Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Saturn in Scorpio: Grounding the Charge and Avoiding the Wrong Astrological Mixes

From a previous post:

"Scorpio is a sign, co-ruled by Mars and Pluto, that involves complex attractions. Mars is the planet of personal desire, attraction, and sexuality, while Pluto involves attractions of the soul, designed to draw us into deep (and sometimes hellish horrifying) processes of change and metamorphosis. Plutonic attractions catalyze a process that leaves us in an altered, yet ultimately stronger and more powerful, state, not the same as we once were. In Scorpio, we experience the interplay between personal will and transpersonal will, personal desire and transpersonal desire, what we want and what is wanted for and from and through us.

Plutonic attractions are often both magnetic, drawing us like moth to flame, and repulsive. One side of the magnet attracts; the other repels. With Pluto involved, we experience both. There is an intricate interplay, and it doesn't take much to turn passionate love into passionate hate and vice versa.

There is a theme with Scorpio and Pluto of being attracted to those we secretly (or not-so-secretly) hate. This attraction brings us into contact, again and again, with people and situations that disgust, horrify, and enrage...but also fascinate, titillate, and compel. We hate ourselves for being attracted, but it's difficult (though not impossible) to break away."

One of the great things about Saturn's almost three-year transit of Scorpio is: people are going to be able to break away.

Saturn in Scorpio grounds the charge of the sign, and as a result, the cyclical, moth-to-flame attractions have less control. Those who are used to having that sexy, seductive, highly-charged pull at their disposal are going to find their drawing power limited.

People are going to be able to extricate themselves. They just aren't going to be as attracted or transfixed. The old dramatic draws will no longer draw. The sticking points will no longer stick.

People fascinated by "the charge" will willingly stay stuck, but most are going to be looking for more substance (Saturn) than that type of attraction (Scorpio) has to offer. Extrication will take patience and effort, but people are going to be able to get out of orbits that have drawn them in against their wills previously.

This includes astrologers' orbits. The re-jigging of mental pathways indicated by the current Mercury retrograde through Scorpio (November 6 - 26) is a boon for people who need to change their "astrological orbits," especially related to Mercurial paths through the world of internet astrology.

The Sun and Mercury Rx are currently coming together in interior conjunction on the Scorpio North Node (exact November 17). This conjunction acts as a laser pointing the way to more fruitful and satisfying tracks in all areas of life, particularly mental/communicative/informational. To get there, we first have to break the charge and the pattern of the ingrained past, and Saturn is here to assist on that front.  

During the transit of Saturn through Scorpio, we're going to be confronted by the lesson that certain people just don't mix. We have to respect the friction and resistance apparent in interactions now and address this in the way we structure things. People at cross-purposes coming into unstructured contact with each other will be sending up sparks. 

It's sort of common sense. If you notice friction and resistance between two of your friends, don't make them co-Maids of Honour at your wedding unless you want the possibility of a hair-pulling slap fight looming over you on your blessed day.

But with Scorpio, it's also more complex than straight-up, overt dislike.

We're working with underlying, often hidden friction, charge, and anger coming up from the depths, which tell us in no uncertain terms that strong boundaries and limited contact are required in certain cases if we are to avoid the "powder keg" dynamics.

Even those who are compatible will require solid boundaries and containment over the next couple years, or things can become combustible. Saturn is transiting an area of the zodiac referred to as the Via Combusta. This area between 15 degrees Libra and 15 degrees Scorpio, excluding 23 and 24 degrees Libra, is known as the burning path or combustible way.

From a previous post:

"When the Via Combusta is strongly highlighted, there is a feeling of running the gauntlet through sometimes seemingly insurmountable odds, collective karma, booby traps, and friction, very often related to relationship dynamics, which are Libra and Scorpio territory.

There's a fire in the Via Combusta and within people with a strong Via Combusta signature that keeps them burning, burning, burning a path through life as you would imagine a shooting star burning an accelerated path through the night's sky. There's a feeling here that one has to keep going no matter what, through the wreckage of old, crystallized layers that would keep us stultified, constricted, and unsatisfied with old wounds perpetually reopened by a revolving cast of characters.

