Billie Krstovic & Studio Athena

PUBLISHED ARTICLES

Saturn return and thirty’s crisis

Astrological guide for the first life’s drama

What you are about to read, is going to be in a plain English, no fancy Astrological terms, no complicated terminology, just plain life talk. Why?

Well, in fifteen years of professional astrological work, I have come across so many people in their late twenty’s and early thirty’s, or in their late fifty’s, which were tearing their hair out, stricken with what they believed to be unbelievable sudden bad luck. None of these people ever heard of a term " Saturn return", and when I mentioned it to them, they have just looked at me with a blank look on their face, as if I was talking some non- understandable language.

"What’s that? " - Was most common reply. So, what is it, and why do we have to know about it anyway?

Let me first give you a few simple facts, which you can use to quickly calculate when this approaches in your own life, as nobody can escape it. Saturn is a planet, which Astrologers use to examine the life lesson for each person by placement in one’s chart. At time of our birth, sky looked on a particular way. Various heavenly bodies stood up there on each side of the sky, some more important then others. All celestial bodies present at that moment which are used in Astrology are placed on the chart and this is called Natal chart, which applies to the whole life. That is a picture, which shows only map of the sky at time of our birth. As time goes on, picture of the actual sky changes, as planets continue to move after we were born. This movement of planets still affects our chart, as we are not separate to the Universe around us. If we see our neighbourhood as our immediate environment, we can presume that transiting planets on the sky are our immediate surrounding in astrological sense. This means that every transiting planet affect us the same way every passer by, or person who knocks on our door, or our lovers, friends and family affect us in our "Earthy " life, this is how planets transiting over our chart affect our astrological influences. As we, in our daily life, take certain amount of time to return home from work, return to place where we started our journey this morning, this is how planets in our chart take time to come back on the same place where they were when we were born. They all take different time to do this. To return! This is when we come to term "return". Considering some of them are so slow, they never come back in one lifetime, and some come back once a year. Influence and meaning of each return is different in importance as much as in nature of its consequences. Saturn return has very bad reputation in both cases. Completely unjust and untrue! Well, even the most popular get bad press from time to time, as far as it goes Saturn gets it all the time!

This is why we have to know more about it!

Saturn takes approximately twenty- nine years to return to its original place in our Natal chart. As he looks at himself face to face for the first time since we were born, this is exactly what we are doing in our life, down here on Earth. Depending in which house in our chart he falls, this will be area of life that will be examined first, or shall we say the most. Chart is divided on twelve houses, or areas, which cover everything from inner self, to finance, love life, children, inheritance, carrier, home, parents, health and so on… Considering that in each house there is few different areas of your life, grouped in clusters, the whole cluster will be affected and every and each part of the chart which have any connection with it. This can be very interconnected and complicated at times. This is why people have feeling there is a whole streak of bad luck affecting many areas of their life. Why is it always bad? Does it have to be?

Let’s make an experiment! Pick up this magazine in your hand and have a walk around your home. It is not important how long you have been living here. Now, have a look around and answer few simple questions. Do you like placement of a content in as much as you liked it when you originally placed it there? Is there anything in your home that you already wanted to move, remove or replace just not managed to do it as jet? Is there anything that is irritating you on a daily basis, you just have no time or money to get rid of it or buy replacement? Or is it someone who lives with you who don’t agree to that change? Would they leave your home if you make some radical changes to make yourself happy and confortible? Have you answered yes to any of these questions? Either way, this shows your attitude to your own happiness, in microcosm sort of way. It shows how do you deal with your life in general. Now, Saturn will make you do this with your whole life, and with the area that is placed in, in particular! Are you ready? Most of us are not! Most of us even don’t know he is doing it! So what can we do?

This, we can apply back to our home situation again. If you can imagine that you have not replaced that chair for so long, purely due to the fact you could not be bothered. One day you come home sit on it and it brakes underneath you! What can happen? You can have a good laugh at best or injure yourself at worst. Either way, you will have to buy a new one or you will have no chair to sit on, so to speak.

This is how is it in life with Saturn return. You have to change things! Anything that is too old, outlived, anything that bothers you and stops you from growing as a individual it will have to go, or it will brake. When chair brakes, it’s a bit different to when relationship brakes down, but if you look at it you will find out that it broke long time ago, you just had no courage to change it. How many times have I heard these sentences: " I have done everything possible to save this relationship! I have lost all my friends over it and it still does not work! I have even fallen out with my family in order to please! Now I have no life, no home, no friends, what am I going to do? " Sounds familiar? Read on! Saturn did not take this person’s friends, partner and family away, Saturn only pointed out that there is no more left to give! No more room for growth, personal growth! So, it had to go. To make room for something better!

Another common situation is when people lose their job. Ten out of ten times, once asked about the job in more detail, my clients confess that they have either hated the job itself, or have been badly treated and under-appreciated in their working environment. Once they think about it, they admit if there were something else available they would take it long ago. Ten out of ten times they never looked for something else! Was it suppose to turn up on their doorstep on it’s own accord?

