What Astrologers Are Saying About Saturn in Capricorn

Thursday December 21st 2017
Landscape by Wang Shi-Min from Wikimedia Commons

Landscape by Wang Shi-Min from Wikimedia Commons

It’s been a long, strange trip around the Zodiac for Saturn over the last 27 years, but at last he’s come home. Yesterday, he arrived with the dust of the road clinging to his clothes, in Capricorn, the sign which, by tradition, he rules. Perhaps, he heaved a sigh of relief to be back in this cool, winter palace.

He left this place in 1991, and like Odysseus coming back to Ithaca, Saturn returns to find his house topsy-turvy in 2017. He has a few of years to sort things out — until 2020. But he is strong here, he knows how things work in this rocky region, and he is the king.

What is more he has help from Neptune also powerfully placed in Pisces, Jupiter in Scorpio, and, soon, Uranus in Taurus.

The up-ending of Capricornian order has come from Pluto — and the square from Uranus in Aries — both ripping apart the structure of global power. Unlike Odysseus though, Saturn may well help out Pluto in his plans, but he will do so according to some rules, and is also likely to impose some new ones.

Saturn in Capricorn

18 December 2017 — 21-22 March 2020
1 July 2020 — 17 December 2020

Astrologers have already been writing about this hugely important transit.

Steven Forrest has written an excellent, and cheering, essay, which is really essential reading. It helps that he is a Capricorn Sun-Jupiter himself so he understands the sign from the inside.

Jo Tracey’s piece is more about how to interpret the transit for yourself.

In her very long and wide-ranging piece on the gathering power in Capricorn, Jessica Adams focuses on the coming conjunction in 2020 — which is indeed highly significant.

Astrobutterfly explains how this transit could be beneficial personally and makes the important point that for the next couple of years the outer planets will be in harmonious aspect — about time too!

Although this is a comparatively short piece by Libra Seeking Balance she makes an important point about Capricorn — this is a feminine sign.

 

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  1. I feel so happy as a Capricorn sun… don’t know why 🙂 I’m post SR2 in Sag zero degrees so it’s a double dose of optimism. Saturn is home and I welcomed him in with a special Saturnalia feast.

    • Christina says:

      I feel strangely optimistic too. Maybe what we need is a long, hard winter (metaphorically). It gives the land time to rest.

      • aqua says:

        If that winter is restful that would be great. I have Saturn in Capricorn.
        Happy Christmas Christina to you and yours and thankyou for all the great words and pictures.

  2. aqua says:

    ‘You can readily see how Saturn and Capricorn are a matched pair. They agree with each other. They’re both practical. They’re both realistic. And no one would mistake either one for a party animal.’ Forrest

    With all respect to mr Forrest, I’ve said it before as have many wiser before me, our astrological interpretations are so clealy a reflection of humans tendency to repeat ad nauseum an initial assesment possibly made centuries ago and in response to cultural beliefs. And then through repetition it crystalises into ‘fact’.
    [Now that is a Saturn/Neptune concept in action, that we have become well familiar with recently.]
    If we accept this cliché as verboten, why not the other face of Janus/Saturn, Saturnalia and Capricorn, the Great God Pan.
    The above interpretation of Saturn has all the joylessness/ imposed ‘work ethic’ of Judeo/ Christianity, Medieval and Victorian sensibilities designed to serve the patriarchy and seemingly bypasses a large part of the Graeco Roman observations.

    The Goat god Capricorn is no stranger to licentiousness, far from it.

    • Christina says:

      Ha ha — I thought the same thing, because Capricorn is the most shamanic sign when it’s in David Bowie mode.

      • Vesta says:

