Significance of Transiting Saturn

Saturn is one of the most important planets to examine in your transits, for it represents the way you see and experience the universe as you have structured it. The location of transiting Saturn in your chart indicates the part of your life that is being examined and tested at that time. The house that Saturn is in represents the areas of greatest tension in your life, to which you must direct your closest attention. The planets that Saturn transits in your natal chart represent energies in your life that are being challenged and behavior patterns that require examination.

Most people experience Saturn transits as if Saturn were an external force that was utterly out of control. Frequently a Saturn transit seems like the product of fate, usually an inpleasant fate. But you must understand that Saturn represents the way you program your universe at the deepest, most fundamental level. Consequently, the energy of a Saturn transit is never truly external. But your c mind avoids responsibility for what is happening, so the unc mind takes over by programming the event unconsciously. You do not experience its effects until the outer world reacts and a "fated" event occurs, which is nothing more than the universe responding to your own actions.

No matter how unpleasant a Saturn transit seems at the time, it represents what you really want in life and is helping you get it. Most people are out of touch with what they truly want. If you thoroughly understand your needs and wants, you will find that Saturn simply brings about their manifestation. The "losses" that Saturn brings are of things that you do not want or need. No matter how much you think you want them, let them go, especially relationships that Saturn may end.

When Saturn transits a house, you should pay great attention to the affairs of that house. It is not a sign that everything in that house is going wrong, but you should direct your c there and find out how you should relate to those affairs. If you are in a good position, that is, one that is appropriate at this time in your life, the transit will firm up and structure that house for you. If you are not in a good position, Saturn will bring great changes that will be unpleasant insofar as you resist them.

Depression, sadness, physical and emotional loss are all signs that you are not well adjusted to the issues of the houses and signs ruled by saturn. Do not be dismayed, however, if you have these feelings. They are normal responses. Very few people are so in touch with themselves that they can react to Saturn positively. In a very real sense Saturn is the teacher, but it is each of us teaching ourselves about what we really are.

Transiting Saturn in the Natal 1st House

This transit represents a new beginning of internal growth. The period when Saturn crossed your Ascendant was a time of shearing away those aspects of your life that no longer had a valid role, a time when projects were completed. As Saturn continues to transit your first house, your responsibilities will continue to be heavy, but your accomplishments may also be great. During this transit it is not a good idea to start any new, long-range projects that will take years to complete. Obviously you should proceed with anything that has to be done in a shorter time span. Dont use this transit as an excuse for sitting around and waiting for a more favorable time.

Now is the time to turn your attention inward. You have just completed a 14 year period in which your attention was focused primarily on interactions with others, your social life. While you have built up a very elaborate external world, you may be quite unaware of what is going on inside yourself. Now is the time to turn inward and restructure yourself wherever necessary. This restructuring will take several years, so dont be in a hurry. You have learned a great deal about the world, now learn about yourself. What do you really want and need? What have you learned about yourself over the last several years? You have to understand what you are in your own terms, not in other people's terms.

Regardless of what type of person you are, this is the time of introversion and introspection. the more you get in touch with yourself during the next few years, the more successful you will be in the future.

Saturn has a way of forcing you to deal with the appropriate issues. Since this is a time for looking inward, it will obviously present difficulties if you have elaborate committments in the outer world. If tose committments get in the way of investing energy within yourself, you will begin to have trouble with them. You may feel that you just dont have the energy to cope; you may feel withdrawn and tired. If you are naturally introspective, you may become more so, Often people experience significant failures in their work at this time, because the work is distracting them from an encounter with themselves.

This is an excellent time for any kind of psychotherapy, human potential work or c-raising. You need to unlearn all the incorrect and inaccurate ways of thinking about yourself that you have learned from others. You need to know who you are. Then you can properly lay the foundation for restructuring your inner life. This must precede the restructuring of your outer life, which will happen about 14 years from now.

Transiting Saturn in the Natal 2nd House

When Saturn transited your first house, you had to learn who you really were in your own terms. Now, as Saturn enters your second house, you have to learn what is really important to you, what you really value. This does not mean just material things, but also psychological, spiritual and moral values. In fact these may take precedence over material values, if that is where you need to work on self-understanding.

