Tracking Saturn Through a Lifetime

Saturn is the source of retentive power. He governs an aspect toward profound knowledge; the science of law; the search for causes, effects, and the origins of things; the utterance of magical words; and the knowledge of deep and occult properties.

Picatrix, translated by Dan Attrell and David Porreca

Saturn's ingress into Pisces in March 2023 was the final curtain call to my Saturn Return. 7 months prior, I had moved to southern California from the northeast with my husband and two dogs. Up to that point, I had never lived more than 25 miles out from where I was born. Soon after that move, I sat my husband down at our kitchen table and told him that I did not love him the way a wife should love her husband. He didn't move out until that very night Saturn shifted signs.

I am not a very observant person so I did not realize he was leaving at first nor the anxiety within me. It took my close friend who has very strong empathic abilities texting to ask if I was okay for me to notice either of those things. I checked myself, quickly recognizing much more was happening outside my energy field. It was as if something very heavy was pressing around me.

"It's not *just* me," I texted back, adding my shock that my ex was leaving. My friend worked in the cannabis industry at the time so she suggested that I purchase edibles so I could get some rest that night. I gamely went on my way and listened to this song on repeat as I headed to some Snoop Dogg-involved cannabis store.

Tell me, are you Lucifer?
Masks are off and bridges burned
Oh tell me, are you Lucifer?
Will you let me play the victim and make me your addiction?
Tell me, are you Lucifer?
We've passed a point of no return
Tell me, are you Lucifer?
Will you let me play the victim and make me your addiction?

"Lucifer" by Elle Lexxa

As I walked, I realized that the weight I had been feeling wasn't just pressing on me. It was *everywhere.* It kind of felt like the scope of the reveal shot in a movie where the vastness of the alien ship or giant monster or whatever is overwhelming the humanity below. But unlike those movies, nothing was visibly occurring and also, it was beautiful. Jubilant, even. As it so happened, as Saturn was ingressing into Jupiter's expansive, druggy sign, she was right on the ascendant for southern California.

There's more that happened that night as my friend accidentally recommended 40mg of THC to me, a person who up to that point maybe smoked cannabis once a month. That's a whole 'nother future blog post about the reshaping of my entire cosmology. Suffice to say for now, I knew at the time that Saturn was going to retrograde back and station at 0 degrees Pisces later in 2023 and during that time, there was going to be some kind of payoff. I also knew based off my preoccupation with that kinky song that night, details from it were going to re-emerge. Which made me ask: who was Lucifer?

Going back to the exact words I used to initiate my divorce: I did not love my ex "like a wife should love her husband." Well, while Saturn did her first lap of Pisces, I discovered one major reason why: I am very, very androgynous. As in, I am not just a woman, but also a man. And as one may guess, a very, very genderqueer person does not belong in a very, very cishet marriage.

The first 6 months of my gender transition were not easy. Almost every stupid cliche in the book happened to me—dysphoria even though I had always loved my body, transphobic attacks from close family members, people asking me about my medical transition that wasn't even planned yet. Sometimes in the midst of experiencing some of the worst trauma of my life, I would want to scream at how fucking unoriginal it all was.

One such friend wanted to meet me for a drink at a dive bar near me shortly before Halloween. At this time, Saturn was stationing. "I have a surprise gift for you," my friend with the natal Capricorn stellium texted me. Later that night, they took this badass photo of me, among others:

Gods, I could not tell you the number of compliments people give me when I wear my horns.

On the outset to a lot of people, it probably seems like it would be easier if I lived as a ciswoman my entire life. After all, over 20 states as of this writing have moved to ban gender affirming care. But man, I fucking tried that. I tried to aim for the 6-figure corporate job that nearly killed me. I had the big glamorous wedding to my "best friend in the whole world." I had two house purchases fall through as the houses were revealed to be horrifically deteriorated underneath neat, suburban facades.

Like Lucifer in John Milton's "Paradise Lost," I tried heaven and it was boring, conventional, and stupid.

Farewel happy Fields

Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail

Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell

Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings

A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time.

The mind is its own place, and in it self

Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.

What matter where, if I be still the same,

And what I should be, all but less then hee

Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least

We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built

Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:

Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce

To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:

Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n.

-Milton

As it so happens? I first read "Paradise Lost" in my high school English class when Saturn was in Virgo, Pisces' oppositional sign halfway around the zodiac.

Now as a planetary pagan, I say that Saturn, like all the other planets, saved me. She taught me character, she taught me what was important to me, and she taught me to see where I do and don't belong.

She taught me that I could make my own heaven of hell.