The basic goal of the Via Combusta is to reach escape velocity. In space travel, this is the point a space shuttle reaches when its speed and momentum allow it to escape the effects of gravity pulling it back down to Earth. In the case of the Via Combusta, it's about reaching the points of awareness and pure momentum where we escape the gravity of the sticky, tricky wreckage trying to draw us back into old territory, especially involving old constructs and dynamics of relating."

With Saturn transiting Via Combusta Scorpio, the weight of collective karmic charge is great, and it's going to take sustained effort to reach the desired escape velocity.

Saturn will be transiting the Via Combusta until November 21, 2013. The North Node enters the Via Combusta at 15 Scorpio on June 23, 2013, leaving it at 15 Libra on January 4, 2015. The potentially frictional and incendiary relational themes are with us for a while.

Over the next year, the strong Scorpio energy in the zodiac is drawing together certain people, situations, skills, talents, and elements in an attempt to create a new alchemy that will really get things done during these crisis times on the planet. It's the "last ditch," if you will. The Scorpio energy is attempting to bring about fusion, creating alchemical combinations that have never before existed, and this process can be particularly combustible. New allies and allegiances will be both forming and melting down in spectacular fashion.

This Scorpionic fusion effect will be apparent across many different disciplines, and we all hold some personal responsibility for what elements are brought together and in what ways.

As Scorpio is a sign related to divination and the "alchemical arts" like astrology and tarot, this is a time period when potentially discordant astrological traditions will be making contact.

In this Google era, astrological knowledge, traditions, and techniques are accessible to people in ways they never have been before. Different traditions and different astrologers are coming into contact with each other in ways they never have in recorded history. And we have to understand that mixing the wrong elements can create some very nasty reactions.

There are belief systems, allegiances, motivations, and traditions underlying anyone's practise of astrology, and Saturn in Scorpio is a time to be very clear on that. Certain astrologers, as well as certain astrological traditions, don't mix well. The level of astrological cross-pollination going on today has never been seen before in recorded history, and we have to be careful to what and to whom we expose ourselves. Readers of astrology should be aware of this, careful of the elements and of the astrologers they bring together.

Astrology is not necessarily a case of "more is better."

Scorpio relates to what we're connected to ancestrally - themes, dynamics, and carryover from generations past - as well as to what we're furthering within our own lifetimes. With Saturn in the sign, there are challenges related to the ancestral lines, and there are grudge matches waiting to play out if we are not careful to maintain boundaries.

We have to feel out what we're connected to (what runs through our blood), what they're connected to (what runs through their blood), whether there is compatibility there, and how to maintain proper boundaries even when there is compatibility.

Saturn in Scorpio is a time period of restrained and restricted energy. There just isn't time or energy for the same old dramas. Because of this, it's in the best interests of most to responsibly avoid the powder keg dynamics.

Starting to work with these themes now, shoring yourself up and creating solid boundaries, is a great way to proactively use the Saturn in Scorpio energy to your long-term benefit.

Venus is currently in Via Combusta Libra, making relationships, money, and values particularly charged territory. Conjunctions to fixed stars Spica and Arcturus on November 16 and 17 will hopefully provide some temporary respite from the heat of the relational burning path.

Venus enters Scorpio late on November 21, leaving the Via Combusta December 4.

Venus forms a conjunction to the Scorpio North Node December 12, and at that time, we should be well aware of which relationships are moving forward, which have run their course, and which are better left alone altogether.

8 comments:

Lea said...

I feel you are speaking directly to me. Can't wait to get the mecklace on me (still keeping my hematite stones close until then). I feel like glue in quick sand. My mind is going over too much and those I am in the most sticky relationships are difficult to say the least. Slowly slowly slowly. No rush no rush, I keep repeating to myself. . Thanks for your clarity and all the Head's ups you have been posting. I hear you. Still sorting out some things, and those I have sorted out clearly are fighting me tooth and nail and periodically I keep wishing I could just cave in. But I never have so far, so it won't happen now. But I am tiring easily. I also agree with you about the smorgasbord of astrologers creating confusion, at best.

Willow said...

Lea, I asked my Mum about shipping and she said the necklace might take longer than I hoped to get there. Sorry about that! But expect it within a week to 10 days.

