Saturn transits, especially the Saturn return, forces us to focus. You get real clear on what matters, and often against your will. And it’s generally not what you thought or wanted to matter
The dread of the Saturn return is that this world has not prepared you to confront your mortality, the limits of your personal power, and the limits of your body. You have been deprived of a right relationship with those things.
The optimism of youth is necessary to survive. And post 1st Saturn return sobriety is necessary to thrive. (The 2nd Saturn return can bring a revival of seemingly endless possibility after have done all that one “should” have done by 60.)
Part of the reason you hear so many stories of people finding a sense of purpose, meaningful work, and even community past 40 and 50 is because life has eliminated so many possibilities. It quenches the confusion by decreasing your options.
The illusion of choice seduces us into living, grasping for a future when. And the destruction of those illusions illuminates real possibility. Knowing what you really have to work with empowers you to get to work!
My Saturn return gifted me revelation about the sidereal zodiac. And when I tell you that this work was not in my realm of possibility, not even when I started, and definitely at no point before I started.
Life eliminated so much, literally just by me living it. This is what I was left to work with.
And this is truly what Saturn is about. It's soothing to have fewer options. Eliminates the fear of choosing wrong. This is why we gravitate towards and create binaries.
One thing that drives us from our core, but is denied fiercely, is the desire to do a good job. To perform well. To be validated and rewarded for it. To reach the milestone and be congratulated. To have evidence that we are progressing as we should. Evidenced by social acceptance
Saturn is the container this happens in. I define Saturn as the socially determined material consequences for existing. Of course, the ultimate consequence for existing is death. But there is so much in between birth and death. Saturn is there too.
I'm thinking of the World card in the tarot as one of many representations of Saturn amongst the 78 cards.
The World asks "did I make it? Did I reach the finish line? Did I rightly discern the limits of my body and the possibilities of time?"
I think this is also what’s behind the idea of procrastination. The limits of time engender an urgency to act.
Saturn has retrograded back into sidereal Capricorn. Earlier this year I offered a Saturn Return Workshop for those with Saturn in Sidereal Aquarius. You can find the contents of that presentation here. I’ll be presenting a workshop for those with Saturn in sidereal Capricorn on September 24, 2022. You can register for that here: Saturn Return in Sidereal Capricorn Workshop.
You can read what I wrote about Saturn’s transit through sidereal Capricorn back when it first began in January 2020: orcle.me/satcap20
In August I will facilitate a Saturn return workshop for those with Saturn in sidereal Capricorn.
These are the dates for the Saturn return in sidereal Capricorn generations:
1st
March 20, 1990 – June 20, 1990
December 14, 1990 – March 5, 1993
October 15, 1993- November 9, 1993
2nd February 1, 1961 – September 1961 October 7, 1961 – January 27, 1964
Dominance and prominence are designations given to planets. These designations help determine which planets have the most influence in your sidereal birth chart. Planets in your sidereal birth chart represent the people in your life and your experiences in relationships with them. Dominant and prominentplanets are the people and relationships that have the most influence in your life.
Dominant planets are calculated by examining the concentration of signs in your sidereal birth chart. Dominant planets say who the people are that have had control of your circumstances and have had responsibility for you. They tell you what the dominant experiences have been in your relationships.
Prominent planets are calculated by examining the position of planets in your sidereal birth chart (proximity to the Ascendant, Midheaven, or Descendant.) Prominent planets say who has had power in your life and over your environment. Prominent planets often explain why you might resonate with the interpretation of certain sidereal zodiac sign(s) even though you do not have any planets occupying those signs. It is because the ruler of said sign(s) are place prominently in your sidereal birth chart.
There are so many ways to understand the dominant and prominent planets in your sidereal birth chart. In sidereal planet, this planet/these planets is your rightful chart ruler. The ruler of your ascendant (rising sign) is not always your chart ruler. It’s not for most people.
Jupiter in sidereal Sagittarius being most the prominent AND dominant planet in my birth chart means that I always have Jupiter figures entering my life, like godfathers. Protecting me, encouraging me, sometimes giving me money, counsel, or connecting me with other people.
They are usually men who are older than me, like an uncle or big brother. Even in my family, there has always been way more men than women who were regularly present and close.
