November 21st ~ 28th
Be always calm, my child. Keep yourself quiet and in restraint, reserve your energies, doing those little things that lie in your way, each one as well as you can, saving your strength, so that when God does call you to do something good and great you will not have wasted your forces and strength with useless strivings, but will be ready to do the work quickly and well - go slowly, my child, and keep ready. ~ Clara Barton
On November 27th-28th, Saturn will station at 25º Pisces 09’, finally ending its retrograde phase. This one feels like a long time coming. It will be immediately followed by Mercury’s direct station on November 29th. But until then we will continue to have 5 planets either retrograde or now literally stationing, as Saturn is, standing still, apparently stalled before it will finally appear to be moving forward again.
During the retrograde phase of Saturn which began this year on July 13th, we come to terms with some of our own life lessons and challenges. We are given permission to withdraw, to say No and set better boundaries. We are compelled to confront our own Saturnian blocks: our fears, our attachments, our need to control all the outcomes, avoidance and our resistance to change. The Saturn opposition, which occurred simultaneously with the Solar Eclipse on September 21st, compelled us to come face to face with some of our hardest Saturnian lessons.
Through hardship, through adult decisions, Saturn asks us to step up to the plate, to be a person of substance and respect and to gain a deeper appreciation of what it means to be responsible, to be mature, and have integrity. We grow through Saturn. This is the means by which we attain sagacity and wisdom.
The difficulty with Saturn being in its retrograde phase these past 4 months, and with a number of other planets as well, is the feeling of being stuck and unable to make any progress. Stagnation, avoidance, road blocks, and delays are all pretty typical with this phase. And even when you manage to take a step forward, it is often followed by having to take a few steps back before you can move forward again. What we learn in the mean time is Patience. Patience with the process, with ourselves and others. Learning to be self-reliant, and learning what it means to be the grown up in the room, rather than looking for others to have all the solutions.
And although it may often feel like we are not making all that much progress in our outer worlds, we have been doing a great deal of inner work. For it is during the retrograde phase of Saturn that we are given the opportunity to internalize the qualities of Saturn such as: self-discipline, self-restraint, organization, responsibility, and self-respect. And patience. And this is important. For these are the very tools required to fulfill the goals of Saturn in the outer world.
And now that Saturn will finally resume what appears to be its direct motion, we will begin to see some of the pieces of our lives coming together. Obstacles that were previously slowing us down and getting in the way, will be removed, or we will be given the tools to remove the obstacles ourselves.
On September 1st, Saturn returned to Pisces for some unfinished business. Pisces is a sign of releasing,, of tying up loose ends, of assimilation, and finishing. It is a sign of endings. But it is also when we are needing to learn from the past, make sense of our history, and our life lessons. And it is also when we gather to us the seeds that are necessary for the next cycle of Saturn which will resume when Saturn re-enters Aries on February 13th.
Pisces is symbolic of our big vision, our high hopes and our idealistic notions. The traditional ruling planet of Pisces, Jupiter, just stationed for its retrograde phase at 25º Cancer 09’, exactly 120º away from and trine Saturn at its station this week. Trines are supportive relationships between planets. In the same element, there is a commonality of purpose here. And as Jupiter sowed promises of hope and better things to come with its station earlier this month, Saturn follows through with a deeper sense of commitment.
Pisces can be a sign of forgetfulness, as we leave the remnants of the previous sign behind us, in order to make room for the new cycle to come. But it also affords us the opportunity to bring the essence of all of our experiences, the memories, all of the life events, the successes along with the failures, so that we may not repeat the same mistakes. History is important. And so is our part in it. We are the sum total of all that we have been. And when we take that essence with us into the cycle that is yet to come, it allows us to build on that pure essence of what we carry with us.
Jupiter in Cancer may be inspiring us with a vision for the future, but it is Saturn that has been teaching us how to make that vision a closer and more achievable reality. It may not be the absolute ideal we had in mind, it may not even be exactly what we were wistfully hoping for, but this combination of planetary forces lays the groundwork for at least an approximation of the ideal, implied by the Saturn/Neptune conjunction at 0º Aries in February 2026.
This is what can happen when the planet of reality, the planet of the real world, slogs its way through the diluvian depths of Pisces, urged on by the trine from Jupiter, the planet of Hope, exalted in the sign of Cancer, a sign of empathy, community, and understanding. We’ve got this. Now maybe we can all get out of the ruts we’ve been stuck in and look onward and upward.
For what Saturn’s direct station might mean for your sign (or natal house if you know it), click below: