Saturn in Scorpio: Teacher and Guide or Devilish Taskmaster?

With Saturn turning Retrograde on February 19th until July 8th it’s time to look again at what we can learn from this  planet’s passage through Scorpio.  On our earthly planet of choice we can view its influence according to our own inner attitude.  We can see it as a teacher and guide or as an old devilish taskmaster who dictates with impunity hard, burdensome chores for us to complete.

I am suggesting that we take the former attitude especially with Saturns passage through Scorpio where the lessons may feel intense and of life/death importance.  Saturn always brings a focus to whatever sign it is passing through for 2.5 years.  Saturn contracts that area in order that a sharper focus be established.  Saturn tests it and requires us to spend some time working it through.  So if we want to learn the most right now what is the subject matter we are studying?  It’s time to buckle down and learn about Scorpio!  So stop right now and pull out your own birth chart.  Where is Scorpio?  What area of life experience is under the jurisdiction of this sign for you? Do you have planets in this sign?  Do you have any angles with Scorpio on them?  Saturn is going to direct you to learn something here that requires patience, discipline, and a willingness to accept some responsibility.  You may have to work for what you gain in this area.

Scorpio has many themes, so I’ll try to suggest a few of them for you to look at:

Intimacy:  The book I just reviewed, Exaltation, and the interview I wrote up with Jacqueline Sa certainly brought the theme of erotic intimacy to the fore, but intimacy is also about closely integrating ourselves with someone else in any number of bonded ways.  We may bond with another to work on a project, or to create a business with them.  We may want to deepen our connection with our life partner in new and meaningful ways.  Saturn is now asking that we look at what is working and what isn’t, or perhaps to look at what has separated us from those we actually started out being intimate with.

Perhaps it’s time to re-define true intimacy for ourselves during this Retrograde period.  How close and merged is comfortable?  For some of you it may be that you want out of a highly uncomfortable situation.  In other words; there is no comfort!  You’ll see it under Saturn.  Intimacy, after all, should feel cozy shouldn’t it?  If there’s no warm fuzzy feeling, perhaps it’s time to separate, which is also a Saturn function.  In business it would be more a feeling of kinship and comfortable working conditions with others.  Can you truly join in with a spirit of solidarity?  Is the bond of fellowship strong enough to weather through disagreements?  Do you feel respected in your collaborative efforts with others?  Scorpio is that place where relationships must go deeper.  Saturn will test those depths for authenticity and value whether in your personal life or your professional lives.

Power:  What kind of power do you have in your life right now?  Do you feel empowered in a way that supports the area of life where Scorpio falls in your birth map.  Let’s take an example here:  Scorpio on your 5th house.  Are you feeling empowered to be creative?  Can you express yourself in a powerful way?  Is your heart bursting with potency as you creatively express?  Saturn is teaching you something about your own confidence right now to live your life with authenticity and love.

If you aren’t feeling much power how can you build it within yourself?  A small child naturally feels a lot of high energetic power if they have received enough nourishment and love.  This lack of self-conscious power is joyous and refreshing.  Power is a force in life that keeps us charged with potency.  It can be life affirming rather than destructive.  Saturn is testing the way in which we engage in power, how we use it, and to what ends while it moves through Scorpio.

On a collective scale we are, once again, focusing on power and the use of it.  Back in 1983-1985, when Saturn was also in Scorpio, we were dealing big-time with nuclear energy, a true Plutonian subject.  I was struck by how many times the USSR (Russia at that time) and the USA were doing their nuclear (Scorpio) tests (Saturn).  In 1983 it was every single month for USA and over 14 times for the USSR.  In 1984 it was at least 16 times for the USSR, but only about 7 times for the USA.  By 1985 it was subsiding for both countries, however I was intrigued by how many times Great Britain was using the Nevada test site for their own detonations of highly radio-active bombings.  Paradoxically, the nations of the world were bent on limiting (Saturn) nuclear weapons.  In 1983, for example, the US House Foreign Affairs Committee endorsed a nuclear weapons freeze (Saturn) with the USSR as anti-nuke demonstrations continued, including a 14-mile human chain formed in England.  By 1985 the Pentagon had accepted the theory that an atomic war would cause a ‘nuclear winter’. (More Saturn/Scorpio)  Hmmm…

Also, in 1985 twenty countries signed the UN Treaty outlawing torture, but not the USA.  Power; at what price is it wielded?  Thirty years later we are dealing with the nuclear issues once again, as well as torture issues.  The recent North Korea defiant stand against the USA regarding nuclear weapons is a case in point.  The use of ‘enhanced interrogative techniques’ has also been condoned just this year by the US.  These are but two examples of the use of power used collectively which truly do fit the life/death themes of Scorpio.

Saturn Flyby

In bringing up these broader themes I am trying to help you to see how cycles return.  Back in 1983-85 Pluto had also entered Scorpio, so there was an instinctual force at work which 30 years later has grown into something much greater, and with graver consequences for the entire planetary body of humanity.  Now we have both Saturn and Pluto in mutual reception (Saturn is in Pluto’s sign of Scorpio, and Pluto is in Saturn’s sign of Capricorn) and together they work with dogged persistence justifying any means to reach an end result.  But at what price?

