Saturn will transit the constellation Pisces
April 5, 2025 to June 12, 2027, then (after a brief dip into Aries) from
October 8, 2027 to March 3, 2028.
In theory, we expect this to resemble a blend of
Saturn transiting everyone's Neptune while
Saturn transits everyone's Venus. Saturn-Neptune means grief, loss, and fear (horror), emotional turbulence, intensified or exaggerated negativity, and undercutting feelings of security. Conditions demand our sacrifice and renunciation. We expect scandal, corruption and betrayal. Saturn-Venus, in theory, signals loss of what is most loved, spoiled fun (“the party's over”), and even hate, remorse, and loss of friendship.
That's the theory. What does history tell us has happened before (and likely will happen again)?
Historically, years with Saturn in Pisces have been times of
increased bigotry and narrowed tolerance. Antipathy has festered and erupted based on
racial, ethnic, or other cultural differences fed by almost manic fear. The "red scare" era of McCarthyism in the early 1950s did not have Saturn in Pisces (it was in the opposite sign, Virgo), but did have a Saturn-Neptune conjunction with the same toxic, insidious, and paralyzing suspicion, distrust, betrayal, and dread typical of Saturn in Neptune's constellation. The late 1960s transit was similarly a time of fear, distrust, and betrayal that by 1968 often felt like a melt-down of sanity and intentional fueling of outrage. The central key of Saturn in Pisces seems to be
fear (and consequent suppression) of the foreign.
For example, the 1819 Hep-Hep riots were pogroms against Ashkenazi Jews in the German Federation. 1848-51 included further violence against ethnic groups by powerful governments such as Mexico's military suppression of the Mayans, the Anglo-Sikh War in India, and strengthening of fugitive slave laws in the U.S. New Japanese emigration to the U.S. was forbidden by the Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907. In 1938, Hitler's
Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass") launched his violent Holocaust agenda by arresting or killing Jewish businessmen and sympathizers, looting Jewish business, and burning hundreds of synagogues. About the same time, Stalin's "Great Purge" began eliminating anyone deemed "anti-Soviet," eventually killing 724,000 people. In 1966-69, anti-civil rights violence accelerated in the American south, including the murder of activist James Meredith during a Mississippi march and the deadly Orangeburg Massacre in which police forcibly broke up anti-segregation demonstrations. The My Lai massacre represents the emotional violence extremes of the Vietnam era. In the Six-Day War, Israel faced off against Arab nations. In 1995, the Srebrenica massacre served as the terrible start of the soon-cascading Bosnian crisis, and Osama bin Laden declared
jihad against the United States.
These were all racial, ethnic, or other cultural differences fed by almost manic fear.
Against this, the depths of accumulated suppression sponsored positive actions of hope: Eighty-six African American colonists sailed from New York to found the nation of Liberia as a home for freed American slaves. The Missouri Compromise and Compromise of 1850 temporarily eased pressures as sincere (and ultimately futile) responses to the polarized slavery struggle. In Seneca Falls, NY, the first women's rights convention was held. China outlawed slavery. In the 1960s,
Loving v. Virginia invalidated all laws preventing interracial marriage, and N.O.W. and the Black Panthers were founded. In the 1878-81 pass, Edison and Bell transformed the day-to-day American landscape: Edison perfected the first practical light bulb, which rapidly lit the country. Edison and Bell together formed the Oriental Telephone Company on the last day Saturn was in Pisces.
New, non-mainstream religions, serious and enduring, emerged: Joseph Smith received his first vision in 1820. One Saturn orbit later, Mary Baker Eddy founded the Church of Christ Scientist.
Historians mark key events from these years as moments when liberal democracy teetered and might have fallen: In the June Days uprising (France), after the government closed National Workshops that guaranteed work and a baseline income to the unemployed, riots were suppressed by the military with over 10,000 casualties. Progressive voices honestly feared that an incoming conservative government was bent on eroding or removing all progressive gains. Sometimes this actually happened: After playwright and diplomat August von Kotzebue was murdered in Germany, the reactionary Carlsbad Decrees criminalized and suppressed liberal opinion. In 1937, armed authorities caused vast civilian death in the Ponce Massacre (police were ordered to open fire on peaceful demonstrators) and Chicago's Memorial Day Massacre (police shot and killed unarmed demonstrators).
Inebriants and consciousness altering substances have been suppressed: The Marijuana Tax Act in the late '30s started the path toward marijuana criminalization. LSD, which was first synthesized in 1938, was criminalized in the U.S. one Saturn cycle later.
Broadly, these were times of
great turbulence reminiscent of stormy, bloody seas, fueled by bleak unhappiness of common people and a resulting collective insanity. See the periods and events listed above through this lens. Add to them the massive anti-war protests and urban riots in the '60s, or the rising totalitarian control in Europe thirty years earlier (Hitler's replacing existing political and military leaders with those sympathetic to his views, and the increasing strength of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, and others). Consider the era when the Taliban first seized control in Afghanistan.
This is the world we have to wend our way through for the next three years.
Summary wrote:Fear and suppression of the foreign. More bigotry, less tolerance. Antipathy festers and erupts based on racial, ethnic, or other cultural differences. Toxic, insidious, paralyzing. Suspicion, distrust, betrayal, dread. Intentional fueling of outrage. Times of great turbulence reminiscent of stormy, bloody seas, driven by bleak unhappiness of common people and a resulting collective insanity. In response, the depths of accumulated suppression will sponsor positive actions of hope and efforts at redemptive compromise. (New, non-mainstream religions, serious and enduring, likely to emerge.)