Beth Owls Daughter and I met for lunch yesterday and commiserated on our upcoming Saturn Returns – although we are a year about, our Saturns are close to the same degree and we both are in the shadow of the Saturn Return right now.  I hadn’t read her blog from Wednesday where she posted this amazing photo of Saturn from NASA’s Astrology Picture of the Day:

Synchronicity in motion.

There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about the second Saturn Return.  Someone I know insisted to me the other day that the Saturn Return lasts from age 58 to 62.  Clients will often call me when Saturn enters the sign that their Saturn falls in, thinking that is the time of the Saturn Return.  A few years ago a client became extremely angry with me when I suggested that her second Saturn Return would not have the same horrific impact that the first Saturn Return did.

Because Saturn’s role is to teach us how to be responsible adults, the first Saturn Return can be exceptionally difficult.  Some of us don’t want to be adults yet at that age and we resist the lessons, and have to deal with the resulting consequences.

Many of you know that I have come to think of Saturn as a mentor; to me this image is more accurate and less fear-inducing than the “Celestial Taskmaster” that we usually use for Saturn.  The voice of Saturn within us tells us when we really know we could do better; sometimes it comes from outside of us instead.  Under Saturn transits we may experience financial losses or the famous delays and disappointments in putting our dreams in motion.  Saturn requires patience and endurance – there’s no way to alchemize a Saturn transit.  You just have to wait it out.

For Beth and I the second Saturn return only comes once and moves away – there will be no retrograde period and final exam as Saturn runs back and forth over Saturn in our charts.  Saturn sits on my Sun in my own chart, so I have become intimately familiar with Saturn.  In fact, I wrote an article called Saturn: Beast and Prince because to me he is like the misunderstood Beast in fairy tales.

This makes it easier to endure the personal dramas occurring to me know as I sit in the shadow of Saturn, waiting for him to realign my priorities and restructure my plans for the remainder of my life (or the next 30 years, anyway).  I know now without a shadow of a doubt that if there are lessons for me to learn, they will be of great help to me in the long run.