if you hang around people who talk about astrology, sooner or later you’ll hear about the dreaded saturn return. it refers to the span of time when saturn returns to the place it was in your natal chart, and it is supposed to symbolize entering the next stage of your life. the first saturn return happens around ages 28 or 29 (you can find out when yours is or was or will be here).
(why is it dreaded? you may ask. saturn deals with boundaries and restrictions and limitations and authority, so it’s not exactly a lot of people’s favorite planet. i’m pretty fond of it myself, perhaps from watching too much sailor moon at a young age and loving sailor saturn.)
mine was four years ago, from march to november 2015. it was, indeed, a trying time - one of transformation. a relationship ended when a partner walked out on me mid-sentence; i turned 29; i got a sword tattooed on myself.
i became, or turned myself into, the queen of swords. (the court of the tarot, after all, can provide a similar progression to the return of saturn.) it was a protection, as i wrote about last year when the queen of plumes came up. sometimes it feels like my whole life has been learning how to protect myself; sometimes it can be hard to remember that not all my defenses are necessarily needed in a situation.
it can be hard, in other words, to be vulnerable.
this week, darlings, let’s practice recognizing when we need to lay our swords down without giving them up entirely. let’s see if we can be vulnerable while still protecting ourselves.
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this week’s deck: dreaming way tarot
this week’s crystals: selenite, amethyst