The most dominant planet in your sidereal birth chart is the planet that has the most influence based on the signs occupied in your birth chart. The most prominent planet in your chart is the planet that has the most influence based on the position it occupies.
Sometimes the most dominant planet is also the most prominent planet. Sometimes it’s not. Some people don’t have a most dominant or prominent planet. Sometimes you have more than one in each category.
Prominence As The Missing Piece
The most prominent planet your sidereal birth can be the most telling (if you have one) because it usually explains why you identify with certain signs that are not occupied in your birth chart.
For example, you might not have any placements in sidereal Scorpio or Aries, but Mars is the most prominently placed planet in your birth chart. Mars might be in the same sign as your Ascendant. Maybe it’s the only planet conjunct your Moon.
I happen to have the same planet as my most dominant (by signs) and most prominent (by position/place.) You may have the same planet as your most prominent & dominant if the ruler of your ascendant is in the same sign as your ascendant (sidereal Libra rising + Venus in sidereal Libra.)
If you have a planet in the same sign as the Midheaven, then that planet may be the most dominant and prominent.
Remember, planets are people and our relationships with people. Sidereal zodiac signs articulate our personal hierarchy of relationship (survival) priorities. So, if Mars is your most dominant planet, that means Mars is at the top of your hierarchy.
That means that Mars, experiences of alienation (differences can’t be concealed) and abandonment, are significant themes in your relationships. These are the experiences you’ve had to survive. These experiences have defined your relationship priorities which are also your survival priorities.
This would also be true if Mars is your most prominent planet.
This download includes 48 minutes of audio and 4 worksheets guiding you through calculating the dominant & prominent planets in your sidereal birth chart. Audio recording includes an extensive question and answer session.
From this week’s email newsletter. You can join my email list to receive stuff like this in your email inbox. Also be notified of opportunities to receive readings and other offerings with me.
The result of… Separating by sifting. Dividing. Distinguish. Perceive. The results of separating the essence of something from the superfluous.
Discernment is a kind of distillation that requires us to perceive with nuance what we can take literally at face value, and what we must deduce from what we perceive to be implied.
The art of discernment, then, is knowing which faculty you should trust to tell you the truth about what you are witnessing or experiencing. And not only that, but also in what proportion you should trust that faculty in relation to other faculties you possesses, and when is the appropriate time to trust this faculty.
Last year (link to September 2021 thread on Twitter,) I began ringing the bell, sharing how important it would be to cultivate discernment in 2022. And now we have arrived to this moment of necessity and urgency.
The sidereal mutable signs offer us language to conceptualize our faculties of knowing and perceiving. They provide answers to the question “how do you know what you know?”
Gemini as a mutable air sign is knowing via concepts, language, reading, listening, and speaking.
Virgo as a mutable earth sign is knowing via the sense experience of the tangible, quantifying the material qualities of what one witnesses or experiences.
Sagittarius as a mutable fire sign is knowing via one’s will, what one perceives to be under one’s influence, in the realm of one’s abilities. Meaning we assign based on what it says about us.
Pisces as a mutable water sign is knowing via one’s body and bodily functions, that which connects us with others on a physical level.
When we rely solely on one of these faculties of knowing, it’s to the exclusion of all other faculties. Taking what we hear and read as the most accurate indication of what is true, to the exclusion of what something appears to be. Observing the tangible measurable qualities of something, ignoring the role of intention. Imposing our beliefs as the context for how we define something, prejudging against a predetermined doctrine, even when it contradicts what our bodies perceive.
It is perfect normal for you to be most comfortable in discerning truth via one of these faculties more than another. However, now, sidereal Pisces is in focus. Our bodies, our bodily functions, and the ways our bodies connect to each other, take centerstage as our primary faculty of knowing, one we must hone and refine.
This time can navigated by reflecting on and answering these question. We will revisit these questions over and over again over the next year.
Do you trust your body to tell you the truth about what you are witnessing or experiencing? Why or why not and under what circumstances or conditions?
What is your body telling you?
What do the functions of your body mean?
What do they communicate to you about yourself, others, and the world around you?
How do each of the following support or contradict what your body is saying? Your social conditioning; Your beliefs about power; your own and others, and the material conditions you can quantify via your senses.
I wrote about the present and ongoing activity in sidereal Pisces back in March. You can read all about it here.
