Can You Stare Into the Void? A Saturn Return Story

I am an incurable optimist. It is generally regarded as a good thing in my culture. But while there are benefits that arise from optimism, it can be used to bypass real struggle and pain. “Just keep smiling” or “the only real disability is a bad attitude” are things we say to people in pain. And I was susceptible to its charms. 

I have a chronic illness that was diagnosed as a teenager and my approach to all things related to it prior to my Saturn return was: ignore and keep pushing. I pushed through my college years and kept pushing post college as I worked. I pushed through hospitalizations, ER visits, and symptoms that were increasingly strange and insistent. I refused to talk about it, refused to ask for help, and refused to change my goals in any way. I believed if I kept a good attitude and ignored pain, I would be productive and successful. And everything in my culture supported this. America is the land of doing, not the land of being. 

Many of you are fresh off a Saturn return and others are embarking on one. As someone who went through their Saturn return more than a decade ago, perhaps there is something I can share to help. But first things first for the astrology nerds. I have Saturn in a day chart at 24 degrees Leo in the second house, co-present with Mars. I have a challenging square from the Sun to Saturn and my Saturn is in detriment. So right away, you can probably tell it wasn’t the easiest time for me. My astrology teacher, Samuel Reynolds, says that when one house is activated by transit or profection, the opposing house is often implicated. And I have found that to be true. So my reflections will take into account both second and eighth house matters.

I entered my Saturn return in late 2006. By outside standards I was perhaps a bit late on career success but I had a lot of outward trappings of a decent timeline. I was married to someone with stability. We had moved recently to a nicer place and were making strides. But the bigger lessons were still to come. Sure there were the usual Saturn return curveballs at first: let’s learn to budget! You need to manage your resources better! And I did. But it didn’t stop there. 

Astrologers interpret the second house as resources that come alongside the first house to assist in achieving goals. But for those of us with Saturn in the second house or who have Saturn ruling the second house, I suspect we may be forced to confront our relationship to the material world. I know I was. I was raised in an evangelical Christian household and when I rejected their teachings as an adult, I defaulted to materialism. When I chucked out teachings that I was ‘not of this world,’ I overcorrected to ‘only this world matters.’ And even more incorrectly to ‘only what I can see and understand is important.’ And Saturn came in and destroyed those ideas too. My health got worse, my finances affected by them since I live in America where there is no forgiveness for being unproductive. Still for the first half of the Saturn return, I rebelled. What can I say, I am a Taurus Sun. And so I stood there my fists curled, thinking I could do it. I could ignore my symptoms, I could stash more cash away, I could take more pills. I was going to be a traditional success if it killed me. And it almost did. There comes a point where your body will settle the score. And mine came due and highlighted the eighth house in very real and very scary ways. Hospitals, specialists, treatments, loss, debts, and fear.

To me thats the second house/eighth house axis: yes you can have things, you can build things, you can add to yourself. But can you also face the inevitability of loss, of change. Can you grasp things lightly, grateful for what you have while also realizing it may leave or change at any time? And can you let that happen? Chronic illness and the impact it has on my resources demands this from me. 

I had to learn as option after option was stripped away. I was never going to be ‘traditionally’ successful. I was never going to be ‘optimally’ productive by the standards of the culture I lived in. And it was a death; a death of ego. A death of illusion. Because we are all one breath away from change at any moment. One heartbeat from incalculable loss. One blink from chaos. 

Saturn forced me to shift my perspective from the optimism of empty platitudes to understanding what it means to build in the face of the unknown. Refusing to adapt is not growth. Denial is not a solid foundation on which to build. No one learns from refusing to accept what is true. So I slowly raised my head and looked finally at the hand I had been dealt. I gazed into the abyss of the eighth house and fear roiled up within me. The loss of who I thought I was pierced me. But then slowly I moved from grief to acceptance. And it changed everything. 

Saturn was the edge of the known to the ancients. Before the discovery of the outer planets, Saturn was the boundary the separated the plotted heavens from chaos. I often think of Saturn in this way, a hedge against the void. And in my chart he taught me to stare right at the fear and loss and anguish of the eighth house and say as he does: build here anyway. I know that loss is inevitable, I am no fool, yet I decide to enjoy what I have in the moment. And that is the key; I decide. I am not in denial anymore. I wake up and have the audacity to adapt. I gratefully accept what I can and learn to let things, dreams, and plans fall from my grasp when they must. Or at least, I try to. Saturn giveth and Saturn taketh away. Blessed be Saturn.