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Discussion
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*(I tried posting this before, but it was removed because it focused a bit too much on my personal experience, so I am removing a lot of that so that the post is more general — hopefully it will be within the rules now.)*
***TL;DR will be in bold, if you prefer to just get the jist. :)**
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Let’s admit it. Many of us on this sub are here because our Saturn Return is either currently in progress or coming up soon. If you’re like me, your impending Saturn Return is part of what fueled your reignited interest in astrology over the past year. I’m sure it’s not uncommon for many people to discover astrology or deepen their understanding of it during this period. **But those of us who are going through it right now or preparing to are all part of a cohort — we all have certain things in common in our chart, we all are living through the events of this day and age and are experiencing a certain level of collective spiritual growth with a common theme.** Why don’t we discuss our experience a little and learn a bit more about what that common theme is for us late millenials as we come of age? **I would be very curious to hear from others about how they have interpreted these transits manifesting in their lives.** I’m going to use my own Saturn Placement (11 degrees Aquarius) as a jumping off point, and generalize outward from there. Obviously, all the transiting aspects I talk about are going to be approximations — your outer planets are possibly at a slightly different degree than mine are, depending on when your exact Return is. But if you’re in your Saturn Return period, you will be experiencing or have already experienced these major aspects exactly at some point.
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The Saturn Return is a period of growth that we all go through — transitioning from our 20s to our 30s — **a period** **that asks us to look back over our lives so far and really start to demand answers from ourselves in order to move forward.** Why do we keep going? What is it that keeps us willing to fight every day? What were our true motivations for our actions in the past, and the true reasons for our behaviors? **We must be honest with ourselves if we want to more forward.**
**Really, in this modern society (in the US anyway), it’s the period where you are finally exiting the final final stages of childhood.** Our 20s are like the last leg of our adolescence that we are now leaving. No one is responsible for us anymore except ourselves. No more excuses, no more slack. You’re not cute anymore. **You have to be ready to catch yourself if you fall. Are you ready to take on that discomfort? You’ll have to.**
**Now, as I said, those of us that are currently going through it belong to a certain snapshot of a generation — we all have Jupiter in Virgo or Scorpio, Saturn in Aquarius, Neptune and Uranus in Capricorn, and Pluto in Scorpio.** Many (if not most) have that star in Capricorn that occurred in the early 90s (Neptune, Uranus, and for some Mars, Venus, Moon and Mercury were all in Capricorn).
Every generation says this, but we are special. The other guys are just jealous. We really are a manifestation of a turning of an age. We will be the last humans alive able to remember a time before smartphones and social media had become second nature. We were old enough to remember Y2K and to remember what the century before ‘felt like’. No one else who will ever be born will have those memories. And someday, we will be the last humans alive to hold those memories first hand. (So don’t tell me we aren’t special, okay?)
…..okay, okay, I know I’m *really* talking it up. There are plenty of people on Earth who live outside of the octopus hands of social media/internet. **But, every astrological cohort is a unique and special manifestation of a snapshot of universal energies from a period in linear time.** It’s pretty amazing to think about, right? At our very being are these beautiful and wild energies that breathe life into everything — manifested into a human form, having experiences, shaping the world around us, and being shaped by it in return. Every man and every woman is a star.
But enough wizard talk. Let’s talk about specific transits. I won’t pretend to be a more advanced astrologer than I am, but I’m going to do my best. I urge you to please add any observations or interpretations of your own, and feel free to challenge mine.
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**Our natal Scorpio Pluto has been getting some attention lately from longer-term transiting planets… Jupiter (square) and Neptune (trine).** Jupiter and Pluto just got finished squaring up and the result has been, for me, an empowering reality check. Our Scorpio Pluto is intimating to some — many agree that it represents an innate gift for accessing the undiluted truth and the ability (and need to) swallow it. **As Jupiter touches Pluto from Aquarius, it seems to urge us to finally take what is rightfully ours.** **What we deserve. To take a seat at the throne of our lives and come into our own.** Demanding nothing less than what is best for us, pushing for the future that we’ve always desired.
With Neptune also having a hand in this formation, I imagine that for some, this could spell a danger of overstepping ourselves or overestimating what’s possible or realistic. Some of us could also fall into an eager overoptimism. On the flipside, **Neptune in Pisces harmonizing with Pluto also signals high levels of intuition and receptivity — to our own emotional needs, to those around us, to the world moreover, and to the spiritual realm.** While we crave ownership of what we feel we’ve earned, we may also feel humbled as we become painfully aware of how necessary compassion is for having a peaceful life.
**At this point in our lives, we are ready to (or need to get ready to) own our experiences, and declare our intentions for ourselves and our lives from this point forward. After years of laying its roots, Saturn has come home to take its place in this throne that Jupiter has set out for us. We just have to steel ourselves to be able to take on the intense rush of higher emotional truth that Pluto and Neptune are serving up. No backing down now. Take ownership over yourself and your life — past, present, and future. Admit where you were wrong or selfish, but no more lamenting over mistakes and flaws. Understand them. Move forward.**
**During this transit, we are learning that humility, kindness, empathy and respect are playing a big role in finding peace. Turns out so much of finding peace is feeling satisfied with the effort you’ve put into to the relationships you care about.** (I’m a Cancer Moon, can you tell?) **And even then, it’s sometimes still not enough. At that point, peace comes from being able to let it go.**
Of course, these are longer term aspects that have been and will continue to be themes unfolding in the background, waiting to be activated on any certain day that a personal planet swings by one of them.
