the chickens come home to roost: saturn in cancer

the october 2003 forecast

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uranus and neptune are retrograde.

sun trines neptune	10°30' libra/aquarius	october 3
sun squares saturn	11°04' libra/cancer	october 6
mercury enters libra	0°00' libra	october 6
venus trines uranus	0°13' pisces	october 8
venus enters scorpio	0°00' scorpio	october 9
full moon	16°35' libra/aries	october 10
mercury squares saturn	13°07' libra/cancer	october 14
venus squares neptune	10°24' scorpio/aquarius	october 17
neptune returns to direct motion (stationary direct)	10°24' aquarius	october 22
sun enters scorpio	0°00' scorpio	october 23
mercury enters scorpio	0°00' scorpio	october 24
new moon	1°41' scorpio	october 25
saturn turns stationary retrograde	13°14' cancer	october 25
mercury squares neptune	10°25' aquarius	october 30

all dates are based on pacific time.

finally in october, we get “planets lite”, and it gives me a chance to once again talk about the background influences that we are dealing with. key to our experiences this fall and over the coming three years is the energy of saturn as it is expressed through cancer. so much of what we face now can be tied to saturn-in-cancer keywords: “home(land)”, “(in)security”, protectionism, isolationism, fear, emotional distancing, to name a few. we can understand saturn in cancer even more profoundly if we look at a more complex underlying level of meaning and motivation.

what saturn in cancer is all about

saturn is our great teacher, the one who won’t let us get away with anything. since we live in a culture where getting away with something seems to be the main goal, you can understand why he’s not a very popular guy. his main remonstrations are, “nothing is ever free,” and, “ultimately, you can’t get away with anything” (plus possibly, “resistance is futile”). so, knowing this (or, more likely, experiencing it time and again and finally accepting it), we come to look at things which are too easy or too one-sided with suspicion. saturn teaches us through limitation and that good ol’ law of karma. so, if we try to get away with anything, we soon find out that we will pay the piper sooner or later. this applies to winning the lottery as much as it does to running a stop sign.

the best approach with saturn is to ask, “what is it trying to teach me? what are my weaknesses related to the area it is currently transiting in my chart?” this leads us to face whatever is there instead of trying to hide out.

cancer is about balancing our emotional nature, learning to exist in a world which has physical, emotional, and psychic dangers and keep ourselves and our “family” (whatever that means to us) safe. cancer is protective and tends to isolate itself from others until they are known to be trustworthy. cancer can also be protectionist — fearful of incursion by strangers (foreigners), it can be eager to attack in order to avoid being attacked. cancerians are warm and friendly with those they are willing to let “inside their shell”. however, to others they will be friendly but relatively distant, at least where emotions are concerned. once of the biggest lessons for cancer is to learn to balance head and heart — to bring a rational approach into their decision-making process when their gut is screaming at them to take a particular course of action. in a healthy upbringing, this balance can be achieved for the most part, with occasional lapses, and the ability to know something instinctively can be an invaluable asset if it is not twisted by personal weaknesses such as narcissism and subjectivity.

while saturn is in cancer, we have to learn to set boundaries on our emotions. we are likely to feel our insecurities in full force. we are likely to be afraid. since saturn denotes in part how the world imposes itself on us (as much as how we choose to interpret and work with it), we always see real-world, culture-wide phenomena to which we can attach our fears. in this case, it is terrorism and the curtailment of civil liberties that we have seen in the wake of 9/11. there are of course personal issues that go along with this — perhaps a limitation of income or an increase in expenditure that makes us feel less secure. if we are in the military, certainly it is the prospect or the real fact of having to go to war.

saturn in cancer is also a time to correct ourselves in these areas. where we are not attuned to the best way to deal with a particular type of threat to our nature, we have the opportunity to revisit our less-than-successful initiatives and redress them. we can expect to become more aware of our personal boundaries and areas where our emotions are unprocessed or running amok. we may find that we are taking too much or too little responsibility for situations in our lives — we may need to ask ourselves where we are taking over what others should be handling and where we are letting others taking over for us. since saturn is in cancer for about three years, we have plenty of time to make reparations and improvements — which typically feels too long.

what about now?

as we move through october, we will notice saturn’s issues becoming more and more prominent in our lives. we’ll notice them more in the news. this awareness will peak around the 25^th, when saturn turns retrograde. at that time, the chickens will come home to roost — the problems will be ever so evident. then we’ll begin a five-month period of problem-solving and reparation, a time to improve the way we use saturn’s energies in response to what we’ve encountered. in the simplest terms, this is what is happening with the u.s. and its position vis-à-vis iraq. the bush administration is having to rethink its position in iraq, as well as its boundaries with the u.n. and the international community (they weren’t necessary.) and if we’re lucky the way they approach the war on terrorism. if we’re really lucky, bush and the neo-conservatives (or, as i have come to see them, the retro-cons) will have pause to consider his war on the environment and everything else his generation stands for.

of course, we all have something to learn, and our learning process will flow in the same rhythm as the political one: peak dates are on october 25, december 31, and march 7. there is grace in our circumstance — saturn has mild support from jupiter and uranus. however, it is opposing chiron for the entire fall, so we can look at the wounds that are revealed over the next few months to be particularly central to our psyche and therefore crucial to see and remove. although pain is involved if we let ourselves see the truth, the rewards will be far beyond our expectations.

and on the front burners. . .

there are only two big events this month, the return of neptune to direct motion on the 22^nd and saturn’s incipient retrogradation. neptune’s energy is subtle but just as powerful. we are just now completing a five-month stretch (begun on may 15^th) where we have been developing a new awareness of group dynamics and the impact of doublespeak on a too-trusting, media-drunk culture. we can use a breather after the last few months’ drama, but that doesn’t mean that our problems go away. it means that we may have the chance to work on them without encountering new ones.

in november, we can look forward to a real shift in focus with the eclipses on the 8^th and 23^rd, but for now we need to stay where we are so we can catch up. may this be a time of relative peace and enjoyment for us all!