Let’s talk about endings

I want to explore death, pain and loneliness.  So if you are into positivity and fluffy unicorns these days, you might want to go here instead.

Saturn in  retrograde motion is about to go back into the sign of Scorpio until September. I hadn’t put much thinking into it, until a conversation with Ichrak Dahou sparked my interest and  got me thinking about all things below ”my belt”. Underneath, hidden, darkness, stillness, power, paranoia are powerful words associated with Scorpio.  The sign that we most often connect with decay and the deep transformation that happens when something has reached the point of no return.

What happens when you add Saturn to the mix? Astrologers have spoken extensively on the subject since Saturn just spent the last two and a half years in Scorpio.  Austin Coppock does a great job at covering the territory in his 2013 Astrological Almanac and he elegantly navigates from sex  to politics in the most eloquent manner.

I found a painting by Swiss Symbolist artist Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901) that strongly conveys what arises in me when I think of Saturn in Scorpio:

Isle of the Dead (German: Die Toteninsel) ”Isle of the Dead depict a desolate and rocky islet seen across an expanse of dark water. A small rowboat is just arriving at a water gate and seawall on shore. An oarsman maneuvers the boat from the stern. In the bow, facing the gate, is a standing figure clad entirely in white. Just behind the figure is a white, festooned object commonly interpreted as a coffin. The tiny islet is dominated by a dense grove of tall, dark cypress trees—associated by long-standing tradition with cemeteries and mourning—which is closely hemmed in by precipitous cliffs.

There is a desolation that comes with the scorpionic understanding that all things have an end. There is a fatality with Scorpio: ”Life’s a bitch and than you die”. With experience and age  which is part of  Saturn’s realm, we come to grasp with the multitudes of life’s endings that shape our inner landscape.

Have you ever met someone that has so much pain in their eyes, you can see their soul is burning? Not accepting the natural process of decay creates more suffering.  Holding on to the pain somehow can feel safer but it will eventually eat you from the inside out. Using the hurt as the great teacher that it can be is not only how you will polish the diamond but it is also what will make it precious.

I have a feeling that Saturn short stint  back into Scorpio for the rest of the summer  will have us finally closing some files that we probably should have burned some time ago. But for some reason we decided to hold onto to them. Either because we love to indulge in the familiar or we were just not ready to embrace the change that comes with a new skin.    What kind of ”business” and especially ”personal business” do you still have floating around  from the last two and a half years which need finalising?  Scorpio is a fixed sign, so the process of letting go can be a difficult and complicated one and Saturn’s revisiting last summer’s territory goes to show that there might be more dislodging that needs to happen in order for the light to enter and new life to be born.

In Saturn’s book, after the struggle and endurance test comes refinement and maturity. If you do your homework.

There is something tragic about endings that doesn’t sit well with our need to remain  comfortably  entrenched in the familiar grooves, but it is a necessary passage in order to bring change and growth. Fear can cripple. Insecurities can become a way we respond to situations, especially in the realm of personal relationship. Saturn returning into Scorpio is the opportunity  to take the teachings associated with our suffering and self-protective responses when we feel threatened and use that pain to grow up.

“The true light never hides the darkness but is born out of the very center of it, transforming and redeeming. So to the darkness we must return, each of us individually accepting his ignorance and loneliness, his sin and weakness, and, most difficult of all, consenting to wait in the dark and even to love the waiting… ” -Helen M. Luke