Complaint Department: Line up here! What’s your beef? Oh, you’re having a Saturn transit? You hate Saturn? Many years ago, as a new student of Astrology and the mother of a teenage son I blithely told him one day when he was complaining that he was just having a Saturn transit, which would soon be over. “I hate Saturn!” he said, stomping out of the house. I know, I know — I’ve mentioned my son before and bragged about him and now I’m saying he wasn’t a perfect teenager. Is there such a thing as a perfect teenager, who doesn’t yell at his mother when she insults him by making light of his suffering? But I was still in my amateur stage of being the mother of a teenager as well as being an amateur in Astrology. I had a lot to learn.
But learning about a thing is, by itself, rather meaningless unless we also understand it in the context of relationships, and I’m speaking also of the acausal relationship we have with the planets which help us to understand ourselves. For instance, in Astrology the planet Saturn represents the principles of limitation but it gets more complicated than that. As we limit ourselves, or else feel we are limited by circumstances, we must refocus our energy on what we wish to give form to. Hence, the finished products or structures in our lives, whether created from material or spiritual sources, have been given form by our own efforts, through hard work, which also focalizes the Saturn principle. In making our choices, we cut out the dead wood to make room for, and give form to, our intentions, and both processes are representative of Saturn.
Our first Saturn Return between the ages of 28 and 30 is one of the most important times in our lives, when transiting Saturn returns to the degree it held in our natal chart when we were born. It’s crucial because we often have a residue of unfinished business and will need to wrap up endings in order to prepare for new beginnings. Especially if we feel we are headed in the wrong direction. If we’ve been trying to reflect someone else’s idea of who we are, it’s time for introspection in order to discover our own needs and become our most authentic selves. But, while we take responsibility for our own lives we also recognize our responsibility to others, both individually and in the larger social order.
My son made friends with Saturn or at least reached a truce, learning and accepting responsibilities early. Quite a few years would go by during which he worked hard to get his education and forge a career as an officer in the Air Force. When he had his first Saturn Return during the years betwee 28 and 30, he married and started a family. Although these are positive, joyful transitions, I have no doubt that at some time he also dealt with the return of wounds from childhood and adolescence that most of us experience at this time, when past circumstances we faced are reawakened. It is as though we’re cleaning out the closet of old disappointments and anxieties in order to make way for a new life. We are on our search for the Holy Grail and are metaphorically reborn.
When we have successfully handled the frustration and pain of growth and change that comes during our first Saturn Return the rest of our lives will be better, and our second Saturn Return at age 58-60 easier. However, if we did not achieve the growth we needed at that time, if we have allowed ourselves to become further entrenched in an inauthentic life, the changes will be harder the second time around.
But it can be done. My first Saturn Return, which thankfully I had not thought about in a long time until now, was very painful, yet at the same time I did not understand what was going on or why I was so depressed. Had I known Astrology at the time, it would’ve helped me to deal with those feelings. However, by the time of my second Saturn Return, I had enough understanding about myself to realize I had to make drastic changes in my life. Although it was still hard, I can assure you the struggle was worthwhile. If you find you are living an inauthentic life even at age sixty, it’s still not too late to change.
Liz Greene, an internationally known Astrologer, says in Saturn: A New Look at the Old Devil that Saturn “is never easy to deal with because his function is that of promoting growth, and it is only frustration and pain which at present are sufficient goads to get a human being moving.”
Saturn has gotten a bad rep as you can see by the title of Liz Greene’s book, but it’s said half in jest because people dread their Saturn times. But Saturn is really a friend, not a foe. He represents our ability not only to deal with reality, but also to take personal responsibility for the structures we build in our lives during this sojourn on planet Earth. Of course, eventually some of those structures become rigid and outlive their usefulness. At which time the transits of other outer planets will reflect a different kind of change, which will also aid us in our continuous struggle to try to achieve the best that is in us. But that is a different story, for another time.
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Midlife Crisis: Retrieving Your Soul
The midlife crisis is no joke, although it may look that way, to people my age who find it endearing that young people over forty are horrified when they find a gray hair. I try to remember the time when I thought forty was old, but I must’ve changed as I now consider myself to be young at sixty-nine. And the loveliest thing about my gray hair is the ability of my beautician to make it any color I like.
I don’t mean to belittle the point here. The midlife crisis really is a once-in-a-lifetime deal and it really is serious. When I say you are on a journey to retrieve your soul, even though you didn’t know until now it had been misplaced, I’m not just speaking metaphorically. This is a crucial time in your life.
