Saturn Enters Aquarius
An essay by Mike Zizis — April 5, 2020
{Author’s note: Saturn also symbolizes fear. Fear is a major by-product of the spread of Covid 19. The human experiment has been thru virus and bacterial plagues since long before recorded history. You are here reading my work now because your ancestors survived all of those narrow passages.}
Initial entry March 21st — July 1st,
Long-term transit
December 17th, 2020 — March 6, 2023.
Every 2.5 years the “old devil” enters the next consecutive sign of the zodiac in his 28-year spin around the sun.
It was British astrologer Liz Greene who coined the phrase the ‘old devil’ to frame the previous many century’s old view of Saturn in astrology. The prevalent POV is that Saturn is the teacher, the bringer of lessons -not often-pleasant ones — and the repository of karmic actions and consequences.
Pain can be the teacher of last resort. Pain, grief, sadness, failure, setbacks, weakness, diminishment, compression, isolation, and breakage can be Spirit’s method of opening the heart. These are thematically a portion of Saturn’s meanings. Saturn also points to care, method, and that realization that we are all to be broken on the wheel.
The symbol of Saturn reveals a cross and a tail. The cross is said to represent soul, and the downward pointing tail to symbolize the spirit’s descent into matter. Hellenistic astrologers thought that the sign of Cancer represented birth into this world and Capricorn as the exit of the soul from this life. Saturn is the ancient and modern ruler of Capricorn.
Up until the mid 20th Century Saturn was depicted as a harbinger of failure, limitations, oligarchy, collapse, reduction, brittleness, and constriction among others. He is associated with bones and teeth as well as individuality and all forms of scarcity. His sociological theme is the closed group and exclusion from a group.
He favours maturity and calculated decisions. Saturn can punish rash decisions and impulsive actions in bodily insults thru broken bones and teeth. He does not confer certainty or insurance. We can do everything right and still experience things going wrong, and I don’t mean things “going wrong”.
The main difference between the anecdotal and the archetypal is the quality of story telling. So first the anecdotal;
I was raised in breakage, disruption, and emotional and physical violence. My father was a physically powerful and violent alcoholic. At 11 years old I had to hit him over the head with a frying pan to stop him from strangling my mother. In my 13th year he stay with us long enough at Christmas to give my mother syphilis.
An astrologer described my mother as silent and needy. These are Saturn’s themes. These are just cold facts; cold facts connected by a dark corridor of memory. These damaged people had their demons. I point this out to tell you in no uncertain terms it does get better. That is also Saturn.
Anyone is free to hang cotton rainbows from every window, and get very upset indeed when another tells their story. Yet we are all stories. We are as sick as our secrets. This is Saturn. And I am spiritually Jewish, tho raised Roman Catholic and now Buddhist. Being Jewish means not forgetting the vengeful god of history and miracles.
Now for the factual; speaking about archetypes, it is good to acknowledge that astrology is not science. Science, from the Greek and more recently French means to ‘break apart’. We astrologers are enough ostracized to cling to this sad little fallacy, as we try to identify with what we perceive as power.
Astrology IS the mother of science. We observed the eternal return of spring, and our own reoccurring chance to begin again. We note the return of deathly winter and see winter themes in people’s lives. Astrology is Saturn’s organizing principle. From it, in time, is born the organization of our realities now called science.
AQUARIUS & GANYMEDE
The myth of the cupbearer to the gods Ganymede embodies the paradox found in Aquarius. He was said to be a beautiful youth swooped up by that quite naughty and lusty king of the gods Zeus, who fell in love with him.
{I am putting aside any noise about being gay here. To the Greeks beauty was beauty. Speaking as a straight man — it’s a shame our culture can’t get this humanely correct. Gore Vidal author and playwright was asked by a journalist if his first lover was a man or a woman. His response was, “I was too polite to ask.”}
Ganymede was made immortal, yet was not a god. Thus he could bear witness to the folly of the gods and men alike, but not change the course of events.
Saturn in Aquarius by Birth
There may be a perceived paradox between freedom loving humane Aquarius and stingy conservative reactionary orthodox and oligarchical Saturn. Those born with natal Saturn in Aquarius can be paralytic ally fearful about being singled out, even for fame. Saturn’s main base of operation is fear. These individuals are fearful about letting their freak flag fly, being ostracized, and being flung out of the group that they call their own, whether this is the blood family, or Charlie’s or Hell’s Angels.
Generally speaking these fears evaporate with age and maturity. Like their brother and sister Capricorns they often feel younger and bolder as they age. Aquarius for good or ill is often the rebel spirit, and Saturn embodies fear.
