Saturn Retrograde

February 7 – June 25, 2012: Saturn Retrograde

Retrograde periods are times for reflection and heightened inner awareness. Since Saturn symbolizes limits, aging, and karma, this period can yield understandings in the areas of your life reflected by the houses that Saturn is transiting in your natal chart as well as the planets with which it is connecting. Additionally, since Saturn is retrograding through the sign of Libra, we can expect it a time when we glimpse new insights into Libran arenas of life, including relationships, sociability, justice, diplomacy, work partnerships, and the arts. A strategy for gaining this awareness is to take this time to foster your inner authority, seeing what wisdom it yields related to these—and other—matters of life.

Saturn retrogrades last for about four and one-half months and occur about every year; the last one took place January 25 – June 12, 2011. This retrograde cycle begins on February 7 and lasts through June 25. During this time, Saturn travels from 30 degrees of Libra through 23 degrees of Libra. While everyone experiences the energies of Saturn retrograde, if you have planets or pivotal points (i.e., Ascendant/Descendant or Nadir/Midheaven) in this degree range in Libra or the other cardinal signs—Aries, Cancer, Capricorn—it may impact you more intensely.

Saturn retrograde periods can allow us insights into our idea(l)s of authority, what it is and what our relationship is to it. Some good questions to meditate upon during Saturn retrograde include:

• Is authority something we readily give over to other people or institutions?
• Do we maintain a healthy level of authority within, being confident that we have the resources to be able to make efficient choices for our long-term well-being?
• Do we have adequate systems in place to filter the counsel we may get from others to see how it fits within our own knowingness of what is best?
• Are we the authors of our lives (or at least integrally contributing co-authors, since not everything is under our control) or have we ceded the role of writing the novel of our live to others?

We can also efficiently use the energies of this planetary cycle to reflect upon what we have built and what we are building. Considering whether projects and relationships that we are putting our hard work and resources into are good investments can be a very worthwhile activity.

As Saturn is related to foundations and protection, it also represents our defense mechanisms. These are the psychological structures that we may have unconsciously put in place to help us deal with the fear of feeling vulnerable. As Saturn goes retrograde, we can look within to see if we can understand more about our defense mechanisms, seeing those that may be supportive and those that may inhibit our ability to more freely connect and express the fullness of who we are. (For more on Saturn’s link to our defenses, see Barriers and Boundaries by Liz Greene.)

While we can gain insights on our relationship to Saturnian principles if we focus and reflect inward during this retrograde period, it’s often more powerful to wait, if possible, to take major related action until after Saturn has gone direct (on June 25).