Many of the old texts discuss this transit as a time of financial loss and poverty. This is not necessarily true, although it can be. If material wealth is keeping you from discovering your true values, then you are likely to experience financial losses. Otherwise, your circumstances will probably be all right. Even so, however, you may feel financially insecure at this time. Control over your material possessions may seem to be slipping from your hands. So you work very hard to keep everything going as you want it to. But try to avoid letting fear and financial insecurity run your life now, for this takes attention away from the task of restructuring your value system on the inner psychological level. The best course is to organize your finances as well as possible so you don't have to pay much attention to them. If you get wrapped up in money matters, they will be a source of trouble.

Your material possessions reflect what you value on the psychological plane. If you are not conscious of your inner values, your possessions will reflect that unconsciousness; that is, they will not accurately reflect who you are. They will require much more involvement, because they are not really natural to you. And above all, your experience of material possessions will seem to be out of control! When you discover your real needs in this area, they may be quite different from what you thought, which is usually what you were taught to think. Most unhappiness about possessions comes because there is some disparity between what you think you should want and what you do want.

Be careful with your finances, and be economical. Above all, do not become concerned with them any more than you have to in order to function in your everyday world.

Transiting Saturn in the Natal 3rd House

Saturn's transit of this house completes the phase of inward preparation and self-encounter that began several years ago with Saturn's transit of the first house. The main issue that you will confront at this time is the actual structuring of your mind and how it operates on a day-to-day level, in other words, your everyday mental patterns, habits, styles of speaking and ways of listening to others. Normally you take these issues for granted and don't think about them very much. But they are very important in structuring your world.

The third house is the house of immediate environment as well as of the evryday aspects of your mind. Your immediate environment is the part of your world that is most affected by your unc mental patterns, attitudes and habits. Therefore you need to understand these areas completely so you can gain greater control over your daily life.

As you encounter this aspect of yourself, you may find it necessary to make extensive changes. Even if you do not realize this, the changes will occur automatically. In either case, as these changes occur you may experience difficulty with people who are so used to your old ways that they cannot handle the new ones. You may have trouble with people in your immediate environment, especially relatives and close neighbors. These changes may also cause you to become discouraged and to be unable to communicate as readily as you used to. That is understandable but it is not a very good way to handle the situation; it only makes things worse.

When you learn what is happening in your mind, it may be quite dificult to accept yourself. This leads to depression, withdrawal and a general sense of discouragement. You must learn to see what is happening dispassionately, without making value judgements. You should be concerned with what is, not with what you think should be. This is especially true now, because you should be restructuring your notions of what should be to reflect your potentialities more accurately. Saturn's energies can make you live according to ideals that have no relevance to yours or anyone else's reality, if you start by making value judgements. When you live for such Saturnine abstractions, you live for no one and nothing!

As Saturn completes this transit, your attention will move away from concern with inner truths. Once again you will begin to deal with how your inner world relates to the outside world. If you are a person who defines success in purely external terms, you may feel that a period of frustration is ending. However, it hasn't been failure, but rather learning.

Transiting Saturn in the Natal 4th House

This is an extremely important transit of Saturn. At this time you will focus on your innermost personal and domestic life, for this is area that requires work now. Any problems in your domestic life will become more critical at this time, and anything you have been "putting up with" but not really handling will have to be dealt with. Consequently the effects of this transit range from a simple reorganization of your domestic environment to a total reshuffling of the personal relationships and contacts that affect your domestic life. Your home itself may become a tremendous burden because of payments, repairs or other such responsibilities.

Elements that used to be important in your life often come back into prominence now, especially if they were never resolved in the past. Therefore this is an especially good time to get in touch with your innermost self through dehypnotherapy or other c-raising and c-expanding techniques.

During this time you may have to take on a parental responsibility for someone, not necessarily your own child, or you may seek out someone who will play a parental role for you. If you do find a "parent", however, make sure that this situation will ultimately lead to independence on your part. Ne certain that it is a growth relationship for you and not the beginning of a long term dependency, which would prove to be detrimental in the years to come.

At this time a period of several years' preparation is coming to an end. You are ready to emerge from comparative dormancy, at least in terms of outward success, and begin to move upward and forward to achieve your ambitions. But you must start modestly. The fourth house acts as the foundation of your horoscope, and you must pay attention to securing and building up this foundation. This is what lies behind your outward concern with your physical home. It is really the inner "house" that you are attending to, which is the reason that this is such a good time to be involved in psychotherapy. Inner problems that you do not clear up now will be the source of most of the problems along your personal road during the next 14 years. The fourth house is opposite the tenth house of career and social status. Any negative factors at work here will oppose your successful achievements later. This is a time of new beginnings, so get off to a good start.

