Saturn transits are never easy, simple or swift. Saturn reveals its wisdom, and its ways, slowly. The keeper of time takes no shortcuts, and it causes serious issues for those that do. The taskmaster isn’t a fan of the cult of youth, fast fashion, quick bucks, or breaks for getting ahead without paying the price. Saturn helps us cultivate patience. It honors experience over praise. It is the moral fortitude needed to do the right thing over getting ahead no matter the cost.  

Saturn reminds us that knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing is far too expensive a state to exist in.

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Three years of Saturn in its air domicile

Saturn first entered Aquarius between March and July 2020. Then Saturn re-entered Aquarius on December 16th, 2020, where it remains until March 7th, 2023.

As the traditional ruler of Aquarius, Saturn is high-functioning and dominant in this sign. Since 2017 — when Saturn was in Capricorn, its other domicile — the planet of structure has been highlighting the rules, boundaries, borders, and systems we live within. Saturn always comes bearing the hard truths we need to know in order to mature.

Most of the world has been running on cheap, fast, and unsustainable solutions for decades now. The drain on our environment, on our relationships, on our psyches and selves is undeniable. We bail out banks and big business before we support those at higher being swept under: the chronically ill, the entrepreneur, the single parent, the student, the teacher, the caretaker, the nurse, the survivor, the artist, the healer, the activist, the undocumented, the elder, the disabled, and the marginalized among us.

We are a world out of balance, in desperate need of a social reorganization.

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Saturn in Aquarius builds new structures for the collective

In Aquarius, Saturn seeks to build innovative social structures. This air sign is known for its intellectual rigor, humanitarianism, and thoughtful visions for the future. In Aquarius, Saturn focuses on the needs of the group, bringing forth rules, regulations, and systems change for the masses.

The last time Saturn was in Aquarius (1991-1993), legal apartheid was dismantled in South Africa. Before that, Saturn was in Aquarius from 1962-1964, just before the Civil Rights Act, which banned school segregation and employment discrimination on the basis of race, religion, color, sex or national origin, was signed into law in the United States. And before that, Saturn was in Aquarius from 1932-1935. The Great Depression had begun in 1929 causing unemployment to reach 25%. These years of Saturn in Aquarius saw the beginning of FDR’s New Deal, which brought social security, government infrastructure and banking regulations to the US.

While none of these measures are perfect, while none were a remedy in and of themselves, they were all attempts at creating social structures that centered the needs of the collective over the individual.

Saturn is back for more.

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A brave new world

While we don’t know how the coming days, months, and years will unfold, we do know that we must wash ourselves clean of any misconceptions that we can remain in this system and be successful. As we move through these enormous challenges ahead, we need to prepare space internally and externally for new solutions to come forth. We need to be patient with our process as the external systems crumble, for they are all we have known.

Even when we want a new world, letting go of the old can be unnerving. As structures and systems show their incompetence, our internal worlds will need time to adjust, refocus, and realign with what can carry us the distance. We can and we will find new ways to organize and care for one another, but it will take a Saturnian effort to do so. It will take our determination, dedication, and patient persistence. Today, and for many more days to come.