This post was originally published as a thread on Twitter. You can find the original thread here. It has been edited to correct grammar errors and to be more coherent.
Men are rightfully angry at patriarchy and the violence of the gender binary. But instead of freeing themselves they blame women, and anyone who doesn’t perform whatever idea of maleness they both worship and resent.
Men hate the role that patriarchy has coerced them into. They are told that the only way they can be respected is by selling their labor for more than the next person. Yet, they have been systematically impoverished.
Men have been told that they must win the attention of women. And in order to do so, they must sell their labor for more than the next man. Should they actually get the attention of women, they can't like it too much.
It’s impossible to please men. It’s impossible. Nothing men do will ever be good enough. They will keep moving the goal post.
Men, what is your sense of self, your pride and dignity rooted in?
You have the key to your own prison.
You will be free the moment you give up the desire to please other men. See yourself through your own eyes. You must define manhood for yourself.
Men are suffering from deep self hatred and a lack of self respect. You look to other men for approval, they never ever give it to you. Nothing you do is good enough. Ever.
How are you gonna get yourself out of this?
I'm seeing tweet after tweet of men whose entire self is rooted in telling other people how to live their lives, what to do with their bodies, how they should look and speak.
Other men have convinced you that the only way for you to be a man is by telling other people who they should be. You have been convinced that the role of a man is to control the identity, body, and expressions of other people. Preferably with verbal and physical violence.
And you believed them because that same threat of violence and humiliation has been hanging over you since you were a little boy. You saw it happening to other boys, so you figured out how to be the perpetrator rather than the target of the violence…
… so you podcast and tweet and beat and assault, cause you're a real man!
You make sure all the other men can hear and see you loud & clear. "I am a heterosexual man who enjoys sex with women's anatomy. And I'll prove it with violence against anyone that threatens that fact."
From childhood until now, your entire identity has been to prove to other men that you are not gay, poor, sexless, effeminate, or weak.
Rejection, humiliation, alienation, invisibility, & a myriad of threats of and actual violence have been very effective at getting you to comply.
Look at you now.
You’ve been so worried with avoiding violence from other men that you haven’t ever figured out if you actually like yourself.
Do you like yourself independent of the opinion of other men? Who would you be if you didn’t need other men to approve of you?
Men, what is the source of your suffering?
Is it gay people? Trans folks? Children? People who want abortions?
None of the above.
It's other men.
Men: Who threatens you with humiliation and physical violence? Who judges you harshly and places impossible expectations on you?
It's not trans people. It's not gay people. It's not children or people who want abortions.
It's other men.
Men: If a trans person existing moves you to violence, or to try to make them be another gender… It looks like you have no power or control over yourself. Cause why do you need to define someone else’s identity? What’s in it for you?
Men: If a woman existing in her own body as she sees fit makes you want to judge her, insult her, or be violent towards her… Sounds like you have no power or control over your own body and impulses.
Men: Can another person do with their own body as they please without you interfering or trying to control them?
Why not? What's it to you?
And if your answer is that men are innately the strongest, and that they they have a right to power over everyone else …
Just because you are imprisoned by the identity associated with your genitals doesn’t mean that everyone else is.
Many of us are getting free. You can, too.
Watch any of the documentaries on cults that are out right now. Every single one of them is led by a man who resents the expectations that patriarchy violently enforces on them.
Heaven's Gate: Led by a man who hated his gayness so much that he castrated himself. Watch the doc yourself.
NXIVM: Led by a man who out of his own mouth said that he resents the way that society forces boys to cut themselves off from their own feelings. His solution? Forcing everyone in his cult to cut themselves off from their feelings. Watch "The Vow" for yourself.
MANHOOD IS A CULT!
They created instruments to look inside the body of the person who conceived and gestated you in order to see your genitals before you were born. Based on your genitals they chose your name. When you finally exited the womb, they picked your clothes and the colors you were allowed to wear based on the genitals you have.
Before you could even focus your gaze they withheld attention and affection from you so that you would not be “spoiled” into “effeminacy”…
As you got older, they ignored your cries and told you to man up, even though you were only a 3 year old child. They rough housed with you and ignored you when you said stop so that you wouldn't grow up to be "weak."
You watched them coddle the the children assigned as girls. Ever boo-boo was kissed. Every tear was met with cuddles and hugs while you were told that boys don't cry.
