It’s Saturn time, baby!

Saturn is actually the biggest ruler breaker of all. This is because its rules do not attempt to serve power. Rather, it tries to define reality despite power.

Neoliberalism tries to tell us that Saturn is all about rules and regulations and that these things do not make us free. It tries to tell us that Saturn is about personal discipline and putting enough hours in at a job because, supposedly, those things do make us free. Too often, Saturn has been defined as something which disciplines poor people (work, work, work work work!) rather than what it really is: something which disciplines the wealthy.

Really, Saturn was the father of the Jupiter-king, who is tried to swallow whole. Saturn is about the flimsiness of empire and of power and of legacy. Saturn, father-time, swallows all because time swallows all. If Jupiter is the smoke filled den in which old white men make deals that benefit their friends at the expense of the wider public, then Saturn is the reality that all of these powerful, rich, white men will soon die of one cause or another. If Jupiter, representing wealth, makes things in our world such as luxury and prestige, then Saturn is the frustrating reality that, no matter how much you have, your life will always be subject to the same diseases, catastrophes, and consequences of time that everyone else is. Saturn means that we share the same fate. Saturn is a public good. It is the power of the public.

December sees Jupiter enter Capricorn (finally!) where it joins its depositor Saturn and Pluto. Venus travels out of bounds in Capricorn until it leaves for Aquarius on the 21st. Mercury is in Sagittarius, ruled by Jupiter, who is being fed by Saturn. This means that, no matter what, this entire month is fed completely by one planet: Saturn.

In the Harry Potter books, Saturnian characters are often framed as frustrating to Harry (who has Saturn at the top of his own chart). Both Snape and Voldemort are seen as brown nosing, and snivelling, and as uncourageous and undeserving of love. Both are Slytherins, which is constantly portrayed as a house where people want to know who you know so that they can see whether you’re important enough to be friends with or not.

What we see in the sixth Harry Potter book is Harry’s new understanding of the institutional politics which rule the magical world. He meets Slughorn, who wants to collect the rich and the famous. He is caught between the power games of the Ministry and Dumbledore. While Harry sides with the cult of Dumbledore, we as readers find out later that Dumbledore is just as power hungry as the rest.

The thing about Snape and Voldemort, being Saturnian figures, is that they’re always outsiders to the institutional power plays at hand. What both Snape and Voldemort are able to swallow, which Draco Malfoy cannot, a life lived on the margins of society. When Tom Riddle was a recent graduate, everyone said that he would go on to do great things but he chose a job at a small shop because he wanted to find his mother’s old locket. When Malfoy chooses to become a Death Eater, it’s in part due to fear and in part due to clout chasing. When his position alienates him from the rest of society, he can’t stand it. He tries to sneak into Slughorn’s party even when it could compromise his position and Snape yells at him.

The power of Saturn is that it doesn’t give a fuck what those in power think because it creates its own reality. It is willing to reside on the margins because it doesn’t chase status. In the case of Voldemort, who functions similarly to far right groups always griping about liberal elitism, Saturn can create extreme ideologies. In the case of Snape, we see someone who is able to get a lot done because he doesn’t care about glory, whether that glory is achieved within the Death Eaters or the Order of the Phoenix.

Questions to consider in December:

If you didn’t care about institutional validation or status, what would your reality be?
Have any of your dreams become fantasies which serve the sole purpose of making you think that all your problems would disappear if only you had one thing? If you had wealth, power, or status what problems would you still have that you have now?
What are some things that power cannot give you?

Sagittarius

Sagittarius is a sign that understands wealth but doesn’t understand money. Get to know money.

The difference between wealth and money is that wealth is a social class. It implies social acceptance. It is a sense of self that is created socially. The thing about money is that it is profoundly alienating. People don’t share how much money they make or what they do with it. It’s seen as their business only.

Your challenge this month is to use money in a way that gives you the gall to pursue the complete freedom of defining yourself without needing social approval. This doesn’t mean you need a lot of it or that you have to be wealthy. It means that you must use money to feed the trust that binds your every relationship together.

Capricorn

You have so much power. It is hard for you to recognize this power because no one else in this world can recognize it. What feels like power for you can look alienating, strange, or even pathetic to anyone who doesn’t care. Your power comes from your ability to treasure all of these things despite how they are named and to build it into something awe striking.

Right now, gather. You cannot do all that you mean to do alone. Gathering looks like: listening to your roommates talk about their problems, feeding others, being fed, and using publically available resources. It means accepting all of the things available to you and rejoicing in them.

