Stella the Good Enough Witch
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May my sporadic wordsmithing be salve of spell-ings for all who arrive


here.

​

Loving Your Saturn Return

5/22/2017

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Saturn's cycles signal the need for maturation, discernment, respect and responsibility. She reminds us of the power of NO, setting boundaries, defining and developing trust for our inner knowing so that we don't live lives authored by some external authority. He tells us that we really must do what we know we must do. They are there to strengthen us as the struggle to emerge from the chrysalis makes us strong enough to fly.

Every 29.5 years or so, Saturn returns to the place it was at the moment of our blessed birth. Around the ages of 29, 58 and 87, we are ushered into a deepened understanding and acceptance of reality. It often isn't comfortable. Particularly for us the first time around, astrological adulthood can provide some unwelcome, but ultimately beneficial wake-the-fuck-up calls. Some discomfort is there to help us grow. Some discomfort gives us information about what to avoid, what habit patterns aren't serving us and gives us the strength and willingness to change. Pain reminds us that we are alive and mortal, that our time is finite. 

The stone associated with Saturn is the diamond. Like this precious rock, we all start off as coal. After many years of tremendous pressure, we harden, crystallize and arrive at our Saturn return sharper and more powerful than ever before. We often wrap up projects that began thirty years before and embark on endeavors that will take that many years to complete. When we make commitments, Saturn is there. We can and should question the manipulated value of diamonds as a symbol of commitment and the exploitation of people and the earth that is associated. I prefer the more reasonably priced diamonds that come on stone sculpting tools and record players and ones sourced with the most stringent ethical considerations in mind. 

Saturn returns are times to do what we should, to work hard, not under the duress that is capitalism, but for our big life works that reflect purpose and meaning. We choose to commit to divorce or to marry, to sculpt stone, to write that book, to take that professional challenge on, to lift those weights literal and metaphoric. We begin to accept that what we now think of as career is a winding, non-linear path that is about purposefulness and service. Being of use in ways that align with our values are good ways to honor and celebrate any point in a Saturn cycle (we feel can feel the influence of Saturn transits prepare us for the returning throughout our lives). Sacrifice means to make sacred. How can you consecrate your one and only current life? 

Here are a few ways to make your time & energy sacred:

-Know (REALLY know) that you are the ultimate authority on your life. Breathe that in and refuse to live your life any other way.
-Validate yourself. External validation will only keep you doing what other people want you to be doing. 
-Wear black (color sacred to Saturn) especially on Saturn's day (Saturday).
-Eat black sesame seeds & make an offering of them as well. 
-Strength training & climbing to honor your inner sea goat (Capricorn is sign associated with Saturn)
-Embrace aloneness & solitude. Place the Hermit card on your altar and meditate on its messages.
-Do what you've always wanted to do, but breaks a patriarch's taboo. Live your life for yourself, not your father (or the most domineering of your primary care givers).
-Discipline yourself. Restraint can be liberating.
-Donate clothes. Get rid of stuff not so much because it doesn't spark joy, but because it's not useful to who you are now and to who you are striving to become. 
-Plan & Strategize. Use time wisely and intentionally. Calendars can be compelling tools.
-Thank your teachers & mentors and/or become one.
-Take care of your health, especially your teeth (the only visible part of your skeletal system which as that which gives structure & rigidity to the body is certainly in Saturn's domain)
-Do your propers.
-Honor your ancestors.
-Commit yourself (can be to a thirty year project or idea that's wanting to be made tangible as much as to a person). If you're wanting to be married and not yet, marry yourself. 
-Get reality checks, but if they don't resonate with your inner knowing let 'em go.
-Hoop. Nothing like literally having a boundary around your body to practice having your very own swirling rings of protection.
-Push through the resistance that isn't serving you and allow that which is to act as a guidepost along your long path forward.
-Take breaks. Saturnal work is a marathon, not a sprint. 
-Sleep on it. If you're not sure, say "maybe" and take some time to mull it over. If you know it's a "no," practice saying it.
-Have boundaries of love replace your walls of fear.
-Get real cozy with the fact that you are aging and embrace the sweet, terrible fact that you will die. Intimacy with this reality helps us live.

