The gifts of Saturn & Neptune retrograde
You’ve probably been hearing about two more planets about to turn (or, in astro-speak, “station”) retrograde, joining Pluto in apparent backward motion: Saturn and Neptune, both of which are in Pisces and getting ready to vacate next year and move into Aries.
Retrograde is an interesting, and widely misunderstood, concept in astrology. For one thing, unlike cars, planets don’t have a reverse gear. They can’t move backward. That they seem to is an optical illusion caused by the relative speed of two planets moving at different rates.
When one planet passes another in orbit, the slower one appears to be moving backward. You probably know this phenomenon from being in a car and stopped at a traffic light or on a train in a busy station. When you take off first, the car or train next to you seems to moving backward. (Hopefully it’s not.)
All the planets except for the Sun and Moon retrograde, and all of them except Venus and Mars do so every year. Venus goes retrograde for about 40 days every 18 months, and Mars spends around two and a half months in “reverse.”
Right away, you might get the sense that “retrograde” motion is perfectly normal and part of the natural cycles of life.
Here’s where I need to call a brief philosophical timeout to establish a fundamental principle: In your personal worldview, do you believe that life is random (and thus potentially meaningless)? Or do you believe there’s some kind of order, reason, intelligence, connectiveness and, therefore, meaning and, if we can stretch this far, purpose to life?
This newsletter presumes the latter. And if you’re kind of on the fence—or you’d love to believe there’s meaning and purpose to life but sometimes you’re just not sure—definitely keep reading!
Saturn and Neptune, Forward & Backward
Saturn pirouettes first, on Saturday, June 29 at 3:07pm EDT at 19º Pisces 26. Neptune follows suit on Tuesday, July 2 at 6:40am, and its station point is highly significant. Not only is it the last degree of Pisces (29) but nearly the last minute (56), and Pisces is the last sign of the zodiac and in modern astrology is associated with the last house of the wheel. Talk about the end of a cycle!
These are lengthy retrograde periods, giving you plenty of time to use their potentials for the benefit of your life, relationships, goals, and anything else that aligns with the planetary archetypes.
First, of course, it’s essential to get a sense of what those potentials might entail. Interestingly, Saturn and Neptune represent entirely different things. Saturn is form, structure, order, boundaries, traditions, discipline, maturity, responsibility and mastery: very much about building, improving and functioning in 3-D reality. You might say he shores or toughens things up.
Neptune, on the other hand, represents formlessness and is associated with right-brain functions, like creativity, imagination, spiritual and mystical pursuits, intuition and compassion. Where Saturn erects, Neptune dissolves. Where Saturn strives to preserve, Neptune releases. Saturn wants to “keep it real”; Neptune questions so-called reality and is more interested in transcendence.
Most of us are familiar with Mercury retrograde and its invitation to “re” stuff: review, reflect, reinvent, reshuffle, reorganize, and so on. The other planets do the same, with areas and situations related to their “wheelhouses.”
And the invitation? It’s to examine what their retrograde journeys are activating in our natal charts: What needs a review and perhaps a stiff edit? Where are we wobbly? (Saturn can help!) Where are we white-knuckling it, what are we resisting? Neptune inspires us to let that sh*t go.
Saturn reverses back to 12º Pisces 42, and its four-and-a-half-month retrograde cycle is a time to reflect, reconsider and recommit to creative or spiritual pursuits of the past year or so. The “taskmaster” planet wants you to go all in, to give whatever you’re doing 5 percent more effort. Saturn’s House Rules: Keep your ego out of it, find the lessons, make amends, don’t take shortcuts, never cheat, and produce something that will last and that you are proud of.
In reverse, Neptune covers a much smaller swath: from 29º 56 to 27º 08 Pisces. Its invitation is exactly the opposite. Where are you just going through the motions, clinging to things that no longer “fit,” being fussy or implacable, or trying to pound a square peg into a round hole? Your gut is your second brain, literally, and part of Neptune’s job description is training you to trust it.
How to Make the Most of These Cycles
All this really comes to life when you find the section of your chart that’s being transited. Depending on which house system you use and where you have Pisces, you’re probably looking at one or two different houses. What’s ruled by that house? Which of those things resonate the strongest for you now? For me, both retrogrades fall entirely in my eleventh house (using any quadrant house system): friends, groups, community, ideals, technology…
Even before it stationed retrograde, Saturn was teaching me lessons I wasn’t keen to learn about my digital platforms’ limitations when it came to large groups (the summit). And I swear I could hear trickster Neptune chuckling in the background, congratulating himself for adding the whack-a-mole confusion that still isn’t 100 percent resolved. I’m actually looking forward to these retrogrades bringing some relief, and hopefully not of the “comic” variety.
Some astrologers believe that when retrograde, planets express their natures in a more inward, self-directed, ruminant way—i.e., we become more introspective, we can reflect with 20-20 hindsight on things that already happened rather with than being solely focused on what’s next.
Beyond the house(s) the transiting planets are moving through, we will also feel these transits when they aspect our natal planets. That influence could be a few weeks—or with Neptune (and Pluto), it could be two years.
If you’ve been doing your inner work—or intend to—these transits and retrogrades can be viewed as gifts. If our mission is to wake up, or at least to continue to mindfully evolve, then we actually need conflict and tension to spark action. Show of hands: How many of you make changes when everything’s hunky-dory?
Conflict is the essence of drama, and if (from the soul’s perspective) we can imagine ourselves as the auteur and star of our own movie, then we absolutely require “conflict” to propel us along on our personal hero’s journey. In other words, we need those monsters and dragons!
So if growth and evolution is your goal, then welcome the conflict, the challenges, the “contrast” as Esther Hicks/Abraham call it. Another good metaphor: Humans are carbon-based life forms. And we carbon-based life forms treasure diamonds above all other gemstones. What are the four ingredients required to produce a diamond? Carbon, pressure, heat and time. Carbon and heat are ever-present. The “secret sauce” is the pressure—and time.
As you continue on your hero’s journey in search of your “diamond,” don’t run from conflict or challenges. What you resist persists. So why not embrace them? Attune to their energies; let them make you stronger, wiser, more resilient and diamondiferous. And in those quiet moments in between growth spurts, turn inward and reflect on what soul lessons are dangling in front of your nose now.
