Saturn in Pisces - Dissolving Boundaries

by Lynn Bell

© Lynn Bell - published by The Evolving Astrologer, December 2022 / 23.01.2023

Source: Image generated by Dall-E royalty free

In Pisces, Saturn loses its footing, its certainty. The maps we formerly used to navigate the world may no longer apply. Our guidance system becomes erratic.

As Saturn leaves Aquarius on March 7, 2023, the last of its ‘home’ signs, the old rules crumble, and the new ones may be hard to grasp. We are asked to take a leap of faith and develop other forms of perception as the boundaries of the world shift and change.

On an individual level, Saturn in Pisces will bring us forward, but we may not yet know where we are going. If we work with Saturn in this sign, it brings compassion and a gift of subtle insight. Planets in Pisces ask us to acknowledge our implicit connectedness, feel things deeply, and identify with the experiences of others.

Just as the fish in the Pisces constellation swim in opposite directions, Saturn in Pisces is ambivalent. Saturn asks us to enlarge and encompass more, but we can feel frightened when our boundaries lose solidity. We can feel destabilized by a lack of control and overwhelmed by chaos. At its most extreme, this transit gives rise to a sort of madness and unleashes disturbances that temporarily seize the collective. All sense of proportion can be lost in a wave of destructive emotion fueled by false notions of the other.

The Fear of Chaos

Destabilization happened in Rwanda the last time Saturn was in Pisces, as the Hutus and Tutsis entered a horrifying ethnic conflict that swept formerly peaceful neighbors into murderous annihilation. These events began when a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down by a missile, killing all 12 passengers on April 6, 1994, at 20:27 (see chart for Assassination of Rwandan President). (i)

Assassination of the Rwandan President
Source: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attentat_du_6_avril_1994_au_Rwanda

It is estimated that 800,000 Tutsis lost their lives between April 7 and July 17, 1994. Various colonial powers had emphasized the rivalry between the agricultural Hutu and the herding Tutsi over a long period. The United Nations ruled this conflict as genocide. The chart shows a tight opposition between Saturn and Chiron and significant outer planet activity.

During the same Saturn in Pisces cycle, a massacre at Srebrenica (in former Yugoslavia) occurred between July 11 and July 25th, 1995—one of the worst events of a terrible war of independence. Bosnian Serb forces raped and tortured the people of Srebrenica, killing more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys. (ii)

In Pisces, ‘normal’ Saturnian inhibitions may be lost, and the floodgates open to our worst impulses, where a sense of shared humanity disappears. Saturn in Pisces may dissolve control and undermine restrictive systems. When the process goes awry, irrational responses may arise. These responses, in turn, can be projected upon others.

The global coronavirus pandemic has been psychologically and physically uncomfortable in recent years. The media constantly draws our attention to doomsday scenarios. These stimuli can bring a wave of anxiety crashing down as Saturn moves through Pisces, but catastrophe is far from inevitable.

Potential for Reconciliation and Reconstruction

Within the same period in South Africa, an entrenched system of apartheid gave way to a new constitution in 1993, bringing the vote to black Africans and other non-white groups. The April 1994 general election swept the African National Congress and President Nelson Mandela to power. (iii)

Mandela’s vision of reconciliation–a message of hope–was more powerful than the resentments of the past, and he became President as Saturn transited his IC. In this case, Saturn in Pisces corresponded with the old system dissolving.

The potential for a healing release of outworn structures is profound with Saturn in the last sign of the zodiac. It can bring a sense of joyous anticipation. For many in South Africa, Saturn brought the incarnation of a dream. In earlier times, entire segments of society had been artificially walled off, separated along racial lines. This is not to say that the harm created by so much injustice disappeared overnight, but structural changes were made to eliminate racial disenfranchisement.

So, what makes the difference between tragic outcomes and more hopeful ones?

Spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti frequently spoke of how fear arises in our personal and global affairs:

We can see that fear comes into being when our comprehension of relationship is not complete. Relationship is not only between people but between ourselves and nature, between ourselves and property, between ourselves and ideas; as long as that relationship is not fully understood, there must be fear. Life is relationship. To be is to be related and without relationship, there is no life. Nothing can exist in isolation; so long as the mind is seeking isolation, there must be fear. Fear is not an abstraction; it exists only in relation to something. (iv)

Saturn in Pisces asks us to become more aware of the connectedness of all life, and each passage can open our perception. One of its other functions is to push the boundaries of our understanding, our place in the universe, and our relationship with the world around us.

