Saturn Return Can Bite Me

Composite grand cross

nobody@vox.com(fullmoon) — Mon, 11 May 2009 08:49:26 -0700

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Brief post

nobody@vox.com(fullmoon) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 10:54:52 -0800

Back from the con. Class went lovely. Next year's class will probably be on Saturn transits because I found a book at the con on them and I am going through it and blabbing about it to everyone. Will hopefully finish compiling the Power Point extra notes sometime this week (let's hope).

In the meantime, here is a good comment (in the comments) on how composite charting plays out, for those who might be interested.

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Saturn and Venus kick you upside the head.

nobody@vox.com(fullmoon) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 13:18:48 -0700

I didn't write this, but I probably could have written something similar (except my Venus is in a different sign, and Saturn doesn't rule my 7th. Venus rules my 7th and Saturn squares it. Maybe that's equivalent?).

I am constantly being disappointed in love. The men whom I could love simply don’t love me back. The only guy who ever stuck around for me was the one I wasn’t in love with. When I was a child my father rejected me, and ever since then the same thing has been happening with the men that I care for.

I fall for hypnotic, charismatic men who know how to influence their surroundings. They are capable of deep and powerful love. Unfortunately, I am never the person who receives it. To make it worse, two men I fell for are now madly in love with the same woman, who is ten years older than me. At the same time, after all this time I still don’t feel like I’ve met the person who can truly sweep me off my feet.

In other areas of my life I am independent and in charge, but in love I just feel like a victim. I’m starting to believe I have this terrible deep inadequacy that can never be erased. I need a lover who is as strong as I am, but my partners never seem to recognize my best qualities. What can I do? Am I simply destined to be unloved?

Elsa's answer:

I don’t believe anyone is destined to be unloved, but I know for sure that loves comes easier to some than others. And with Saturn ruling your 7th house and Venus in Scorpio square Saturn, you are clearly one of the others and for that I am sorry and I will try to help.

Saturn tied to Venus delays love in most cases, and if you read around you’ll be told that love comes later in life but I’d say there is no such guarantee. Love comes later in life to those willing to work for it. And I am sorry but this is just a fact and thinking otherwise is sort of like believing we all get rich in the end. Er… no we don’t!

No arguments with that...

So yes, Venus Saturn can love and be loved but you have to accept the conditions which most people just will not do. And I don’t mean to make this about me but I am going to use my personal life to illustrate this because I can’t see any other way to offer you something of substance that might actually help.

I don’t know if you read my blog regularly but I have a great love with a man I call the soldier. And our relationship is basically impossible. We are constantly thwarted. We are pounded in every way you can possibly imagine. With Saturn highly emphasized in both the synastry (aspects between charts) and the composite, we are delayed, screwed, blued and tattooed on a routine basis but we love each other and we hang in.

Once again...this comes up. I think in a sick way, I also find that sort of thing fascinating. I know I'd hate it if I was actually in that kind of relationship IRL, but part of me really does want to see how it'd come out. Even though I KNOW it'd be badly, and it's not like I am looking for stress in relationships. (Obviously, it finds me anyway.) Hell, one could say that Older Ex was someone I already had that kind of relationship with, but it wasn't as binding as one would think in the end. (Though if he still thinks of me, maybe it was more than I thought.)

Sorta off-topic, I am currently working on the astrological charts of a friend of mine and her husband- he has been in Pissy Bitch mode for a few months now and it is worrisome. So far I can't say I've seen why he is having Pissy Bitch mode now, since he doesn't have any major transits that would cause such going on, and he's got a massive stellium in Aquarius. I was assuming he must be a Scorpio rising (my friend is a Scorpio), but nope, Sag rising. In my experience, it takes a hell of a lot for an Aquarius to get pissy and yell, and Sags aren't inclined in that direction so much either. (I was flabbergasted when a friend of mine with two planets in Aquarius admitted to getting annoyed at someone last week.) But it turns out he has Mars conjunct Saturn, and she has Mars opposed to Saturn. Well, there ya go. Oof.

The synastry isn't massively Saturninan other than them both having that particular affinity, but their composite chart has a whopping moon/Jupiter/Saturn/Uranus conjuction in Capricorn- almost all of their planets are there, except for some stray Saggishness. Heck, the planets away from the bottom are in their 6th and 10th houses. I said, "Wow, this looks a lot more like an ideal business partnership than a schmoopy relationship." She was all, "No way would we go into business together." I don't know...

