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The water element prevails

As I approached this blog I thought about the upheaval in Egypt, the San Francisco plane crash, the Quebec train crash, the gruesome soccer match in Brazil, Andy Murray’s win at Wimbledon — no lack of remarkable events.

But on Sunday — with Jupiter and retrograde Mercury in Cancer and the dark of the Moon with both luminaries in Cancer and also Saturn’s stationing direct in Scorpio — I was feeling a bit moody and decided to just wait and listen for a theme to write about.

Melanie Reinhart was the first person I heard use the term “metalog” to describe the phenomena of “that which we are speaking about is also arising.” In the transparent world we astrologers often inhabit, this is something that happens naturally and often – that which we are attending to makes an appearance.

So, I was thinking about Saturn’s station when I got a call from someone in NYC (who also happens to be getting to the last pass of the first Saturn return). Saturday (Saturn’s day) had been a big disappointment — a job he had seriously been counting on fell through.

On Sunday he was on a day trip from lower Manhattan to somewhere outside the city to escape to a friend’s swimming pool on a gorgeous summer day. He left the apartment with barely enough time to take the subway to Penn Station, to catch the train to have an afternoon away from the immediate confines of the city.

The subway that happened by first was not an express, but the much slower local, stopping at every stop. He methodically recounted the name of each station to me on the phone. It took forever, but he did get there just in time to catch the train to a sunny afternoon.

What a perfectly literal Saturn station conversation. And yesterday the transiting Moon was applying to oppose Pluto and square Uranus. The urgency to get away, to get free of something, to break out is a familiar sensation these days. But Saturn’s station is like the local train…we go slowly, no stop can be overlooked, no shortcuts taken. We may feel frustrated by the pace with so much of importance to attend to, but when we respect the unfolding of time, events proceed properly.

The Theosophists and Alan Leo spoke of Saturn as character building. In Scorpio our character is formed in the dark tunnels of subjectivity and in the magnetizing power of our attachments and desires. Emotional insight, coming to understand a deeper reality, comes from staying right on the edge of intensity – this is one of Scorpio’s gift.

Saturn may keep us waiting; patience and restraint are the ingredients in the current emotional caldrons.

Saturn inclines towards solitude and loneliness, but we won’t stay there. It’s a temporary and ever-fluid state — Saturn is moving directly, gloriously, towards Jupiter in Cancer and Neptune in Pisces. (Saturn trines Jupiter precisely on July 17 and Neptune on the 19th.)

Saturn brings the humility to accept the restraints and limitations in our experience. We can bypass the ubiquitous seductions of our culture — no one has everything they want; every one of us has a portal of emptiness and isolation inside which a deeper fulfillment and meaning may actually dwell. Saturn rewards the yogis and ascetics, as well as the builders and architects.

The water signs are mute. All are connected to the occult, the hidden aspects of our experience and the matrix that gives birth to form.

There is creative and gentle magic in the air these days with the generosity of water signs lining up in ongoing harmonious configurations.

With Cancer we are carried further on the timeless journey home – home to wherever we feel safe and to whatever feeds body and soul. A Cancer theme is our remembrance of the past and our yearning to belong.

Cancer is the beginnings of life, the myths and realities of our origins; Scorpio brings constant death and resurrection and Pisces pulls us away from the material and into the poetry of the soul life.

The water trilogy, shining from above, show that fullness and emptiness, the exquisite and the brutal, the soft and the firm, are all part of the wholeness of life from which we never can be separate.

We may not know where we are going but we know we will get there.

Happy Cancer New Moon week, everyone!

10 Comments

  1. My mother always called Saturn the Great Teacher, and that it is. Whatever we need to learn, Saturn the energy of Saturn moves us to learn…It’s so amazing to see how that plays out in the houses/parts of our lives Saturn transits. The Saturn in Scorpio’s movement throught the Collective Consciousness and our own unconscious realms is stirring us all very deeply though in different ways.

    Also wanted to nod in agreement to what you say about how our own experiences affect and color the ways we approach, talk about and understand current and long-term transits.