Publication of the Theory of Relativity
Source: https://guides.loc.gov/einstein-annus-mirabilis/1905-papers

Einstein published his first paper on Relativity on June 30, 1905, with Saturn at 2° of Pisces on his 4th House cusp, in a Grand Water Trine to Mars in Scorpio, and Sun-Neptune in Cancer. Saturn was also exactly sextile to Uranus. (See chart for Einstein Publishes Relativity.) The year 1905 was Einstein’s “annus mirabulus” (miracle year), illustrating how Saturn in Pisces can break through a former prosaic understanding into a new mystical perception of the nature of things. (v)

In another Saturn passage through Pisces, sunspots were observed for the first time in 1611. Then in 1612, Saturn marked the first sighting of the Andromeda galaxy.

It is important to remember that Saturn in Pisces shifts our understanding of the boundaries of the physical world. Below is a list of the most recent passages of Saturn in Pisces and its interface with outer planet cycles.

Saturn in Pisces Dates with Critical Outer Planet Cycles

Apr 13 - Aug 17, 1905, and Jan 8, 1906 - Mar 19, 1908

Saturn Trine Neptune, Neptune opposition Uranus - The first Russian Revolution pushed against autocratic rule. This corresponded to other confrontations between labor and capital and major discoveries in Physics.

Feb 14, 1935 - April 25, 1937

Saturn opposition Neptune - Ideologies of racial purity, fascism, communism, and socialism vied for prominence on the world stage. The U.S. ‘New Deal’ came into place, and mass shifts in population were set in motion by drought, floods, and civil war.

Mar 24 - Sep 16, 1964, and Dec 16, 1964 - Mar 3, 1967

Saturn opposition Pluto-Uranus – This period was marked by major social upheaval and pushback against systems that encode injustice, including racism, colonialism, and sexism. Echoes of this time are currently quite powerful.

May 21 - July 30, 1993, and Jan 29, 1994 - April 7, 1996

Uranus conjunct Neptune - Saturn gave form to the new electronic world where unification and annihilation arose in distinct parts of the world. Saturn was briefly in Pisces from May 21 to July 30, 1993, when the rare Uranus-Neptune conjunction was still within a degree of orb, then returned from January 29, 1994, to April 7, 1996.

The push to open borders was part of the process of globalization, more precisely symbolized by the rare 172-year conjunction of Uranus and Neptune. Those who championed the pairing of the two outer planets believed it would bring the world closer together in greater cooperation and prosperity. The U.S., Mexico, and Canada implemented the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and 26 European countries joined to establish open borders, known as the Schengen Area.

Over time, some people have looked more negatively at the idea of open borders, seeing the loss of jobs and the cost of outsourcing. The upcoming entry of Saturn in Pisces on March 7, 2023, is the Saturn Return of this period. As with all Saturn Returns, there is substantial sorting out to be done.

The 1993-96 passage also gave form to a new planetary nervous system, with email becoming widely available. New communication methods like email and internet-based discussion forums increased our ability to be connected, shaping a world we hadn’t fully imagined. It has largely shifted consciousness from embodied experience to communication outside physical boundaries.

Mar 7, 2023 - May 25, 2025, and Sept 1, 2025 - Feb 14, 2026

Saturn sextile Jupiter in Taurus - will turn our attention back to the physical world. This harmonious connection could facilitate steps toward greater compassion and a sense of responsibility toward global suffering. One of the most forward-thinking moments in this cycle comes in March-April 2024 when Jupiter sextiles Saturn and then Jupiter conjoins Uranus— always a peak innovation cycle.

Venus will join Saturn in Pisces from Mar 12 - Apr 4, 2024. In astrology, Venus is exalted in Pisces and Saturn in Libra. The movement of a Venus Star Point into Libra is a hopeful presage for this passage of Saturn in Pisces.

From the Collective to the Individual

As Saturn goes into Pisces, we will meet the opportunity to determine whether we need fewer boundaries (more openness) or more boundaries to protect ourselves from chaotic forces.

