This article was originally published on the main blog on September 20, 2012. It describes themes of the Saturn in Scorpio transit (2012 to 2015), but it will also be useful to those with natal or Secondary Progressed planets in Scorpio, as it describes some of the challenges and the authoritative talents associated with the sign of Scorpio, in general.
Saturn in Scorpio: October 5, 2012 - September 18, 2015
North Node in Scorpio/South Node in Taurus: August 30, 2012 - February 18, 2014
North Node, Venus, and Saturn conjunct: September 18, 2013
Saturn is the planet of tests and challenges designed to mature us as human beings. It's a planet related to time, aging, obstacles, fear, constriction, restriction, limitation, effort, structure, dread, weight, waiting, and responsibility. Though the associated process can be long and arduous, Saturn is a planet that works to put us in better and stronger position for the long-term. It strengthens us gradually, over the course of time, demanding that we earn our positions from the ground up so that we do not collapse under the weight of our responsibilities.
Scorpio is the zodiac sign related to sex, death, regenerative healing, darkness, secrets, betrayal, nastiness, karmic ass-biting, wisdom that comes from trips through hell, intuition, x-ray vision, soul drive, and metamorphosis. It is associated with suppression, oppression, and obsession. Scorpio is the sign of witchery, alchemy, the occult, the night, the soul, the pitch black, the hidden, the taboo, the complex, the complicated, the impossibly layered and convoluted. It is the sign of dark corners, trap doors, diviners, and soul healers. It involves emotional and psychological difficulties, energy processing, body intuition, intense examinations of power dynamics, and the severing of ties. Scorpio relates to creepy crawlies and things that go bump in the night. It is eagles, snakes, scorpions, and all things that poison, bite, or sting. Scorpio is venomous - you'd better believe it. But it also has the poison that heals those last resort cases, and at this point on Planet Earth, we're all pretty much enmeshed in one of those. Scorpio is also associated with the phoenix, rising from the ashes of destruction and devastation.
When Saturn is in Scorpio, our maturing challenges and responsibilities take on the thematic flavour of that sign.
(And you can now perhaps see that it is impossible to sum up Saturn in Scorpio in one or even a series of astrological articles, though I'll do my best.)
The long, drawn-out divorce. The arduous extrication process after a personal or professional relationship goes awry. Struggling within the confines of one's personal hell. The sick realization that you've let a rat through your front door, into your bank account, into your bed.
These are all themes of the Saturn in Scorpio variety.
As Saturn transits Scorpio, it will be in mutual reception to Pluto in Capricorn - that is, each will be inhabiting the sign ruled by the other, creating an interwoven relationship and energy exchange. During this mutual reception, we are going to see some very ruthless moves, to be certain, but we're also going to see some very ruthless moves fall flat. Dirty tricks will be played in the name of personal advancement, but they will also be exposed and outed. Character assassination and the sly erosion of others' professional reputations will be tactics used, but they will also be tactics that come back to bite their originators in the ass. Hard.
Under Saturn's thumb over the next years, misuses and abuses of power will be put in check. The results of underlying dynamics we've been (even unknowingly) furthering will start to surface. Issues falsely believed long-resolved will be stirred, like hot spots re-igniting after a brush fire. We'll be confronted with our misunderstandings of the way energy really works. We'll come into contact with the consequences of the way we've been living our lives - for good or ill.
Scorpio is considered one of the most "karmic" signs, but this isn't necessarily the much-offered oversimplification that "bad people have bad karma, and good people have good karma."
The truth is, the underlying energetic rules and realities of life on this planet are so complex that it is impossible to know the effects of each and every one of our actions. Add to that the fact that this sign is often working with collective, rather than purely personal, dynamics and "karma," and that complexity is compounded.
The beauty of Saturn is that it will give us a chance - multiple chances - to learn about all this, redirecting and reorienting our motivations, alliances, and allegiances in the process.
We're going to come into contact with the natural energetic consequences of our personal actions, but also of actions that are chain sequences coming through our ancestral lines. With Saturn in Scorpio, we're feeling out the confines of the chains that bind in an attempt to work our way out of them. These are emotional, psychological, and psychic states as well as entrapping power dynamics that have coerced and controlled our parents and grandparents and their parents and grandparents before them.
Legitimate power through Scorpio comes, in part, from facing fears head-on and working through them. Once we can no longer be coerced or controlled through our deepest fears, we're liberated. And then we can start to hold some real power.
But in Scorpio, co-ruled by Lord of the Underworld Pluto, these fears are the big ones. They're the ones that turn us into scared animals, blindly blundering through our circumstances, making the wrong moves, repeating the same patterns. These run deep in our DNA and turn steely resolve and self-control to liquid.