Transiting Saturn in the Natal 5th House

During this time you will learn more about yourself and how to express yourself in the best possible way. But you will have to work for this result; it will not happen by itself. You should proceed in a careful, organized manner. Although the fifth is usually considered the house of recreation and amusement, Saturn's transit through it is not likely to be very amusing. It is as if everything in your life has to have some teaching or learning purpose. During Saturn's transit through the earlier houses you redefined and restructured your inner self. Now you will begin to give that self new form through interaction with others.

Areas traditionally associated with the fifth house may become a burden at this time. You will have to attend to these matters, for they will not take care of themselves. For example, children may become a heavy responsibility for some reason. Love affairs may become quite difficult, especially if they do not permit your newly restructured self to be expressed. A love affair may involve an older person who acts almost as a parent to you. Or you may play that role for someone younger. You may first become aware of certain aspects of yourself through an intense emotional encounter with another person. Even if it is an unpleasant encounter, it can be a positive growth experience.

During this transit you may also simply withdraw from encounters with others. This is understandable because every encounter poses challenges, but you should not avoid them anyway. In so doing you are avoiding the experience of what you have become, which is so necessary for your proper development at this time. If you feel that you want a relationship, but your opportunities seem to be frustrated, examine your real feelings. Usually you will find that you are subconsciously avoiding the people who would be right for you in order to avoid the confrontation you fear.

The fifth house is also the house of gambling, speculation and other such risks. Needless to say, these activities are not at all in accord with the methodical and work-demanding nature of Saturn. Do not take such risks at this time, for they are not likely to work out.

Anything that you produce at this time will be the result of hard work. You will have a much more disciplined approach to creative activity than you have had in the past. This is as it should be, because again the aim is to understand yourself through careful, disciplined action. In this case the activity means giving form to something through your own efforts. This principle applies whether or not you are artistic. All of us are creative in some way.

Transiting Saturn in the Natal 6th House

This is a critical time in your development. When Saturn leaves this house and crosses the seventh-house cusp, your efforts to attain your goals and ambitions will begin to bear definite fruit if you have handled this house properly. Even if you have not received much recognition for your efforts in the past few years, you will begin to receive it then.

The transit of Saturn through the sixth house can be compared to preparing for a debut. You have to put everything in order so that you will make the maximum impact. Consequently this is a time of very heavy responsibility and hard work. At times your responsibilities may seem overwhelming, and you may not feel equal to the challenge. If you are employed, you may find it difficult to live up to your employer's demands, which can lead to difficulties on the job. This situation is made worse by your feeling that even if you did better, you would not be adequately recognized or compensated for your efforts. And you would probably be right, at least in the short run. But in the long run, if you can keep with it, the work will be beneficial.

Your effectiveness as a human being will be tested during this time. Therefore, you should try to get your performance into shape in many areas, especially work and professional matters. Later you will be in a more public position, where it will be harder to make necessary changes.

Conserve your energies now in order to devote yourself more efficiently to whatever must be done. If you scatter or waste your energies, you will not have enough. And if you try to compensate with an extra burst of energy, your health may suffer. The sixth is also the house of health, and this Saturn transit means that you must attend to your health. Treat your body as a tool that has to be well cared for in order to achieve its desired purpose. If your health breaks down during this transit, you should examine the way you handle your physical energies as a whole. Make whatever changes are necessary so that your lifestyle more accurately reflects your intrinsic reality. Both your body and mind must be in shape for the impending emergence of your energies into the outer world, where everyone can see them more clearly. That will happen shortly.

Transiting Saturn in the Natal 7th House

The transit of Saturn through this house represents the culmination of the process that began about 14 years ago when Saturn entered your first house. The need then was to redefine yourself in your own terms. Now you need to experience yourself through one-to-one encounters with others, through partnerships and intimate associations. Close relationships are the area of attention.

During this transit you will discover that your close associations with others test you out and make increasing demands. Often these will be sources of difficulty in your life, and dealing with them will require great effort on your part. Some relationships will end, because they demand more than they are worth. This transit often coincides with a marital breakup. Even a good marriage will have to confront its flaws when one of the partners has Saturn transiting the seventh house.

Coworkers will make greater demands upon you than in the past because they see you as someone who can accomplish things, and they want you to prove it. This brings us to the other major point about Saturn's transit through this house.