Okay, back on topic.

And we have found that by accepting the conditions and the limitations, the universe does support the relationship, but hey! No whining. No whining when sometimes weeks pass and we can’t see each other. No whining because other couples have it easier than we do. No whining even though we are pretty sure it will probably be years before we can actually be together. Getting the idea? Who would sign up for this?

Well you would if you were smart. Because the love is real and it is deep and with a chart like yours anything less well never satisfy. So here’s the point:

Forget the love that other people have because it has nothing to do with you.

Heh. Yeah... I do get jealous of other people's loves. A lot of them seem to be fairly easy- fall in, stay in, all is snuggly, happened when they were 18 years old... okay, you know what I mean. It's frustrating.

Be willing to redefine what it is you think you want because as you have noticed you’re not getting it. If you are consistently denied what you want, it might be productive to want something else.

Well, in my case, I am choosing to want singlehood... which mostly works out very nicely, thank you. (Especially lately because so many people are having astro-weirding warping their love lives in the last month. I am really hoping that crappity wears off soon before divorces happen.)

But.

For example, I want convenience! I want a man who lives right down the street who loves me like the man who does not live right down the street. And I want this new hologram man to be of the same quality of the man who comes with all the challenges and guess what? Too bad! That man does not exist. So I can pine for this thing that doesn’t exist or I can live in reality, yes? And you can do the same.

Ask the universe to send you a real love, not a fantasy love. Ask for something singular and hand-picked to challenge you. Then commit to doing absolutely whatever it takes to feed and maintain the relationship. And accept that pain is part of the deal. With a chart like yours, relationship at times will be absolutely grueling. You will be made to face your fear when you are scared to death but I can tell you firsthand the reward is in proportion.

That sounds right...fucking horrible, but "right." That is generally how relationships go for me. (Chiron in the mix too.)

"What you’re doing is working the deprivation side of Saturn. No love is safe, see? No love = control. You’re going to have to work much, much harder. Believe it or not you’re shirking your duties here. It is much easier to say I don’t have or I will never get, then it is to go out and work for it.

....

Um. Yeah. True and true.

"And I am sorry but if I wrote this any other way this would have been crap for your purposes. La la la, you’ll find love late in life just isn’t going to cut it. The love is there, you’re just going to have to swim upstream to get it but here’s the trick: if you decide to do this you will find it exhilarating and incredibly satisfying. It’s the difference between working for your money and being handed it. Which of those experiences do you think is peak? Come to recognize you’ve got no interest in tutti-fruitti easy-peasy light-fare love and you’ll be on your way."

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You can't get away from those people!

nobody@vox.com(fullmoon) — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 15:47:41 -0800

Wowee.

When you look at your own natal chart, alone, the bare positions of these traditional points, outside of their traditional astrological interpretations, mean nothing. They're just there. But overlay your parents, your siblings, your children, your co-workers, the people in your recent phone or email correspondence, your progressions, and the current positions in the sky and you'll start to see individual degree areas bunching up like crazy, in a provocative fashion. It's not random, there are regular clusters, and over a lifetime the clusters stay in the same places. Whatever the specific degrees - usually (but not always) obvious degrees in your own chart - they repeat themselves again and again. It's like you're locked into a weave that was there when you were born and keeps coming back to you, a celestial family with DNA that's totally extraterrestrial. Journalists these days bemoan the lack of family and social connections - the fact is, there are more there than you may want, you just haven't noticed it. And further, like biological family but more permanent, you're stuck with them.

