The Fear

 Photos: Willow

Renegade Heifer Photography

Saturn is currently sitting on the end of the sign of Scorpio, stirring up a whole mess of fear. This is "deepest, darkest fears" territory, which is rarely any fun at all.

Saturn is completing the final weeks of its mutual reception with Lord of the Underworld Pluto in Capricorn, so you had to expect a little something nightmarish with this Grand Finale double dose of Scorpio/Capricorn and Saturn/Pluto.

The fears (depression/paranoia/dread) could seem to come out of nowhere, dug up by the relentlessly slow motion of Saturn regaining speed after the August 1 direct station at 28 degrees Scorpio.

Saturn hasn't gained much speed or distance since then (think "relentless crawl"), so we could be feeling quite stuck under the same old challenges that seem to have no easy solutions. The gut-churning emotional and psychological challenges could be quite thick until Saturn breaks into lighter territory in Sagittarius on September 17. When Saturn re-enters Sagittarius at 8:49 p.m. CST that night, the transit of Saturn through Scorpio as well as the mutual reception to Pluto in Capricorn are officially complete.

For now, we're locked in. Dreadful Saturn has us in its grip.

Malefic planet Mars in Leo is closing in on a frictional square to malefic planet Saturn in Scorpio, which will not be exact until September 25 when both planets have (mercifully) ingressed mutable signs (Mars into Virgo and Saturn into Sagittarius). But this slowly-forming square between the two malefic (ie. potentially less pleasant) planets in the fixed signs of Leo and Scorpio could stir fears and frustrations to almost intolerable points over the next month.

Mars square Saturn indicates a feeling of being between a rock and a hard place with nowhere beneficial to turn. One way is hard, the other way even harder. Our movement and personal will can be painfully constricted under the influence of this aspect. Our challenges and "what we have to do in the world" can seem overwhelming. We're just sitting under it all, spinning our wheels.

Saturn has a way of convincing us that our troubles are always going to be this hard, that life is always going to be this difficult. (Not the case!) But with Mars rubbing up against Saturn in Scorpio in a frictional way over this next month, certain points will seem acutely difficult, if not impossible, to navigate.

This is said not to scare anyone - just that there is nothing "wrong" with you if you experience some difficult or frustrating points between now and late September.

Saturn has the ability to make the things it touches concrete, real, material. And our deepest, darkest fears are sometimes proving more real than we would like under the tail end of this Saturn in Scorpio transit.

These could be fears we may have thought were already confronted, settled, resolved, and accepted but are now circling round to get at us again, and this can be depressing.

(Saturn is back where it was in December 2014.)

It's difficult to see our way out of this glut of fear (though we will work our way out of it). In many ways, we have to accept the things we see and sense. The stone-cold reality on Planet Earth is not much of a comfort these days once you lift all the rocks and look in all the nooks and crannies.

But one comfort we have is this: we're not alone with this terrifying mess. We're all struggling with the icy, suffocating grip of fear at times. We're all existing under the weight and karma of Saturn in tail-end Scorpio. Personal challenges can seem insurmountable now to the vast majority of people on this planet, not just to you and me.

So when it seems there's nowhere to turn to make it feel any better, when Saturn is hell-bent on exposing our terrors, as it is now, we have to endure with the understanding that there are those who shoulder it alongside us. We're all struggling with the sickly grip of personal terror and collective horror at times. How could we not be considering the state of things on this planet? Facades indicating otherwise can easily be cracked by just one more event going awry.

Don't let the fear isolate you. You're never alone with this.

It's not all bad, either:

Benefic love planet Venus Rx forms a conjunction with malefic Mars at 14 degrees Leo on August 31 (11:04 p.m. CST), providing a little boost of love, support, and fire. The Venus-Mars conjunction is often considered a boon for relationships with the feminine and masculine planets coming together.

Lovely Venus goes direct at 14 Leo on September 6 (2:29 a.m.), and the love, money, and relationship planet moving forward again should come as a relief - or at least provide a change of pace.