On entering this house, Saturn has once again come above the horizon of your natal chart. This means that your attention is again focused primarily away from your inner world, out into the social world. If you have been preparing yourself properly during the last 14 years, getting to know who and what you really are, what you can do and cannot do, then you will begin to get recognition during this time. But this house also calls forth tests of your ability through confrontations with others. This may be particularly obvious in your profession, but it applies equally to your personal life. This is another factor in the marital tensions that accompany this transit. The better you handle such confrontations, the better your relationship will be in the immediate future. basically the situation is quite simple.

You must do the best you can at any particular task, and you must understand the nature of your relationships with others. Exactly what are your expectations of them and their expectations of you? In other words, what agreements have you made with others? Once you know, live up to them. It is not terribly important what the agreements are, but it is important that you fulfill them. This is the fundamental test of this transit.

Transiting Saturn in the Natal 8th House

This transit brings into focus finances and possessions that you hold with others. In a larger way it brings into question the greater transformations that you have been going through.

It is not enough simply to know who you are and how you relate to others. You must also come to terms with other people's values. You must learn to live with those values and to incorporate them constructively into your life without destroying your own individuality. With Saturn transiting this house, you will become aware of this issue, often through conflict with other people's values. Other people's resources may be cut off from you and be unavailable when you think you need them. A concrete example of this would be not getting a bank loan because you have not met the bank's criteria. Or in a marriage, your partner may encounter financial hard times that cut you off from an accustomed source of income.

During this transit you cannot count upon others for any kind of material backing. They may not have the money, or they may not want to share it with you now. It would be a good idea to get into a position where you don't have to depend on anyone else's resources.

The eighth house is also the house of major transformations in life, including death. However, it must be said immediately that your own death is an extremely unlikely result of an eighth house Saturn transit. If death enters your life at all at this time, it is likely to be someone else's. Or you may suddenly become psychologically concerned about your own mortality. You may think about death more often.

You have just finished a phase of intense encounter with others, which has enabled you to define yourself by becoming aware of how you deal with people. This phase is more or less finished, and now the question arises of what all this is for. During this time you are likely to review the changes you have gone through in the years since Saturn crossed your Ascendant and to look for a pattern in it. Through this analysis you hope to arrive at an understanding of where you are going. This process and learning to understand other people's resources and values will prepare you for the transit of Saturn conjunct the Midheaven, which will happen in a few years. Also you will learn the limitations of your own resources and the degree to which you have to cooperate with and depend upon others.

Transiting Saturn in the Natal 9th House

At this time you are approaching a life peak, when all your ambitions and efforts should bear their greatest fruit. That peak will occur during the transit of Saturn through the tenth house. Now, while Saturn transits the ninth house, your views about life are becoming stabilized. You understand the rules of the game you are playing in, and you are concentrating on how to play more skillfully. In this phase of the cycle of Saturn, your understanding of yourself and how you live has reached a climax. If you do not know who you are now, you will probably have to wait until the next cycle to find out-about seven to nine years from now.

There is a danger here, however. It is tempting to assume that you have reached the point of complete understanding, so that you may become narrow unless you remain open to new discoveries about yourself and the world. let your philosophy of life be a guideline, not a straitjacket. If you assume that you know everything, you may suddenly find yourself losing the "game". Strangely enough, legal difficulties can be a manifestation of this problem, for the ninth house is also the house of law.

Older authorities have claimed that this transit is dangerous for long journeys; but it is not, unless the planetary combinations in your natal ninth house suggest that you are violently accident-prone. But it does mean you may take long journeys for learning or to fulfill obligations rather than for fun.

You will be attracted to all subjects relating to higher c, such as religion, metaphysics or philosophy, as well as the law in its highest sense. But you are also concerned with practical results. You are coming to a stage that will test your ultimate effectiveness as a human being, so this is not the right time for abstractions, unless they really help you get a firmer grasp on the real world. Your approach to learning is very pragmatic at this time. The understanding you gain in this house will be of enormous benefit to you when you encounter the transit of Saturn through the tenth house.

Transiting Saturn in the Natal 10th House

In many ways, Saturn's transit of this house represents the harvest. During this time you will experience the consequences of the preparations you have been making for the last 20 to 24 years. If you have prepared well, the results will be excellent, but whatever is not so well prepared will be the basis of the difficulties you will encounter.