        I was thinking about work, actually, reflecting on what I did and how things have changed. Last time Saturn was in Capricorn, I resigned from my permanent job, but it coincided with a recession and a new job was hard to come by, so I started temping. I earned more money, which was nice! So I never went back to a permanent position ever again. I had admin/secretarial skills, there was plenty of work, I was turning jobs down, and it’s how I got through university (which I applied for during saturn in capricorn) without needing a student loan until I got to my finals. I worked and worked. When I decided I wanted to travel, I got an evening job in a shop a few times a week. Even travelling I didn’t lounge about, I got casual work where I could. Yes, workaholic. Yes, eventually burnt out, but that’s another story…
        So the point I wanted to make was the gig economy kind of started in the early 90s, when saturn was in capricorn, after the late 80s/early 90s recession hit the economy hard. Homeowners were losing their homes as banks repossessed them. There were suicides, which was underreported as usual. Zero hour contracts became a thing during the 90s, not sure exactly when, mid 90s maybe, after saturn in capricorn changed what work means.
        That reminds me, it was during saturn in capricorn that the Tories decided to make it harder for the sick/disabled to get benefits. John Major was prime minister. He saw the sick/disabled numbers were suddenly rising. Instead of asking what was wrong, what was affecting the health of so many people all of a sudden, (remember pluto had gone through scorpio, mystery illnesses) John Major decided they were lazy scroungers who should be punished. So that’s when he got help from America, brought in US insurers who knew how to deny people, and designed the benefit system that way, to deny support wherever possible, find people ‘fit for work’. That’s f’d up saturn in capricorn. F’d up ideas of work, who should be working, who needs to stop, what work means, what it’s doing to people. It’s the idea of work fetishised.
        The recession of late 80s/early 90s should have been seen as a warning, it was a pretty big one, but it was ignored. It took a good 5 years or so before the UK recovered. That’s why I decided to go to university, it gave me some stability for a few years. After that, the next recession was the dotcom one of about 2000, again people carried on as normal, and then of course 2008. Nobody listened to saturn in capricorn’s warning, so uranus/pluto had to have a word with us. Now here we are, saturn in capricorn not so much saying I told you so, but more saying we really need to give this some thought, can’t carry on as we used to, we need to find another way. Obviously we have to anyway with increased automation. If we hold on to the idea of work, fetishise it, then we’re going to end up in bullshit jobs, anything to live up to a label and call it identity. Or we can think about how we live and what we need to live. This is a good time to find our purpose. What we’re on this earth to do. If we can turn that into work, or find a way to make a living doing what we’re meant to be doing, then that’s something to aspire to. I’d like to figure out what I’m meant to be doing so I can get on with it! 🙂
        Talking about tired old tropes and stereotypes, Rick Levine talks about that in his videos too. Saturn is father time, but also there are female equivalents, no point judging one as ‘better’ than another.

  3. aqua says:

    Interestingly Victim (1961 film) was made during Saturn in Capricorn. That was one of the most subversive films made in the UK that had real impact on the future of our society.
    And I note Dirk Bogarde had that society changing JupiterSaturn conjunction natally and Jupiter and Saturn were conjunct when the film was made.
    Hmmm.
    And Obama was born a couple of weeks prior with that conjunction and he proceeded to champion gay rights.
    Hmmm
    I could overstretch a bit further 😉

  4. aqua says:

    My final thought before I leave you alone is this really is the Season of the Witch, and natural justice. xm

  5. 44 and counting says:

    1988 seems a very long time ago – I guess because it is. I was still a teenager finishing up school and doing A-levels half-heartedly. I’d lost interest in education but didn’t have the drive to know what to do instead. So when I finished I extended my part-time hours at the local supermarket but also spent a lot of that summer laying on the beach sunning myself.

    Then one day I came home and my mum showed me an ad for a Trainee Computer Programmer at the local corporate. I believe transiting Saturn was square my natal Uranus that week. I applied, topscored the aptitude test, interviewed and started a few months later as all my friends went off to university.

    I met a whole bunch of new people and slowly the old school friends dropped away. Saturn exited in 1991 but in those three years the new friends got me out to different places, different events and new activities. Among other things I learned to drive, I started nightclubbing, I went and stood in a field in the middle of nowhere for a rave. I went skiing for the first time, I went to America from a 3-week touring holiday and there were the highs and lows of England at the 1990s World Cup. Thinking back I remember I had a huge crush on a bimbo brunette in the next door office but not the slightest confidence to ask her out. I kept going to the coffee machine hoping she’d be there 🙂

    I read my chart as Cap being Equal 9H but with my MC in there squared by Libra Uranus. But looking back at how it played out definitely a 9H vibe to all that. When Saturn moved on into Aqua and my 10H I got given an anal-retentive boss who scrutinised everything I did and kept sending work back to me to do better on!!

  6. Liz says:

    Interesting that Damien Green’s resignation from the government of this Capricorn nation came just as Saturn changed signs in the light of Steven Forrest’s comments on morality. On the same day the IMF forecast that the UK economy would undergo a Saturnian contraction caused by Brexit.

  7. Phillustrator says:

    One ‘Saturn in Capricorn’-style news item that caught my attention today (22nd Dec) was the reintroduction of the so-called traditional blue British passport. Apparently the passport turned from blue to red back in late 1988. Where was Saturn in late ‘88? Early Capricorn of course!

