Saturn tends to create challenges and shows us where we have to wake up to some cold, hard realities.  As it has traveled through Virgo over the past two and a half years, it’s been bringing up some difficult truths about the healthcare system and in fact our very health itself.  Virgo is associated with health, but also with the mundane details of taking care of life in a body.  Under Saturn in Virgo it was discovered that hormone replacement therapy was actually bad for women.  The cold hard reality of the burgeoning cost and diminishing effectiveness of the healthcare systems around the world has become evident.

Virgo is also associated with perfectionism, work and service, and Saturn’s restriction in Virgo has seen millions of people lose their jobs and have to recreate a new life from scratch.

When a planet is at the 29th degree of a sign it is completing its business there, and as Saturn completes its passage through Virgo there have been a plethora of recalls of all types, as the perfection that Saturn seeks in Virgo reveals the poor quality of many of our products.  These are just a few of the recent recalls in the news:

• Kellogg recalled 28 million boxes of various brands of cereal after a smell in the packaging revealed the presence of a petroleum-based chemical.  This chemical, methylnaphthalene, is approved by the FDA but it is linked to serious  lung damage in some studies.
• McNeil Consumer Healthcare (a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary) has been linked to recalls of several of their products over the past year or so because of a musty, moldy smell in the packaging.  McNeil is now under investigation by several government agencies.
• A children’s jewelry manufacturer, Tween Brands, recalled its jewelry which contained toxic amounts of cadmium.  
• Romaine lettuce in Hawaii and baby spinach in several states were recalled for potential E Coli problems.
• A cat food manufacturer (Feline’s Pride) has recalled several of its product lines which were contaminated by salmonella.
• Four states have recalled Diamond dried apricots due to undeclared sulfites that were discovered during random testing.

Then there is Toyota, whose recall of Toyota and Lexus models began under Saturn in Virgo and has continued to expand over the past year to include over 270,000 cars world-wide.

Saturn enters Libra on July 21st, leaving Virgo behind for good.  Hopefully these Virgoan details can be taken care of before then!