Saturn in Pisces 2023 -2026
When mercenary Saturn marches into Pisces on March 7, 2023 it will have been 347 months since it last did so. On average Saturn spends about 2 ½ years in a zodiacal sign. During those journeys, father time seeks to bring form and structure to whatever it touches. This passage through the seas of Pisces will no doubt have resonance with previous voyages in these mystical waters. There will be a collision of form and the formless, time and the timeless, boundaries and the boundaryless, defined and the abstract, rationalism and the imaginary, just to name a few.
Here is a list of recent Saturn transits through the sign of Pisces:
Dates for Saturn in Pisces:
· Feb 14, 1935, to Apr 25, 1937
· Oct 17, 1937, to Jan 14, 1938
· Mar 23, 1964, to Sep 16, 1964
· Dec 16, 1964, to Mar 3, 1967
· May 21, 1993, to Jun 30, 1993
· Jan 28, 1994, to Apr 7, 1996
· Mar 7, 2023, to May 24, 2025
· Sep 1, 2025, to Feb 13, 2026
Before I begin exploring those past events I wish to briefly comment on the elegance of Astrology. In preparation to write this blog I went back to the basics and wrote as many delineations of Saturn in Pisces as I could. For most astrologers this was the starting point of their learning. Before one can become competent in any discipline/science/art there is a language that must be learned. Words as well as symbols help us to communicate ideas and concepts to one another. When spoken, those words become a vibration that carries energy to the receiver, energy that can heal, help, encourage, discourage, wound, harm or destroy based on the intent of the provider to the recipient.
Astrology is an art and science burgeoning with a lavish vocabulary that enables an astrologer to act as an intermediary between the heavens and earth. Translating the symbolic language of the cosmos into meaningful information is the ultimate purpose. It is not my belief that this is a causal relationship but rather an indicator of source at work in our lives. As I glance at the clock on my wall, I am reminded that it is not creating time but merely helping me place myself in it. A frame of reference. This is what Astrology does, it helps us place ourselves and the world we live in within cosmic time, the higher vibrations ever unfolding around us.
When planetary bodies such as Saturn change zodiacal signs, it represents a shift for the collective. Saturn is the taskmaster. Saturn carries powerful energies of form and structure- discipline, fear, restrictions, austerity, commitment, and determination. Saturn is about getting real. Piscean energies are quite different from Saturnian. In these deep emotive waters, we encounter the transcendent. Pisces prompts us to explore the imaginary, to dream, and to seek oneness with all that is. Boundaries are scoffed at and the nebulous celebrated. Escapism is preferred over the harsh realities that Saturn is known to deal in. Pisces reacts with empathy and compassion while Saturn counters with guilt and responsibility. This is truly a collision of opposites.
However, there is some common ground between these otherwise strange bedfellows. Their collaboration can result in some sensational outcomes. Both share an affinity for isolation and a commitment to the austere. They unify in celebrating the monk, the mendicant, nuns, priests and priestesses. Anyone seeking the spiritual side of this existence. Vows of service and servitude carried out in secret and in quiet seclusion. In such practices Saturn melts easily into Pisces numinous waters. The practice of meditation finds solace in this coalition, a commitment and discipline aimed at piercing earthly veils. Saturn brings the rigor, oaths, and perseverance needed for Pisces to fulfill its desires to compassionately commit itself to a higher purpose. It is in the solemnity of temples and tabernacles that Saturn and Pisces find tranquility.
Looking back at the most recent visit of Saturn in Pisces, May 1993 through April 1996, we see numerous examples of this spiritual unity. For instance, in June and July 1993 the District of Columbia was a crime ridden mess. There were “24 people killed and another 53 were wounded by gunfire or stabbings. There was one afternoon in which six children were shot and wounded at a public pool.” To counter these acts of violence, over 4,000 people from around the world (80 different countries) gathered for group meditation repeating silent mantras aimed at bringing peace and in an attempt to lower the rate of crime. This led John Hagelin, a Harvard educated physicist, to conduct a study linking the power of this organized meditation with a reduction of homicides, assaults, and rapes.
Then there is the story of Claude Anshin Thomas. He is a Vietnam veteran turned Zen Buddhist monk. He served as a helicopter crew chief who survived being shot down five times. At one point Thomas was injured in the shoulder and face, and broke his jaw, cheekbones, ribs and neck, and split his sternum. The trauma of war haunted him daily upon his return home to the United States. He is quoted as saying, "Everywhere I looked there was war." After dealing with PTSD for many years, living in his car, battling drug and alcohol addiction, he found Zen Buddhism and was introduced to Thich Nhat Han, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk; quite ironic. In 1992 Han invited Thomas to become a Buddhist monk but he was not ready, but by 1994 he took 16 vows as a zen peacemaker. Later he was fully ordained as a Buddhist Zen monk on August 6, 1995 and went on in 1996 to author an award-winning essay “Finding Peace after a Lifetime of War".
There is also a mutual aspiration to create. Saturn wanting to form, mold, and sculpt with precision and Pisces imagining the unimaginable. Foggy dreams seeking a potter. When the psychic and clairvoyant skills of the fish meet with the stewardship and reasoning of Chronos, art, poetry, movies, books, and music take on a purpose that seeks a serious cause. Topics of mysticism, spirituality, escapism, conspiracies, spies, and fantasy find meaningful expression through the arts. Saturn adds the tenacity and work ethic needed to deliver these creative concepts in a reality-based manner. The fantastical becomes substantive through an array of leading-edge productions.
