The Necessity of Blockages in a Spiritual Life
Gods what a Saturnian title!
As I am writing this, I am not in the best of places. To clarify, I am surprisingly feeling good, but my life prospects from a traditional capitalist standpoint look pretty shot. I want to disclose this openly because I haven't seen a lot of magical practitioners necessarily discuss when they are down bad. There is a lot of New Age "pull up your bootstraps and manifest" content and a lot of occultists adhere to this very stiff upper lip masculine presentation where they suggest that if you are not doing well, there is a regimented idea of solution. Both are performances and not very realistic ones.
As the yijing will tell you, life is a series of inevitable cycles where there are fortuitous periods and tumultuous periods. You can't magic away the fact that shit is always going to happen to you and that for awhile, you may be stuck in it. Income takes a hit, loved ones die, relationships end. There is always going to be a point where you lose clarity on your life direction and you may be so overwhelmed that you can't hear your spirits. You can't control or even solve your way out of it. It just is.
So to recap, in the last year and a half I did a cross-country move, got a divorce, lost one of my dogs in that split, experienced my grandmother's passing, had a gender awakening, and finally individuated from my transphobic family. In the last two weeks, I was terminated from my job in nonprofit in the most unbelievably unprofessional way and then received a rejection from the only Masters in Social Work program I applied to because it was the only one I wanted. I was essentially depending on that MSW program to provide structure for me I haven't had since moving here as well as a pathway forward and now it's been made clear no foundations will be provided for me.
There are spiritual reasons for this. Back when Saturn was midway through Sagittarius in 2017, I was laid off from my job in New York City. "Rat race" is the technical term for NYC capitalism in general, but is especially true if you work in marketing, which I did. What followed was in retrospect a surprisingly fruitful year where I occasionally volunteered, went on numerous interesting first dates while Tinder was novel, and first explored MSW programs. But I suffered a lot of trauma during that year as I was hit with job rejection after job rejection, and then dead silence as the gap in my resume grew. Being raised to value myself as a bragworthy extension of my parents, in which corporate career success was predominantly prioritized, I felt that NYC and the greater cosmic mechanisms were declaring me worthless.
I thought I could escape ever experiencing that again, but now that Saturn is transiting midway through Pisces and will station direct on the same degree she is on as of this writing, I am realizing I cannot. I am going to have to finally learn to recover who I am and value myself outside of employment. I'm going to have to fully face my trauma.
That means choosing not to work for the foreseeable future. I will have to build my own structure and routine. I am going to hopefully volunteer at least one LGBTQ+ organization in my area, meet new people as I have been the past year, commit myself deeper to my writing, and take either some spellwork courses or audit community college classes. This will all happen as I begin taking testosterone and go through a second puberty, which will certainly have some unexpected twists and turns. There are moments that are going to be invigorating and there are moments that are really going to suck. That's just life.
It's better acquiescing to this rather than hitting my head against walls from pretending that they are doorways. I know my spirits will block any employment I try to get at this juncture because they have expressed concern that it will just lead to further burnout. Eventually, I will re-apply to grad school because I really do want to be a social worker some day. When I get there, I will be a wholly different person. I will be the person myself and my patients/clients will need me to be instead of the confused Fool I am now.
Further astrological conditions involving Saturn indicate that I am far from only one feeling trapped. If you are and you're reading this, I hope you too see where there is now autonomy in places where you once did not have any. I hope you also find your pathway forward into a life that makes a little more sense.
