
    raw

    in bursting grey canyons of fear
    something golden glows
    shimmering between the mind/world barrier
    it is the language of stars
    your language
    seeming to lift right off the page
    written by
    the descending underbelly of sky

    (you phoned)
    Saturn walked right in
    giving advice
    with long words and even longer silence
    a maintenance worker
    escorts you to a place of perigee
    with the apse of Nereid’s temple
    a place you have been before
    in many, many life times
    as you experienced the nebula within

    30 years of time has passed
    a slow arc etched the mind

    now after the sea
    has turned to flame
    where once mist covered moss
    a red hot ember clears the space
    what was then Pisces
    is now Aries
    in the rarified etheric thermocline of beginnings
    you turn tree rings into recorded star light

    light years beyond the threshold
    of our deeply grooved forehead
    sighting dimples in beach sand
    on a shoreline of astral jello
    the coronal flame arcs
    in the structural wood stove of time

  5. I can relate to your experience, Mary, I lost beloved mother on the evening of Dec 21st. She seemed to have been preparing to depart while I was caught off guard and felt grief stricken. At first I felt stuck and unable to initiate anything. The Capricorn new moon in my 1st house helped me to look at practical things that needed to be attended to…I felt Saturn’s signature in that last week of December


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