  8. Iris says:

    My goodness, 88 to 91. Those were brutal years. It’s still hurts to remember. Sun is in late Sag and Cap is on the cusp of the 11th, so that period was preceded by Saturn, Uranus and Neptune transiting my sun. In those years my tremulous identity dissolved. I entered into a relationship none of my friends could accept, and lost all friends bar one, and with them lost my community. The relationship took a terrible personal toll yet was catalytic. But then I was between; neither fish nor fowl; I didn’t fit anywhere. Seagoat. At the same time, I met blood family for the first time; I found people like me. Everything I knew about myself was thrown up in the air like a pack of cards, to settle again where they may. I felt like my identity had been put in a tumbler. It would be hard to overstate the impact of those years. I have Mars at the end of the 11th, and although Saturn tr. n Mars in early 1990 was an utterly dreadful, cruel time; my lowest low, when I look at that time overall it seems like the impact was the effect of the transit to my sun playing out in the 11th. It was as if all my hopes and dreams about myself; the structure of a life I’d been trying to create, were shown to be illusions and the slate wiped clean. I lost my sense of self but gained one too in time; more authentic. But at that time it felt like I’d been unmade. I was so lost.
    So I feel suitably awed at the idea of Saturn in Capricorn again.

    • aqua says:

      ‘I entered into a relationship none of my friends could accept, and lost all friends bar one, and with them lost my community.’
      I hear you, I was in an abusive relationship at the time and the community I was in was all party hearty and sweep things under the rug, leaving me without support.
      But as 44 and counting said Uranus and Neptune wont be there this time so hopefully not so harsh this time around.

      • Iris says:

        Neptune is tr natal Saturn two signs on for many of us mid-60’s generation over these years, so we’ll see. Thanks Aqua, Christina and 44 & counting for your astute comments – and thanks for your year of wonderful, erudite posts Christina.

    • Christina says:

      I think that also sounds very Neptuney & that was when Neptune was also in Capricorn. This time round things are going to be a bit different…

      • aqua says:

        Given the fall of the Berlin wall, Caecescus downfall etc etc Im really interested to see what happens with Putin/ Russia this time around.

    • 44 and counting says:

      Think Saturn in Cap will be different this time around. As you show, last time we also had Uranus and Neptune hitting at the same time dissolving things that weren’t working.

      I don’t know where it goes this time with Uranus moving into Taurus next year other than I believe people are going to be taking a long hard look at their values and what they stand for.

  9. Hugh Fowler says:

    This Saturn in Capricorn transit is shaping up to be highly significant especially when Saturn Conjuncts Pluto in January 2020. I believe the last time this occurred was at the beginning of 1518 shortly after Martin Luther nailed his Ninety Five Theses Against Indulgences to the church door in Wittenberg on 31 October 1517. That Saturn Pluto Conjunction also happened after Uranus had moved into the early degrees of Taurus. The whole status quo of western Christendom which had lasted over a 1000 years was upended in the subsequent decades particularly when Pluto moved to Aquarius and Neptune to Aries in the 1530s. Again this is a pattern which will repeat in the 2020s. This suggests any changes are going to be a lot more profound and long lasting than simply replacing the odd President or government.

  10. Christina says:

    Yes 1518 last time the conjunction was in Cap. Interestingly, last time Pluto was in Cap (1770s), there was no conjunction.

    Martin Luther’s theses were posted 31 October 1517 — while Saturn was still in Sagittarius (publishing) — and then things really kicked off in 1518.

  11. Hugh Fowler says:

    Worth noting that the Saturn Pluto Conjunction looks to be particularly significant for the UK as it occurs Square the Aries Sun in the 1927 UK Chart (ie the current Constitutional Settlement).

  12. soab says:

    Saturn in Capricorn hardly matters. Its what aspects does Saturn make with planets in your chart? Thats where the action is.

    • 44 and counting says:

      Whichever house Capricorn rules in your chart will be affected by transiting Saturn. Even if there are no planets in it, there’ll be a focus on that area of life for the next few years.

      I, for example, have Capricorn in my 9H so I was late to go to university and never had any interest in travel. I’d judged religion as a waste of time because I took a Capricorn literal view that it was impossible for an old man with a beard to live in the clouds and affect our lives. My 5-year-old self quickly realised that after a few months of Sunday school.

      The effects of transiting Uranus and Neptune through Capricorn in the early 90s meant I went abroad 2-3 times every year and I began to explore the ideas of there being a god and now class myself as a spiritual believer but not a follower of any particular religion.

      I expect this time around Saturn to help me define my philosophy and what I believe in. Personally I’d say transiting Saturn in Capricorn matters a lot to everybody.