Befriending Saturn
How the Malefic's Influence Delivers The Advice We'd Prefer to Avoid
Before the advent of the telescope, Saturn was the furthest planet our ancestors could see with the naked eye. It also had its distinct rings, representing a metaphoric and literal boundary of both sight and space that is an apt mirror for its role in our own lives. Saturn, a master teacher, time keeper, and ruler of both Capricorn and Aquarius (in traditional astrology) does the often uncomfortable work of teaching us about the boundaries most people would prefer to avoid.
Today I spoke with a client who shared that she so wished she could skip the tension she felt internally about setting a boundary with her work. I reflected to her that the tension in and of itself was the only palpable sign that a boundary was needed. That the discomfort we feel, though perceived as negative and unenjoyable, is usually the signal of what needs to be addressed.
How often do we avoid the boundaries we face in our own bodies—working beyond our bandwidth, pushing ourselves beyond physical limits, ignoring our exhaustion, our hunger, our anger, our grief. Saturn is the real friend who won’t sugar coat the reality of a thing—he delivers his medicine straight up, no chaser. The seemingly deeply dysregulating signs of a message from him, perhaps better seen as a warning we might have otherwise ignored.
In astrology each planet represents a certain kind of work we may engage with in our worldly endeavors, and each house a sector of life. So when a planet moves through a house, it is essentially highlighting a particular type of work in a specific sector of life. Let’s look at Saturn, for example in my own life to demonstrate how these themes play out (both because it is easier to share from personal reference AND because the examples have been so literal lately they serve as good teaching tools.)
In late 2020 Saturn moved into Aquarius. Remember, Saturn creates lessons that come from having to set boundaries, be realistic and pragmatic. As it rules Aquarius, Saturn does exceptionally well when transiting through this part of the sky. Aquarius thrives in boundaries because it loves to compartmentalize, to distance, to take the objective stance in favor of logic and reason over feelings—both to its benefit and detriment depending on the circumstance.
The part of my chart where Aquarius holds residence is the seventh house, which represents one-to-one relationships, commitments such as best friends, partners, and clients are the issues explored in this part of my chart. In 2020, not only was Saturn in my 7th house, but Jupiter was as well. The role of Jupiter is to emphasize, expand, philosophize and in some cases create blessings.
About six months after Saturn’s initial transit into Aquarius, I met a serious partner who emphasized these Saturnine, Jupiterian andAquarian themes. As it was a polyamorous relationship, there were rigid boundaries around when and how I could be involved in this person’s life. The philosophy (Jupiter’s domain) of polyamory as a practice confronted everything I had known about relationships (a 7th house theme). In this construct I saw my partner once every week, or even sometimes every other, which was incredibly challenging for the ways in which I like to relate to people in romance (a strict Saturn boundary). I also had a bigness, depth and intensity of feeling that I had never quite experienced in relationship before (a Jupiter theme).
Let’s fast forward into Saturn’s transition from my 7th house of partnership to my 8th house of sex, death, inheritances, taxes, and psychological trauma.
It is worth noting that the 8th house of astrology is largely misunderstood. For you may have read the above paragraph and thought “That is a lot of seemingly unrelated subject matter. How does the 7th house only rule partnerships and the 8th all that other stuff?” Well, the 8th house is representative of the part of the chart that controls the ways in which we merge with others and then confront the sense of being beholden to them.
When taken at face value sex, inheritance, taxes and psychological trauma seem like four wildly different aspects of life. But each relates to the ways in which we choose to combine our resources (either physically, energetically, spiritually, psychologically, or literally) with another. This is where the 7th house of choosing to enter into a partnership graduates to a sense of choosing to rely on and invest in another.
My 8th house is Pisces, which is a very different energy than Aquarius. Where Aquarius loves boundaries, Pisces is boundless. Where Aquarius seeks to separate, Pisces seeks to merge. How does Saturn experience Pisces? Well, as a task master with the agenda of teaching the lessons of boundary setting, it struggles. Here Saturn is like an accountant trying to take a dance class—completely out of its element and a little bit disoriented.