Most people ask me how can one avoid this happening to them, is it all possible. It is, to a very large extent.

First of all, we have to see Saturn return for what it really is. Is it time in our life when some bad evil planet is going to bring us bad luck and take away all necessities away from us? If we see it that way and just sit there helplessly, doing nothing, this just might be what is going to turn out to be. Luckily not for too long, as once we are made redundant, as if by magic, ideal job, we have never dreamed of having, appears out of thin air, and we can not believe our luck. This does not happens immediately, as Saturn is a relatively slow moving planet but it does come eventually. This time, Saturn’s lesson has shown us to look for things we do like and will take us to the path of making solid foundations to a life we really want to live. So, thirty- something out there, don’t despair, it will all make sense eventually!

What Saturn return really is, it is time in our life when we are going trough our first real rebellious phase. Remember teen years, spots and tantrums? That was a rehearsal! Saturn return is a real thing!

As we rebelled against authority of our parents, teachers and society and its formalities then, now we are rebelling against anything that we have personally created in our lives, while we were still guided by our upbringing. As teenagers we did it while confused about our identity, this time we have enough life experience to know what we really want. Only problem here is that this time we have our own choices to rebel against. This is hard. It is as if we first have to admit to ourselves that we have already failed in what we have done so far. Wrong job in age of thirty? Wrong marriage with two kids? What a disaster! Really? Don’t forget that Saturn will make another trip in another twenty- nine and a half years, for your second Saturn return and then you will be fifty- eight! How about that for a disaster? This is why it is so important to get your first one right. It is much easier to change your life in your thirty’s then in your fifty’s. This is common sense.

There is certainly a need to explain this theme of failure in process of a Saturn return. Failure and fear of failure is "saturnian" characteristic in its negative aspect. During Saturn return we are not really admitting to ourselves that we have failed in our choices, even it feels like that. What we are admitting it is that our needs and wants have changes from what they were before. There is a difference. While we maybe liked things, situations or people we brought in to our lives before thirty years of age, often this was what we thought we meant to be doing. Life we meant to be living, so as our parents did, on the way continuing our family values as a group. Now, we are becoming individual in his/hers own right, which might find all the values with which one was brought up, irrelevant to their personal happiness. This results in conflict with environment, which inevitably brings feeling of failure and not fitting with society. This is only an illusion. Maybe so, but it is so real in life that stops people attempting any change at all till it is very late, sometimes too late.

Very often I suggest to people to have their year horoscope done for twenty-nine or thirstiest birthday. Yearly horoscope would tell them what is the area of life most affected, how can this influence areas from other houses, timing and how to deal with it. In reality, people have all this done then they go home and still do nothing about it. They are back six month later, in the middle of some kind of disaster and asking for help. Astrologer can not help more then give relevant information, the rest is up to a person.

I have realised from my clients experience, and also from my own Saturn return, that reason for this behaviour is huge fear unknown to people before this time occur in their life. It is not just intensity of it, but quality of it. It is feeling as if someone is striping every inch of yourself and throwing it away. It is psychological nakedness! Even worse, it is the fact that one resist change with all his/her might, but in the same time feel annoyingly desperate to change his/hers life with such unbearable urgency! It is this contradiction that is hardest part. This also eats precious time in which to act on the problem!

You have made a few wrong choices, so what? That’s life! It is what are you going to do about it that Saturn is concerned with. Many people find out that if they don’t go with the flow, and don’t admit to themselves that they are not happy in certain situation, the whole thing falls apart at this time anyway. In this case we have much less control over it, as we have waited unprepared till it has actually happened. Saturn is very generous in his influence. He will, and this is fact, give us a plenty of warnings. We will feel more aware of all the areas in our life which are not working for us, much more then usual. Feeling of dissatisfaction and restlessness is another common warning sign. It is important to look at the cause of this feelings and then act on it. Saturn is a wise teacher, he is a God of time and he doesn’t like hasty decisions. This is why he will give you plenty of time to gather your thoughts and make your decisions. He has never hurried anyone, therefore unfortunately, people during this transit behave more like "saturnian" types, they also, take time to act on it in fear of wrong decision, sometimes too long.

Bit of a vicious circle? Well, yes, but if you are aware of all this, then it all comes much easier. Of all people that I have seen trough their Saturn return, ones that had least ties in their life were the ones that lived it trough with least problems. Reason for this is that anything that ties us down at this time can feel like a prison. Anything that limits our choices, and anyone else we have to take in consideration while making them. This is yet another Saturn’s tool on a way to freedom and a happy life in which we can be true to ourselves. This is when we come back to your home picture. Do you think you want to have another look? Do you still like that vase on the very corner of the very top shelf? One, which you can not really see as it is almost hidden from everyone’s site, and it looks like it is going to fall down because it sits in a dark corner on the very edge of the shelf? One which was present for Christmas two years ago, and it is still there just because it came from your mother in law? If you hate it get rid of it! It will only fall on someone’s head most likely yours! And yes, do it now!