Your Saturn Return is when Saturn returns to the same position in the sky as when you were born. Saturn takes roughly 29-30 years to make one full orbit around the sun, so Saturn returns every 29-30 years.
I turned 58 this past March, 2006. That puts me square in the middle of my second Saturn return. If you’re 27 to 31 years old then you’re going through your first Saturn Return.
According to the scientifically dubious but nonetheless scarily accurate field of astrology, the planet Saturn effects us in terms of values, identities, and life direction. In your Saturn Return, there’s generally a series of deep, profound changes in your life, usually in areas of your life that you’ve been avoiding looking at.
So how do you ride out your Saturn Return? Do you or can you prepare for it? Even if you don’t believe word one of astrology, there’s gonna come a time of BIG UPHEAVAL in your life. How’re you going to deal with it?
I’m a great big fan of chaos. I find it thrilling and exhilarating. But when the chaos is in danger of engulfing my livlihood, my health, or the lives of my loved ones, I’m all of a sudden a big fan of order. The tendancy of people to cling to what’s orderly in times of crisis makes total sense. It’s what makes moral codes work: when everything is mad all around us, we can at least remember things like "Thout shalt not kill." And yippee, we most of us don’t kill.
But what about the times when the crisis is long and drawn-out? Crisis is not simply the moment the Twin Towers fell down, it’s the long period we’ve got following 9/11 that’s just as much of a world crisis. The difference is we seem to have the time to examine it. That’s what Saturn Return is like. It’s an ongoing crisis, and the good news is that it’s possible to examine it with some orderly perspective. We just need to step out of the picture for a moment, breathe, and examine what’s going on from an orderly perspective.
The orderly perspectives I choose to examine things with differ, but I am a BIG fan of the Tarot, the I-Ching, and Astrology. There’s something calming about these orderly meatphoric systems of
life in our universe. I can return to any one of these systems, and I’ll always know its frame of reference.
The illustration for this blog posting includes the Tower card from the Tarot deck. In many early tarot decks, the figures who are falling out of the Tower are the Pope and the Emporer. Yep. Look closely and you’ll see one of ’em is wearing a crown, even in this more modern deck. Is it time for some deeply held political or spiritual belief to come tumbling down around your ears?
Big crises are times of almost complete collapse. The people we’ve credited to be our spiritual or political leaders have let us down, and we find ourselves having to be the leaders of our own lives. We’ve got doubts. We’ve got questions that no one can seem to answer. And we’re left to make life-or-death decisions without the confidence that comes from subscribing to an unquestionable system of beliefs.
How do you prepare for a Saturn Return? You become very familiar with your values, your desires, your plans, and all the identities you use to navigate the world. All of them are going to change, and the more you know about them going in to a Saturn Return, the better equipped you’re going to be once your in the middle of it all.
And once you’re in the thick of it? Well, here’s how I’m going to be dealing with my second Saturn Return:
- I’m going to take every opportunity I can to step outside the swirling chaos of my life that I don’t seem to be able to control very well.
- I’m going to become more aware of my values, my beliefs, my identities and my desires.
- I’m going to see for myself which of my values, beliefs, identities, and desires have been determined by me; and how many have been determined for me by outside forces that don’t or didn’t have my best interest at heart.
- And when I find those other-determined parts of me? I’m gonna toss the motherfuckers out of my tower and get on with living a much better life.
Peace, love, and happy saturn returns.
xoxo
Kate
PS — I get my astrology information from David Harrison. He’s not a
professional astrologer but he’s my very favorite expert. Here’s how he
describes Saturn Return: "It’s… oh man, it can be very challenging.
It effects everything about your life. It’s about growing up. That’s
what I hear the most, it’s taking stock of your life, getting clear
about who you are and what you want to be doing. It comes with a lot of
lessons. It requires patience, a sense of humor, and the skill of rolling
with whatever comes your way. It effects people
differently depending on their charts. But things will definitely change in your
life. Things will change."