Aquarius

No, it’s not true that you can become less trapped by social mores than other people if you seek unconventional ways of life. You can only become less trapped by social mores when you confront the ways that these mores raised you, step by step. Don’t be that person who uses quirkiness and social ostracization as a shield against addressing social guilts such as classism, racism, and sexism.

Your gift is that you’re already willing to contradict the challenges and approvals that are offered up to you. This month is simply your chance to figure out all of the ways in which you limit yourself from facing some of your own sources of blame and shame.

Pisces

Why don’t you build real community from your many groups of friends? This is not a rhetorical question because there are often real and debilitating reasons why we do not do this. Often, friend groups are consequences of institutional gathering that divide people from one another.

Stay away from the normal places where you make friends. Make friends who are 30 years older than you or 30 years younger than you. Make friends with people who need childcare and people who can give you healthcare. Make friendship a revolutionary act of distributing support.

Aries

Your goals should be giving you more freedom, not less. Think about what defines a grown up existence to you. If it means settling down and appeasing whiteness and appeasing power, then you have bought into rebellion as a consumer good only suitable for the young.

Create a grown up version of yourself that has the gall to fuck shit up. You have the power to not only do this but make it a livable reality. You are tremendously capable of creating a sustainable existence for yourself. Just choose your own rules.

Taurus

Your politics should not be contained by the political sphere. Your struggle should be evident in every decision that you make. This is the only way that you can build trust. I understand that there are areas of life you want to keep stable so that you can fight in others but you have already shown me that safety doesn’t exist in stasis.

As a Taurus, you will never say what you don’t mean and you will always do as you say. There’s a real revolutionary potential in this because this way of going about your business is so anti-neoliberal. Don’t change this part of yourself. Just remind yourself that your meaning is built through an outsider’s lens and that more people will disapprove of your message than approve.

Gemini

Stop living as if what you do for a job now will be what makes you money five or ten years from now. Your needs are not static and the way that you feed them should be changing with them. If you can demonstrate to yourself that you are in charge of feeding your own hungry, you can stop being so afraid of your own appetite.

And that means that you must feed yourself hedonistically. No more scrimping around the edges for yourself, giving yourself leftover ambitions that you already know you can achieve. Don’t play it safe. Promise something to yourself that feels like abundance.

Cancer

You’re not supposed to be with anyone who makes you feel comfortable. Why would you? You’re the king of comfort already. Choose people who spook you in the ways that your stomach tells you are the right ways to be spooked.

You’re simply not happy being the person who all of your friends think you are anymore. You’re not happy being easy, being whimsical, being happy to please. You’re ready to earn a new identity for yourself through doing things that initially feel uncomfortable.

Leo

Stop being so helplessly frustrated with your job. You are not helpless. You are the most talented and ingenious person that you know. The only thing that holds you back from greatness is your desire for social validation through immediately accessible glory.

Don’t let anyone know about your accomplishments until they have already happened. Let your intentions be misread because you know and trust your own motives well. Stop explaining yourself. Stop being the favorite child of your boss or mentor and let them know without words and you’re not here to serve anyone’s goals except the ones which you explicitly approve of.

Virgo

The only thing that shocks you to your core is love. Because it can feel so frivolous and so besides the point. Why spend all this time in loving when you have far less nebulous tasks at hand? But, also, what is the point to life if you don’t have time to love?

Your ability to dig out the real love behind facades of romance mean that you want to choose the person, not the atmosphere. You are mature enough and capable enough to build the type of love that you want to build. All this means is that you’re capable of falling and recuperating from the one hundred mini heartbreaks that any real love affair is made of.

Libra

Your boss is not your daddy. Your partner is not your daddy. Your father is not your daddy. The only things you should be calling daddy are 1) yourself when you validate a hard life decision that makes you feel in control and 2) patriarchal figures that you want to make fun of.

So, find new ways of using that word across all aspects of life to yourself and for yourself. Start a Roth IRA fund, save up to buy a car, pay off your credit card debt and tell yourself “Thank you, daddy.”

Scorpio

The reason why you are where you are today is because you are simply ready to think and speak differently. You are one of those rare people who can say the thing that everyone else wants to shy away from without even a hint of blush. This ability works for you when you use it to disturb systems and not yourself. Disturbing other people without a pure motive is simply passive aggressive vengeance. You will not build a trusting relationship with yourself through it.

Keep your ideas sacred by only sharing them with a motive. Speak as if you have nothing to lose.