On the precipice of my Saturn return in Libra, I narrowed my worldly possessions down to four bags and crossed the country to see if the long distant (originally a typo, but more accurate than "distance" so leaving it as is) relationship I was in had legs (it didn't). Determined to live alone, I found a tiny hermitage in the city I'd just tried to leave. It was supposed to be a two month sublet which I've lived in for going on eight years. I started to say no without apology (learning that I didn't even need an explanation took a few more years). This is when I finally began to give astrology readings professionally. I met my future spouse and started experimenting with monogamy after a decade of polyamory. I focused and committed. I finally got this website going. I worked hard to rebuild my life in a way that reflected what I most needed to thrive. I quit smoking. I started meditating daily. I figured out that because my mother had had me when she was 27 years old that, as her firstborn, I had been her Saturn return rite of passage. We started to understand each other much more, as adults, in a new way with much more clarity and respect. It was really potent time. I'm already looking forward to the next one.

As a student of astrology, it was as if I had been preparing for it my whole life (though I hear that a sense of having arrived or levelled up happens for folks turning thirty who don't know anything about astrology too). In my mid twenties, I found myself dreading the experience. I felt overwhelmed and scared. Fortunately, I spoke with a lot of brilliant astrological colleagues and teachers who assured and reassured me, guided me and encouraged me through the initiation. Turns out that I had nothing to be scared of. Yes, I went all in on love and from one vantage point, I lost it all, but from where I am now, I see clearly how much I really gained. Folks who are already on their path in some way are less likely to be knocked down by this experience. If you do get knocked down by it, don't kick and scream and resist (though that may be an important part of the process too). Always ask, what can I learn from this? How can I grow (hint: Saturnal growth requires a fair amount of weeding a la learning to let go)? 

May your experiences with Saturn be blessed with wise restraint and enduring acceptance.

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Love letter to Saturn in Scorpio

11/18/2014

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Dear Saturn in Scorpio, 

I've been meaning to write you this letter for so long, but if there's anything you've taught me, it's there is a time for everything and if that time hasn't come, it's not yet the right time. Here's to right timing. I realize you won't be here for much longer and it'll be 28 years before we see you again so I just wanted to thank you. You've taught me so much about time, like when I take plenty of time for myself, it seems like I suddenly have more time for everybody else.

When you first came around, I found myself having to deal with a lot of sh*t (a bird literally pooped on my baggage the day you showed up those couple years ago). You highlighted all the ways that my life was messy and unmanageable. You made it so that I couldn't ignore the pesky health issues that would've become full blown crises if not for you. You made sure I had all the help I needed to do the hard work of recovering too. You made it so I had to learn how to reign in my feelings and find responsible and more appropriate ways to express them. For my more restrained loved ones, you helped them to find the feelings they were bottling up so that they could learn to be with them better too. 

Most amazingly, I learned how to say NO with love. I learned that if something is worth doing, it probably can't really be rushed and that the stuff we rush probably just doesn't matter anyway (and if it's the other way around, it's a sign to slow down and reconnect with our actual priorities). Thanks for making it okay to recycle piles of papers that I'd been meaning to get to for years. Thanks for making it so obvious when I've overdone it, for giving me so much practice with coming back to center that it's more easeful than it ever has been and almost even graceful now. 

You taught us that while merging into our interconnectedness can be delicious, our skeletons are separate and it's okay to bend & flex away from difficult people so as not to break. I hope that I get to keep the lessons on how to separate well while still sharing air; how to detach without burning bridges in the process. Thanks for making sense of boundaries (hint: if you have to tell someone you need boundaries, you're probably not living your own boundaries very well). Thanks for showing me where I've been too rigid and where I need to tighten up. 

Thanks for making it easy to work harder on what matters, but impossible to work too hard. Thanks for showing me that uncertainty is often just a sign that it's not yet time to know or decide. In that, it's now such a gift to cozy up to not knowing and not yet. There can be liberation in de-liberation. You've also shown me that critique always comes from a place of loving respect even when it's hard to hear. Thanks for helping me to see the beauty that commitment can bring particularly when we don't ignore the ugly of it. Thanks especially for giving me the wisdom of grief and awareness of mortality that helps me to live and love better than I ever could've before. 

Yours mostly truly,

Stella*

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