STARFIRE

March 2007

March 2007 - Saturn Opposes Neptune
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THAT OLD REALITY CHECK

What do Ernie Pyle, Duke Ellington, Norma Shearer, Fred Astaire and Helen Hayes have in common? Celebrity, talent, focused creative work and Saturn opposing Neptune in their birth charts.

An opposition is always a balancing act, and balancing giants like Saturn and Neptune is the work of shamans.

It’s not a common aspect. Out of 19,736 charts in my database, the Saturn-Neptune opposition only appears in 96 charts.

I didn’t expect Saturn-Neptune to be a frequent aspect. It only occurs every 36 years, more or less: 1900, 1936, 1971-72, 2006-07. When I searched for comparison numbers, I learned that oppositions in general are rare aspects. Even though we have a full Moon every month, only 103 charts show the Sun-Moon aspect if I keep the orb as narrow as one degree variance from an exact aspect.

No wonder we have so many superstitions about Full Moons. We humans just don’t have the experience with Full Moons and opposing aspects that we have with conjunctions and sextiles. Or perhaps some other factor of introspection and balance just makes it less likely that the charts of people with astrological oppositions will end up in astrological databases. It is the self-balancing aspect.

My data includes earthquakes, Dow-Jones Industrial Average peaks and bottoms, corporate and government charts along with celebrities and ordinary citizens. Still, it’s curious. There are 117 Sun-Saturn conjunctions and only 103 oppositions. I have 116 charts with Saturn-Neptune conjunctions and only the 96 with oppositions.

What strikes me, though, is the talent displayed by that most difficult of aspects, the Saturn-Neptune opposition or forced balancing act. If spirituality is the inside of the cup of life or the inner workings of mythology, then creativity is the outer. Joseph Campbell remarked that mythology and creativity differed only in the fact that creative work has a physical product.

Without Saturn’s opposition, Duke Ellington might still have heard music in his head. Helen Hayes and Norma Shearer might have been drawn to dramatic stories and heard great characters in their minds. Ernie Pyle might have listened to and understood the stories of heroes on the radio. Without Saturn, all that talent might have stayed hidden in their own minds.

Without Neptune, all that hard work might have gone to waste. Imagine Helen Hayes and Norma Shearer going from one casting call to another without finding a camera to love them. Imagine Ellington playing scales without hearing the music in his own head.

It’s interesting that, although my charts include a small collection of studies about alcoholism, only one of the alcoholics from that study made the list. And none of the famous people on my list were noted for periods of paralyzing depression (or not to my knowledge anyway).

The Saturn-Neptune opposition list does include Taylor Caldwell, a disciplined and dedicated novelist who also explored past-life regressions. There’s a story, perhaps apocryphal, about Caldwell’s research for her best-known novel, Luke the Physician. Caldwell, a devout Catholic, was denied access to the Vatican Library archives because she was a woman. Later, so the story goes, a church official said she had included material known only to the Church archivist. Caldwell apparently accessed it in her sleep.

Saturn-Neptune oppositions by transit to our natal charts occur about every 29 years. Typically, clients call complaining about fatigue. It takes about two weeks after the aspect forms and separates for them to regain their usual vitality.

So how does this work?

Saturn is the reality principle, and here it represents the facts of the external world. Neptune is the dream world, ruling everything from meditation to natural gas to ballet that is on the verge of form, but not consistently formed. Dance and music, for example, move too rapidly to be a constant form like architecture.

When Saturn and Neptune come together, we make choices. Will I follow my inner vision or let the world’s demands distract me? Or will I choose to stretch myself to deal with the outer world in order to live my dream?

Ernie Pyle, living on the front lines of World War II in order to send home stories of human life in the trenches, clearly chose to cope with reality rather than give up his dream.

Duke Ellington was famous for his piano, but considered himself to be foremost a composer and arranger. Saturn is structure, in music and architecture as much as in any other setting.

Saturn and Neptune aspects in individual lives show a different scale than the grand oppositions in the sky. Here we see the formative issues of our era played out. It’s too easy to say Saturn represents military equipment (although it does) and that Neptune represents natural gas (although it does). Financially, it’s an easy prediction to say that gas prices are probably as low as they’re going to go for awhile, and it’s also an easy prediction that the final meeting of Saturn and Neptune for this era on June 25, 2007, will help define the future of gas prices and the stock market.

When Saturn and Neptune formed their precise opposition on February 28, 2007, the stock market took a dive. That’s not unusual; Saturn-Neptune aspects often include either highs or lows for the market. It’s the balance between dreams and reality; and the prices adjust to tune the balance.

Slow transits like the Saturn-Neptune oppositions usually occur in three parts. On the first pass, the problems seem to be defined. By the second, which we’re experiencing now, the criteria for solutions become visible. The third pass, which will be exact on June 25, 2007, usually brings the actual solutions.

What we’re looking for is vision and the determination to do something substantial to make that vision a reality.

In the chart set for Washington, D.C., the emphasis is (finally) on ethics. Jupiter conjunct the midheaven promises expansion and brings elements of mercy and compassion to the ongoing debates about war. Saturn’s parallel of declination (another form of astrological conjunction) to Pluto reminds us that both oil and gas are involved in these decisions and also suggests that nuclear power will be part of any answer.

Mars (anger) also opposes the Moon (public will, desire for emotional comfort) in this chart. Venus is the planet that releases the energy of the Mars-Moon opposition, suggesting that human values and corporate profits will both play visible roles in the outcome of debates on both global warming and war.

Al Gore’s Oscar for his movie on global warming, coming so close to the precise opposition, confirms that global warming issues are likely to be taken seriously and play a strong role in future energy and economics decisions. (If he had not won the Oscar, I would have been musing about whether this issue was going to be ignored until the Saturn-Neptune square in 2015-16.)

On a personal level, it’s time to structure our lives so we’re living by our own highest principles and values. As a creativity coach, I’m urging my clients to use these months to “put feet under” their creative dreams. For one person, that means the daily structure of opening to write with morning pages; for another, meeting ongoing work from within a visualized bubble of protective energy that shields her and the work from the small blizzards of distracting thoughts. One artist may negotiate with a gallery. A writer may work on career plans with a publisher. Another will focus on career planning or learning to pitch and market her work.

For all of us, it is about dreams and the world, about discovering how closely we can follow our vision and still live effectively and productively in the modern world.

Mary O’Gara, Ph.D.