Three Tough Lessons from my Saturn Return

• The only certainty is change (that incessant gnawing feeling, its change, trying to get out!)
• What you think is important, probably isn’t (excess baggage fees are a complete waste of money)
• Hold on tight (to yourself)

Astrology tells me that with Saturn in Pisces, I am a reluctant Hero, but the way in which he connects to my Sun, and to Jupiter, tells me that I am also blessed with a free soul, a fighting spirit and a brave and creative heart!

As I approached thirty years of age, I could hear the individual call of my own Astrological Saturn and understood the call to adventure that was being issued. I allowed myself to be drawn, instructed and coerced by “fate” to respond in a suitably dramatic and flamboyant manner.

Having given up waiting for my partner to commit to me and satisfy my desire for children, I grew tired of waiting for the gnawing sensation in the pit of my stomach to go away and trying to pacify the roaming restlessness I felt.

I could hear the call, and it was time to go, I accepted the challenge and I “let go” of my life, I turned my back on it, and chose something completely different.

I was emigrating, and although it was not that far, I was still emigrating to a country where they spoke a different language, where the rain was prayed for, and where the muezzin sang from ivory towers five times a day.  I was leaving home, for the second time; I thought I was doing something different.

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Having sold, bartered and given away nearly everything I possessed, I departed like any novice hero, with well-wishing, teary friends, a heart full of hope, and, unlike most novice heroes that I had read about, a rather over-sized Edwardian travelling trunk! (I was always the romantic)

It wasn’t long before things started to go terribly wrong, and that was just the beginning.

Only an hour after leaving, there I was, the car broken down, standing on the side of the road, clutching a kite, and waiting for a taxi to carry me and my impossibly archaic Edwardian trunk to Heathrow airport. I was actually wondering if I was meant to go at all!

Heathrow was mobbed, my trunk was something that should have gone on an ocean liner, not an airline, but I was stubborn, it was coming with me, and I paid an exorbitant surcharge.

Two years later, I left most of its contents behind me, but the value was the lesson!!

I did finally get there, and the next few years were some of the maddest, saddest, funniest and loneliest that I have ever had. Saturn pushed me out into the world, this reluctant Hero, and made me who I am today.

This is the beauty of Saturn. He has a shaping quality that, although painful and arduous at times, works to refine and transform you into a person who can withstand the trials of life, to build a strong container to carry you through the rough and tough times that will inevitably come.

The relationships you form with the transits of Saturn, inform the very structure of your life.

My travels have not ceased, and although I no longer tarry in the land of the “infidel”, I still live several weeks on horseback from the land of my birth and I have watched Saturn closely ever since those “daredevil days”, and with deepening interest, as he has made his way around my chart.

I was that reluctant hero, naïve and gauche, heading into the unknown, learning about the world, and the different groups, peoples and institutions that I became involved with whilst Saturn navigated my 10th, 11th & 12th houses.

I watched Saturn as he dropped below the horizon, moving through Cancer, as my soul finally found  the children I would give birth to, helped me build a house, my nest in the mountains, the place where I kept my babies safe.

I witnessed my Hero battling with the dragon in the cave at the bottom of my chart, stealing the monster’s treasure as I gained my lifelong dream of an official qualification in astrology, whilst juggling toddlers.

More recently, I have watched my Hero limp back towards civilisation; the journey home can often be the most dangerous, letting go of much of what I thought I had gained, as the load became too heavy to bear.

Having spent the last seven years bringing the bounty home, back to be shared with others, I am once again facing a Saturn return, my second, and the call has come again. This time, instead of emigrating, I am publishing a book and a deck of cards, which, like long-distance travel, also come under the rulership of Jupiter. The call has come again, and I have heeded it, because I have no choice, but I know these three things for certain:

“The only certainty will be CHANGE, for regardless of whether I want change or not, it will come and get me anyway, even if I hide under the bed.

That I need to travel LIGHT, because I can’t take it all with me, excess baggage fees are a complete waste of money, but I STILL LOVE FLYING KITES.   

That I will be leaving home again, maybe not in the same way, but certainly on another level. I WILL BREAK THE MOLD IN WHICH I HAVE BEEN SET, and once again, I WILL ANSWER THAT CALL TO ADVENTURE. 

If I am blessed with a long life, I may even see my third Saturn Return, like my father, who has recently had his; still sharp, still active, a staunch Saturnian with a bold dash of Jupiter about him, and always game for an adventure!

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