From:
https://aquarianastrology.org/saturn-in-aquarius
Anyone with Saturn in Aquarius is ahead of the time by at least two generations. You are a channel of new energy onto the planet (sometimes literally, as in Robert Oppenheimer). But your energy is blocked until you understand how to use the power cleanly. This may come to you as part of your Saturn Return.
Early in life you may have felt “different” and chafed at the differentness. At first (until the age of 40–45) it seems to work against you. You are a Stranger in a Strange Land. And you feel like you are so different that your whole life is an act, an attempt to fit in and be like everybody else. You want the traditional. And, you want the normal. But eventually you begin to see that you have a different take on things and that your differentness actually gives you fresh perspectives and beneficial insights. As you begin to trust that, you realize that this different viewpoint is enlivening. It quickens others. You are able to point them to higher truths that waken sleepy eyes — sometimes like a cold shower. Then one day you remember what your mission is.
Take, for example, Michelle Obama, born with Saturn in Aquarius. She struggled in her youth to reconcile her identity as a black woman with the privileged education she received. As a young adult at Harvard, she eventually found herself. She owned that she was both “black and brilliant” (so said her college advisor). Mrs. Obama then used that as a springboard to spend a life fighting for diversity and opportunities for young people. At her first Saturn Return, which occurred in the wake of the death of her father and then a close friend, she married Barack Obama. She also let her law license lapse as her career turned to focus on more community-oriented projects. These issues defined the boundaries of the rest of her career. This is just one example of using one’s life experience to enlighten and encourage others.
Saturn in Aquarius is complicated and difficult to understand. It has to do with being somehow considered inadequate by a parent. This is usually the father, as if his own creation was not acceptable to him. (Uranus, the Sky Father, devoured his own children because they were not good enough.) Your task is to grow into an understanding. You should understand that this most certainly was *his* issue and has nothing to do with you.
For some, though, the healing never takes place, and there can be a rebellious, adolescent quality that haunts the adult life. Think Sarah Palin, Chris Christie, Louis Farrakhan, Tom Cruise, Quentin Tarantino. Or Aleister Crowley, Ayn Rand, Winston Churchill, and Jon Stewart. These are strong, accomplished individuals with identities deeply rooted in autonomy, even belligerence in some cases. One wonders at times if the point is the ideal the person stands for or just the idea of being different.
SATURN IN AQUARIUS BY TRANSIT
From the period of March 21st — July 1st, Saturn will give us some hints into areas of our lives that will need to go through a restructuring — Aquarius style. On December 17th, 2020, he’ll re-enter Aquarius, once again, and remain there till March 2023.
Saturn will be a little more comfortable in the air sign of Aquarius, as he is in Libra, the sign of his exaltation. The mind here can use practical channels of thought in creative ways. Saturn here marries the forward thinking Aquarian thought process for earthly problem solving, and the spirit of invention.
An apt metaphor for Saturn’s journey thru Aquarius and the practicum of invention might go like this; who is more likely to “invent” the wheelbarrow?
That wretched person with eyes and back burning in the sun toting a heavy load on their aching back, or another person watching this beast of burden from under a shaded tree?
A thorough understanding of this example concerns groundedness, mechanics, ability to work thru the physical and a need to provide a better practical solution to, literally, a backbreaking problem. That is my contribution to marrying the themes of Saturn and Aquarius. Aquarius favors sobriety and clear sight, not abandonment of the mind thru inebriation, and intoxication. In other words to be in full possession of one’s mental faculties. Think James Watt and the invention of the steam engine to save miner’s lives; it simply is problem solving.
From Wikipedia:
An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition or process. The invention process is a process within an overall engineering and product development process. It may be an improvement upon a machine or product or a new process for creating an object or a result. An invention that achieves a completely unique function or result may be a radical breakthrough. Such works are novel and not obvious to others skilled in the same field.
Our gloss on the inventor is either mad scientist or arcane nerdified social reject or reclusive tech-babbleologist introvert. Of course none of these stereotypes are good fitting garments for real people.
Countries & Cities affected most
strongly by Saturn transiting Aquarius:
COUNTRIES: Iran, Finland, New Zealand, Russia, Sweden, Syria, Ethiopia, The Holy Vatican City, and Sri Lanka.
CITIES: Brighton, Hamburg, Helsinki, Moscow, Salzburg, St. Petersburg, and Bremen.
HOW TO PROCEED?
