04 Feb Four Tips for Saturn Cycles
Have you ever wondered how the rings of Saturn affect you? Every seven years, we feel Saturn’s effects. Here are the mechanics of the personal cycles of Saturn to inspire reflection. What was life like for you around these years? What have you learned about the gift of your natal Saturn and lessons in authority over time?
Did you have any major break ups, break downs, or breakthroughs around these ages? Were there patterns or themes involved where you felt held back or restricted—and overcame?
Saturn represents cycles of identity – when we are confronted with limitations
- Age 7: learning who’s in charge, defining neurocircuitry standards for home, “you’re not the boss of me”
- Age 14: dreaming our identity “what do you want to be when you grow up?”
- Age 21: adulting with our own energy signature, separate from our family
1st Saturn return: Age 28-30: turning childhood dreams into real life
- Age 35: finding our own authority inside
- Age 42: questioning and pivoting careers
- Age 49: maturing through limitations
2nd Saturn return Age 56-59: no turning back
- Age 63: accepting the role of wise elder
- Age 70: preparing for death by passing the torch to the next generation
- Age 77: polishing the mirrors of our hearts
and so on…
Saturn’s orbit is 29.5 years. The cycles of Saturn are slow, and demand our attention. Given that most Saturn returns take three years to finish, there’s not an exact moment in time to look for a release. It’s about what we’re learning over time, around these ages.
Tips for Working with Saturn
Saturn creates limitations that help you redefine how you want to live your life from each turning point—at each seven year cycle.
- Understand what rules you’re playing by—you personally—do you want to outline what core values are defining your life? What needs to adjust? I find it helpful to write core values for my household, and my business. It feels useful to weave those core values into meetings, goals, and general personal check-ins. If you don’t know where to start google is your friend. I created my own based on yoga, recovery tenets, and spiritual systems. It doesn’t mean I have to be perfect, but it helps me know when something feels off, it’s likely that something isn’t a good match for my inner core values—and I can make the appropriate adjustments.
- Get off autopilot—let go of what you were supposed to do according to society, genetics, or anything else. Be your own boss. Do you want to start learning about your personal decision making authority through your human design bodygraph? How you make decisions is unique to you. Do you want to take full responsibility for your life through all the limitations presented and soar free? Are you a yes/no person, or a person that needs to wait for clarity before making decisions? Do you feel a whoosh-knowingness, or is it better to sleep on things? We are not taught how to follow our own rhythms of decision-making, but wouldn’t it be amazing to offer this to the next generation?
- Dump out your junk drawer—or in Rachel’s case her entire closet (read entry below). Embrace the limitations you’re experiencing and remove the stuff that blatantly doesn’t fit. Metaphorically and practically.
- Set yourself straight—new habits, routines, and daily disciplines are the small things that lead to big changes over time, but only you can make that change. It might be the most brave and empowering time of your life, and it will be worth it. Know that you can win. Life is happening for you, not to you.
My client shares her experience facing the tail end of her Saturn opposition:
by Tiffany Harelik, MA, RYT
Texan to the bone, Tiffany is a fourth-generation Austinite who shares her practice from Travis and Callahan counties. Her family lineage is steeped in Russian and Blackfoot ancestry. She holds a Master’s in Psychology and specializes in guiding clients through deep diving intuitive sessions. When she’s not writing the astrology column, you can find Tiff bee keeping, gardening, and midwifing new books at Spellbound Publishers. Explore her creative projects at www.TiffanyHarelik.com
When Saturn Jumps Out of Your Jewelry Box
Rachel J. Wilkinson
I was hunched over my bathroom sink scrubbing ten years of tarnish off a silver pendant when my husband came in and stopped dead in his tracks. “What crazed OCD monster crawled up your ass and died?”
Unnecessary and rude, right? Well, a jewelry bomb had exploded in my bathroom. I was surrounded by piles and piles of rings, bracelets, and more statement necklaces than a woman could wear in a lifetime. My intention had been to liberate the few good pieces I own from the mass of brassy garbage I’ve collected over the years because of costuming and theater projects. But what my husband walked into was a full-blown combat operation.
“Saturn,” I said. “Saturn crawled up my ass and died.”
You see, this wasn’t an afternoon whim. I had spent days mercilessly decluttering my house as if possessed by Marie Kondo’s more belligerent twin. I didn’t care about what sparked joy, only whether or not I had touched whatever I had in my hand in the last year. If I hadn’t, it was gone. And the weirder part was that I hadn’t planned on doing any of it. I just felt moved.
This is what made me recall a conversation I had with Tiffany about the energetic influence of Saturn and how I’m in my Saturn opposition. I’ll be 45 years old in May so, I suspect decluttering my house is only the beginning of the downsizing, chucking, and stripping away I’ll be doing this year as I confront the nagging worry that I’ve wasted half my life.
Let’s just say I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I basically donated my entire closet to goodwill over the weekend. Most of the clothes I owned didn’t feel like me anymore. I spent years trying to “make prints work” because that would mean I was stylish and fashionable, but all I had to show for it was wasted money on years of regretful purchases. It was immensely freeing to chuck them into boxes so they could go away forever.
And I think that’s the silver lining of Saturn. For all the challenging aspects a Saturn opposition brings in terms of confronting past choices, I see this as an opportunity to liberate myself from the programming of other people’s expectations. How much brassy garbage have I worn as my identity because someone said I was supposed to? How can I avoid future regret? How will I use the years I have left in a way that makes me proud and fulfilled?
So as trepidatious as I might be about what 2022 has in store, I look forward to testing what my past experiences have taught me. I want to reexamine who I really am. I want to discover what I really want. And I want to know what is important enough to me to do battle against a Roman god to keep it in my life.
