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