What only the Scorpionics/Plutonics have understood and raised as concerns previously become concerns for all under Saturn in Scorpio. What was previously hidden, easily denied, easily kept off the books comes slamming into our concrete realities. It seeps into the structural fabric of our world. It snaps us upright and tells us to grow the fuck up.
A thorough examination of corruption, violence, and inhumanity in power structures on this planet will be ongoing - but only because things are so bad, people will no longer be able to deny it.
In Scorpio, Saturn is going to dog our asses. It will demand answers about how we're using our time on this planet. What really motivates us? And is that good enough?
Saturn in Scorpio will peel comfortable illusions. It will break flimsy bonds. It will demand that we get serious, willingly stripping anything unnecessary in the achievement of our long-term soul objectives. It will put us under psychological and emotional pressure and constriction - sometimes intense. It will strip us to essentials so that it can build us up into worthy recipients of the positions of real power it has to bestow.
And it will be our responsibility to contain this process. To maintain a stiff upper lip. To stop it from spilling out and badly affecting those around us.
Sounds like fun, right?
Under Saturn in Scorpio, we learn how to be fully responsible for our power. We learn the skillful management of our resources. We become facilitators of structural metamorphosis, triggering the trigger points, tipping the tipping points.
Progress will be more difficult to achieve over the next three years, less airy exalted, more hard-won. In order to make concrete progress (Saturn) we're going to have to do things that scare us (Scorpio). But it will also be highly, highly satisfying to finally pull ourselves out of enervating quagmires and onto solid, new ledges.
In a way, during the Saturn-Pluto mutual reception, we have to be willing to co-exist with what is already dead, as we're held within the constraints of dead and dying structures. We have to be willing to endure periods (hopefully brief) of intense constriction, restriction, and personal challenge as we work this process of metamorphosis.
We're lava rock turning to obsidian under intense pressure and alchemical reaction.
This is heavy, and it's work, but if you've gotten your Scorpio in good working order ahead of time, the Scorpionic meat hooks will have far less ability to pull you under.
Understand that anyone who really knows what's going on on this planet and is willing to live with it as personal reality is a very valuable resource.
Anyone with soul-deep integrity and backbone, highly-tuned bullshit detectors, and the ability to see through artifice is a hot commodity.
People who have proactively cleared bullshit from their human personalities and egos, who have confronted and harnessed triggers and fears, who have learned real from fake and substance from style, and who have dropped the attraction to highly-charged drama and intrigue are holding the gold bullion for the Saturn in Scorpio years.
Those who haven't gotten their Scorpio in order will have time to get on top of it, but that time is limited (Saturn).
Those who have repeatedly ignored or denied Scorpionic realities and awareness will reap the results of that. People who have generally taken a pass whenever a deep and complicated issue came up will now have Saturn holding their noses in it. The days of glossing over have passed.
Masterful Scorpio is at a premium. Everyone wants it; few have it.
Many false authorities masquerade as experts now. Many claim to have the skills we need while misusing the very sign they claim mastery over. But anyone setting him or herself up as an authority in these matters better damn well have the goods - the real deal is the only thing that gets the job done here.
Scorpio energy is hidden, and, therefore, easily siphoned off, stolen, used for purposes other than those intended. Those who have bolstered and furthered themselves on the unrecognized energy, talent, resources, and skills of others will be put in check - but only if we demand it.
It takes holding self-declared leaders and authority figures to a higher standard than they have so far been held.
Energy will be liberated but will need to be actively and responsibly harnessed and redirected before it is absorbed again.
At our best during Saturn and the North Node in Scorpio, we're steely-eyed serious metaphysical magicians: alchemizing, catalyzing, metamorphizing. Diving down deep to hit trigger points that bring about the changes and shifts in power and control this planet so desperately needs. Large and in charge and in control of the process.
And all this at a time when a lot of us have had quite enough. At a point where we've been absolutely wrung out. When the intensity of what we're required to process and metabolize on this planet is off the charts, overwhelming, decreasing quality of life.
Many are working within half-destroyed, half-limping along Pluto in Capricorn structures, increasingly toxic to the system.
We're sick and tired - literally, figuratively, or both.
Like a moth caught halfway through its process of change. We've expended too much energy getting this far to go back now, but we sure as hell can't see where the fuel is going to come from to complete the process.
And here come those catalytic mergers of energy and resources so associated with Scorpio.
These aren't the Scorpionic mergers of the astrological Piscean era where once we come together, we stay together. Forever. As one. Bliss.
These are Scorpionic mergers and energy exchanges under the astrological Aquarian umbrella.
