The Mind of Saturn

Having closed out the last decade with a powerful solar eclipse, involving the majority of the planets, we begin 2020 with still quite a bit of tension in the sky. Today, five planets remain in the sign of Sagittarius, whose effects I have written extensively about on the Facebook group. Saturn is now edging toward Capricorn, his own sign, where he will be stationed starting at the end of January.

But already his energy has shifted slightly with his entrance into a new nakshatra, or ‘lunar mansion.’ These nakshatras are the houses of the lunar zodiac, which in the Vedic system precedes the solar zodiac historically and gives us a unique lens into the psychological and emotional approach of planets as they circulate through the solar zodiac. The nakshatras, in other words, tells us about the ‘mind’ of the planet at that moment, which becomes our mental approach and emotional experience in whatever area of life they are influencing.

Saturn’s nakshatra placement will show a collective weakness, and he stays in each nakshatra for about one year. He was in purvashada nakshatra from November of 2018 until December 27, 2019. Purvashadha is ruled by the deity Apas, who is the goddess of water. This nakshatra has to do with sensitivity and the development of emotional intelligence, which may have been somehow a tender spot in last year. This is a place where we can get our feelings hurt easily, so Saturn’s transit may have thinned our collective skin, which could account for the volume of violence and extreme protective behavior over this time period, which will generally have its root in an underlying fear of being hurt.

In December Saturn moved into Uttarashada nakshatra, which translates as ‘the later victory’ and forms a pair with Purvashadha, which is ‘the former victory.’ If Purvashada had to do with cleaning up your emotional life, uncovering the internal ghosts and encountering what might have been formerly hidden (the ‘former victory’ I interpret to relate to a spiritual victory on a personal level), then Uttarashadha has to do with universalizing the awakening and realizations that may have come with delving into your deepest recesses.

Uttarashadha is concerned with ‘the many,’ and its victory comes by transforming those hard-won personal gems of insight and spiritual depth into connective tissue between yourself and other living beings. This next year is the time to share what you’ve learned and found, and maybe been keeping to yourself. Many others may have been on parallel paths of diving deep into themselves, asking big questions and sometimes making themselves emotionally raw in the process. And many may be guarding these experiences because they feel so tender, particularly given the current cultural climate. It’s hard to know where it is safe to expose what feels most central to one’s own experience.

Despite the upheaval around us, more maybe because of it, now is the time to connect deeply with others so that a web of emotional and spiritual integrity can be woven which might somehow support us in these troubled times. Surfaces are no longer very relevant here, depth has been carried to the surface over the past year, and now that depth wants to run out into the streets and find other depths that it can mingle with, so that it might transform into some magical creative creature that can serve us at this historical moment.

This is the task of Saturn over the coming year, and particularly once he moves into Capricorn at the end of this month I believe he will take it very seriously. Saturn in Capricorn is concerned with practicalities. You may find yourself realizing that exposing your deepest fears, sorrows and longings with those around you is the logical next step in the process of tilling the ground of this stale cultural model into something that means something to anyone with a soul. It is the composting of shame and guilt (which come from exposure) into empathy which is truly the connective tissue of any culture worth its weight. Genuine change on the scale that it is now required can only come from a powerful meeting of hearts.

So empathy is something you can keep in the back of your mind for this coming year. “The ability to share and understand the feelings of others.” And when you find you can neither share nor understand the feelings of others, you can at least pause and allow space for them to exist with their foreign feelings and imagine how you might, at some later date, be able to share and understand those feelings. This practice begins to build the muscle that would respond, rather than react.

Saturn in this placement may also want to translate the sensitivity and insight he collected over the past year into action which can somehow benefit the world. Organizing a group to discuss issues related to something close to your heart would be extremely beneficial during this transit.

And of course there was the option, as there always is, over the last year for those with thick armor to not make contact with their internal experience, and guard the upwelling sensitivity even more ferociously, thus creating an even thicker layer of armor. It will be a tougher road ahead for these individuals, as the empathy that comes organically from contact with your own emotional experience may be less available. If you are, or are in close contact, with someone in this situation then the best course of action may be simply to lead by example. If they witness you creating deep relationships with those around you through bringing to the surface what was formerly buried, they may at some point reach out for help.