By the time you went to school, you learned to perpetuate the same humiliation, emotional neglect, and demands to "man up" that you had been subject to. You learned to point out the ways other boys didn't conform to maleness. You ridiculed them, making sure you didn't slip up.
Once you hit puberty, you had already learned that your ability to get attention from girls would give you favor with and power over other boys. And if you were not interested in girls, because you were attracted to boys or just weren’t interested at all in dating, you tried your best to not garner attention from other boys. The violence would hurt you.
During puberty, as your body changed, you became self conscious about your body. You knew other boys were looking at you. You knew that your chest size, height, genitals, and body hair were all symbols of how convincingly you conformed to the cult of manhood.
Even to this day you hate your body.
You need to have the body patriarchy says you should have or the money patriarchy says you should have. And if you have neither… you aren’t a real man.
One thing the God of the Bible was gonna do was change somebody’s name. Story after story is about the new identity that emerges from leaving behind one’s former self for a new self, one’s old name for a new name.
The God of the old testament gave new names to those God called to lead their people towards liberation, and to those given mantles to change the trajectory of their family lineage. Abram became Abraham while Sarai became Sarah. Jacob was called Israel.
This practice of changing names has been important for people, past and present, both as political statements of self-determination and as a reorganization of one’s sense of self. The latter is political, too.
Just as Jesus of Nazareth changed his disciple Simon’s name to Cephas (as a prophecy for how Cephas would soon carry forth Jesus’s work and legacy), Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s father changed both of their names from Michael to Martin Luther. He did this in honor of the legacy of Martin Luther, father of the Protestant Reformation. Malcolm Little was called Malcom X and then el-hajj Malik el-Shabazz in the tradition of the Nation of Islam, relinquishing the surname of their ancestors’ enslavers. He was renamed as an acknowledgment of a new identity from a new lineage, no longer seeing and knowing himself as the offspring of chattel.
There are also instances in the Old Testament of the Bible where colonizers changed the names of those they colonized. Pharaoh changed the name of Joseph, son of Israel (Jacob), to Zaphenath-Paneah. Daniel became Belteshazzar under the reign of imperialist ruler Nebuchadnezzar. Both Joseph and Daniel were given names as a way for their colonizers to appropriate and claim ownership of their gifts.
Though this particular kind of name change is not unique to the Bible, it illustrates the legacy of colonialism and imperialism. Empire makes objects of its subjects by supplanting the subjective gaze for that of empire. The colonized must see and know themselves as empire sees and knows them in order to survive empire. They must answer to the name that empire calls them.
What does it do to one’s identity, one’s sense of self, what one even defines as oneself, when one’s name is changed? Name changes are not in any way superficial or aesthetic. They form the shape and content of identity. They are symbols that allow us to conceptualize (see in our imaginations, our minds) ourselves. We come to know and see ourselves by the words and names we are called, for good or ill.
Whose Vision Determines What You See?
A question I pose often is, “whose vision determines what you see?” We assume that we see ourselves, each other, and this world through our own vision. If we are not seeing through our own eyes, whose eyes are we seeing through?
What we call the ‘self’ is an aggregate of internalized gazes. By gaze, I mean who and what other people perceive and/or demand us to be, and how they treat us and judge us. An internalized gaze, then, is the way we consciously and unconsciously see ourselves, each other, and the world through the judgements and perceptions of others. This often happens to the exclusion of our own gaze, until the time comes to see ourselves anew. That time is now.
The gazes of those who have, and have had, the power of life and death over us comprise the most of this self that we identify with and project outward. That which makes up the self that you identify with and as “me” comes from other people in direct proportion to the amount of power they have over you.
Enslavers’ power of life and death over the African’s they kidnapped and tortured.
Parents’ and other adults’ power of life and death over children who have no power of their own.
Whiteness’s power of life and death over all who must survive its obsession with dominance over all.
Capitalism’s power of life and death over all who must be fed and housed under its perpetual theft and hoarding.
Patriarchy’s power of life and death over all who must survive its entitlement to authority, assumed and enforced with violence.
One’s parents and caregivers, government and all proxies for the state, the dominating culture and their cultural norms⎻these all have the power of life and death over us in varying degrees at different points in our lives. Whatever self one might identify with as “I” is most certainly the self that has managed to survive these forces of life and death.