Anonymous said...

Excellent as always Willow! Fascinating when you talk about ancestral lines.."With Saturn in the sign there are challenges related to the ancestral lines and grudge matches waiting to play out". So this is personal and collective I suppose? Isn't this the stuff that family feuds and wars are made of? Wow...best piece of info I've gotten all year. You rock Willow!!!

Lea said...

I'll let you know when it arrives. Thanks so much for the update.:>)

athenian200 said...

Wait, Mercury went retrograde on Novemeber 6th, AND Saturn is entering Scorpio?

That actually explains a lot of things that have happened to me recently. On that day, November 6th... I became completely frustrated with an unhealthy Skype community that I'd been part of for nearly 3 years, and uninstalled Skype from my computer to separate myself from out of control people who do nothing but cause chaos and backstab friends in order to gain power.

I also went back and focused on working with a good friend on the website I had purchased but neglected for the past year due to dealing with these people and trying to comfort or help them.

For some reason, we now ended up using the exact same Shoutbox software that that they had used on that forum (before they removed it from theirs), as our main communication medium. We started trying a bunch of different CMS software, and finding all of them to be limited and poorly designed for what we wanted to do. All our attempts at getting technical help from forums/mailing lists failed, we were completely ignored.

One of the days, we tried a framework called Django, and it broke the site completely a few times. I ended up giving my friend the IP to my abandoned Minecraft server that had an IRC plugin, and we ended up talking through that during the interruptions.

At one point, I needed him to use SSH, but my host wouldn't let anyone use it who wasn't from my own IP for some reason (some kind of security lockdown). So I had to SSH in myself, set up a VNC server (which I hadn't done for a few years), and have him log in to MY computer to get the SSH session.

Eventually, we did get it working, but found it also wasn't quite what we wanted.

Finally, we just decided to try and make the adjustments we wanted using our existing CMS software. It was extremely difficult because it was poorly documented and help wasn't forthcoming. We ended up having to rack our brains, and he complained several times about "backwards programming," mentioning how archaic and confusing some of the code was. But eventually, we did it, and realized we were finally satisfied with the design we'd been working on for the past year.

Another weird thing that happened included me randomly asking my mother about a replacement BIOS battery for a 10 year old computer, and her immediately knowing what type of battery it was, and pulling it out of a drawer saying she had tried to replace the batteries in a scale, but it was broken, so they were never used. I inserted it into the computer and it worked perfectly.

Also, while I was buying a gift for my mother (a boombox that supported cassette tapes and CDs) with an unused $100 gift card I had found in the closet from last year, but had money left over... the site suggested a discounted, ancient 2GB pack perfect for that computer. Probably because of a purchase I made on there years ago. So I got that, installed it, and suddenly it said "Dual-Channel mode enabled," and began running most tasks nearly as fast as my current machines.

Oh, and if that's not enough... yet another site gave me a huge discount on the SATA controller card I would need to use a discarded 250GB drive (it had been for a machine I had in 2006 that melted within 5 months) in the SAME old computer, in lieu of the old 20GB model I'd been using since purchased.

So, basically... this whole Mercury retrograde seems to have done more than just interfere with communication. It seems to have resulted in me having to use old or abandoned system and protocols that most people have forgotten, to get around serious problems, and it also seems to have rewarded rediscovering discarded objects and upgrading old hardware.

Anonymous said...

Willow have told me many times... I am just unable to help myself.
I just wish something descends through the sky.

Pat Sharp said...

I just watched this video.........it states that on Dec. the Solstic/Equinox signs will shift to the fixed signs rather than the mutables...............How does this affect the yods which span this time frame IYHO?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlfYHAV1i8w&feature=player_embedded#at=125

Willow said...

You're referring to the precession of the equinoxes from Pisces (mutable) to Aquarius (fixed).

http://willowsweb.blogspot.ca/search/label/precession%20of%20the%20equinoxes

There's no way to say that the equinox shift happens this December, though. That's the Mayan calendar stuff.

I'm a Western tropical astrologer, so it does not affect the yods other than that we are in the midst (I believe) of this astrological era shift.

The energies and themes of that shift are always woven into the astrology here.