Astrologers see it all the time, but rarely note it except in passing. I remember when I had an ad in the New York City yellow pages, and over ten years only people with lots of similar degrees called, no random pattern there. They could have called anybody else in the listings, but they didn't. They called me. All the others simply didn't call. They called the other astrologers in the yellow pages who had their degrees, instead. There are some degree areas (not populated in my own chart) which I have simply never met. No reason to cross paths, apparently. And other astrologers regularly report the same. Is it some cosmic principle of attraction? Paul Kammerer thought so, and it's why he believed "synchronicity" was no accident. It's a great tool for rectification (finding someone's true birthtime, when they don't know it) - all you have to do is collect charts of all their friends and family and the preponderance of the degrees that turn up are their natal angles).
It forms the essence of traditional astrological compatability, synastry, and comparison. Whatever the immediate passion between two people, if they have lots of shared degrees between their charts, they will tend to stay together, at least as friends, or even enemies. Circumstances just tend to shepherd them both into the same situations. If they have few degree contacts, even the greatest passion will have to fight circumstances just to stay in the same neighborhood. Composite charts are another story, as they start slowly, but gain momentum over time, but they, too, usually reflect the same degrees. Of course, there are many people you have never met with lots in common with you, and you don't know them, yet. But once you actually meet, just watch how difficult it becomes to escape them. That's perhaps why first meetings and introductions are so important - they are gateways to floods of experience that you may quickly lose control over.
In non-astrological terms, this type of event is considered ordinary. It's just the way life works. For all the gossip, Hollywood stars marry other Hollywood stars - mainly because that's the world they live in and they never get to meet anybody else, even if they occasionally go out and meet ordinary people elsewhere. But the same principle appears to extend to the rest of life, in ways where we don't get to go choose to meet other "ordinary" people elsewhere, because we're not even aware of the option. And if we do accidentally meet, we don't notice them, and they don't notice us, like ships passing in the night.

The mathematics and the probabilities of this could be debated forever, but the ultimate test is specific and often anecdotal. Don't you notice it yourself? Have you known anyone for very long that doesn't have a lot of degree areas in common with you? At a glance, it should become obvious. After that, you begin to focus on the individual common degrees and see which parts of that warp and weft you share with another influence each of you, one to the other. Is it Saturn (a teacher) or Jupiter (an inspirer), perhaps Mar or Venus (physical, sexual), or raw energy and timing with Sun and Moon and the Angles? But if there is no commonality, it just doesn't generally happen long enough to answer the question - the term "star-crossed" meant just that when it was coined. Some of us are swimming in the same river together, others simply aren't.
How do you explain this? Probably that mutual attraction thing. Astronomically, the planets do it, by gravitation, and it's described by LaGrange points. A simple extrapolation of these five points defines all the common astrological aspects and their meanings. It's about repetition and locking yourself into the familiar by simply doing it over and over again, just like the tides that go in and out.

Only it's more complicated, like the tides themselves. Some creatures live their lives and meet their mates only at high tide, others only at low tide, others only at certain points in between. Most are never even aware of those who do otherwise, on a different tide. Just a simple look at how we individually overlap by degree areas shows this same principle in action. Cosmically, astrologically, gravitationally, however you want to put it, it's about the greater family you are thrown into simply by your beginning, regardless of biological ties. You may not notice it right away, but as you get older you begin to just know them at first glance, although astrological awareness and comparisons really help to flush out the details - oh, here comes another one, and another one, some better, some not so nice. You can't avoid them, they're family.

The question and decision at any one moment is, "Should I invite them in?"

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Past relationship synastry

nobody@vox.com(fullmoon) — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 10:02:03 -0700

Okay, someone suggested to me that I check exes's horoscopes and see what was good and what went wrong.

I wasn't too thrilled with this idea (as has been previously mentioned), but upon further reflection, there was kind of a good point to that.

So, I made some guesses, considering I couldn't remember the birthplace and never knew the birth time of one guy, and another one I had to make an approximate guess at his birth time...you get the drift. But even if you rule out the whole ascendants/house placement thing, you can still figure things out by most planets.

So: here's what was good, and what went wrong. All unlinked quotes come from astro.com:

The Workaholic Ex is apparently quite Capricorn- no wonder I've been turned off by the idea of dating Caps since. He most likely has a T-square of his own (Sun/Venus, Moon, Pluto). He's a few months older than me, so his Saturn sets off all of my squares. Our nodes are a few degrees apart in the same houses and his Neptune (same as mine) opposes my vertex. So I suppose there was some karma going on there.

No Mars/Venus contacts in synastry, but in the (halfassed) composite, Venus trines Mars. Hm. I'm not sure what to make of this- this was kind of the least hormonal relationship I ever had, so the synastry seemed to trump there. Our Venuses trined, though.

Saturn composite aspects: sextile Jupiter, trine Mercury. Nothing real bad there.