**Speaking of the Moon, it is no doubt the reason I was looking at all this, as it was recently just trine our Pluto on the 19th. How do you feel that recent aspect between the moon and our Pluto manifested in your feelings?** I expect that it brought out some quirks or flaws in our character– those idiosyncricies that are a result of how our psyche grew within its environment. Since we’re talking about Pluto, it’s quite possible that some urge for control over our surroundings surfaced, possibly leading to unresolved frustration, or possibly leading to a much-needed breakthrough with the people close to you where you communicated what your needs are.
**The meaning of “Growing Up” is identifying the kinks in our makeup and learning to handle them responsibly, for our own wellbeing, but also for the wellbeings of those around us.** (Maybe you’re someone who tends to fester over your own negative emotions, and you need to learn when it’s useful to express yourself versus when it’s better to just let them go, for example)
**Going back to Pluto, and that Star in Capricorn many of us have, it’s worth noting that Pluto has been passing over that Star for the past few years.** Back in 2015-2017 it was crossing over our Neptune/Uranus conjunction, and I’d be curious to hear about your experiences on that. For many of us, it probably has/is/will pass over some other personal planets, also. It certainly seems to be acting as a crystallizer of those aspects in our character that are represented by those Capricorn placements. When it crossed Neptune/Uranus, it asked us to dive deep into how we view the world, and how we want to make an impact on it. As it crosses over any inner planets, perhaps it challenges your more personal traits, asking about how you approach your relationships with others, how you manage your inner world, or how you go about achieving your aspirations.
**To top it all off, transiting Pluto is also sextile itself in our chart, so the whole transformative energy is even more heightened there.**
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And I haven’t even mentioned that Uranus has been squaring our Saturn for a while. It is certainly another major part of this puzzle — **As it aspects our Saturn during its return, Taurus Uranus is urging us to look soberly and realistically about our lives and the world we live in.** It wants us to re-evaluate and do what is necessary to make things ship-shape. It needs us to clean house. It doesn’t care if it’s uncomfortable or hard for us. But in fact, it breathes energy and optimism into this whole restructuring process. It’s okay to be excited about changing our life! **With Taurus Uranus, I believe what’s especially pertinent here is changes to our daily lifestyle, the physical space we live in, and the way we approach making money.**
**Uranus was/is/will also trine our Jupiter, bringing new opportunities and ways of looking at the world. I feel that Uranus is our friend in this whole coming-into-our-own process.** It’s imbuing this period with a fresh perspective and making us receptive to positive, necessary change. **Now, I’ve heard that Uranus is giving many people a very hard time right now, and** **I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on how it has manifested during your Return. That goes for every planet and aspect I’ve talked about, of course.**
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**My personal interpretation of this whole configuration is that it wants us to understand and accept that life is pain, in varying degrees. And we should not heap on more pain by lamenting over the pain that’s unavoidable. Unavoidable pain that we must experience makes us into the ineffable beings humans are meant to be.**
I understand that many of us are having a very hard time with their Saturn Return right now, alongside everything else that’s going on in the world, and the picture I’ve painted here could be a mite more optimistic than you’re experiencing it right now. So I apologize if you don’t feel represented. But **I encourage you to please, respond with how your interpretations and experiences differ. What do you think the overarching themes and lessons are?**
**I feel that,** **at the end of this whole period, we will be much stronger and be able to take on more undiluted truth than we used to. Hopefully, we will feel transformed by the power of pain, fear and death. That we will now know the true limits of how far we can and will go to create a good life for ourselves. And I am sure that it is much more than we knew.**
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I’m aware that many believe that outer planet transits don’t materialize in our daily life like inner planet transits do, and that they remain a background theme until they are touched by a quick-moving transiting body. However, I feel that analyzing these background themes can be even more beneficial to our long-term growth than tracking every little movement of the inner planets. Of course, knowing what the inner planets are doing is very important, too, but this is where it becomes more individualized and less generalizeable, and therefore beyond my scope in this post.
If you read this whole thing, well I just thank you. These entries have been something I’ve wanted to do for a while, and I’m very curious to hear from others in the midst of their Return and how they have interpreted these aspects. **I believe that the specific configuration of these major planets right alongside our Saturn’s Return holds a lot of information about us a generation and how we have/are/continue to shape the progression of the society we live in.**
If there is any interest in this post, I would love to make writing them an ongoing, collaborative effort. I know there are many who are more experienced than I am, and I am open to any information or corrections you have to offer. I just ask that you please try not to be rude or belittling in your replies, this is not a contest about who knows more. This is a place to learn things and be intrigued by new perspectives. Thanks again.
