Saturn conjunct the Shiva* Asteroid in Aquarius: Transforming the Patriarchy, Bringing the Sacred Masculine Down To Earth.
May-September 2022, October-November 2022
This is exceptional combination and is actually a meeting of two similar archetypes. Both can be very hard on us, in challenging our weak spots, our undeveloped and immature responses, and where our ego structures have become out of kilter with our core, authentic selves. In this respect both are tough teachers but ones who have great mysteries and deep wisdom underneath their fierce,and seemingly unemotional, unforgiving gazes.
While Saturn is a tough love teacher who uses obstacles, adverse circumstances and limitations to teach us the hard lessons of dealing with a physical world, Shiva is the Cosmic Guru, concerned with the highest of truths and the awakening of enlightened consciousness.
Their differences lie in the fact that Saturn is predominantly an earthing deity, concerned with how to create on the material plane, while Shiva is partially the yogi god intent on meditation and detachment from the world. Ultimately though, they both support us to find our core centre with both its earthy wisdom and its masculine spiritual potency. In Aquarius, they both act as lightning rods for the genius of the sign, to be channelled into effective expression and manifestation in the world. Aquarius is also the vehicle for heightening consciousness of Shiva, while Saturn seeks to stabilise our bodies enough to handle such knowledge and power.
Superficially, both can appear to be hyper masculine and anti-feminine and certainly, if they are out of balance in our culture or in ourselves, they can become so, even to the point of appearing robotic. Underneath this imbalanced and patriarchal façade though, both know implicitly that they, and our reality, are incomplete without an integrated divine feminine.
Curiously, in traditional Vedic astrology Shiva, as a time lord is represented by Saturn, and both represent the fruits of spiritual and worldly discipline. The two together then represent increased capacity for resilience, sustained focus and discipline, particularly in the face of extreme circumstances
So, we can see this conjunction as an opportunity to dig deeper inside ourselves to find that core centre, and to use its wisdom and expanded knowledge to sort the difference between absorbed patriarchal beliefs and our own inherent divine masculine.
The deeper we go with Shiva energy, the more receptive our inner masculine becomes to these awesome Shakti goddesses.
Similarly with Saturn, in experiential astrology, we have found that he has a great love for the wise medicine women, including Hekate and Medusa, a reversal of our culture’s painful and shameful historical antagonism and, an echo of the Shiva/Kali union.
Their Mutual Alchemy and Work on Each Other.
Shiva, like Pluto, is an agent of transformation, death and rebirth, and a destroyer of naivete, denial and ignorance, of ego structures that inhibits our wholeness. Consequently, he will focus his fierce, blowtorch-like third eye on rigid, patriarchal and out of date conservative structures, superficial masculine personas, psychologically naive leaders and defence mechanisms that keep us separate from our authentic and Shiva like inner core. (We in Australia have just seen the demolition of a conservative government partially filled with climate change deniers, out of integrity politicians, a lack of cultural diversity and predominantly white male leaders!)
In turn, Saturn always demands that we get to know and integrate more deeply whatever he touches. In this case, this includes understanding the mechanics of authentic transformation, of the death and rebirth cycle within our own psyches. It includes how to build appropriate internal structures that support our ongoing evolution, which increase our capacity to hold the increasing voltages of Shakti or spiritual power and, to take deeper responsibility for purifying our use of power so that we can serve more powerfully as agents of authentic change. (Note all the familiar Plutonium themes and, the potential inherent in the memory banks of a Scorpio South Node!)
Of course, we are going to get individuals and even nations who will be seduced by the power potentials of this. Trying to harness Shiva energy for one’s ego drives has the same seductions and destruction as attempting to do the same with Pluto. Instead of welcoming an opportunity of breaking up old karma, the same gets repeated and eventually leads to the downfall of the perpetrators (as well as many more lifetimes of further trauma!)
Putin is very much a negative Saturn/Pluto/Shiva figure, and the invasion of the Ukraine is a clear reflection of this transit. Like Hitler, he will get his!
Saturn will also go after other, less global expressions of excess Shiva energy, particularly in letting us know where detachment has become escapism, spiritual bypassing and denial of the feminine inherent in our bodies. There are enough half-baked yogis out there claiming enlightenment and yet who are confusing authentic detachment with ego-aggrandisement and disassociation. Ditto with tantric predators and, teachers lacking integrity and real spiritual attainment.
A Karmic Turning Point For Us and Our Civilisation.
The Shiva/Saturn conjunction is at the midpoint between the Scorpio South Node and Taurus North Node of the Moon, a situation powerfully energised by the recent eclipse. Squares to the Nodes often represent necessary detours in our efforts to move away from the past, and towards a constant evolving future.
We have already had two months of the Saturn squaring the Nodes, a major contributor to the kind of deep resistance, and frustration being experienced by many of us in our efforts to move forward. Saturn almost always has a way of forcing us to stop, review and re-evaluate, and to then prepare inner and outer foundations that give us greater traction in the next phase of re-creation.
The intensity of this has been heightened and strengthened by Shiva joining him. So, it hasn’t been easy for many of us in a worldly sense and yet there are much bigger underlying processes happening here.
Like it or not, we are also dealing with the repercussions of destructive actions and misuse of power in our past, represented in the Scorpio South Node, whether we consider this as our cultural past or as accumulated past life expressions. Underneath our daily struggles with obstacles and limitations, we are working through some considerable karma. This makes sense considering how additionally difficult these last months have been.
These processes are likely to continue, as Saturn and Shiva stay close until the end of August. However daunting this might sound, the alchemical grinding through ancient layers of karma can prepare us to bring the wise, sacred and transformative expressions of the masculine towards the visions of the Taurus North Node. This includes one of a potentially sustainable future and, of cultural development that brings us much closer to the same spiritual relationship that all First Nations have with the earth.
Looking back, this conjunction can be seen as the latest instalment of the deconstruction and reconstruction processes that began with the Saturn Pluto conjunction in 2019.
It’s another layer of dismantling the old redundant masculine,to make way for a potential rebirth of the authentic masculine, with its wisdom and earthy realism, coupled with both embodied and transcendent spirituality, and, in balanced and profound union with the sacred feminine.
May both grace and power support us through this prolonged psychological and spiritual obstacle course!
*For my Hindu readers, in speaking of Shiva in this blog, I am referring to the astrological and archetypal Shiva, that is, the Shiva-like part of each of us, rather than him as the pure cosmic deity. No disrespect is intended, especially since I have been an initiated Shaivite for all my adult life.
I like to think of the archetype as the psychic version of the local temple, the place we go to inside ourselves to access, honour and connect with the god or goddess.