Saturn is not just something that returns when you’re twenty eight-ish and again when you’re fifty six-ish. When it returns, it’s actually just one part of a larger cycle. Saturn squares itself when you’re around seven years ago, opposes itself when you’re around fifteen, and squares itself again when you’re around twenty-one.

Some of the things that Saturn tends to represent are:

Citizenship
Cultural belonging
Property
The pastoral
Utopia
The “real”
Daddy

Sect

The first thing that you’ve got to do, when working through Saturn issues, is you have to see if you’re a day or night chart. That just means that you have to see whether you were born during the day or night. If you were born in the evening or morning, check on your natal chart to see if the Sun had crossed your horizon. If you were born in the morning and your Sun is just a few degrees away from crossing the ascendent into the upper part of the chart, you can still be a day birth since the rays of the Sun would have been visible. The same doesn’t apply for night since the Sun sets faster in the evening.

If you were born during the day, issues around belonging will be easier for you. Depending on the condition of your Saturn, you might be able to navigate issues of cultural authenticity or ownership well. That doesn’t mean that you will necessarily be happy about these issues if your Saturn is in signs contrary to its nature or poorly aspected but it means that community functions strongly. When Saturn is in your sect, you are able to enact your authority.

If you were born during the night, Saturn issues will be harder. Saturn might mean that whatever it is you sense as your real environment is at odds against who you are. You might have felt like you were forced into certain roles or that you failed in community. You might have had older mentors fail you or you might have experienced failure as an older mentor. This doesn’t need to be a bad thing. You will likely feel passionate about not replicating some of the issues around authority and patriarchy that you experienced. When Saturn is out of sect for you, you feel as though authority is always something that is done to you.

The First Saturn Square

Now that you know whether Saturn is something you feel comes from your environment or something that you enact, think back to when you were seven years old. This will be a time when reality, responsibility, and your place in the world was beginning to get defined. It will be a time when you’re starting to learn about cultural ownership and what traditions you accept and resist.

Ask yourself the following questions, depending on whether you’re a day or night chart.

Questions for the first Saturn square Saturn in a day chart:

What was happening in your life when you were seven?
What were you beginning to accept responsibility for?
What challenges were the most exciting to you?
What did you feel ownership over at this age?
What type of agency did growing up give you?


Questions for the first Saturn square Saturn in a night chart:

What was happening in your life when you were seven?
What was being done to you outside of your control?
How was cultural ownership being defined for you?
Who or what put you in your place?
How did you resist responsibility?

Saturn Opposite Saturn

Saturn makes another hard aspect to itself when you’re around fifteen years ago. Often, oppositions are experienced as relationships when we’re younger. The Saturn opposition is about learning to be social. It’s about learning how to enact or deal with the ideas around cultural agency and response that you were hit with when you were seven.

Ask yourself the following questions, depending on whether you’re a day or night chart.

Questions for Saturn opposite Saturn in a day chart:

What was happening in your life at age fifteen?
What felt good to repress?
What kind of longer life patterns did the good feelings associated with some kinds of repression build in you?
What models were you emulating?
Who were the younger people in your life and what did you represent to them?


Questions for Saturn opposite Saturn in a night chart:

What was happening in your life at age fifteen?
What were you disillusioned about?
What kind of adult emotional self image grew out of your teenaged self?
What models were you unable to emulate?
Who were the older people in your life and what did they represent to you?

The Last Saturn Square Saturn

The last Saturn square Saturn is the last hard aspect that Saturn makes to itself before it returns. This Saturn transit is always a reality check. It forces you to own your life. It forces you to allow all of the investment that your family, ancestors, and community made in you into the world.

Ask yourself the following questions, depending on whether you’re a day or night chart.

Questions for the last Saturn square Saturn in a day chart:

What was going on at age twenty-one?
What new roles did you step into?
How did you redefine community?
What spaces accepted/needed you?
Are you right for the roles that you play in the spaces that accepted you?


Questions for the last Saturn square Saturn in a night chart:

What was going on at age twenty-one?
What roles did you have to give up, even if they were roles that you always assumed you’d have to play?
How was community redefined for you as a result of you giving up these roles?
What spaces are not for you?
What kind of agency does leaving the spaces that are not for you give you?

Saturn Return

Your Saturn return is just the resetting of this whole Saturn cycle. You’re an adult when your Saturn returns and, as a person in your late twenties, you’re not hanging onto youth anymore. You have some things figured out, a favorite type of pasta, and a bed time that you might be reluctant to change unless an event or person really means something to you.



If you imagine the entire Saturn cycle as a type of hero’s journey or anti-hero’s journey, then the first Saturn square Saturn is when the hero (you) realize that you need to go on a journey even if you don’t have the tools to go or even know what kind of journey you want to go on yet. For the day time chart, you might be a hero who feels optimistic about the journey. For a night time chart, you’re more like an anti-hero who sees the journey as something that you’re condemned to.

The Saturn opposite Saturn, then, would be the climax of that journey. If you’re a day time chart, you’re defeating the bad guys or what you think are the bad guys to protect the people you have a responsibility over. If you’re a night time chart, you are the bad guy and you might have negative experiences with mentors who mistreat you, leading you to be scapegoated. You might need to dethrone someone.

The last Saturn square Saturn is either the rebirth or atonement part of the journey. A day time chart might feel more childlike during this time because enacting Saturn gets exhausting and what needs to be reborn at twenty-one is their inner kid. A night time chart might experience the last Saturn square as a time when they need to forgive themselves for putting themselves in places that were not made for their comfort. They will need to atone to themselves for themselves so that they can forgive their younger selves.

The Saturn return is just the return home. The progressed lunar return that happens right before Saturn returns means that the home you’re returning to isn’t the same home you left and that you have a home shaped by your adulthood rather than your childhood. Saturn return is coming back as a fully formed hero or anti-hero—an adult.

Ask yourself the following questions on your Saturn return, depending on whether you’re a day or night chart.

Questions for Saturn return in a day chart:

How was adulthood defined to you at ages seven, fifteen, and twenty-one and how do you define it for yourself now?
Are there any roles that force you to be too responsible that you need to let go of?
What keeps you alive and joyful rather than responsible and calibrated?
How can you make it easier to listen to yourself?
How can you take authentic pleasure in your authorship?


Questions for Saturn return in a night chart:

How was adulthood defined to you at ages seven, fifteen, and twenty-one and how do you define it for yourself now?
Are there opportunities for new responsibilities that can give you agency that you never thought you could have?
Who are the people who share your disillusionment so that it does not alienate you from the entire world?
Who listens to you in a way that makes you feel heard?
Who are you once you release your shame?