Words for the People



Saturn in Virgo, 2007-2009: Meaning for the Sign of Aquarius

Saturn remains in your solar 8th House of transition, surrender, and shared power through October 29, 2009. Your lesson during this time: Become an astute observer of power. Know who has the power - and how much - in all of your key relationships. These include lovers, friends, roommates, business partners, banks, credit card companies (anyone loaning you money) and even opponents or competitors. Be honest and ask questions you normally wouldn't dare ask (especially of yourself). Don't sign any contract until you know exactly what you're giving up and have decided you're willing to pay the price. You can build powerful alliances that transform your life this year, but only if you're dedicated to being a professional. Remember the words of Dr. Gonzo: "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

You're one of the lucky signs with two ruling planets: Saturn (the planet of hard work, structure, and responsibility) is your ancient ruler and Uranus (the planet of cosmic intelligence, rude awakenings, freedom-seeking behavior, and lightning-strike intuition) is your modern ruler. Modern astrologers often tend to ignore your Saturnian side and focus solely on Uranus when writing for you, but there are good reasons for respecting astrological tradition and including Saturn in our calculations.

First, the outer planets Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto represent transpersonal forces that come into our lives at certain preordained times (as indicated in the natal chart) and act as catalysts for personal and collective evolution. In astrology, the more slowly a planet moves, the more powerful its effects tend to be and the less it responds to personal attempts to modify its impact. By applying awareness, effort and ingenuity, we can shift the expression of the internal energies that correspond to the so-called personal planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars - and to some extent - Jupiter and Saturn). The outer planets, on the other hand, more or less happen to us.

As astrologer and playwright Antero Alli Alli puts it in his wonderful primer, Astrologik:

For the most part, transpersonal forces can never be completely subject to personal control and/or comprehension....The overall intention of all transpersonal forces is the administration of shock...The primary effect of shock is to instill a discontinuity to the ego. It does so by temporarily disconnecting us from familiar routines and self-images that maintain our reality structures. We all react in different ways to shock. The process of responding to shock is what I call initiation; the shock itself, no matter how dramatic, is not the real initiation. How you respond to the initial shock is your initiation because that is what shapes your fate.

Clearly, you do have this Uranian aspect to your energy. Your nature is to rebel against blind conformity, and with your innate Uranian drive for freedom, innovation, and idealistic living, you provide an ongoing series of shocks to people who are stuck in conformity and the petty consistency that Thoreau called "the hobgoblin of simple minds." Uranus in Pisces (your solar 2nd House) since 2003 has been driving you to reinvent your relationship to the 2nd House energies of income, self-esteem, values and possessions, bringing these even more in line with the cosmic, transpersonal imperative for conscious evolution immanent in our species.

But if Uranus spurs you ever onward to innovation, you also have your Saturnian side. This is the part of yourself you can consciously work with to create appropriate structures for all of that revolutionary Uranian energy to flow into. You have a hard time buying in to systems, structures, or authorities that have grown stale or have outlived their usefulness to society, but your innate Saturnian side does give you a facility for working with systems and structures. In fact, you excel at creating the next-level systems that society will move into when it finally outgrows the old and tired.

Saturn in Virgo and Uranus in Pisces oppose each other twice more in 2009, exact on February 5 and September 15.

Until the Saturn-Uranus opposition that was exact on November 4, 2008, the day of the U.S. presidential election, the last time these two planets opposed each other was in 1966, when Saturn in Pisces lined up opposite Uranus and Pluto in Virgo. The mid-1960s were an explosive time in world history, as the energies of form (Saturn) clashed with the energies of sudden, explosive (Uranus) cataclysmic evolution (Pluto). While the absence of Pluto from the equation this time around takes a little of the edge off of this explosive formula, we are still dealing with a major showdown between the archetypes of authoritarian, hierarchical structure (Saturn) and the impulse to freedom-seeking, anarchic transcendence (Uranus). In the Tarot, these energies are pictured by The Fool (Uranus) and The World (Saturn) - the first and last cards of the major arcana, representing the beginning and end of any evolutionary cycle.

On a personal level, this showdown (or negotiation) between your two governing archetypes may manifest as an ongoing challenge of balancing your need for discipline, discrimination, and detail-oriented thinking (Saturn in Virgo) with your tendency towards radical idealism and faith- or fantasy-based behavior (Uranus in Pisces). Another way of looking at this: how can you structure your relationships, specifically those that involve the sharing of money, sex or power (Saturn in the 8th House) so that you can express your natural idealism and progressive ideas as fully and effectively as possible?

Because Saturn and Uranus are opposing each other across the 2nd House/8th House axis of your chart (representing your resources and the resources you share with others), you can expect money, cooperation, sharing, self-sufficiency and self-esteem to be key issues through the end of October. Since 2003 when Uranus entered Pisces (your solar 2nd House), you've been aligning your values more and more with your spiritual center. Many of you have already made significant shifts in either what you do for money or what you do with your money and possessions. Aquarius is the architect of the new society, and life has been doing everything in its power to make sure that all of your actions are aligned with your deepest spiritual values!

Saturn in your 8th House will challenge you to exercise the Virgoan qualities of discrimination, order and practicality in all of your relationships that involve the sharing of money, sex, or power. You will be learning when to hold on and when to let go; above all, you'll be learning to apply the Virgo ideal of selfless service to your relationships. Questions you might ask throughout the year to check in with yourself could include variants of the following:


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