Saturn in Pisces dissolves boundaries, and when we are unnecessarily walled off or overprotected, it can be liberating to drop some defenses. It can also be frightening to feel at sea. One of Saturn’s primary functions is to protect, solidify, and define our limits. In contrast, Pisces is the most fluid, changeable, and multiform of signs. Pisces has an inherent sense of limitlessness, infinite possibilities, a wide range of emotions, and a vast imagination.

Saturn’s passage in this sign is paradoxical. It can dissolve barriers to freedom and redefine our core myths. It can also give rise to fear, leading to redoubled efforts for control, often empowered by a fervent faith that another way of being or living would be preferable.

Pisces can come as a wave bigger than all of us, and we may be powerless to resist some of what flows in. The changes that swept the world in the mid-1960s were experienced by many to be a mix of confounding, exhilarating, marvelous, and frightening. Psychedelics fueled some, and the fear of these changes later emerged as a war on drugs–a tightly Saturnine response to the powerful shift in consciousness. We note that in current times, there is a trend in the medical community to reintroduce experiments with psychedelic substances to treat trauma and depression. Saturn in Pisces will likely bring a more mature approach to inducing powerful changes in consciousness.

Saturn in Pisces may also reveal our disconnection from the physical body and other people, making it urgent to reconnect with the senses, the earth, and the living world. It can affect our personal myths and shake our faith in the future.

What needs to flow in for each of us? And which systems of control will no longer be necessary?

First Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholics_Anonymous

The chart for the first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous has Saturn in Pisces opposite Neptune in Virgo (see chart for First AA Meeting). (vi) Co-founders Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith set out to find limits for what could not be controlled. (vii)

Out of the suffering of addiction, two men found a path to release the pattern of repeated suffering, step by step. Over time thousands of others followed their program of recovery.

Saturn in Pisces asks us to step into the place between waves—between old forms dissolving and new ones rising. If we know how to surrender, magic may come. It can be pulled, a gossamer thread, drawing forth a novel pattern of being. If our understanding is fine enough, we may sidestep the undertow of past emotions —the imprint of self-defeating behaviors —and create new possibilities.

We find another example in the Dalai Lama as the inheritor of a great tradition, who was born with Saturn in Pisces. Centuries of learning, beauty, devotion, and sanctity dissolved around him in his adolescence. In fleeing to the West, he brought the living remnant of a spiritual tradition—holding the embers, keeping it alive, and spreading it among us. Despite regret for what was lost, he built a new version of the old world while in exile.

Of course, those who chased him away tell another story. They see him as a dangerous purveyor of ignorance and entrapment —a toxic remnant of the past holding his people back from a new era free of superstition where there are no saints or magicians, only leaders.

Saturn in Pisces will prompt us to choose between old stories and new myths. We will decide how to make sense of the changes in our world and engage in the new possibilities of being human.

Will we wonder, like Miranda in The Tempest, at "the Brave New World that has such creatures in it” and open our hearts to the unknown? Or will we step into a vision closer to Huxley’s dystopian novel?

References:
1 The beginning of Genocide in Rwanda. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attentat_du_6_avril_1994_au_Rwanda
2 Srebrenica massacre. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_massacre
3 Apartheid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid#Final_years_of_apartheid
4 https://www.livereal.com/psychology/fear-krishnamurti/
5 https://guides.loc.gov/einstein-annus-mirabilis/1905-papers
6 https://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Wilson,_Bill
7 Alcholics Anonymous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholics_Anonymous

Published in: The Evolving Astrologer, December 2022.

Author:
Lynn Bell has been an astrologer for over four decades, integrating into her practice archetypal, psychological, and spiritual approaches. She has spoken at most of the major conferences in the world and loves the work of decoding shifts in the larger Cosmic signatures. A long time tutor for the Centre for Psychological Astrology in London, she also teaches online for Astrology University and MISPA (Mercury Internet School of Astrology) and sees clients in Paris, and online. Her classic book on Solar Returns, Cycles of Light, has just been republished, along with a series of webinars on the same theme. She also taught for Caroline Myss, most recently in a series on the nodes, “Being Swallowed by the Dragon.”
lynnbellastrology.com

© 2023 - Lynn Bell - The Evolving Astrologer

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