Each of us as individuals now face both our own personal issues around power, wherever Saturn happens to be impacting our life as well as Pluto, but also the enormous collective issues of power which will decidedly bring either further well being to our selves and our progeny or further destruction.  There are so many injustices merited out today through violations of human rights and the health of all life on this planet by governments who continue to misuse their power.

Uranus in Aries squaring Pluto and widely inconjunct Saturn might well be represented by that great man, Harry Belafonte, who stated in his acceptance speech for the NAACP’s highest honor, the Spingarn Medal, “We must unleash radical thought”.  One quote from this speech strikes a chord for me about a truth Saturn in Scorpio is trying to teach us around power and justice:

“The pursuit of justice is all I have ever known. In reading a book, ‘The Life of Theodore Roosevelt,’ I came upon a quote where he said that when the state finds itself moving away from its commitment to the rights of the citizen, when those rights are being trampled and misguided, when there are those who would wrest from the Constitution the quality that it attempted to give all of us, then citizens of the nation have not only the obligation, but the right to challenge the state and those who run it.  And he said, if we fail to do that, if we fail to meet those moral criteria, then we the citizens should be charged with patriotic treason.’ And that struck me because what we’re really on is a journey to end the treasonous behavior of the contemporary political scene…”

Rising in India

Scorpio must deal with power and the right use or abuse of it.  Scorpio type people have to learn to master that power within their own beings.  Now with Saturn in Scorpio we all have a duty to address the misuse of power wherever we experience it.  A very positive example of this has been the amazing work and leadership of Eve Ensler with her VDAY global activist movement to end violence against women and girls for the past 15 years.  This was a monumental undertaking that achieved empowerment for women all around the globe to rise up and give voice to the feminine right to ‘thrive, rather than merely survive’ culminating in this years Valentine’s Day One Billion Risingin over 205 countries.  If you didn’t see one in your local community, check it out on the web.  This was a monumentally powerful event because the vibration set in motion will have an impact whose positive results may surely be in evidence for years to come.

Linor Abargil

The feminine does seem to be rising up and demanding greater justice during this Saturn passage.  Another example is Linor Abargil who was Miss World in 1998 just 7 weeks after being violently raped by a serial rapist.  Her subsequent life work has been “For anyone who is a victim of rape, I am stepping forward to meet you and to help you tell your story.”

Thanks to the work of Cecilia Peck, the daughter of Gregory Peck, this work is now a reality in the documentary Brave Miss World.  Please go to their website to learn more.

Money as a Shared Resource
This theme is certainly a biggie.  It ties in the two previous themes nicely because money, as energy, does need to flow and when someone hoards it or prevents others from accessing it all sorts of problems arise.  Equally as destructive is when someone misuses it to the detriment of others they are in relationship with.  Debt and bankruptcy come under Scorpio’s jurisdiction, but so does good financial planning.  With Saturn we now have major lessons in how we share our resources with others and where are those resources being used, misused, and abused?  Since Saturn deals with cause and effect, many are now dealing with the results of past abuses or misuses of handling money.  On the other hand, others are reaping the rewards for their hard-earned efforts.

This is definitely a time to learn good money management skills as well as handling financial mergers of various types.  Saturn tests for what is workable and practically possible.  Joint ventures can be solidified during this time or disbanded if no longer viable.  Responsibility seems to be the key to all shared resources right now.  Are both parties acting responsibly for the good of all?  This is true on all levels from a married couple to a large corporation and their shareholders.  It’s even true on governmental.  It’s called fiscal responsibility.  Again, we see the monumental issues rising now that need to be handled and resolved, and we have a ways to go with all of this.  Saturn won’t leave Scorpio until late December of 2014, and even then it will back-track for a final mop up from mid-June of 2015 until it finally moves on by mid-September of 2015, not to return until 2041 in this sign.

The Great Mysteries and Rites of Alchemical Transformation
Saturn can be a truly great teacher for all initiates into the hidden realms usually veiled from conscious penetration of which Scorpio has dominion over.  The true seeker now can delve more deeply into all esoteric knowledge and find answers if willing to persist with discipline and organized effort.  Like the Hermit, Saturn is one’s guide up that daunting mountain to the top where the summit brings its own reward in terms of awareness through achievement.

A good example of this type of work is the book Veneficium by Daniel A. Schulke.  Mr. Schulke is a researcher and scholar who is writing about “magic, socery, and the occult dimensions of plants.  In particular his work concentrates on the vital mystical communion between magical practitioner and the spirit world, as extant in folk magic and charming traditions worldwide.”  How very Saturn in Scorpio!

Voyager Probe

Another analogy on a different front might be our exploration of deep space.  Back in ’82-85 many Challenger, Pioneer, and Space Shuttle launches took place.  Astronauts and cosmonauts were orbiting for as long as 237 days in highly demanding and confined spaces.  The probing of the mysterious space surrounding us continued unabated and in 1984 the first planet outside our own solar system was discovered.

Saturn tries to define and bring into form what in Scorpio was heretofore unfathomable, even incomprehensible.   There are yet inner and outer mysteries to be experienced as real.  If you want to learn further secrets of the Universe, there is no better time than now to enroll in a Mystery School near you!

There is much left to be covered on this theme, but I will save it for another write-up.