In your professional life, you will gain many responsibilities. If you are ever to be a leader, it will be now. If you are ambitious for leadership, this will be a period of great achievement. If you prefer not to have such responsibility, this may be an onerous time for you, but still productive, if you let it be.

In your personal development you will function with the most complete sense of who and what you are in all areas. The tenth house governs those aspects of your life that really represent your individuality as it is expressed by your unique accomplishments. At this time you have the greatest opportunity to make an impression upon the world as an individual.

But this can also be a time of disaster. Negative energies that you have unleashed in the past may have negative consequences now. Presidient Nixon resigned from office during this transit. In the past he had created great opposition, a large body of people who were anxious to see him fall. He also brought about his fall through his own unethical conduct. Saturn's transit through this house is especially dangerous if there are difficult aspects to planets in the tenth house in your natal chart. Even so, you can control the results of this transit by preparing carefully and not taking any shortcuts as you rise to the top.

Another danger that can occur during this transit is that you may become so focused on external affairs- your job, social prestige, status, etc.- that you overlook what is happening in your personal life. This is why it was so important 14 years ago, when Saturn was transiting your fourth house, to lay a strong foundation in your personal life. Anything that was done badly in that area then may be a source of problems now, and may vitiate whatever success you are enjoying now.

Nevertheless, If you have prepared well in the last several years, this can be one of the most rewarding times in your life, because you have earned every bit of it.

Transiting Saturn in the Natal 11th House

At this time your principle task is to integrate your individual self with some kind of group expression. Whatever group you will belong to will demand that you become integrated. During Saturn's transit of your tenth house, you had the opportunity to shine and achieve as an individual. Now others require that you join them and be less a star on your own. In general, however, this transit is a continuation of the high period in your life that should have begun when Saturn transited your tenth house, especially if you answer the challenges presented by this house.

If you find it difficult to work with others, to cooperate in team efforts, you may feel that coworkers and friends are getting in your way. They may give you responsibilities that you dont want. But as with the transit through the tenth, you should try to come to terms with these demands rather than avoid them, because this is how you will be rewarded.

The eleventh is also the house of your hopes and wishes, your ideals and objectives in life. During this transit you will find out whether or not you have worked effectively to attain these ideals. Saturn in your eleventh house should bring about the results you have been trying to attain, if you have prepared well. If not, your expectations will be disappointed, and it will be clear that you are not going to get what you want.

In this case, Saturn's transit of the twelfth house will be a time of breakdown and clearing out, so that in the next Saturn cycle you can try again. Most people have at least two Saturn cycles in their life. Frequently the first transit through the eleventh house is not as successful as the second, because it comes too early in life for you to take full advantage of it. At least two transits of Saturn through the chart are usually required for you to gain enough experience and maturity to make events work out in the best possible way.

Transiting Saturn in the Natal 12th House

At this time the decks are cleared for new action. Now you should be finishing up anything that was not done completely during the last several years. This is not a good time for starting new projects, for the energy just isn't there even if you think that you want to start anew.

Even if you don't want to take some project through this final finishing-up phase, circumstances will compel you to. Important elements of your life may begin to pass away, and activities that used to work well no longer do. Your ways of handling people and situations no longer achieve the desired response. You get the impression that in order to succeed you will have to change everything, yet you don't know how to make the changes. people tend to "withdraw" into themselves during this time so that they can get more in tune with what is happening. It is very important that you use this time to understand what you have accomplished and what you have failed to accomplish. Do not judge or evaluate; simply observe and recognize.

If you life has not succeeded according to your expectations during the last several years when Saturn transitied your natal tenth and eleventh houses, now you have an opportunity to clear away the barriers that prevented you from achieving what you wanted. But this effort will not bear fruit immediately. This is the end of a cycle, not yet the beginning of a new one.

It is tempting to fall into despair over the "failures" that seem to haunt you now. During this time you are more likely to feel guilty and to brood about your inadequacies. But these feelings are neither productive nor therapeutic. Recognize that this is the time to clear away leftovers from the past and to make ready for a new start. You will feel pressures for tremendous changes both in the direction of your life and in the manner of proceeding in that direction. Heed these pressures, for they are the first signs of the new order that is about to begin in your life. You will go through a new cycle of defining your individuality within yourself and within respect to others and of experiencing its effects before the world. Cut your losses, if any, and look forward rather than backward.