Have you been jogging along the right path lately? That’s the question that comes up when you reach your late thirties to early forties, a period of about four to six years. It’s been ten to fourteen years since you experienced your first Saturn Return and faced the first big milestone on your soul’s journey. But maturity is not an overnight process. Along with the new insights you gained back then you most likely had a job to maintain, a family to provide for, and all that goes along with being a responsible member of society.
Now transiting Saturn will enter the picture again when you’re about 42, but this time only as part of a complex series of transits that have already begun, to bring the new results to light. By opposing its position in your chart, it’s asking “How are you doing so far on the halfway mark to your second Saturn Return?” And your cranky reply may well be “Would you quit being so serious for awhile? I’ve got all these other issues to deal with so you can just wait your turn!”
The other three transits just passing are Uranus opposing Uranus, called your “Uranus Opposition”, Neptune square Neptune, and Pluto square Pluto. All of these transits represent a complex of self-evaluations and choices you are making about your life. It is a process. Although I experienced my Uranus opposition first, many of you are experiencing your Pluto square first, as Pluto has been traveling faster recently.
Pluto is associated with psychology and some believe he even represents the soul. Since this is a one-time transit, it represents a life-changing crisis in action on a deep emotional and psychological level. It often begins with a growing awareness of our mortality. We become obsessed with the loss of youth and other signs of aging, and feel a deep sense of loss along with other intense feelings: of grief, depression, rage, jealousy, betrayal, isolation and disempowerment.
What’s really triggering these feelings is an internal process in which the unconscious is awakening, and something within us is crying out for greater depth of meaning in our lives. In Jungian terms, this phase represents the confrontation with our “shadow” and we are faced with the “demons” of the past. Through internal and external experiences we become more aware of those parts of ourselves we have repressed, buried, rejected, denied, projected and ignored.
It’s time to begin recognizing, owning and integrating these unlived parts of ourselves. In order to heal our wounded child it is also time for us to endure the pain and face the past, allowing ourselves to be vulnerable. This phase is not just about death, it is about birth and renewal.
For most people, the Uranus opposition follows and occurs between the age of 40 and 42 (others nearer to 38 or 39) which is at the midpoint of its 84 year cycle, the amount of time it takes to travel around the zodiac. Since an opposition is much like a full moon this transit of Uranus reveals what we have become in the first half of our lives. As we begin to see ourselves more clearly we also begin to feel an urge to free ourselves of attachments to the past in order to build a new identity. We want to explore new possibilities, do things we’ve never done before.
We want to reconnect with the parts of ourselves we’ve repressed. According to Jung, if we successfully navigate this midlife transition “Above all we will have achieved a real independence and with it, to be sure, a certain isolation. In a sense we are alone, for our “inner freedom” means that a love relation can no longer fetter us, the other sex has lost its magic power over us, for we have come to know its essential traits in our own psyche.”
The time of the Uranus opposition is exciting because we now have the impetus to make changes necessary for our growth, and can find ourselves inspired to follow our dream. However, our dream is undergoing a revamping by our Neptune square during this midlife experience.
We are faced with a crisis of ideals. During the Neptune square we may feel terribly disillusioned and depressed as we begin to see a gulf between what we once idealized and the reality in our lives, also reflected through our interaction with society. Now is the time we face whether what we have become matches our ideal self. And, even if it does, we need a new dream to guide us in the second half of our life. What shall it be? This is a time many of us begin to question our religion as well as our spiritual and philosophical beliefs and whether they are still valid. We may feel an absence of meaning, the lack of a sense of purpose, or find ourselves in a state of mourning for the lost dreams of youth. By studying Astrology during this time in my life I experienced an entirely new awareness of the Divine Order of the Universe, God’s creation.
The importance of this journey through uncertainty is that it gives us the ability to connect with a larger spiritual purpose. Formal religion has its place but how many of us drop our spirituality in the collection plate every Sunday and forget about it the rest of the week? Religion is no substitute for spirituality. That sounds suspiciously like something my eldest daughter says, that “school is no place for children”, which is why she home schools. But that’s a decision she made after she had two more children near the time of her midlife crisis.
At this time of our life we have the opportunity to connect with the core of our being more than ever before, to help us make decisions about what we really want to do with the rest of our lives. All these values are activated following closure of the transits, not during the transits themselves. At last we feel free to express our gifts, unhampered by the restrictions of the past. At last we can retrieve our souls from obscurity.
Filed under: Astrology, attitudes, Family, old age, Religion, Self-Improvement, Spirituality | Tagged: Astrology, attitudes, old age, Religion, Self-Improvement, social commentaries, Spirituality | 6 Comments »