From this point on I am listing a select few of the major events of Saturn transiting Aquarius in the 20th century. Every writer must consider what to put in and what to leave out. I am choosing science as the ‘leave in’ here. Saturn {method} and Aquarius {synapses} can both be considered in the light of the sciences. I hope I have chosen clarity to assist your understanding of this complex elixir.
Saturn in Aquarius in the 20th century: {from Wikipedia}
Saturn in Aquarius
February 23, 1932 /August 13, 1932
November 19, 1932 / February 14, 1935
Astronomy and space sciences
• August 10 — A 5.1 kg chondrite-type meteorite breaks into fragments and strikes earth near the town of Archie, Missouri.
• Estonian astronomer Ernst Öpik postulates that long-period comets originate in an orbiting cloud (the Öpik–Oort cloud) at the outermost edge of the Solar System.[1]
Biology
• English geneticist C. D. Darlington publishes Recent Advances in Cytology, describing the mechanics of chromosomal crossover[2] and its role in evolutionary science.
• English geneticist J. B. S. Haldane publishes The Causes of Evolution, unifying the findings of Mendelian genetics with those of evolutionary science.
• American physiologist Walter Bradford Cannon publishes The Wisdom of the Body, developing and popularising the concept of homeostasis.
• A flock of Soay sheep is translocated from Soay to Hirta (also in the depopulated archipelago of St Kilda, Scotland) by conservationist John Crichton-Stuart, 4th Marquess of Bute.
• The heath hen becomes extinct in North America.
Earth sciences
• Braggite is first described, the first mineral discovered with the assistance of X rays.[3][4]
Mathematics
• John von Neumann makes foundational contributions to ergodic theory in a series of papers.[5][6][7]
• Rózsa Péter presents the results of her paper on recursive function theory, “Rekursive Funktionen,” to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Zurich, Switzerland.
• December — Marian Rejewski of the Polish Biuro Szyfrów applies pure mathematics — permutation group theory — to breaking the German armed forces’ Enigma machine ciphers.[8][9]
Medicine
• January 5 — The pathology of Cushing’s syndrome is first described by Harvey Cushing.[10][11]
• American gastroenterologist Burrill Bernard Crohn and colleagues describe a series of patients with “regional ileitis”, inflammation of the terminal ileum, the area most commonly affected by the condition which will become known as Crohn’s disease.[12]
• Grace Medes discovers tyrosinosis, the metabolic disorder later known as Type I tyrosinemia.
• Rudolph Schindler introduces the first semi-flexible gastroscope, in Germany.[13]
• Commencement of the 40-year Tuskegee syphilis experiment by the U.S. Public Health Service to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis in poor African-American sharecroppers in Alabama without their informed consent.[14]
• First published use of the term Medical genetics, in an article by Madge Thurlow Macklin.[15]
• Gerhard Domagk develops a chemotherapeutic cure for streptococcus
Pharmacology
• Albert Szent-Györgyi and Charles Glen King identify ascorbic acid as an anti-scorbutic.
• December 25 — IG Farben file a patent application in Germany for the medical application of the first sulfonamide drug, Sulfonamidochrysoidine (KI-730; which will be marketed as Prontosil), following Gerhard Domagk’s laboratory demonstration of its properties as an antibiotic at the conglomerate’s Bayer laboratories.[16]
Physics
• April 14 — John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton focus a proton beam on lithium and split its nucleus.
• May 10 — James Chadwick discovers the neutron.[17][18] Werner Heisenberg explains its symmetries by introducing the concept of isospin.[19]
• August 2 — The positron is observed by Carl Anderson.[20]
• The Kennedy–Thorndike experiment shows that measured time as well as length are affected by motion, in accordance with the theory of special relativity.[21]
• John von Neumann rigorously establishes a mathematical framework for quantum mechanics in Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik.
• Zero-length springs are invented, revolutionizing seismometers and gravimeters.
Saturn in Aquarius
January 3, 1962 / March 23, 1964
September 16, 1964 / December 15, 1964
Astronomy and space exploration
• Spring — First recognition of cosmic microwave background radiation as a detectable phenomenon.[1] The discovery and confirmation of the Cosmic microwave background in 1964 secured the Big Bang as the best theory of the origin and evolution of the universe.
• March 20 — The precursor of the European Space Agency, ESRO (European Space Research Organization) is established (under an agreement of June 14, 1962).
• July 31 — Ranger program: Ranger 7 sends back the first close-up photographs of the Moon; images are 1,000 times clearer than anything ever seen from Earth-bound telescopes.
• October 12 — The Soviet Union launches the Voskhod 1 into Earth orbit as the first spacecraft with a multi-person crew and the first flight without space suits (the crew wouldn’t fit in the space capsule otherwise).
