By astrological law, the first moment of any process sets the template for what follows. The first big transits of the new year reverberate with a loud inaugural buzz.⁽¹⁾

2015 begins robustly, with the Sun setting off the Uranus-Pluto square. Like a midwife awakened in the dead of night, we’re being called to urgent consciousness.

This is our signal of what kind of year it will be.

Sea change

Those sensitive to planetary movements are probably still reeling from the sea change that took place a couple of weeks ago. Two days after the Solstice, Saturn entered Sagittarius, where it will stay for 2½ years.

An ingress – when a planet moves from one sign into another – is a palpable shift for many of us. When planets enter a new sign — especially the slower-moving planets, like Saturn — we know instinctively that something big has happened. The body-mind-spirit must make an adjustment. This adjustment is much easier to finesse when we understand the nature of the signs we just moved out of and into.

So let’s take a look at the difference between Scorpio, where Saturn has been since October of 2012, and Sagittarius, where it will be until Dec 2017.⁽²⁾

Scorpio vs. Sagittarius

For the general population,⁽³⁾ the nature of hard work has changed. Life’s challenges just took on a new complexion. Saturn’s shift from water to fire shifts our lessons from the emotional realm, of sexual and psychological issues, to the somewhat more accessible realm of aspirations, ideologies and big ideas.⁽⁴⁾

For the last couple of years, Saturn has been monitoring how we handle the mysterious demands of intimacy. It’s been coaching us to take responsibility for the way we share and merge with others. Now the focus has moved into the area of belief.

We’ll be asked: Does our belief system make sense, given our experience living in the world? Or is it just something we’ve adopted because it was passed down to us? Saturn in Sagittarius forces us to focus our values, so that they match our reality. It won’t let us take our worldview for granted.

Growing Up

I propose we begin this transit by pledging our allegiance to the maturation process. That’s all Saturn is trying to teach us: how to grow up. Instead of indulging in the superstitious notions that so often surround this most maligned of planets, let us make a pact with ourselves, right now as the year begins, to repudiate the “Woe is me” trip that so many of us get into with Saturn.  It’s a waste of time, and a waste of a fine transit.

I guarantee that the more deeply you understand Saturn, the more you will appreciate it (details in my webinar).

Hey, you with the Saturn-Return

Readers with Saturn in Sagittarius are having their Saturn Return.⁽⁵⁾ If you’re around the age of 30 or 58 (the Saturn cycle averages 29½ years), the pressure is on. You may be obsessing about not being as competent as you should be (or think you should be. It’s a very subjective perception, though we usually insist that our incompetence is objectively, incontestably true). The question behind all this self-critique is What does it mean to be a responsible adult?

If you have Saturn in Sagittarius natally,⁽⁶⁾ the issues that are in the air right now, for everybody, have always been all-too-familiar to you. These include acquisition of knowledge (e.g. education) and deciding how to see the world (e.g. religion, political point of view). These issues provide a measuring device for you. They’re the way you test yourself. And right now, you feel severely tested. You feel it’s terribly important to be getting somewhere in life.

If you’re of the Saturn-in-Sagittarius generation, be proud of your independent outlook. Be grateful for your lack of credulousness. Inherited worldviews may work for other people – those born into a family with a certain religion, say, who take on its assumptions without question, from cradle to grave — but not for you.

With natal Saturn in Sagittarius you are meant to eke out a definition of integrity that is uniquely your own. In the process, you become an adult.

Saturn-Neptune cycle

For all of us, the tension between Sagittarius and Pisces will be a defining feature of the next couple of years. Saturn’s square to Neptune, which peaks in November but is in the air now, pits mutable fire against mutable water. Each of us, in our own way, will be working on the distinction between the preacher/teacher archetype (Sadge) and that of the mystic (Pisces). This is something we’ll be looking at in upcoming Skywatches, as the aspect waxes and wanes.

As a preparatory exercise, let us get to know the two parts of ourselves in question: the inner priestess, and the inner psychic. They will be our guides, throughout this quest to balance belief and faith.

Notes

1 This is why New Moons are so important. We want to be as conscious as we can when the Moon is New, because that’s when we’re laying down the paradigm for the month. This is also the premise behind solar return charts: the transits on our birthday offer clues about the big themes to be played out in the upcoming year. For more on this astrological principle, see this essay.

2 It will retrograde back into Scorpio in June ’15, and re-enter Sagittarius for the duration on 9/17/15.

3 As always, these general interpretations become meaningful in a specific way when we plot the planet against the backdrop of the individual birth chart. Look at your own chart and see where the early degrees of Sagittarius reside, or have an astrologer do so. The houses it occupies will reveal where you’ll be facing the kind of obstacles that build confidence. Expect movement to be slow and gains to be solid.

4 This isn’t to say that it’s going to be more accessible for everyone. Depending on your individual chart, Sagittarian issues may be more highly charged than Scorpio ones.

5 Think of it as a five-year transit, with 2½ years on either side of exactitude.

6 Everybody born within the same 2½-year period is likely to have Saturn in the same sign, so you and your immediate peers carry the same sub-generational issues. Your shoulds are similar. The differences between you will be because of Saturn’s houses and aspects (time and place of birth).