These are mergers conducted under the rules of the egalitarian Aquarian win-win. There's a whole lot of lip service about these win-wins, but few truly accomplish them. First, of course, there are the unequal power dynamics to bring up, examine, eliminate. No underlying coercion or domination can create a true win-win. But this is easier said than done. With Scorpio, the fear is that if we don't dominate, we'll be subjugated. If the power shifts too fast or without due process, we just flip ends. Dominator becomes subjugator and vice versa.
These are highly complex and complicated energy dynamics we're working with as we officially stand on the water-bearer side of the Pisces/Aquarius divide.
In order to find the energy to complete what we have to complete, we'll need mergers of just the right energy, resources, talent, people, and motivations - and for limited amounts of time. These are Aquarian-flavoured mergers: brilliant, erratic, irregular, unpredictable, splitting apart as soon as the exchange has been made.
This is about trading and fusing fuel sources under transparent and mutually-beneficial temporary contract. Catalyzing new actions and reactions in order to get us where we need to go.
And it's about keeping our own fuel sources carefully guarded and protected from marauders. Everyone will be looking for new vitality and energy under the weight, depression, and constriction of Saturn in Scorpio, and many won't hold any qualms about tapping what isn't theirs.
The North Node entered Scorpio August 30 from one end of the sign (29 degrees). Saturn enters October 5 from the other end (0 degrees). They will form a conjunction, along with Venus, just before fall equinox 2013.
Saturn and the North Node come together in conjunction about once every 11 years. The last Saturn-North Node conjunctions we experienced were:
June 2002 at 17 degrees Gemini
January 1991 at 28 degrees Capricorn
July 1979 at 9 degrees Virgo
April 1968 at 18 degrees Aries
October 1956 at 29 degrees Scorpio
May 1945 at 9 degrees Cancer
February 1934 at 19 degrees Aquarius
July 1922 at 2 degrees Libra
May 1911 at 10 degrees Taurus
Successfully navigating the time frame surrounding this conjunction requires maturity, levelheadedness, and responsibility. In Scorpio, this relates to energetic responsibility and honesty right down to the core of the interpersonal situations with which we're involved.
There is a drawing together and consolidation of resources, energy, and catalytic potential over the course of this upcoming year which culminates in the Saturn-Venus-North Node conjunction. It falls at 8 degrees Scorpio on September 18, 2013, exactly sextile Pluto in Capricorn.
People with specific metaphysical skill sets are being drawn together for the purpose of deep structural change on this planet. Power meets power and sets new rules for authority through the alchemy of the contacts.
It isn't always going to be fun, but it will be purposeful.
Scorpio relates to motivation and allegiances. Those compatible on this front can work together under merged circumstances, but there is still difficulty. Combining energy and resources, whether as lovers, marriage partners, or business associates, requires intricate work and careful testing of waters - now more than ever.
As people, energy, and resources are drawn together over this upcoming year, the motivations and allegiances of those coming into contact with each other cannot cross, or there will be immediate and energetically-violent severing of ties.
Scorpio season comes along just as everything freezes in the northern hemisphere, as everything goes dormant and night becomes stronger than day. Scorpio is the sign of the end, the finish line, completion. Death - either literal or figurative.
Here is the official death knell for structures and power hierarchies that began to collapse when Pluto entered Capricorn. And here is an increase in morphing mergers - often desperate - as they attempt to stay alive.
During Saturn in Scorpio, there will be endings. But there will also be fusions at the soul that grab on during this transit and never let go.
Certain goals will wither and dry up. Steps we felt sure of will suddenly drop out from under us. Things we've been striving to achieve will prove no longer relevant, considering the climate on this planet.
Saturn is in Via Combusta Scorpio until November 2013, and we're trying to structure molten lava. We catch a more solid stride heading into 2014.
Under Saturn in Scorpio in mutual reception to Pluto in Capricorn with the North Node in Scorpio, patriarchal control - both monied and non - tightens its screws. We go under more intensive (though still hidden to the majority) lock-down as an old new world order slowly advances its objectives, sets up military outposts around the world, sets the chessboard for check and mate.
The truly valuable resources on this planet are being squandered. The artificially-valued resources and associated wealth are concentrated into the hands of the corrupt, the elitist, the inhumane - those committing heinous crimes through the misuse and abuse of occult knowledge and metaphysical principles. These are people who feel nothing about sacrificing human collateral damage.
And our souls, taking this often dark trip into human life on this planet, are our strongest, most dependable guides through it all. They know why we're here even when we don't. Intuition and gut feelings direct every tricky step over the next three years, telling us when the ground beneath us will support our weight.
During its transit, Saturn in Scorpio will conjunct the natal Neptune in Scorpios (1955 to 1970), the natal Uranus in Scorpios (1974 to 1981to in Scorpios (1983 to 1995).
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