Biology
• British molecular biologist Robin Holliday proposes existence of the Holliday junction in nucleic acid.
Computer science
• April 7 — IBM announces the System/360, in six models with 32-bit architecture.
• May 1 — John George Kemeny and Thomas Eugene Kurtz run the first program created in BASIC (Beginners’ All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), an easy to learn high level programming language that will eventually be included on many computers and even some games consoles.
• PL/I (Programming Language I), a block-structured computer language, is created by George Radin, while at IBM.
• Programma 101 is announced at the World’s Fair. Invented by the Italian engineer Pier Giorgio Perotto, It is one of the first commercial desktop programmable calculators.
Earth sciences
• March 27 (Good Friday) — Great Alaskan earthquake, the second most powerful known, with a magnitude of 9.2.[2]
• Swiss geologist Augusto Gansser publishes Geology of the Himalayas.
History of science and technology
• January 23 — The Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of History and Technology opens to the public in Washington, D.C.[3]
Mathematics
• Paul Cohen proves the independence of the continuum hypothesis.[4]
• Jacques Tits publishes significant work on group theory.[5]
Medicine
• January 11 — U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry reports that smoking may be hazardous to health in the first such statement from the Federal government of the United States.
• January 16 — First angioplasty carried out, on the superficial femoral artery by U.S. interventional radiologist Charles Dotter.[6][7]
• January 23 — First heart transplantation on a human, using a chimpanzee heart, carried out by U.S. surgeon James D. Hardy on Boyd Rush, but the organ is rejected after a few hours.
• March 28 — The Epstein-Barr virus is first described, by Anthony Epstein, Bert Achong and Yvonne Barr in London.[8]
• Jerome Horowitz synthesizes zidovudine (AZT), an antiviral drug that will come to be used in treating HIV.
• Temazepam first synthesized.
• Lesch–Nyhan syndrome is first described, by Drs Michael Lesch and William Nyhan.
• Fernando Alves Martins of Portugal applies optical fiber technology to a gastrocamera to produce the first such device with a flexible fiberscope, for use in esophagogastroduodenoscopy.[9]
Paleontology
• August — John Ostrom identifies remains of the dinosaur Deinonychus in Montana, significant in being a small, agile species closely related to the birds.[10]
Physics
• Three papers are published by Robert Brout and François Englert,[11][12] Peter Higgs,[13] and Gerald Guralnik, Dick Hagen, and Tom Kibble,[14][15] predicting the Higgs boson and Higgs mechanism (or Englert–Brout–Higgs–Guralnik–Hagen–Kibble mechanism) which provides the means by which gauge bosons can acquire non-zero masses in the process of spontaneous symmetry breaking.[16] As part of Physical Review Letters’ 50th anniversary celebration, the journal will recognize each of these contributions as milestone papers in its history.[17]
• Existence of the charm quark is speculated by James Bjorken and Sheldon Glashow.[18]
• John Stewart Bell publishes a paper on the EPR paradox originating Bell’s theorem.[19]
Psychology
• Publication of Eric Berne’s book Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships.
Technology
• October — Dr. Robert Moog demonstrates his prototype synthesizers.[20]
• Farrington Daniels’ book Direct Use of the Sun’s Energy is published.[21]
Saturn in Aquarius
February 6, 1991 May 20, 1993
June 29, 1993 / January 28, 1994
Astronomy and space exploration
• May 18 — Helen Sharman becomes the first British person in space, flying with the Soyuz TM-12 mission.[1] She is the only British astronaut until 2015.
• October 29 — The Galileo probe becomes the first spacecraft to visit an asteroid (951 Gaspra).
• Steven Balbus and John F. Hawley publish their elucidation of magnetorotational instability.[2]
• Asteroid 6859 Datemasamune is discovered by Masahiro Koishikawa.
• 11514 Tsunenaga is discovered.
• There are four lunar eclipses: three penumbral on January 30, July 26, and June 27, and one minor partial lunar eclipse on December 21.
• There are two solar eclipses, one annular eclipse on January 15, and a very long total eclipse on July 11, lasting 6 minutes and 53 seconds.
Chemistry
• Carbon nanotubes discovered in the insoluble material of arc-burned graphite rods by Sumio Iijima of NEC.[3][4]
Computer science
• February 26 — Tim Berners-Lee introduces WorldWideWeb, the first web browser, and a WYSIWYG HTML editor.
• May 14 — Nicola Pellow, an intern working under the direction of Berners-Lee, introduces Line Mode Browser, the first cross-platform web browser.