When Saturn moved here in March of 2023, the construct of my relationship was put to a test that it failed—the reliance I had for commitment, deep emotional investment and reciprocity did not fit into the Saturnine boundaries of my then-parter’s Aquarian nature (with a natal Moon in my 7th house in Aquarius). A year later, we broke up.
Here is where it gets literal enough as if to be almost a divine cosmic joke—
My father died two weeks after the break up (this is not funny, I know). Saturn, which in astrology represents the father figure, was moving through the part of my chart that rules inheritances and death. He had had dementia for almost a decade before his passing, and because I study astrology with a sort of obsessive compulsive bent, I had had a feeling he would pass while the planet of the father was transiting my 8th house of death.
I did not anticipate, however, the hard lesson of Saturn severing both my relationship with my partner and my father in the same two week period, but the astrology of it all was literal enough to remind me to believe in God even as I was swimming in the pain of it all (very Piscean).
When we began this exploration of Saturn, I discussed the tension created internally as a sign that a boundary needed to be made. As humans, we vehemently avoid the uncomfortable, the darkness of our own feelings and emotions seen as “bad”. Whereas positive things and joy are “good.” Death is “bad” and largely avoided in conversation in dominant culture. However, it is also universal. In the year leading up to my father’s death the tension of wondering if he was okay with his declining health was an ever-present part of my day to day life. As was the strain and pain of a relationship where I poured myself into someone who had no nourishment to pour back.
I carried this tension through every hour of my day, as a companion to every experience. I lived in anticipation of the phone call from my mother of my father’s passing and the waiting to know when I could see my partner next. The whole thing was making me very ill inside, but as someone indoctrinated into patriarchy and late-stage capitalism, I pushed it down. I ignored Saturn’s messages, resolved to focus on anything else.
In May of this year, Saturn will be departing my 8th house for my 9th house of Travel, Publishing, Long Term Plans, Philosophy. I am looking forward to a respite, but I now see his teaching as a difficult, but wholly loving lesson.
In the last year of this Saturn transit I have had to sort, literally through my father’s affairs. I have inherited and sold his home. Done his taxes. Rolled his bank accounts into my own. The receipt of this financial gift (an 8th house theme) was also tied to an incomprehensible amount of manual labor (Saturn) and a bizarre web of confusing bureaucracy (Pisces). Simultaneously, I was so consumed by my own grief (again the 8th house) at the loss of the two most important men in my life that I was confronted with the scariest, darkest corners of my own unhealed trauma (8th house). This tension felt terrible. I literally hated every second of the entire experience. But it forced me towards a number of therapies that have helped me make sense of my family history in a way I was never previously able to see.
As I finally get my head above water I am struck by the fact that I likely would never have been able to make sense of my own pain without being forced to confront it in the series of events that took place during this Saturn transit.
Last week I took a yoga class where I found myself in a familiar pattern of rumination on the anger and grief that are still present parts of my healing journey. Frustrated, I inquired internally, “What is something else I could be thinking about right now?”
A mantra appeared in my mind—
It’s not happening to you, it’s happening for you.
I began repeating this with each vinyasa, over and over the entire length of the class—
It’s not happening to you, it’s happening for you. It’s not happening to you, it’s happening for you.
At the end of the class, the teacher came around a placed an oracle card at the head of every student. I turned mine over and read the inscription—
It’s not happening to you, it’s happening for you.
I began to weep.
While suffering is still incomprehensible and I’d 10/10 rather avoid it, I also see how hindsight is 20/20.
It was only by picking up the pieces of my broken life and actually examining them could I fix things that had been broken since I was a very young girl. And while I wouldn’t tell anyone in the height of such an emotionally intense and horrifying experience that it was happening for them (because if you had said that to me a year ago, I would have told you to shut the f*ck up), I do think that Saturn is trying to help us, not hurt us. The idea of a Malefic signification is too binary an approach for this Master Teacher. For he deserves reverence and respect for the work he is doing to help you become an ultimately happier version of you—even when it doesn’t seem like it.
