I discuss how to get along with Saturn in astrology. I describe what to avoid and how to conduct yourself to minimize the most challenging manifestations of a hard Saturn transit or difficult natal Saturn placement.

In my view this is very simple and mostly requires good old – but strikingly rare these days – common sense.

This episode was published on April 8, 2023.

You can support my work and this channel ⁠⁠by booking an astrology reading⁠⁠. 

Please ⁠⁠add yourself to my contact list⁠⁠.


Episode transcript:

Greetings all, Welcome to Aquarian Diary.

I’m your host, John Irving.

It is April 8th, 2023.

People who study astrology or their astrology charts often fear the planet Saturn.

Historically, it was even referred to as the Devil. It is also referred to as the planet of Karma, Duty and Responsibility.

However, as I frequently state when I do readings, in my opinion, Saturn is one of the easiest planets to understand. Its rules and boundaries are quite clear and quite simple, often much more simple than most people think.

This is not going to be a lengthy discourse about Saturn. I simply want to address how to work with it or make friends with it so we can minimize the challenging expression of it by transit or natally.

As I said, Saturn’s rules are very simple.

They go something like this – Be Responsible, Be Pragmatic, Be Realistic, Be Honest, and Be in Integrity.

Generally, if you follow those rules or guidelines, you can kind of breeze through Saturn transits relatively easily.

I’m not saying they’re not challenging, I’m just saying that you won’t experience the harder expressions of Saturn.

So, some practical examples.

If someone is living beyond their financial means and then up comes a hard Saturn transit, say Saturn squaring your Sun or Saturn squaring your Venus or something, or Saturn transiting your second house, you may experience some restrictions or limitations, but you can still get through.

If Saturn is transiting your seventh house of close personal relationships and you’re in a significant relationship, the relationship can go through kind of a testing period, but if the relationship is fundamentally sound and good, it will survive and probably even become stronger as a result.

If the relationship is based on some kind of superficial values and you’re making a lot of compromises within it, it might be severely tested, because Saturn is about reality, not wishful thinking.

The question is always, “Is it real or not?” Are you being sincere and responsible and mature?

So I’m getting chills right now because I’ve recently been going through some Saturn transits that I was a bit nervous about, but I’ve actually found that I have been expressing the positive expressions of Saturn and Saturn hasn’t had a lot to complain about with me lately.

So the positive expression of it is that it helps us refine and purify our aims or ambitions or circumstances, it can help us separate the wheat from the chaff, become more focused, become more real, and so forth. It’s all about helping us determine what’s real versus what’s illusory, which is a good thing.

So in a positive expression, it helps us solidify and strengthen and build solid foundations. As the Lord of Time, Saturn can help create structures in our life that are very long-lasting and durable. This is good! It’s contrary to what a lot of people think.

So yes, when Saturn comes along and challenges us in some aspect of our life, it will test us. So ideally, you’ve been orienting yourself in advance of this to make sure that what you’re engaged in is real and sincere, ethical, and so on.

Another example, if somebody was involved in criminal activity and then Saturn, being the authority figure, comes along and says, “No, you’re not going to get away with this because it’s unethical, you’re breaking the law” or whatever. It’s likely that you’re going to, in some way, be held accountable for your actions.

If our solar system didn’t have Saturn, in my opinion, Earth would be completely chaotic and it would be anarchy here. We need to have rules and laws because a lot of people are irresponsible and do things to other people that are misleading and harmful and so on, and Saturn keeps us accountable.

So it’s really easy to understand on a pragmatic level, like when it comes to just living our lives and being responsible members of society.

On the more spiritual dimensions, it can be about concentration and focus and purification.

So for example, if we have beliefs that are based on illusions, Saturn can help us clarify those beliefs and question their assumptions to make sure they are foundationally accurate.

On the spiritual level as well, Saturn transits can help us focus. So it may mean, for example, a period of time if Saturn is transiting your 12th, if your 12th house is Pisces right now, it can be an excellent time to be very rigorous, concentrated and dedicated to your spiritual practice.

And yes, I personally believe that dedicating time in a disciplined way to our spiritual practice is very important. We put a lot of energy into all kinds of activities in our lives and if spirituality is important to us, it deserves attention as well. At least some time.

For a lot of people, it’s only a few minutes a day. There’s 24 hours in a day. How much time are you devoting to your spiritual practice and what rewards will you reap?

Saturn tends not to give rewards easily. Discipline and diligence is required and it tends not to give rewards immediately. It takes time, but the rewards that you do get can be very solid and long-lasting.

Think of the churches that they built centuries ago, or even in medieval times. Some of these churches would take several generations of activity to construct, but they last for centuries, if not potentially millennia. Fantastic.

You know, our society now is very much geared to immediate gratification and we have this kind of disposable mentality where we are constantly consuming things that we just dispose of. That’s not very Saturnian. And of course, it has consequences for our environment.

Saturn is about quality and mastery. And mastery is about being responsible for yourself on every dimension of your being, from the pragmatic and material to the energetic.

So it’s really just about common sense when dealing with Saturn. Not being in denial, being accountable, being responsible, being diligent, being able to focus and concentrate, being able to determine what is superficial and what is not.

Saturn is not about superficiality. It’s about patience, diligence, and things like that.

Karma, of course, and karma is closely related to personal responsibility. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, as I often say.

So there should be nothing to fear with Saturn if we are conducting our lives with integrity and honor. Saturn does not like shortcuts.

So my advice to you is to follow those principles and the sooner you start the better.

