Is This The Most Challenging Saturn Return Ever? Part 2

Saturn is in Libra

Oct 29, 2009 - Apr 7, 2010    Jul 21, 2010 – Oct 5, 2012

Sept 21, 1980 – Nov 29, 1982     May 6, 1983 – Aug 24, 1983

Nov 20, 1950 - Mar 7, 195      Aug 13, 1951 – Oct 22, 1953

Oct 7, 1921 – Dec 20, 1923    Apr 6, 1924 – Sep 13, 1924

Before addressing the Saturn Return, let's talk about Saturn in Libra in general. You know, I can't emphasise enough what a good placement this is. (OK, it might not feel like it just now.)

Saturn is exalted in the sign of the scales. That means he is at his best. He behaves better here than in any other sign. His obsession with rules and regulations is modified by a balance and fairness, by partnership, by intelligence.



The more people I meet with this placement, the more I admire and respect them as a group. People with Saturn in Libra are blessed with the following:

• practical fairness, 
• clear, rational problem-solving, 
• a sense of social justice and duty, 
• an understanding that personal relationships are serious, 
• loyalty to partners, commitment, the desire to work at relationships, these people are grown up about relationships, 
• practical intelligence Libra is a very bright sign, like all the air signs, but this sometimes gets overlooked. With Saturn here, that Libran intelligence is put to practical purpose. Saturn is not a personal planet, so the intelligence tends to be less foregrounded, more subtle. It manifests more in how Saturn Libra gets things done.

Even Shiva and Parvati had their problems.

Why is it  such a special placement? Because Saturn in Libra, when well expressed, truly supports a partner, puts other people first. Saturn in Libra shares.

Here is the downside. Obviously the main area of difficulty is likely to be relationships which come under the rulership of Libra.

• working on relationships that aren't worth the candle. Getting stuck in a partnership that is a bad habit.
• choosing difficult partnerships. It may not feel like it at the time, this is ultimately a growth experience. You need to look at it rationally and ask yourself: are we better off together or apart
• fear of commitment. You must face this fear (if you have it) and figure out how you are blocking yourself. Are you deliberately choosing the wrong people? Are you staying single for too long?

The 1980s generation
Right now, this generation is experiencing their torrid first Saturn Return. Saturn is important for many of them anyway, since they may have a Jupiter conjunct Saturn natally, which is one of the most challenging and character-building aspects. These big planets are the two kings of solar system with opposite ways of ruling the world. Saturn contracts, Jupiter expands. The conjunction (which happens every 20 years) promises great potential. But they fight each other. Saturn is about contraction and Jupiter about expansion. In the second house for example, this combo often shows people who are always broke but always able to earn a crust.

It took them years to get to the altar, v Saturnian.

Or they may have a Pluto-Saturn conjunction, or a Saturn-Jupiter-Pluto conjunction. Pluto plus Saturn is really tough. In Libra, this would suggest the early experiences of partnership (e.g. their parents' marriage) may have been pretty harsh. (I can't help thinking of Prince William, born in 1982 with Jupiter, Pluto, Saturn, Mars in a stellium. His parents marriage was exactly a paradigm he did not want to follow. He learned the lesson (Saturn) of bad marriage.)

Pluto plus Saturn in the long run suggests people who can transform partnership, take it to a new level. But in the short term, it can mean that life deals you some tough lessons. You may even have had to grow up fast.

Of course the power and intensity of these planets depends on how they interact with the rest of the chart. If they are well integrated with the more personal planets (Sun, Moon, Mercury and so on), then you may deal with these energies so well that you hardly notice them.

The 1950s generation

Isabella Rossellini (b.1952) and her
then-partner David Lynch. Picture says it all really.

You'd think that the previous generation born with Saturn in Libra in the early 1950s would have had an easier time with relationships – after all they have dreamy, romantic Neptune in Libra too and Saturn would be in a handy sextile to wicked Pluto in Leo for many of them.

Far from it. Neptune's idealism has made partnership really quite difficult: there is no such thing as perfect. But with Saturn there, you just keep on trying  – and you take relationships really, really seriously. And with Pluto in Leo one of your most important life-missions is the transformation of the self. You may well have effected this through relationships.

These are the flower children born with Uranus in Cancer, who did so much to change how we think of the idea "mother".

You can see how this pattern starts to work. The whole structure of families shifted thanks to these people and I expect more shifts as they become grandparents.

So Saturn has returned for these generations born with such powerful alignment of planets. They have come of age. And what have they walked into? Oh - just the biggest planetary firestorm since the 1960s.

More in the next post....

But meanwhile here are some related posts.
The Royal Wedding: Celebrating Power
For all the Royal Wedding/Middleton posts click here.