Tom Jacobs - Saturn Returns: Thinking Astrologically

Saturn Returns

Thinking Astrologically

Tom Jacobs

Also by Tom Jacobs

Living Myth: Exploring Archetypal Journeys

Seeing Through Spiritual Eyes:

A Memoir of Intuitive Awakening

The Souls Journey I: Astrology, Reincarnation,

and Karma with a Medium and Channel

Cover image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech.

2010 Tom Jacobs. All rights reserved.

ISBN 1451598688

EAN-13 9781451598681

Contents

Acknowledgement

My thanks go to Amy Schaich for reading the manuscript and offering comments and edits. Any errors remaining are my own.

Foreword

Saturn here.

We meet again.

Dont flinch.

Im not as bad as they say, and I am not as bad as you imagine and make me out to be.

Each time I have come to ask you for something it has been for your own good. All I want is for you to see how my view of you and the world can help you get where you want to go. Help yourself out give me a chance to tell you what I know.

Remember all the Saturnian people in your life who had taken in what I offered them. They helped make life interesting. They showed you how to plan for the long haul. They taught you how to organize, how to realistically see and appraise potential obstacles to your path and figure out with intention how to work through them. They taught you the value of patience. They taught you the value of giving up what doesnt help you get where you want to go, whether relationships, attitudes and habits, or ways of living and being. They taught you to sit still long enough so you could do something worth doing.

Now remember all the Saturnian people in your life who had not taken in what I offered them yet still brought forms of my energy to you. They taught you that discipline and structure without conscience is only half the story. They showed you that authority without compassion creates pain everywhere it goes. They embodied ways of bringing my energy through that left you feeling unloved, unsupported, ungrounded. They left you feeling threatened with sanction and punishment for being just who you are.

This book has been written to help you sort through the two kinds of examples of my energy that people have embodied in your life. All of them have taught you important lessons, whether these were about how to live or how not to live. My energy does not have to be threatening and burdensome. It does not have to weigh you down. But it is real, it is a part of you, and it is not going anywhere. Your best bet to accepting and loving yourself more and more deeply is to make nice with what I have to offer and teach you.

Sort through everything you have learned about my energy from others in your life and in the world around you into two boxes. Into one put the examples and experiences of my energy that leave you feeling empowered and deeply in communion with yourself as a human being. Into the other box put all the examples and experiences that left you feeling frightened, hurt, stepped on, defeated, and hopeless. Thank the teachers who brought you these difficult experiences, whether positive or not, and commit to learning more about developing and committing to the positive examples in the first box. Keep the first one with you and count on what it is inside it to show you how to respond to my calls and questions with realism, maturity, and discipline, but also with conscience, a moral center, and heart.

What I want from you can look difficult, of course. Trust that I will only bring you experiences that you are ready for. Trust that the situations and people I bring to you are opportunities for getting clearer on your idea of and commitment to what kind of person you want to be in the world, what kind of my flavor you will bring to the world. And, finally, trust that you have the option of how to experience and carry my energy.

Its all up to you all of it. Responsible, compassionate leader or tyrannical dictator? Loving, grounded, realistic acceptance and guidance or harsh, unyielding criticism? Its all up to you all of it, and all the time.

Now, read this book. Read it and use it. Put what you learn here to good use. If you dont, why bother reading it? Why bother doing anything if you dont put it to good use?

Peace out.

Use This Book

A Very Famous Bad Rap

When was the last time you heard something good about Saturn? If you have had astrology readings think about what you were told when Saturn came up during them. How much opportunity for growth did you see come into focus? How much heaviness, grief, hardship, and misery were you told to expect? What have you read in astrology books about Saturn? How much made you dread ever hearing the name again? How much made you excited about the opportunities to do with this planet that lay ahead?

One of Saturns old-time monikers is the taskmaster. Another is the Greater Malefic. These are names that dont make us flock to hang out with Saturn. Im happy to report that as we near the end of the Piscean Age we can rethink what we have been told about what Saturn energy is about, offers, and does. While we have always been free to think about Saturn as we please, the coming energy of the Aquarian Age asks us to unplug from whatever we have been taught that comes from others and begin to learn from and trust ourselves. Or if we do learn from others, to trust our inner wisdom as the final arbiter on truth. Since Saturn is a part of us naturally, I encourage everyone to make peace with its invitations and directives while recognizing the value in them. I have done this for myself and my clients and then considered what I and they really learned from them et voila! , you are now holding a book on Saturn that aims to give you numerous proactive ways of living and dealing with what this planet asks at its returns.

Besides regular transits of the planet, the first Saturn return is fertile ground for discussion in astrological circles. Next to Mercury retrogrades and new and full Moons, it might be the most widely known nugget of astrology outside the world of students and professionals. Many people not well versed in the discipline know that at around age 29 or 30 there is a major thing going down with the planet Saturn that throws a monkey wrench into things. In fact it was when I overheard the phrase Saturn return that I knew I had to learn everything about whatever that meant! I asked the person who said it what it meant and he didnt really know, only that it was a tough and major event people in our age group were coming up against soon. My first return was at that point technically over, but I was still in the process of figuring out how I was going to respond to what Saturn had shown me that I could alter and upgrade in order to move into the future.

I have spent my share of time dreading the energy, pressures, and expectations of this planet. Yet I have come out the other side of my first return with a profound respect for Saturns questions and its motivations. When we are feeling we might not be strong, mature, disciplined, or structured enough to stand up to Saturns invitations to change, we will feel dread when he comes knocking. It is true that our experience of the planet and its returns is entirely determined about our attitude about what we are being asked to do.

Saturn is the planet of conditioning, doing something again and again with structure and rewards and punishment to ensure that we learn. As a result, dealing with the planets energy in our day to day lives involves working with our history of having dealt with the planet and how we have been conditioned by our past experiences. We all absorb ideas, attitudes, and behaviors about how to live from those we live with when young and those whom we encounter and spend a lot of time throughout our lives. What you will read in these pages is in part designed to put your attention on all the ways you have been taught to think of and act on the energy of Saturn. This is because you cannot deal effectively and clearly with what Saturn asks of you at your return (or generally) if you are unconsciously running someone elses ideas, attitudes, and behaviors as your own, or your own ideas based in old conditioning that no longer serves you. Saturn returns can serve us greatly if we unhinge ourselves from historical models gained or adopted from others and learn to get into the present tense in our living. The processes of dealing with Saturn energy and yourself as Saturn energy at the times of your Saturn returns will be smoothed over immensely if you let go of the past after learning what was useful in it and move into your own chosen futures.