This is the last night of Saturn in Scorpio for this Saturn cycle. Each cycle lasts around 29 years, and Saturn is in each sign for over two years.

Saturn is the stern teacher archetype, associated with hard lessons, structure, challenges, age and death, among other things. Scorpio is the deep dark zodiac sign of power, fear, transformation, penetrating depth, life and death… the two together bring us face to face with our fears, our power-struggles and our own mortality.

I felt Saturn enter scorpio a few years ago. I was largely oblivious to astrological occurrences at that point. I only knew the basics, but I knew my Saturn return was coming up in Scorpio, so I had a vague idea that Saturn would be going there within the year. I was visiting a community as part of my PhD research and I found myself reading a random book, confronted with fears of intimacy and vulnerability. The thought occurred to me: Saturn must be getting into scorpio. A few days later, upon returning home, I looked it up and sure enough, it had gotten there just at the time of my revelations.

I was expecting Saturn in Scorpio to be hard, but nothing would prepare me for how hard it was. Every major I’ve feared was stirred up in a massive way, in uncanny synchronicity with exact transits. Some of the details are too personal to share, but let’s just say it has been agonising. It has also been astoundingly rewarding. I have confronted patterns and aspects of myself that I had never been able to face or even recognise before in this long journey through the dark.

If you look at where saturn has been (where Scorpio is in your natal chart), over the past few years you may notice that this area has been under rampant transformation and restructuring. Saturday has been going through my 5th house, home of creativity, pleasure friendship, parenting and play. The 5th is often light hearted and gin but with natal Saturn there it lends a seriousness to my character. Incidentally, all of my Scorpio nice fear-facing challenges have occurred through these types of things. IT HAS NOT BEEN FUN. Saturn also squared my Leo Sun and is still in fairly close conjunction with my Mars at the end of Scorpio, giving me plenty of chances to release my power issues, inhibitions and helping me learn to stand in my own power.

Compared with the last few years, Saturn in Sagittarius (philosophy, nature, expansion) sounds a lot more fun… but we’ll see about that!