    Thank you for the Mountain Astrologer….always enlightening, insightful, diverse, and interesting.

    • Hello Catherine,

      Thank you for your comments..

      This is especially moving:
      “Saturn in Scorpio’s movement throught the Collective Consciousness and our own unconscious realms is stirring us all very deeply though in different ways.”

      I find especially with Saturn in water that being emotionally vulnerable though sometimes terrifying (a Scorpio word?), can definitely bring more intimacy…so, I appreciate your writing..

      Mary

  2. Thank you for this article. The Saturn station going direct is 22.5 degrees to Uranus and Mercury is retrograde in Cancer, not to mention the fact that 5 planets are currently in water signs. This past weekend, we’ve had 2 AIR DISASTERs: Asiana 777 at the San Francisco Airport and fuel oil train that derailed and crashed in a very small town, Lac-Megantic, in Quebec province. Followed by the plane crash in Alaska on Sunday. May they all R.I.P. This is turning into a very emotional July, to say the least!

    • Hello CelticSeer,

      Are you a Uranian astrologer? I appreciate your notice of the station at 22.5 to Uranus..

      Take good care..

  3. Mary, your article reads like poetry. Thanks!

    • Thank you, Jo..

      I was kind of in a mood when I wrote it…I am very glad you liked it…a very subjective, personally (for me) revealing blog..

      (But then, I have Scorpio on the Ascendant and Mars in the 12th..)

      Love to you..

  4. You hit the nail on the head in your ending sentence. Great article. Saturn ruled, I have been waiting a long time for this retrograde to end. Now, it will roll over my ascendant and won’t that be fun. Finally out of the 12th house.

    • Thank you, Pam..

      May Saturn bring only the lessons and “character building” you are completely ready for as it crosses the Ascendant 😉

      Mary

  5. Hello Mary..

    Speaking of the ‘Water Elements’ prevailing, I just posted my latest blog on Bradley Manning & his current sentencing awaiting him.. at http://whatsitallmeanthen.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/bradey-manning-not-guilty-heavens.html?showComment=1375241401016#!/2013/07/bradey-manning-not-guilty-heavens.html.. And, as a long time student of Dane Rudhyar’s Sabian Symbols, I once again noted the symbols at my publishing my blog on all this.. And, I noted the Scorpio Ascendant, in my 7th house, at 20deg05.. forming a ‘grand water trine’ with the midpoint of transiting Mercury in Cancer, 18deg30 & my *Sol-Arc Jupiter in Cancer, at 22deg30, in my 3rd house.. along with the midpoint of my *prog Pisces MC, at 19deg51, along with my natal Ceres-Chiron in Pisces, at 21-22deg in my 11th house… And, here are the symbols for the moment I published this blog, beginning at *20degSco.. A WOMAN DRAWS AWAY TWO DARK CURTAINS CLOSING THE ENTRANCE TO A SACRED PATHWAY.. The revelation to the human Consciousness of what lies beyond dualistic knowledge.. The “Woman within” – the faith that is rooted in the deepest intuitions of the Soul – is seen here as the Hierophant unveiling the realities which the either-or, pro & con mind alone cannot perceive. The path to the mystic “unitive life” is opened up once the darkness of fear, Egocentricity & dualistic morality is removed.. Courage is needed to go beyond the veiling darkness – the courage to go beyond the familiar & the traditionally known, to PLUNGE AHEAD INTO THE UNKNOWN.. While also moving towards the next degree, at *21degSco.. OBEYING HIS CONSCIENCE, A SOLDIER RESISTS ORDERS.. A readiness to face the results of a refusal to follow the authoritarian patterns of an aggressive Society.. In this first stage symbol the issue it presents is clear. Society seems to be all powerful, yet the individual need not be Spiritually bound, even if imprisoned. He or she can still display INNER FREEDOM & prove him or herself an “individual”….

    Once again.. “As above.. So below”. Or, “As within.. So without”…


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