The Saturn in Sagittarius Transit for Creatives : December 2014 - December 2017 - Part I

Saturn is a slow moving outer planet. He takes about 29 years to cover what the Moon does in about 29 days. This makes his movements serious and important. A second chance to get a Saturn transit right will be a long time coming. We want to get it right now.

Saturn is the 2nd largest planet - a planet of contraction (Jupiter, the largest planet, is the planet of expansion so we expand a little more than we contract) - he's about boundaries, responsibilities, karma, commitments, self-control, solitude - the stuff that defines (meaning = outlines) us.


Saturn focuses our will. His work gives us the strength to make our intentions rule our fears, our emotions, our inertia. 

In astrology Saturn is an aspect of the father/authority figure - he takes us back to how we dealt with adults and how adults dealt with us when we were growing up and what we are carrying forward from that. I believe there is also past life stuff here, but you do not have to believe in that to work with Saturn.

How safe do we feel now around people who could judge us? How vulnerable do we feel when we know we haven't done something perfectly or when we know we haven't done something we think we should have done?

Saturn asks if we are working hard enough and can we own that - without guilt or anger or glibness. What are we willing to do to make ourselves respectable? To live up to our responsibilities? To get really, really good at something? What are we willing to give up? Saturn is pictured in the tarot as the Hermit and is the space in our birth chart where we must act alone.

Saturn is the planet of hard work. His creations come through challenge and seriousness and competition and completion. His process is slow and steady and shapes us into a better version of ourselves through hard work, adversity and yes, sometimes lack and loss.

Which is why his transits scare the hell out of everybody!

On December 23rd, Saturn finally left Scorpio and moved into Sagittarius (he does pop back in next summer for a few weeks while retrograde to finish up, but for the most part his journey through the netherworld we call Scorpio is over). He had been in Scorpio since October 5, 2012.

During his journey through Scorpio we dealt, as a collective and in our personal lives, with Scorpio themes - birth, death, abortion, sex, insurance, debt, reproductive issues, divorce, inheritances, taxes, secrecy and privacy issues, crime, marriage laws - we have seen many headlines in the last two and a half years about this stuff and every single life has been touched, some clobbered, with them. These issues may not be settled, but the trajectory - the course they are headed down - most likely is.

Now he has moved on to Sagittarius where he hasn't been since 1985 - 1988. 

Where were we in those years?  

If we are old enough something we started then - something we were maybe very ambitious about and committed to is going to be wrapping up now - we've run the entire 29 year Saturn cycle with it - we get a brand new chapter. 

There will be some similarities between what happens now and what was happening then - and of course if you were born during those years with Saturn in Sagittarius you are about to hit your first Saturn return!

So now we get some new lessons with Sagittarius themes!

Sagittarius rules the BIG picture, expansiveness and exploration, the media, publishing, higher education, teaching, legal matters, weddings, long distance travel, foreigners, people at a distance, import/export, religion, spirituality, faith, politics, philosophy, blinders and blindspots, gambling, know it alls and all or nothing thinking!

Sagittarius is ruled by Jupiter - the only planet larger than Saturn. Jupiter is about faith, too - but Jupiter's faith comes through expansion. Jupiter says "Yes, I have faith that life is good; that I am living the life I came to live. Look at my growing business, my handsome hubby and adorable children, my beautiful home and twice a year vacations in Mexico."

Saturn's approach to faith is a little different; Saturn's faith comes through contraction. He shows us darkness. Maybe he takes away our growing business, our handsome hubby, our vacations in Mexico. Then he looks us straight in the eye and asks, "Do you still have faith?".

This isn't a religious faith (although it could be) - this is about our faith in ourselves, our faith in the universe as a good and kind place, our faith in things working out in the end even while we are staring at certain defeat and failure. 

Although I have jokingly called this a battle between Santa (Jupiter) and Scrooge (Saturn) - this isn't very accurate.

What I really think this transit will be about is us coming up against our limiting beliefs. The house where Sagittarius is housed in our natal chart (birth chart) will be the field of play. We will get to see what we really believe by what happens. I am going to do a whole series on this and our creative businesses.

And if you were born between 1970 through 1984 you were born with Neptune in Sagittarius. At some point over the next three years your creative dreams, faith or bullshit illusions are going to hit a brick wall. This is a whole lot of people. This can change our world. More about that in Part II.

xo all