Another example, somebody who lives very lavishly and has very high expenses and overhead, that might be fine until something happens and their income is impacted severely or diminished. And then suddenly they find themselves in a great deal of trouble because they have a very high overhead, which could result in even something like bankruptcy. It can get quite extreme.

Whereas someone who lives more modestly and has savings and so forth, again very pragmatic, can easily weather a period of a year or two or three where their income isn’t as much as they thought it might be. They will kind of breeze through these periods of ups and downs because it’s not very realistic to expect that you’re always going to be making huge amounts of money.

Even the very wealthy can go through periods that are challenging. It could be something like a recession that they have no control over.

It’s very simple common sense really.

The degree to which Saturn will test you often pertains to your own particular astrology. Some people naturally get along with Saturn. That’s just because of the way they are.

And then other people who are less kind of grounded typically have more problems with Saturn.

Again there’s a lot of variables. It depends on your chart. But just bear that in mind.

Like I have met and known people who get through hard Saturn transits really easily. And I have known others who go through some very challenging times under Saturn transits.

My main point here was simply to illustrate that it’s really easy to understand Saturn. It’s not complicated at all and I think a lot of people overthink it.

Neptune by contrast in my opinion is a much more complicated planet to understand because it can manifest on so many different levels and in so many different ways. It can be extremely problematic or it can be extremely creative and spiritual.

There is a wide variety of expressions that have to be considered and a lot of it depends on the native in question.

Saturn can also play a role in helping us be an authority figure. It can create circumstances where certain people can become very authoritative in various areas again depending on your chart for those who are disciplined and who have put in the work.

Recently Saturn began transiting Pisces on March 7th of 2023 all the way through 2026. So roughly three years. And I did a whole episode about that which I will also put in the description. And I titled that “Reality Check” because some expressions of Pisces can be a bit illusory and ungrounded. And Saturn wants us to be grounded and to deal with reality.

So like I’ve said in that episode I find it kind of funny what’s happening right now politically and socially because to me much of that are expressions of Saturn transiting Pisces. See that episode. I think you might find it a bit entertaining.

You can kind of see that I don’t have a hard time with Saturn because where would we be if people were completely detached from reality all the time as many people definitely are.

And I think that combined with the transit of Pluto in Aquarius and Saturn transiting Pisces we’re definitely going through a period of reality check, thank God, because a lot of people are completely detached from reality and it creates many problems as we are seeing.

But Saturn does bring accountability and order and even justice which we all want and desire. This is not a bad thing.

It’s funny I’m pretty sure I’ve not laughed as much when I was recording an episode as I am about Saturn which many people perceive as being dark. So I have made friends with Saturn and I encourage you to do the same thing. You will avoid a lot of BS if you do. Nobody really wants BS.

You know Saturn is the law and we need laws obviously because there are a lot of unscrupulous people out there and they need to be kept in check. And if we follow the rules we can avoid a lot of unnecessary drama and blowback and consequences that will demand huge amounts of time and energy on our part to correct. And we don’t want to waste time. Saturn the Lord of time.

And again Saturn is not about superficiality. If Saturn takes something out of our life it may be because it’s not real or it’s not grounded or it’s not based on truth. Sometimes we may not realize that until later on. It can take time.

I’m someone who actually really disdains ill placed superficiality. You know people who judge us. Do you really want fair weather friends? People who are just associated with you for superficial reasons or who judge you based on superficial reasons like your appearance or your habits. Something that they find objectionable.

They’re not actually connecting to the core aspect of you. They’re just attaching to you for superficial reasons. Or it’s transactional or conditional.

No you probably don’t want that. Because when you do go through some challenging experience they will be the first ones to leave. And the people who are still there with you in the end are your real friends. That’s an example of how Saturn can prune your social contacts. It may be disheartening at the time but later on you will realize that they weren’t really your friends to begin with.

Often younger people have a harder time with Saturn because they haven’t fully matured. As we get older we tend to be more in harmony with Saturn because we’ve had a lot of life experiences so we know these kinds of things from intimate and direct personal experience.

In fact people with strong challenging Saturnian aspects in their natal chart, say for example Saturn near the Ascendant, may have to grow up very quickly and have a lot of responsibility and maybe not as much fun and being carefree as others when they are young. But as they get older they actually start to become and express a more youthful outlook and attitude because Saturn kind of reverses the process. They start out being very mature and responsible and later on in life they almost become younger in their expression.

Again I don’t want this to be a really lengthy discourse on Saturn because it would just be too long. I just want to paint a picture for people to understand. And especially like I said younger people in particular I feel a bit more compassionate towards about this because we don’t really fully mature in my opinion until probably in our 40’s or so, if not even our second Saturn return. So the first Saturn return at 28 or 29 is when we begin to become serious and more responsible about life generally.

Anyway I hope this is helpful. It’s come up a lot for me lately because I’ve been doing a lot of readings and I thought I would share this with you as it might be helpful.

Thanks everyone for all your support.

I am organizing the spiritual evolution workshop or classes that I mentioned in my prior episode. That’s going great. I’m very excited about that. I’ll put a link to that in the description below.

If you’re interested in a reading I’ll also put a link to that in the description.

Take care, all the best and we’ll talk to you again soon.

End episode transcript.

Related episodes:

Saturn transit Pisces – Reality Check

Pluto in Aquarius – Dawn of Global Consciousness⁠ ⁠

Pluto at 29° Capricorn – A Karmic Reckoning

Clearing Karma (and a Position Statement)

—

Check my “Community Tab” where I comment and share links I find interesting.

You can also support this channel with ⁠a monthly membership⁠.⁠

#Astrology #SpringEquinox #PlutoInAquarius

Errata

Astrology #Saturn #SaturnTransit #SaturnReturn