Between hope and despair: a meditation on Saturn and Neptune in Aries
[Man] earns his bread by exertion and is like a broken shard…like a passing shadow and a vanishing cloud…like a dream that flies away.
The great weight of outer planets always trick me. I’m fine, I say. I know these feels. Maybe I’m just lucky because I was born under the last Saturn Neptune conjunction. And sometimes that’s true. Like the world is waking up to that feeling I’ve had for ages— that our reality is as fragile as tissue paper, as enduring as a fairy tale.
And then? Then there is the growing doubt, the great gaping questions just under my skin. Mars whispers what if we burned it down? Jupiter whispers what if this blockage is just a door to whatever is next? And I wonder: can you drown in fire?
Who will live and who will die?
Who by hunger and who by thirst?
Who by earthquake and who by plague?
I tell clients over and over that the Saturn Neptune story requires both a death and a rebirth. You can’t immediately have a new story, a new dream in days. It requires months, even years to bloom. More importantly? You have to allow something else to die.
What is dying? What is being born? Something is coming. Can’t you hear it? The stars scream but no one looks up.
Who shall have rest and who shall wander?
Who shall be at peace and who shall be pursued?
There is so much I want to bury.
The fear that I’ll never have what I want
Privatized healthcare
Feeling insecure about my body
Christian nationalism
The way work has become something to survive
The climate crisis
The worry that everything that keeps me afloat economically can collapse at any second
Wanting to be loved but afraid I’m not feminine enough to be loved
I need a graveyard for all of these bodies. My nails are broken and my hands ache from digging. Who will give me a shovel? Do I have a choice on what to bury?
There has to be another way to live. There has to be something better than this. But it’s caught in my throat. The ghost of my family whispers be reasonable. The things you want (universal healthcare?!?! Four day work week?!?! High speed rail?!?!) These things can’t happen overnight. Look at the polling. Look at the moderates. Move small. Move practically.
They dream chains on top of me: chains of naïveté, of impatience. I nod, smile, unable to bear the warped images of myself in their eyes.
I wish I could explain my dreams. I never dreamed in seconds. I dream of generations, old growth trees, slow and monumental, inch by inch, until they cover the sky. I dream of Golden Gate Park, built in decades. I dream of worlds I will never see but yearn to build anyways. I dream of futures just as my ancestors dreamed of my life. Still, flames lick inside my mouth. I burn. I’m tired of scalding myself.
Who shall perish by water and who by fire?
Who by sword and who by wild beast?
Who by strangulation and who by stoning?
Living in California, you live with fire. Fires that destroy entire neighborhoods. Fires that don’t just burn, they devour. They swallow decades in minutes. It’s not a ghost town it leaves behind. it leaves scars. It leaves rubble. It doesn’t just take, it changes a place and refuses to be forgotten.
But our ecosystem adapted to the fires. Redwood and other plants require post fire conditions for seeds to grow. It’s not supposed to be these mega fires, but fire is necessary. In California I discovered the phoenix. It was never a bird, but a tree.
[Saturns’s bound] knows quitting isn’t an option…[its inhabitants] are remembered for the worlds they built and actions they took
-Kira Ryberg, The Bounds Guidebook the bounds of Aries
Anyone that has seen my birth chart knows I am far more Saturnian than meets the eye. It’s not just that I was born with Saturn in Capricorn. My ascendant is in Saturn’s bound of Leo and the 12th part of Capricorn. My lot of Spirit and Eros are in Capricorn.
In other words? Hope has never been easy for me. I can imagine all the ways we fail. I can imagine 12 ways a project how things can fall apart. I pause when my therapist asks me for 3 ways it could work out. Despair can be a second skin, weaving anxiety around me. So I do something, everything to prevent tragedy. Because what is worse than dreaming? It’s being a failure. A failure who should have known better. Don’t be so naive, Kay kay.
Still, I look at that conjunction of Saturn’s structures and Neptune’s dreams. How these two giants finally met in Jupiter’s bound of Aries. An alignment of disillusionment inside Jupiter’s room of hope. How does that work? Do despair and hope intertwined in something new? Can it be something that lasts?
Who shall be exalted and who shall be brought low?
Who shall become rich and who shall be impoverished?
I don’t have the roadmap. I have a seed. It looks something like a four day work week. It’s a world where you can go to the doctor and not worry about the bill. It looks like hopping on a train in SF and getting to LA in 3 hours. It’s knowing my queer, immigrant, and Muslim friends can thrive.
It’s nights filled with art, astrology, bad movies, and weird YouTube clips. It’s an environment where humans and the ecosystem can thrive. It’s coming home to a partner who loves me, dances with me, and spoils our cats. It’s a vision for me, but also it’s a vision for you. A vision of a life far wider than this. A place where our grandchildren can thrive in ways we can only begin to imagine.
Was it ever about these details? This is death and rebirth. We forge a beginning, a seed in the fire. Not because it’s the smartest move, or the most researched. Not because we are even certain to see this tree of an idea blossom in our lifetimes.
We begin because it feels right. The kind of right that burns inside us begging to try. It’s the one who whispers keep us up at night. Nothing is possible if we do nothing. We begin because it’s a yes in a sea of no’s. Because this feeling? It’s big and generous, exciting and warm. It feels so good in a world that feels so wrong. It feels something like hope.
Feeling a little lost yourself? Consider getting a birth chart reading. We’ll talk about what makes you, you and how to help find your mojo again.