• June 5 — Phil Zimmermann posts the first Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) data encryption program.[5]
• June 23 — The video game Sonic the Hedgehog is first released, propelling the Sega Genesis 16-bit console into mass popularity.
• August 6 — The first website goes online at CERN.[6][7][8][9]
• The Trojan Room coffee pot at the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, England, inspires the first webcam.
• October — Apple releases the PowerBook. The first modern Laptop.
Conservation
• October 1 — The New Zealand Resource Management Act 1991 comes into effect.
Geophysics
• Alan Hildebrand and others provide support for the Alvarez hypothesis for the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event by proposing the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico as the impact site for a large asteroid 66 million years ago.[10][11][12]
• The Ames crater impact structure is identified in Major County, Oklahoma.
Mathematics
• July — English physicist Philip Candelas and colleagues show that mirror symmetry could be used to solve problems in enumerative geometry.[13]
• Qiudong Wang produces a global solution to the n-body problem.[14]
Physics
• January 1 — Finland joins CERN.
• October 15 — the “Oh-My-God particle”, the first ultra-high-energy cosmic ray measured at an energy of 3×1020 eV (40,000,000 times that of the highest energy protons that have been produced in a particle accelerator), is observed at the University of Utah HiRes observatory in Dugway Proving Ground, Utah.
Physiology and medicine
• Takotsubo cardiomyopathy first studied.
Technology
• July 1 — World’s first GSM telephone call made in Finland.
Publications
• The first open-access scientific online archive, arXiv, is begun as a preprint service for physicists, initiated by Paul Ginsparg.
A VERY SHORT LIST OF PEOPLE
BORN WITH SATURN IN AQUARIUS:
Michelle Obama
Born: Friday, January 17, 1964
In: Chicago (IL) (United States)
Brad Pitt
Born: Wednesday, December 18, 1963
In: Shawnee (OK) (United States)
Johnny Depp
Born: Sunday, June 9, 1963
In: Owensboro (KY) (United States)
Selena Gomez
Born: Wednesday, July 22, 1992
In: Grand Prairie (TX) (United States)
Jodie Foster
Born: Monday, November 19, 1962
In: Los Angeles (CA) (United States)
Tom Cruise
Born: Tuesday, July 3, 1962
In: Syracuse (NY) (United States)
Elvis Presley
Born: Tuesday, January 8, 1935
In: Tupelo (MS) (United States)
Miley Cyrus
Born: Monday, November 23, 1992
In: Nashville (TN) (United States)
Brigitte Bardot
Born: Friday, September 28, 1934
In: Paris 15e (France)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Born: Tuesday, January 27, 1756
In: Salzburg (Austria)
Whitney Houston
Born: Friday, August 9, 1963
In: Newark (NJ) (United States)
Jim Carrey
Born: Wednesday, January 17, 1962
In: Newmarket, Ontario (Canada)
Zayn Malik
Born: Tuesday, January 12, 1993
In: West Lane Baildon, Bradford (United Kingdom)
Elizabeth Taylor
Born: Saturday, February 27, 1932
In: Hampstead, London (United Kingdom)
Demi Moore
Born: Sunday, November 11, 1962
In: Roswell (NM) (United States)
Charles Manson
Born: Monday, November 12, 1934
In: Cincinnati (OH) (United States)
Carl Jung
Born: Monday, July 26, 1875
In: Kesswil (Switzerland)
Jacques Chirac
Born: Tuesday, November 29, 1932
In: Paris 5e (France)
Michael Jordan
Born: Sunday, February 17, 1963
In: Brooklyn, New York (NY) (United States)
Salvador Dalí
Born: Wednesday, May 11, 1904
In: Figueres (Spain)
Friedrich Nietzsche
Born: Tuesday, October 15, 1844
In: Rõcken (Germany)
Nicolas Cage
Born: Tuesday, January 7, 1964
In: Los Angeles (CA) (United States)
Ed Sheeran
Born: Sunday, February 17, 1991
In: Halifax (United Kingdom)
Juliette Binoche
Born: Monday, March 9, 1964
In: Paris (France)
George Michael
Born: Tuesday, June 25, 1963
Quentin Tarantino
Born: Wednesday, March 27, 1963
In: Knoxville (TN) (United States)
For further reading:
https://astrostyle.com/saturn-in-aquarius-three-years-of-technology-progress-and-justice/
https://cafeastrology.com/saturn-in-aquarius-transits.html
https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/m7q4zp/what-does-saturn-in-aquarius-mean-astrology
