SATURN ENTERS PISCES: Martyrs in a sunken city

Ancient astrologers would sometimes associate Saturn, in certain configurations, with seafaring professions, but the association of Saturn with the ocean is nuanced. Saturn is not Neptune, and the connection is quite different. 

Seafaring over long distances is dangerous and isolating, rules on the ship are taken seriously.  The ship’s voyage requires discipline and grueling hard work of sailors.

In Pisces season we see the Bosun, Saturn, losing his grip on what he’s doing and why. Emotional issues come up for which he has no answers. In his attempts to restore order, he may turn to the whip to provide lashes upon himself and others, only to discover- to his horror- that the pain turns to pleasure, even epiphany. 

Saturn’s 2 rulerships, Capricorn and Aquarius, along with Pisces make up part of the Celestial See along the Yellow Road of the Ecliptic. These are the Winter months of the zodiac, the deep, dark, cold period in the Northern Hemisphere when the Life Force of the Goddess is underground, in hibernation. When the Sun is in Saturn’s territories, days are short and nights are long. This is the time of introversion, introspection and adversity: rules must be followed, resources must be conserved, and the Tree of Life dare not send up a shoot for fear that the organism as whole will be compromised. Life’s processes go underground, the outer world is still and quiescent, and often treacherous, icy and blanketed with snow.

Saturn’s control begins to dissolve as the ice melts, and the scent of Life’s sexy potential begins to permeate. But it is still only potential. 

Pisces is often associated with the 12th house in astrology, which is a house of asceticism, introversion, isolation, imprisonment, hidden enemies, psychological illness, self examination and release, dreams and visions. It is deeply semiotic and hypnogogic. This is territory that Saturn works in: he is in his Joy in the 12th house in any chart.

Pisces shares themes with this house, but is NOT equal to the 12th house. Signs have some affinity for certain houses, but astrology is far more nuanced than that.  

Saturn is all about the internalization of rules and the preservation of established structures, and making do under adverse conditions. Saturn is the epitome of the superego in the best and worst sense. 

In Pisces season, we are still deeply introverted, but the impending promise of the Fertile year to come begins to overwhelm us. We have lived through the adversity of winter and the sense of anticipation of abundance is undeniable. The harshness of winter may leave us weak, and Saturn favors the weak and the lame, the aged and the downtrodden. There are definitely areas of agreement between Saturn and the territory of Pisces: this Venn diagram overlap focuses mostly on isolation, inward searching, psychological purgation, martyrdom and self-negation. The areas of conflict and disharmony between archetypal Saturn and Pisces are much larger.

Saturn in Pisces finds his authority slowly, perhaps even suddenly eroded. Sandcastles wash away with the incoming tide. Even well established cities of granite and limestone can be submerged by deluge: if we should happen upon an underwater palace by chance, we may be lucky if we can explore it once, much less ever find it again. And as we imagine what this sunken city may have been, we risk nostalgia and atavistic attachment to a fabled past. 

Saturn makes us face our past. 

The immersive Piscean waters make things murky, emotional and unstable in ways that distort and degrade the clear vision and firm boundaries that Saturn works to create. And Neptune’s presence in Pisces adds murk, fantasy and toxic delusion to this scenario.

Saturn rules a Cardinal sign, Capricorn, and exalts in Libra, another Cardinal sign. He rules fixed Aquarius, and has an elemental affinity for Air and Fire signs. 

Pisces is a mutable sign, and mutability is transition. Saturn, above all, hates change. Saturn has no affinity for water signs, despite his rule over the Celestial See. Saturn is in exile in Cancer, the fertile and pregnant water sign of the Moon.  

Saturn eats children.

Saturn will be in Pisces for two and a half years, and this time promises a degradation of authority and a feeling of an impending change of story- a sea change. This celestial move from an Aquarian, collectivist, socially-bound point of view to a Jovian- inspired, faith-based lens will demonstrate the delusion, weakness and irrelevance of those in power who are propped up by dogmatic and rigid ideologies. The use of emotional manipulation by those who would corral us into socially-engineered herds at one another’s throats will be ratcheted up to new heights. But their techniques of manipulation will become more and more obvious.

This placement offers us the opportunity to examine how we deal with loss of control, personally and in groups. We are confronted 24/7 with stories of rampant oppression, injustice,  exploitation, environmental degradation, cruelty, war, corruption and deceit. What is our relationship to these things- how do we participate in a world that may appear more and more to be a prison realm? Do we immerse ourselves in the emotional darkness that these things can bring to us as the news reminds us of our irrelevance, smallness and weakness? Do we yield emotionally to become trauma bonded with the demos, the herd that charges this way and that to alleviate its feelings of responsibility for these terrible things? 

Can we even see that we are being triggered and traumatized by manufactured crises for a reason? Fear and hopelessness breed self-hatred, and those who hate themselves do not advocate for themselves. Self-hatred is a state of infantilism, of emasculation and powerlessness. 

But is just a feeling. A socially contagious feeling that is reinforced by lawn signs and flags proclaiming our hard-won virtue, earned when we bravely “condemn hate” and stand with… whoever is oppressed this week. Whether their interests are in line with ours- or completely at odds- no matter, in fact we gain more virtue by martyrdom in the name of something that calls for our total annihilation. 

How do we switch from the logically-oriented, intellectual left-brained collectivist revisionism of Aquarius to the right-brained, briny depths of emotional Pisces?  And what do we do when we realize that our secular and religious leadership is being driven not by logic, science, compassion, progressive and community-minded values but by disembodied corporatism, apocalyptic fear-mongering posthumanism and eugenics? 

As we enter a time of profound impending change on a collective level, government and self proclaimed authority figures reveal themselves to be utterly corrupt and captured by internationalist corporate and ideological interests. Saturn in Pisces embodies this corrosive immersion into collective delusion: a new communitarian religion has been prefabricated for us, and we are now frogs in this toxic ideological gumbo that is coming to a rapid boil. 

But this situation is far less dire when we simply advocate for our own immediate and long term interests and resist the tidal pull into trauma-based mind control. Our personal power relies on one thing: seeking the truth. Above all else.  Emotions are to be honored and given credence-when they are ours, truly arising from our individual being and not from screen time and instinctual herd compliance, and newly concocted brown shirt Woke religiosity. 

Saturn is an archetype that serves humanity, like all others, because he represents a swath of our psyche that cannot be denied. We serve ourselves when we have enough circumspection to realize that the archetypes are in flux: they are not our jailers, nor are they our messiahs. Saturn in Pisces warns us of deluded saviors, martyrs lost at sea, immersion into collective delusion, paranoia and self-negation. 

Consider yourself warned.