The Saturn-Neptune opposition, whose last shimmering exactitude1 hangs in the air as July begins, has made its goofy, ridiculous, tragic and potentially enlightening mark upon the consciousness of the world over the course of the last three years. This tug-of-war between the planets of realism (Saturn) and surrealism (Neptune) has given us a fools’ paradise of disillusion2, meltdown and revelation.
We saw water disasters wipe out villages in Southeast Asia and inundate a great historic city in the USA as if they were sand castles leveled by the tide. We saw flat-out fraud used to elect the leader of the most powerful country in the world. We saw national boundaries (Saturn) crumble (Neptune) as immigrants impoverished by globalization found their way into the First World wherever and however they could. We saw the concept of global warming transform in the public mind from a science-fiction-like notion – some had even called it a “hoax” (Neptune) — to a consensual reality (Saturn).
Make-believe is governed by Neptune. It represents the image-making capacity of the mind, very strong in children (Let’s play house); and makers of video games (You are now in a mist-enshrouded castle). For the media-defined cultures of the West, this transit has had a field day. There is a parallel between the wholesale resignation with which Americans accepted the stolen elections of George W. Bush and the glazed-eyed avidity with which they gobble up stories about Lindsay Lohan’s stints in rehab. Saturn and Neptune have been hosting a game of let’s-pretend-this-is-reality. Satirists have been warning for years that irony in American culture is dying; but when our morning paper sports a page-two story like “Paris Hilton’s dog food can auctioned on e-bay” we can only conclude that this transit has killed it off for good.
The Third World has experienced a different set of teachings from the opposition of Saturn and Neptune than has the First World. The developing countries of the Earth are increasingly in material crisis of a life-or-death nature. Meanwhile, the First World – with its peculiar tendency to think of itself as the only real world — remains deeply, existentially confused.
But confusion is the language Neptune speaks. Confusion is porous, and opens up space for a different kind of truth to get a foothold. The foggy free-for-all of melted-down sureties that characterizes this last half of the decade is being used by the transit to raise human consciousness. Many sacred cows have collapsed during these insecure times; many heretofore credulous thinkers have reconsidered the nature of deceit – especially self-deceit—and the illusions that make up popular culture. The nature of reality itself has changed for millions of people.
This has been the deeper purpose of the Saturn-Neptune conundrum, now ebbing with the calendar year.
Swan Song of Saturn in Leo
Artists and performers3 of every stripe have been hit particularly hard during the two-and-a-half-year run of Saturn through Leo, winding down this summer.
Leo is the sign of showmanship. The meaning of this grand and glorious fire sign encompasses all kinds of creative self-expression, from showing off at a party to exulting in the floodlights after bestowing a magnificent gift of self to an audience. Saturn, meanwhile, tests the limits of whatever sign it’s in. Thus for a couple of years the transit has asked for extra focus from those who display their creativity in public. It has required performers to compromise, to adapt to necessity, to modify their plans to accommodate less-than-ideal circumstances. Grandiosity under these conditions is ill-advised, as those stubborn souls who have held on to their sense of entitlement have found out the hard way. By contrast, a little generosity of spirit has gone a long way.
Over the past couple of years, some creative folks have run into problems around the circumstances they were counting on to launch their exhibitions; some have been inhibited by stage fright or writer’s block. But even these apparent obstacles were blessings in disguise, for they acted as incentives to cultivate a seriousness about our art that was not there before. Saturn’s intention was not to dry up our creative juices but to teach us self-discipline, demanding that we work up a refined repertoire of moves before striding onto the stage. We have been shown how to structure the ways we show our talents to the world. This has made us grow up as artists.
Old Rules Out the Window
Complicating this effort is the fact that Neptune has been undermining our old notions about what it means to create. Old-school standards about “serious” art have been tricky to apply; Neptune’s job is to render suspect any of those values that we were brought up to hold as sacrosanct. Who’d have thought a few years ago that graphic novels – essentially, comic books — would be esteemed now as high art?
Neptune has been toying with the distinction between the real and the unreal in all creative arenas. Are the shows we’ve been seeing on TV and at the movies no more than effluvia churned out by cynical, profit-driven entertainment moguls (see the March 07 Skywatch)? Or are we privy now to the inspired imaginative experimentation of a whole new era of media (e.g. the masterful new animation film “Ratatouille”)? It has been a mixed bag, but the effects of the Saturn-Neptune opposition upon what we think of as creative art have been far-reaching.
Leo is also the governor of love affaires and dating. Saturn has been enforcing its cautions upon the otherwise spontaneous nature of recreational relationships so as to weed out the stale old moves (and people) that may have been keeping our relating superficial and meaningless. To use Saturn in Leo well is to discriminate between creative silliness (childlike energy) and lifeless silliness (childishness).
The opposition has meanwhile had a surreal influence upon the whole business of searching for fun. With Neptune diluting what used to be thought of as the rules, what can we count on to provide the high jinks we thought were our due, if we just played the game right? With Neptune mocking the expectations of Saturn, nothing can be predicted; and trying to control things tends to backfire badly. Yet Saturn is insisting that we have to work at play, using it as a maturing exercise. How to put these together? The answer is to take the game very seriously, all the while knowing it is just a game.
We have a couple of more months to understand the subtleties of this dance, trying to integrate the paradox it offers. Saturn will ingress into Virgo on September 2nd.
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Notes:
1 The last exact opposition of this cycle occurred June 25th, and Neptune’s retrogradation stretches the aspect out. With the two planets only a couple of degrees from exactitude, its effects will remain strong throughout July.
2 Consider that the core meaning of disillusion is “to take away (dis-) illusion”. Anything that got revealed as false during this transit was an illusion in the first place. The transit’s job was to expose lies as lies; stories as stories.
3 If you have personal planets in Leo, you fit this category whether you identify as an artist or not.