An example of fantasy taking on the form of a book comes from the period of 1935-1938 when Saturn visited Pisces. J.R.R. Tolkien published “The Hobbit” in 1937 and immediately garnered wide acclaim and was nominated for the Carnegie Award. In this wondrous tale Bilbo Baggins, the protagonist, leaves his comfortable and safe home to venture out on an episodic quest that leads him to new levels of competence, maturity, and wisdom. This couldn’t be a more literal blending of Saturn in Pisces, a fantastical tale filled with dragons and all types of mythical creatures such as wizards, dwarfs, and goblins that bring Bilbo ultimately to new levels of personal growth and understanding.
And then there was Dune, a science fiction novel published in 1965, during another recent journey by Saturn through Pisces. This novel is the best-selling science fiction book of all-time. At the time this was a highly controversial novel in that the book is a complex, transhumanist epic about the dangers of messianic prophecies. Wikipedia describes the book as follows:
Dune is set in the distant future amidst a feudal interstellar society in which various noble houses control planetary fiefs. It tells the story of young Paul Atreides, whose family accepts the stewardship of the planet Arrakis. While the planet is an inhospitable and sparsely populated desert wasteland, it is the only source of melange, or "spice", a drug that extends life and enhances mental abilities. Melange is also necessary for space navigation, which requires a kind of multidimensional awareness and foresight that only the drug provides. As melange can only be produced on Arrakis, control of the planet is a coveted and dangerous undertaking. The story explores the multilayered interactions of politics, religion, ecology, technology, and human emotion, as the factions of the empire confront each other in a struggle for the control of Arrakis and its spice.
Another incredible blending of the energy of Saturn wearing Piscean clothing.
Both Pisces and Saturn have a proclivity toward the darkness. Saturn is often referred to as the dark lord, being connected to our fears, hidden places, and all things occurring in secret. The shadowy happenings carried out in seclusion that bring suffering and grief to the unsuspecting. Deceit capable of enslaving and imprisoning souls in tombs of tribulation. This too must be considered as the secret societies of the subterranean world scheme up new methods of restriction and suppression that elicit fear in the populace. Charlatans aiming to poison souls with falsehoods cloaked in clever spiritualism that is capable of persuading many.
The 1960’s and 1970’s represented a period of time during which a great wave of new religious and spiritual movements appeared and many of an alternative nature. Hare Kirshna and Transcendental Meditation gained favor at this time. But not all of these movements were led by those holding the highest of intentions. One such character was Reverend Sun Myung Moon. He was a “self-proclaimed” messiah who once claimed to have presided over Jesus’ wedding posthumously in order to get the Christian savior into heaven.
Quoting from the website Cult Recovery 101 we learn the following about Moon’s activities during the 1964 – 1967 Saturn in Pisces period:
Moon, who is Korean, and his two fascist Japanese buddies Kodama and Sasakawa, worked together in the early 1960s to form the Asian People’s Anti-Communist League with the aid of KCIA agents. The League allegedly used Japanese organized crime money and financial support from Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek. The League concentrated its efforts on uniting fascist and right-wing militarists into an anti-Communist force throughout Asia.
In 1964, League funds established Moon’s Freedom Center in the United States. Kodama served as a chief advisor to the Moon’s subsidiary Win Over Communism, an organization that served as a conduit to protect Moon’s South Korean financial investments. Sasakawa acted as Win Over Communism’s Chair.
Moon was a despicable yet charismatic character, owning dozens of businesses, many of them involved in arms deals, drugs, and money laundering. Another spiritual movement used as a smoke-screen to cover other activities. Once Moon infiltrated the United States in 1965, opening a center, his influence rapidly infiltrated the highest levels of the US Government. By 1995, during another Saturn in Pisces period, there was a huge controversy over connections between Moon’s movement and his involvement with George H. Bush.
Another cult figure whose activities correspond with extreme exactness to Saturn in Pisces is Shoko Asahara. He was the leader of a doomsday cult based in Japan known as Aum Shinrikyo (meaning Supreme Truth). This group was an eclectic mix of Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, and Christian beliefs. Aum's official recognition as a religious organization qualified it to pursue its activities without oversight from Japanese authorities. Like other fanatical, maniacal movements that have come before, this did not end well. In 1995, members of this group perpetrated a sarin gas attack on a subway in Tokyo that killed 13 and injured over 5,500 people.
It's interesting to note that Asahara started this movement out of dissatisfaction with traditional Japanese Buddhism. He espoused a spiritual path whose goal was the attainment of enlightenment in this life. Yet in the end, these aspirations went off the rails, ending in a heinous act of using an odorless, colorless, and highly toxic nerve gas sarin against defenseless people.
As we approach this new chapter of Saturn in Pisces it is always helpful to remember other versions of this rite of passage from history. There will no doubt be beautiful as well as abhorrent developments that spring up bringing both joy and despair to the collective consciousness. Incredible imaginings coming to reality through the arts in its many forms, newfound commitments to spiritual pursuits that bring enlightenment as well as compassion to our souls, and maybe even new ways of using plant medicines to formally and finally begin effectively treating all types of societal maladies that elude modern medicines.
On the flipside, we must stay diligent and mindful of the darker side of this transit. The examples cited of spiritual leaders and movements that ultimately follow a sinister and descending path are a potentiality. If we get too caught up in the fantastical and imaginary, we potentially become ungrounded and lost, seeking escape through multiple methods including drugs and alcohol, or even technology.
This will be a time to “get real” about who we are from a higher perspective. Our focus will be called upon to turn to the ultimate form of transcendence that recognizes a state of being incorporating the oneness of all that is and ever has been. Saturn in Pisces will give us an opportunity to bring form to our dreams. The integrity of how we operate in the world will be challenged to become more empathetic and compassionate to all those souls we come in contact with in our daily journeys. Saturnian energy teaches lessons, brings forth maturity, and leaves us hopefully wiser. May we all use this time to become the highest version of ourselves and to bless others in our lives as a result.
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