Have you ever wondered how does it feel to lose the structure of your life? The structure that keeps you going and evolving just like all the creatures on this planet?
In the next months, we will face a reversal of time and reinvention of personal understanding of what time actually is. Saturn – a planet that rules over time and maturation, will go retrograde until 24th of December this year. When we look at the Saturn we see a planet with rings around it, it symbolically gives us a sense of boundaries and limitations. It is the last planet that is possible to be seen with a naked eye, which invites us to think of it as some sort of an end, some sort of completion.
Saturn basically keeps us grounded and rooted in reality. Without restriction that comes from Saturn, we wouldn't be able to store our thoughts and exist on the material plane. We wouldn't be able to look back at our experiences and create choices, new choices enriched by our personal wisdom. Many fear Saturn and his effects, maybe because it forces us to be responsible for our own maturation and growing up, what may be really hard when there are so many opportunities to play around.
During the Saturn retrograde cycle, we are invited to look at our own “ground control” and observe where is our life going. Are we blind followers of other agendas, or are we aligned to our own inner-compass?
There are two ways in which the energy of Saturn is present in our lives:
The Outer reality and The Inner reality.
The Outer reality is connected with the external authorities, laws and regulations that keep our society and world in a structure. These are also any external authorities that impose on us some kind of structure and limitations that we need to obey. Saturn is an earth sign that is why it is able to provide us with a material structure of this world, a structure and a form. It is a physical, traditional and material world. It is a financial and societal success one can achieve in the eyes of society at large.
The Inner reality is connected to our conscience. Our consciousness is an overseer that navigates us to live accordingly to the reason for our existence on the material plane. Whenever you feel that it is “right” to do something this and not another way, your overseer is speaking to you. It is an inner-dialogue that is here to guide us through the dimension of time, by making decisions and choices that bring us closer to the purpose of our lives.
When Saturn goes retrograde it is pointing out to the part of the psyche that is responsible for our Inner reality. It gives us time to see and acknowledge the balance between the two points of mental origin. We may find ourselves off track, following the lead and demands of society and external authorities, forgetting about our individual lives but we may also totally ignore the system and process of material structuring and find ourselves struggling for survival and social acceptance. None of the above should be performed in excess. There is a healthy balance between the two, that can be reached with the help of the planetary cycle of Saturn. As we know, time in astrology is cyclical. There are crucial moments in the life of the human being when our responsibility is tested. The timing is key here.
Process of maturation and gaining of wisdom from Saturn is closely related to our age and experience we have already gained. On average, a human being is able to experience 3 planetary cycles of Saturn. At the end of each cycle of Saturn that lasts approximately 29 years we are forced to make a life progress report. Our Inner reality calls us to analyse and extract the wisdom coming out of the experiences we have gone through the entire cycle. We are able to give ourselves feedback and see how well we were balancing between our inner and external authorities. The Life Progress report is also called a Saturn Return, much feared by many astrology enthusiasts. Saturn is a great teacher, and he never punishes his students unreasonably. If he puts us through the times of stress and increased responsibility it is probably because he tries to force us to look within. When we cannot handle our Outer Reality, maybe we went out of tune with our Inner Reality, ignoring our personal life purpose. And on the other hand, when we don't have problem with the Outer world probably we are in touch with our essence, and we will be rewarded for our time spent on inner development and self-mastery. This is what karma means in essence, and this is a law of action-reaction presented in the human psyche. We are all influenced by the ringed planet, and we all live together in the realm of Saturn.
We may struggle for an outer recognition, or we may struggle to recognize ourselves – both hardships will be rewarded accordingly.
Responsibility is yours.
Responsibility is Saturn.
Bart Ptolemy