Bad composite aspects: Sun square Neptune, Venus square Neptune, Moon square Uranus.

Be extremely careful with a relationship that has the square of Sun and Neptune in the composite chart. This aspect implies that the relationship tends to be unrealistic and impractical. In particular there is a danger that one of you will deceive the other, which could result in disappointment and disillusionment when this is revealed. No matter how beautiful the relationship seems at the beginning, there is a real possibility that it will end with a major let-down.

Yeah, "major let-down" certainly describes the ending.

The square of composite Venus and Neptune requires that the two of you be quite wary about the true nature of this relationship. If you are not careful and unless you evaluate yourselves thoroughly, you could experience great disappointment. With this particular Venus-Neptune aspect, you may believe that you have met the ideal of your life, especially in a romantic sense. The love of your life is here!
Neptune is the planet both of illusion and the ideal, and under its influence you are likely to find it very difficult to tell which is which. You must ascertain whether each of you is for real; that is, are you relating to each other or to some idealized fantasy? Is the spiritual element that you see in each other and in your relationship real or not?

Actually, this one really sums it up for me. I literally thought he was the love of my life and the ideal, though I doubt at this point he felt the same way! No wonder I felt so stupid afterwards.

With the square of composite Moon and Uranus, this relationship is not likely to be a stable, enduring, long-term one, at least as far as love is concerned. This is an aspect of emotional change and instability. A love affair with this aspect may flare up suddenly and then cool off with equal suddenness.

Yeah, it was also totally off-and-on in that manner.

Next, we have the Older Ex, who I was dating when I was young and dumb and he was going through his Saturn Return. Gee, no wonder there were issues there, eh?

In synastry: His Saturn was conjunct my Sun and Chiron and descendant, and opposed my ascendant. OUCH. That ain't pretty. That's big squashing aspects right there, not to mention that he got sick of me. Our suns squared each other.

As for Mars/Venus, my Mars and his Venus were opposite, and his Mars and my Venus were conjunct. That's a weird combination right there- ideal and unideal at once.

My moon conjuncted his Neptune, my Venus trined his Pluto, his Uranus hit my North Node.

The composite's where it's really nasty. Sun square Saturn, Venus square Saturn, Saturn square Pluto. Moon trine Saturn, Mercury trine Saturn, Saturn trine Uranus, and Jupiter sextile Saturn aren't enough to trump those problem aspects, I suspect.

Composite Sun square composite Saturn is likely to present some problems. It may be that you get in each other's way and then are not flexible enough to let the other do what he or she wants. One of you is very likely to become a repressive influence upon the other, constantly criticizing and condemning.
It would be good if creative changes could occur spontaneously in each of you that would make your relationship more stable and pleasant, but you should not make this a condition of the relationship. You must be able to accept each other here and now, although this aspect makes it difficult to do that.
Try to avoid criticizing each other excessively, and do allow more freedom of self- expression. If you really cannot accept each other's annoying characteristics, it is probably best to get out of the relationship.

Venus square Saturn can be a most troubleseome aspect in a composite chart, depending to a great extent on what you expect of the relationship. It can prevent a love relationship that is otherwise good from ever being physically consummated. Things seem to get in the way - either circumstances are not favorable or one of you blows hot while the other blows cold. In a relationship with more problems, this aspect may be the final indication that it cannot be satisfactory from any point of view.
The square of composite Saturn and Pluto creates difficulties. One of you will feel that you are struggling in chains forged by the other, that the relationship is restrictive, and that your natural growth is being inhibited. It is most likely that each of you will affect the other this way at different times.
The energies of the aspect may not be experienced directly, however. The Saturn-Pluto combination seems to have the effect of creating a shortage or lack of something that seems essential, so the two of you will not always have what you want, whether it is material comfort or psychological support.
Please realize, however, that the dynamics of your relationship is the problem, not the other person. In other words, both of you are contributing to the situation.
Such a relationship can face quite unpleasant circumstances, most commonly in the form of increasing emotional coldness and remoteness between you. From there you may get to the point of resisting each other strongly and wanting to break free at all costs. If you want to make it work, you must recognize how you have created this situation.

Ouuuuuch.

There's also Venus opposed to Pluto and moon conjunct Uranus.

