Saturn Return: You Will Survive
Astro-commentary, Saturn Return survival tips, and meandering miscellany from the Saturn Sisters, authors of SURVIVING SATURN'S RETURN
What's the Saturn Return?
There is nothing merely socio-cultural about the pain of turning thirty. Astrologers have known for many centuries that it takes 29.5 years for the planet Saturn to make its orbit around the sun. That's why this crisis is called the "Saturn Return". When Saturn moves back to the place it was the moment you were first born, you are metaphorically reborn, but not before you are put through a series of tests. Choose your metaphor — meat grinder, crucible, tornado — anyone approaching their thirtieth birthday is already in the process of transforming, if they know it or not. And most of us don't jump up to shake Saturn's hand. (Order your Saturn Return astrology chart.)
When you're born, Saturn occupies a certain space in your chart (the basic astrological thumbprint of your soul.) Consider this a roadmap to your inner and outer world. Dependent on Saturn's place in one of the twelve sectors, or signs of the Zodiac, astrologers garner much information about specific issues you face over the course of your life. What you're afraid of, in particular. Also the road blocks likely show up in your travels. Saturn makes you feel your wounds. Circumstances that you faced in childhood and adolescence return screaming for you attention at the Saturn Return, forcing you to deal with them. Saturn is symbolic of what you think is missing from your life, based on past experience. Whatever your insecurities, your Saturn placement will alert you to the causes and the cures. More than anything, Saturn's place in your chart shows you which lessons you came here to learn. (Find out where the planet Saturn was when you were born.)
Saturn is probably not your A-list planet, as he is connected with such pleasantries as dentistry, divorce, broken bones, hair loss, authority figures, and aging. He has earned the reputation of cosmic taskmaster. (The depiction of Saturn that hangs in the Musee Du Prado in Madrid, painted by Goya, presents him as a monster, dark and bloodied, swallowing his children whole. This is not a party any of us would want to attend, frankly.) He was originally known as Kronos, and in the Greek myth, he did indeed eat his children to prevent Zeus from usurping his power. This is all a reminder to be humble in the face of both success and adversity. If the Saturn Return teaches us anything, it's that we should never give away the authority in our lives. Saturn reminds us that time is indeed ticking; that it's now or never if we want to accomplish anything in this world. (For more on the mythology of Saturn, explore Mythology.)
If you're in your mid-to-late twenties or even in your early to middle thirties, you are close to the heart of your Saturn Return, and are probably feeling the crush of Saturn's black boot more than you ever have before. If everything feels like chaos, if your relationships are breaking down and you're questioning your career, your friendships, and your very life, it is likely that it's just the ripples of your Saturn Return descending. Although men experience Saturn Returns as well, it's vital that women look deeply at their father issues during this time. This is because Saturn symbolizes the father (personally and universally), and can set us up with very particular responses to the men in our lives, as we attempt to fix whatever was broken in our relationship with our dads.
As we hit the Saturn Return, we are women about to leap off the cliff of little-girldom. We feel estranged from external support systems. Now we can't be taken care of by daddy, boss, boyfriend, husband, priest, or doorman. We have to learn to fend for ourselves, and figure out what truly constitutes the ground below us. What internal resources do we draw upon for a safe landing if we are to make this leap? Once we finish our Saturn Return, we usually have a much better idea.
Saturn and Contemporary Culture
Our culture condones the phony notion that we're mini-adults when we graduate from college. Off we go into the world, to create our own reality TV series. When we're still in our twenties, it sort of feels like that. As if we're trying on costumes in order to figure out which lifestyle fits best. Some of us change careers and boyfriends as often as we get fresh manicures. Some of us get stuck early, in marriages, jobs, bad situations of all sorts. Others seem to be having a grand old time. But no matter how much fun some claim to be having, women of this age tend to freak out, en masse. (Men do, as well, but the cultural impositions they face are different.) Even though marriage and children are delayed as each generation progresses, many of us are still stuck in the moldy consciousness of our parents and grandparents. If we haven't met our mate by the time we turn thirty, we may never, we secretly fear. Weddings are often dreaded events. Are you the last of the cousins to be married off? Does everyone want to find you a nice husband, even though you have other things on your mind? Even if you're proud to call yourself a feminist, the little voice of ancestral marriage-minded maidens might echo in your ear.
Extended Adolescence
One thing that seems to be true of the twenties is that it's usually a time of inordinate confusion. The rare person knows their life's denouement in their third decade on earth. Sure, there are prodigies, actors that make it big as teens, athletes that find their calling while the rest of us flounder like fish on land. Do not be jealous, because these folks represent .9999999999 percent of us. If you're in your twenties and feel completely lost, you are in the majority.
The twenties are known by some to be that relatively easy era beyond the strife of adolescence, a time of openness, discovery, and experimentation. You are no longer a wildly hormonal zit-driven hater of your parents. You've likely graduated from at least one institution, according to statistics, probably at least one institution of higher learning. But anyone that's a hair beyond twenty-five knows that any light reading of the late twenties is as fake as a Louis Vuitton in Chinatown. Like most myths about aging, this one is a doozey. The twenties can be hard. Really, really hard.
But why, god, why is it so hard? The universal complaints of the Saturn Return show us that it is not a simply a falsely imposed cultural construction. Western culture (American in particular) is the only one that force feeds this value system on its people. Our culture allows us to vacillate wildly through our twenties, party like frat boys, and then by the eve of our thirtieth birthday expects us to have an engagement ring and a 401 K in hand. We learn early that if you haven't gotten your act together by that fateful date, it's probably all downhill. Thirty continues to be a threatening mile-marker on life's highway. When we hit this age, inner and outer chaos descends. (In our navel-gazing culture, it is probably a slightly heavier burden to bear.)
Aging Gracefully
You may be thinking, "I'm not actually AGING yet." But, dear one, you are. Everyday, your cells are dying, your eggs withering, and your chances at marrying one of the less than 50 percent of the male population on earth are dwindling. We're not mentioning this to depress you, but simply to illustrate the things you understand unconsciously — the true reasons you probably screw up your relationships and drink to excess. As we get closer to thirty, we recognize our mortality looming. The first time a fish or a friend or a grandparent died when we were kids, we understood it intellectually — things have endings. They die. They leave. But until our own bodies get it (and some get it earlier than others) we can't take life seriously. Turning thirty is serious. It's the moment that it crystallizes in you that you are not going to live forever. You are not a child anymore. Welcome to the real world.
But it's not nearly as bleak as it it sounds. The beauty of endings is that they almost always signify new beginnings. And the thirties offer a chance to start over, to get things right that you've been screwing up and spinning out about through your teens and into your twenties. Now you finally have the chance to get it together — that's why Saturn offers you all your shortcomings, faults, and wounds on a silver platter. Not to make you feel bad about them, but to give you the opportunity to reach your highest potential. Growing up is hard to do, and many of us choose not to do it. We grow stagnant and die, rather than letting go and beginning again. Instead, you have the grand opportunity to get right with Saturn and get a grip on turning thirty.
We wrote our book, and built this website, to help you survive your Saturn Return. We have crossed the threshold, and lived to tell about it. And you can, too.
For more on the Saturn Return, read our article on Lifescript.com.
