posted December 16, 2008 03:55 PM         

Saturn is one weird planet. It spends most of its time trying to convince you that it's really mean. And then at the end it hands you a big fat gift to make your dreams come true. It reminds me of a person I knew who opposed his daughter's plans for college with true Saturnian sternness. She responded like a Saturn person herself, and scraped and saved up her money to attend on her own, in spite of his wishes. On the day she was to start school, the Saturnian dad suddenly presented her with enough money to pay for an entire year of college.

Why does Saturn act like this? Does it want to make sure you're really determined? Does it want to test your resourcefulness? Does it just like jacking people around for no good reason? Or does it have a heart of gold underneath its stern exterior?

It's hard to say, but it's helpful to remember Saturn's habit of turning out to be the good guy in the end. Old sayings like "it's always darkest before the dawn," and "every cloud has a silver lining" come in handy when dealing with Saturn. Saturn can go out of its way to convince you that you will never ever ever find true love, and then reward you at the end of a harrowing journey through the back alleys of romantic frustration with your knight in shining armor, a beautiful engagement ring, and something that looks a lot like the happily ever after of fairy tales. Go figure.

Most of the time, getting Saturn to cough up the big rewards involves determination, persistence, trial and error, fortitude, patience, dedication to a goal, hard work, frustration, difficulty, and a certain lack of good feeling. You can think of it as a Zen master planet. There you are, all hot for enlightenment, and Saturn insists you start by washing out your rice bowl conscientiously. No shortcuts with this big guy. It strips everything back to practical essentials and builds from there.

These days, Saturn is traveling the terrain associated with the sign of Leo. In this sign, it has a tendency to take on knotty issues of identity. No matter what solar house Leo may represent in your chart, Saturn usually finds a way to associate it with your core identity. If it takes aim at your 2nd house of money related matters, it tends to ask you to define your identity with regards to money more carefully. It doesn't necessarily ask you to make a big change. It asks you to be an individual and make your own decisions based on your own core values. Saturn's not real big on getting you a lot of help in the sector it travels either. It asks you to figure it out for yourself.

Sometimes it asks you to curtail activity in the sector it travels; sometimes it asks you to ramp it up. If its crawling through your solar 4th house and you already over-identify with your home life, Saturn will try to get you to redefine your identity by restricting your options in your previous comfort zone. If it's in your 7th house of relating to others and relating to others is not your strong suit--Saturn may ask you to take serious action to gain some mastery in this area. Again, Saturn leaves it up to you to figure out whether you need to pay more attention to the sector it travels, or less.

Doesn't necessarily sound like a lot of fun. Sometimes it isn't. But, boy, when you finally get the hang of dealing with knotty sector (whatever it may be for you), do you ever feel satisfied. You just don't get that sense of satisfaction and pride with things that come easy. You don't get that feeling of accomplishment, or of confidence in yourself without the kind of help Saturn brings. The worst things eventually become the best when Saturn's at the helm.

There's another story to illustrate Saturn in Leo. It's the story of Scrooge. Miserly Scrooge is the quintessential representation of Saturn and its capacity for transformation. Scrooge starts out in Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" by being one mean old stingy guy. The Ghost of Christmas Past shows Scrooge why his heart is so hard. Loneliness, abandonment, lack of love and sympathy--all of these things in Scrooge's past made him believe that it was just too darn scary and painful to open himself up to other people. A look at Christmas Present shows Scrooge that in spite of all his efforts to protect himself, the present ain't all that great either. The Ghost of Christmas Future seals the deal by letting Scrooge know that the path he is on will never work. It only leads to damnation in the end.

In the story, Scrooge, scared and overwhelmed, sees the light. He remembers the most important thing about himself. He remembers that he always wanted love, to get it, to share it, to feel it, to express it, to dance around reveling in it with the joyous spirit that Christmas represents. And that's exactly what he does in the end. He showers his formerly abused employee, Bob Cratchit, with generosity and good spirit and receives it back in return.

This is Saturn in Leo. This is all of us. We all have bitter and negative experiences. We all seek to protect ourselves from more of the same by reducing our capacity to feel. We do this to survive. Saturn is all about survival and the things we do in the name of its necessities. That's half the story.

The other half of the story is that this form of self-protection never works in the long run. Our not-so-great past because our almost-as-bad present. Our not-too-wonderful present cuts off our future from everything we most truly want. Leo is associated with the heart, the capacity to love, and to give, to be generous and noble, and joyful and confident in ourselves. Saturn in Leo demands cranking open those closed parts of our hearts (everyone has them) so they can see the light again.

posted December 16, 2008 04:31 PM         

Took me a long long time to come to terms with him. We have made tremendous progress and I don't hate the old ******* anymore.
I think we came to a deal of sorts.

I actually am hoping he gets off my back now, and I am hoping I have learned my lessons, as my whole chart shows the deal and I quit fighting it and grew up in certain areas.

posted December 17, 2008 03:10 AM         

Look at the lexigram of Saturn:
SATURN: U TURN TRANS N STAR, meaning it is turning into a "star" towards the Trans-Neptunian objects.