With the opposition of Venus and Pluto in the composite chart you will have to be very careful. Somehow this relationship dredges up all kinds of deeply buried emotions that you may not really want to cope with. At its best, this power can cause you both to become new and more authentic people than you have been. But at its worst you will just play around with each other's feelings and what comes of playing around will make both of you feel quite bad about yourselves.

The conjunction of composite Moon and Uranus is bound to create a certain amount of excitement; but it will not provide stability. If the relationship ceases to be stimulating, it may very well come to an end Uranus challenges your preconceptions and drives you out of your established ruts. This relationship may exist for the same purpose.
On the other hand, it is possible that this conjunction signifies something unusual or atypical about the relationship itself.
If the relationship itself is unusual, it may be more stable than a more ordinary partnership. In a love relationship, this aspect demands that you give each other more than the usual amount of freedom.
This is likely to be an unusual relationship. Accept it as such and allow it to teach you something new about life.

I'd say the Moon conjunct Uranus sums this one up best, as it was an unusual relationship and he was an unusual fellow on top of that.

Venus sextiles Mars in the composite. And here's Venus trine Neptune. interesting how there's two Venus/Neptune composite aspects so far. No wonder I was so freaking deluded in these relationships.

The trine of composite Venus and Neptune indicates a highly idealized relationship. If this a love affair, it is a very romantic one; if it is a friendship, you probably idealize each other's attributes. This relationship may also stimulate great creativity in one of you, enabling you to write poetry or music.
Venus and Neptune together mean the beautiful illusion. In a trine, however, the word "ideal" might be more appropriate than "illusion." Even so, you must try to stay in touch with the everyday world. Like many other configurations of Neptune, this aspect is often characterized by a platonic relationship. If there is physical sex, it is highly idealized.

And then there's the Ex-Fiance. I was gobsmacked to see that he's got a Grand Fire Trine going on, considering that he was the ex who (a) had the worst luck, and (b) never got anywhere with anything. I guess this goes along with the Rushman book saying that some people with Grand Trines never get anywhere without motivation.

We didn't have any Saturn aspects going on at all in synastry, and in the composite Saturn is unaspected- no wonder it didn't end up going down the aisle. (Though I can't help but wonder why my shorter relationships had Saturn aspects and this one, my longest, didn't. Hm.) But he has Sun conjunct Uranus, which was conjunct my Uranus, and I gather that doesn't help with stability (even if it's great for love at first sight). Oh, and his Venus is conjunct the sun and Uranus. That's pretty wacky. We don't have any Mars/Venus aspects in synastry, which is odd.

Then there's the composite. And speaking of repeating themes in relationships: there's Venus square Uranus, Venus trine Neptune, and Venus sextile Pluto! Plus sun trine Pluto, which seems to translate into "whoopee sex!"

Other aspects:

Sun Opposition Venus: This is one of the strongest indications of a love relationship between two people, even in a friendship. It does not primarily indicate a sexual relationship; instead it signifies love, pure and simple. The attraction indicated by this aspect is so powerful that it can bring together people who are incompatible by ordinary criteria.
If the relationship is laden with conflicts, even a strong feeling of love between you may turn to hatred. In most cases, however, this will be a very fine personal relationship.

I guess in a way that summed it up. Brought together despite some major incompatibilities in lifestyle and money management...alas, the "whoopee" aspects and the illusions got squashed by that.

Sun square Uranus in the composite chart means that this relationship will be the source of many surprises for you, some of which will be quite difficult to deal with.
Most important is the problem of instability. Clearly this is not a relationship in which either of you can be possessive; you must give each other maximum freedom. And if this results in one of you drifting away to someone else, then that is the way it must be. This aspect is not especially good for any relationship, such as marriage, that involves traditional expectations. Marriage is possible, but it would require much more flexibility than most people have.

Traditional expectations...yeah, I guess that was it. He had more traditional expectations than I did for the relationship, and yet he couldn't actually fulfill the ones he wanted to do. Plus, I didn't actually want to do them. And yet I expected him to act in certain ways that just didn't pan out either.

So... I guess what I need to "watch out for" are Venus/Neptune aspects, Uranus aspects, ugly Saturn squares in the composite chart, a total lack of Saturn aspects period, Saturn conjunct Sun.

I swear, the anonymous celebrity synastry/composite is looking better and better compared to the exes.

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