Carl Boudreau
Along comes Saturn.
Saturn’s move into Sagittarius will have great significance for all of us.
Many of us are experiencing a very deep, persistent unease. Essentially, we feel the ground shifting beneath our feet, we cannot get firm bearings and so we cannot deal effectively with our concerns about the future. We are no longer confident that we know how world works, anymore.
This feeling is caused in part by the current status of the Saturn/Sagittarius cycle.
Sagittarius governs ideas, including and especially big, all-encompassing idea systems - like religious belief systems, philosophical, theological and metaphysical systems, as well as political idea systems, or ideologies. We speak also “mentalities” or “mindsets.” Often people refer to such systems as “-isms.”
Idea systems are the software programs that make human lives and societies run. We all use idea systems to provide structure, organization, to set goals and measure progress.
In fact, we do very little that doesn’t depend heavily on an idea system of some kind. Our need for a coherent, reliable system of ideas is all but organic. We feel lost without some such set of ideas to guide us.
Idea systems are living systems. Over time, things are added and subtracted from idea systems. Existing ideas get modified, tweaked. These changes are often made on the fly. Eventually, inevitably, an idea system tends to become less logical and out of sync with reality.
When idea systems deteriorate to a certain point, it causes widespread anxiety. The disconnect between our ideas about the world and the world itself becomes very apparent. This, in turn, causes a very basic, gnawing anxiety. We sense our ability to understand the world and find our way in the world failing.
The Saturn/Sagittarius cycle governs the birth, growth, maturation, maintenance and demise of idea systems. At the moment, and for some years past, we have been passing through the end of the Saturn/Sagittarius cycle. That is when the problems in existing idea systems are most.
When, as now, Sagittarius and the vast sea of ideas that it governs has gone too long without the sobering and direct influence of Saturn, all of our ideas get a little crazy.
Craziness creeps into our affairs. Indeed, crazy comes to seem normal. Ideas and countless things that they affect slide in a decidedly dysfunctional direction. Anxiety and uncertainty peak.
Every 28 years, approximately, Saturn returns to Sagittarius and begins restoring order to the universe of ideas. Saturn’s last transit of Sagittarius began in 1988.
Saturn will begin transitioning into Sagittarius in December 2014. It will retrograde into Scorpio for the summer and re-enter Sagittarius for the full transit in September of 2015.
When Saturn gets into Sagittarius, it will begin rectifying our idea systems, trimming back the crazy bits, building on the sound ones, and re-syncing ideas with reality. Over time, a semblance of sanity will return. The uncertainty and anxiety will abate.
While in Sagittarius, Saturn will cause things that reveal the current dysfunctionality of our idea systems. It will do so in a way very concrete and immediate way that forces us to rectify those ideas systems. Our bad ideas will cost us time, money and relationships.
In that way, bad ideas will be revealed as bad ideas and motivate us to rectify them all at the same time. And Saturn will require that this be done carefully.
I will offer only one example. The recent so-called “Hobby Lobby” decision allows for-profit corporations to refuse compliance with certain federal laws on the basis of religious objections. This decision delighted “cultural conservatives.”
In reality, however, any objective observer could see that the decision left a host of unresolved issues. With Saturn headed into Sagittarius, these will almost certainly lead to protests and lawsuits, potentially overwhelming the court system.
We can expect similar floods of unintended and embarrassing consequences wherever people rely on ideas they have not examined very closely recently, and whose validity they might have been taking quite for granted.
As Saturn makes its way through Sagittarius and then ventures out into Capricorn and Aquarius, the world’s idea systems will begin righting themselves. And so will the world and our individual lives.