As we bumbled out of Africa, we brought language with us. A funny thing happened along the way: languages started using fewer sounds. The complexity of inner lives didn’t become any simpler, and the challenges we faced didn’t get any easier. But we dropped some phonemes and made some alterations, and by the time we arrived in India our vowel sounds became longer and more regular. We made it to Europe and four different R sounds became two, then one. Finally, when people had migrated to the islands of the Pacific, their speech was made of a mere handful of consonants and vowels.
When I was in Grade One I had a friend who was a recent immigrant from Africa. Because of this, I can produce not one but all three of the click sounds that exist in the Xhosa language. I haven’t learned a single word in that language and I probably never will, but I can make the appropriate sounds. I may never have an actual use for this particular skill, but I have it nonetheless. As we get older languages become harder to learn and to become fluent in, but it can still be done. Old dogs can still learn new tricks… it just takes them longer.
I’ve recently learned a word that (although only made of three consonants, one vowel, and a glottal stop) has profound implications — and is (to me at least) damned hard to enunciate properly.
In its simplest form, the word means “correction,” but has layers of meaning far beyond that. It also involves forgiveness and reconciliation and liberation from karma. I don’t think I’ve fully grasped all its implications yet. But I know this much: it is the one single word in all of human language that we need to carry forward with us as Saturn leaves Sagittarius.
What are we supposed to take away from the last two and a half years of Saturn in Sagittarius? The lessons I’ve learned are mine, and the lessons you’ve learned are yours. They are likely very different, yet are also probably similar on some level. Either way, there is a word for what you and I should do next.
The last word from Saturn in Sagittarius is hoʻoponopono. Learn it and understand it.
Forgive. Forgive yourself and forgive others. Forgive the world. Make your corrections and be healed, and do it all with as much love as you can summon. If I can learn that, then so can you. And once the lesson has been learned, it becomes time for practical application.
Welcome, Saturn in Capricorn. We are ready to begin the work.
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