Are All People Persons?
Who lives without fear of physical violence from their caregivers? Who is conditioned to expect violence as a consequence for existing?
Who is granted the dignity of safe housing and food security? Who suffers from chronic housing insecurity and hunger?
Who can move freely without fear of imprisonment or an untimely death? Who constantly faces the threat of imprisonment and death?
Who is granted the freedom to embody and express their feelings as their evolving authentic self? Whose is stripped of bodily autonomy, the right to feel and to control what they do with and what happens to their body?
The one who conforms, without error, to the gaze of the forces of life and death is granted the rights and privileges of personhood. They are granted freedom from a life without fear of violence, houselessness, food insecurity, or an untimely death. And when they err, they are punished and expected to repent and atone.
Under these definitions, who is seen as a person and at what cost? Are all humans granted personhood? Are all who are granted personhood humans?
Who has assumed the power to determine what a person is? This answer is simple. Those who harness and then weaponize the power of life and death over others determine what a person is. The definition of personhood precludes the self-determination of individuals and once sovereign peoples. The right is violently stolen.
Reclamation As Revolt
Name changes are a political act of self-determination. They expose and reject internalized gazes. They reclaim the power and the right to see oneself through one’s own eyes.
Name changes get to the root of imperialism and colonialism. The root is when and where the three-headed beast of patriarchy, capitalism, and whiteness claimed dominion over you by stripping you of your right to decide what name you will answer to.
Self-determination, as the gift of sidereal Aquarius, is the process of, right to, and survival based need to:
Recognize and name the gazes you have internalized;
Realize that those gazes are not your authentic self;
Reclaim the right to see yourself through your own eyes and imagination;
Reimagine, redefine, and rename oneself.
Self-determination is the difference between identifying with who and what has power over us, and identifying with a real imagined self that exists independent of who and what has power over us.
So, whose vision determines what you see?
Saturn Return in Sidereal Aquarius
Birthdates for those having their Saturn Return in sidereal Aquarius
You are having your first Saturn return if you were born:
March 2, 1993 – June 2, 1995
August 9, 1995 – February 16, 1996
You were born after a decades long fight against apartheid in South Africa “ended” with the election of Nelson Mandela. During the 1980s crack cocaine ravaged Black communities in the United States. It culminated in the 1994 Crime Bill which has irreversibly harmed generations of Black people. That same year HIV/AIDS became the number one cause of death for Americans aged 25-44. Also in 1994 was the Rwandan Genocide and the start of the First Chechen War.
Underlying all of these events is the same thing: the colonial exploits of whiteness, patriarchy, and capitalism and the movements of self-determination that rose up in reaction.
Your Saturn return begins the very first time Saturn enters sidereal Aquarius which is April 28, 2022. Your Saturn return does not end until the very last time that Saturn leaves sidereal Aquarius which is March 29, 2025.
You are having your second Saturn return if you were born:
January 27, 1964 – December 19, 1966
You were born at the height of the 1960s Civil Rights struggle in America which culminated in a polarized combination of wins and losses: the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the assassination of Malcolm X, the formation of the Black Panther Party, The Vietnam War and the anti-war movement, The Cold War, desegregation.
Underlying all of these events is the same thing: the colonial exploits of whiteness, patriarchy, and capitalism and the movements of self-determination that rose up in reaction.
Your Saturn return begins the very first time Saturn enters sidereal Aquarius which is April 28, 2022. Your Saturn return does not end until the very last time that Saturn leaves sidereal Aquarius which is March 29, 2025.
Preparing For Your Saturn Return
Download and work through the content of my 2 workshop Saturn Return in Sidereal Aquarius – 2022-25. This download includes 2-hours of audio, 13 slides, and 6 worksheets. I cover the following topics:
What is Saturn?
What is the Saturn Return?
What does Saturn in sidereal Aquarius mean in my birth chart?
![Wooden plank with various woodworking tools a the bottom. Text reads: Saturn Return in Sidereal Capricorn Workshop with Dayna Lynn Nuckolls. [Features image of Dayna in a rounded square. ]Saturday, September 24, 2022, 3:30pm-5:00pm Central. $25. Zoom.](https://i0.wp.com/thepeoplesoracle.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/saturn-return-capricorn-workshop-peoples-oracle.png?resize=512%2C512&ssl=1)
