If you’re like me, the things we hear and read contain delightful reflections on how the planets can express in our everyday lives. Here’s an example of something I recently heard that reminded me of Saturn.
- Source: Ted Radio Hour — A Love Letter to the Ocean
Catherine’s is the first story. The entire episode is highly recommended!
Traditional astrology refers to Saturn as “the greater malefic”. And yes, major Saturn transits often usher in a season of melancholy, loss, time pressures and reality checks. Yet, in the end, Saturn asks us to take responsibility for the changes we wish to see in our lives. The trials of Saturn contribute to the growth of wisdom in many of us.
Catherine’s Story
The following story reminds me of how Saturn can work in our lives. It’s told by adventure seeker Catherine Mohr about one of her scuba dives. She was exploring in the Galapagos Islands when she was stabbed underwater by a sea urchin. I highly recommend listening to her story as she takes us through the stabbing, navigating sharks to resurface and then breaking her pelvis a day before she was scheduled to remove a piece of painful sea urchin spine from a joint in her hand.
Mohr and her broken pelvis convalesced for six weeks. Constrained to her couch, friends kept her company, especially one introverted friend who would become her current day husband of 23 years!
When she finally became weight bearing again, she discovered she no longer needed surgery to remove the sea urchin spine from her hand. “Turns out,” Mohr exclaims, “when you break a bone, your body scavenges calcium from all the bones in your body and from the little sea urchin spine that you happen to have lodged in the joint of your finger. So yes, my pelvis is now part sea urchin.”
Saturn Transits
In the same way, the suffering we often experience during Saturn transits can be metabolized later as the source of healing wisdom. It’s as if these Saturnian initiations provide pockets of relevant experience that we can draw from later on in life when we feel broken. When we enter stillness, we travel at Saturn’s speed: slow and steady—and in this way, we alchemize Saturnian experiences into the experiential wisdom that evolves us.
Eventually, we become part sea urchin… those painful seasons embed in us. We can call on them when we need to remember what we’re capable of. In the process, we open up to becoming our own authority as we take responsibility for the healing in our lives.
Top image by Catherine Mohr’s daughter. Middle: Mohr at her 2018 Ted Talk.