Transit Lab: Saturn Opposition

This transit is one of what we call mid-life transits, happening for people now from the late 30s to early 40s.

If you haven’t heard of it, it’s when transiting Saturn reaches 180 degrees from – opposes – your natal Saturn placement.

We each have one as teenagers, somewhere around 14-15 years old, and then again about 29.5 years later.

(For the record, the other mid-life transits are Uranus opposition Uranus, Neptune square Neptune, and Pluto square Pluto.)

With Saturn, it’s about work, structure, authority, discipline, realism, and other Earthly, practical issues. We can expect someone experiencing this opposition to question if the work she’s doing is going well, makes her happy, and/or is in fact worth doing.

The issue of authority can be related to that of respect, and during this time a person can realize how he or she feels about how he or she is doing with work and in life in general.

If the person is good at what he does, then he might find recognition. If he needs improvement, he might find some obstacles. Saturn’s questions in transit are all about responsibility, authority, and respect, and this transit is a time when a person realizes if these things are focused outwardly at the expense of inner strength and confidence.

For example, if external responsibilities are taken on at the expense of the person’s health, happiness, and future goals, then during this transit she will either begin doubting that she should have those responsibilities or, perhaps, start resenting them. She might find herself seeing drudgery all around her and not being willing to listen to what others want, need, and expect of her.

This transit is all about getting reflection from life, others, work, and relationships how your Saturn project is going: Are you realistic? Do you have goals? Do you have a sense of what you want to do with your life? Are you authoritative in your world? Are you a healthy model of work-play balance, or do you overemphasize or avoid hard work?

The transit lab series of posts – starting early in my blogging days – are a chance for me to teach a general bit on a transit and offer some personal perspectives on just what it is that I’m experiencing. What it is for me might be very different from what it was, is, or will be for you, for the record.

Re my work, I’m self-employed as an astrologer, energy worker, and channel. Recent issues that have come up and caused me to confront how I’m doing in my ongoing development with Saturn themes include:

  1. Frustration over years of delays on the publisher’s end re my true Black Moon Lilith Natal Report. I love this thing, and I want it to get out. I’ve been frustrated for almost 6 years (signed the contract 6.5 years ago, and was told it would be 6 months until release), and angry, and it’s been hard. When I tune into what’s true and best, I feel strongly that I’m not supposed to break the contract, so I haven’t. I realized that it’s too important to me to wait until they automate it, so it’ll be put together by hand like it used to be before I got so angry I stopped selling it earlier in 2016. I put together over 240 reports over the years by hand, and it was dragging me down. Solution: I hired someone to put them together by hand until it’s published at long last.
  2. I receive wonderful feedback from my clients and customers, but always feel I want more community connection … which never seems to work. I applied to be a speaker at UAC 2018 and the other day received a rejection email. It was upsetting as yet another rejection, and it’s sometimes hard in the face of multiple rejections not to take it personally. My girlfriend tried to help by telling me that I’m a maverick and it takes time for the mainstream to accept mavericks, which just made me mad because if my work is good, then it would be accepted. I had anger that day, and tried to regroup and focus on what I love about what I do – Saturn loves when focus on the work and the goal! – and I did feel better and more optimistic.
  3. Then today I received an invitation to be part of AstrologyHub’s 2017 program that will center on educational and forecasting materials related to lunations and other things (stay tuned for details). This is great company to be in, as I was chosen as one of the 10 favorite astrologers of the many thousands in the AH community. So that validation I didn’t get from the UAC committee came via another route, another indication to not take things personally. In the end, I’ll reach many more people through AH, and I’ll get more time to teach during my featured month with AH than I would if I had an almost-hour at the conference.
  4. In general, over the last few weeks, I’ve wondered if I’m headed in the right direction with my work. This point is broader, and more applicable to many people than my specific points above. I’ve had to evaluate what matters to me about this work, and what kind of effect I want to have. There are details about what I do that don’t excite me but seem necessary, and I’ve had to will myself to choose to be okay with them because they serve the larger, longer-term goal. (Saturn loves that!)
  5. One thing I’ve been looking at quite a lot is the list of half-finished books on my mind all the time. I’ve self-published 16, plus 2 natal reports, and there are around 8 books and one natal report somewhat done. I love writing and getting new ideas and perspectives out there, but I’ve felt like the universe has unfairly kidnapped the Lilith report and is holding it hostage. It’s been exhausting, and because of that – let’s just call it pain because that’s what it is – I can’t let myself pour more heart and soul and passion into more writing. This is still causing me Saturnian invitations to get real, because I know I’m holding onto pain that inhibits my ability to meet my long-term goals. It doesn’t matter if there are so many books done already if ideas I’m super excited about are stalled on my computer. Like the Eris and Pluto books, and Living Myth II, and volumes 4, 5, & 6 in The Soul’s Journey series. So I’m still in process with this one, still working on patience with the report delays.
  6. And a general thing: I know I’m not usually patient, and I don’t typically respond well to rules. The last few days I’ve found myself much more willing to take a deep breath and  figure out the best thing to do, including tonight when trying to reinstall Windows on an old computer with a new SSD drive. Something went wrong/stupid at each step, and in the end, it didn’t work. But I just did my research and tried the solutions, and without any frustration, anger, sighing, or breaks to distract myself from feeling stunted. That’s a good sign, and I’m trying to memorize it.
  7. This transit echoes some themes I’ve been working with since March of this year when my progressed Sun entered Capricorn. I’ve been collating, organizing, and packaging some teachings and products into new forms that will last, and until recently felt pretty clueless in it, unsure of what direction to take. The Saturn opposition has helped me see more clearly because I’ve felt that I need to look at my long-term goals and figure out solutions that serve me and others over the long haul. This is happening with classes, as well as with the numerous energy work and meditation tools I’ve developed over the years that I haven’t had time or vision to promote.

I’m sure there’s more, but that’s enough for now. The real lesson with this Saturn transit, I’m seeing pretty clearly, is to get grounded and be less reactive. I actually don’t know what might happen next and what I might be called to do, as I don’t know what solutions to problems I might be able to come up with if I take the time to think through them.