March 7th, which is the astrological calendar’s biggest day of the year is approaching. That’s when Saturn, the stern School-master, must deal with Pisces, the artsy, ne’er-do-well dreamer, doodling in a notebook instead of listening to lecture. This upcoming Saturn in Pisces transit, which lasts until February 2026, will not be a match made in heaven.
For the past six years, Saturn has been relatively happy in the two signs it rules, Capricorn (2017 to 2020) and Aquarius (2020 to 2023). During these jaunts, the Taskmaster has been able to live its best life: controlling and restricting things; disciplining wrongdoing; streamlining and eliminating inefficient processes from the workplace; surveilling our words and world via technological incursion.
Aquarius and Capricorn, like little henchmen, have provided the safe houses for Saturn’s schemes. But now, as if we are entering into the new season of a sitcom, the Taskmaster has lost its accommodations and is knocking at the door of Pisces, who answers in a well-worn terrycloth robe, while holding a reefer cigarette, whose smoke vaguely shrouds a mess of used paper plates on the dining table (which is also the coffee table).
Unlike the rigidity of Saturn+Cap+Aquarius, Pisces is a mystical and mutable sign with little interest in rules, schedules, or keeping appointments. It’s about long meditation in search of Samadhi, or losing oneself in the gaze of a soulmate; its politics are communistic; it lives in a commune; and it finds value in the skein of New Age affirmations, which curl like a loose shawl about its shoulders.
In almost all respects, we have in these two energies deep opposition. Saturn is cold and dry, Pisces watery and emotional. Saturn strict, Pisces soft. Saturn indicates subtraction, Pisces addition. The major cause for these differences, of course, has to do with the fact that expansive Jupiter rules over the Fishes. Saturn (lack) and Jupiter (abundance) represent our two cosmic titans at loggerheads.
The eternal jostling of these two planets have played out with particular fever pitch the past few years. In 2021, for example, Jupiter spent nearly 12 cold months in cold Saturn-ruled Aquarius. We all know how that year went: Jupiter debilitated and locked down, like the rest of us.
In 2022, however, Planet Luck moved over to Pisces–where it’s in rulership and has power. Saturn, meanwhile, stayed in the Waterbearer. And we saw, with the liberation of Jupiter in its home sign, a year of expansion, but also excess, as inflation reached madcap levels. This is the unchecked side of Jupiter and Pisces, especially when they are in cahoots: liberty turning into licence; party balloons filling with infinite helium.
The question becomes: will Saturn pop that bubble? The Great Deflator will definitely try (that’s its nature). But, just as Jupiter was weakened in Aquarius back in 2021, Saturn is going to be debilitated in 2023 and beyond in the emotional waters of Pisces.
All of this is to say that grim Saturn is not going to do its work in a liquid, ambiguous sign. But is that a good thing?
We rightfully give Saturn a bad rap. It is a malefic planet. But one reason we nominate it thus revolves around the fact that we don’t like sticklers and disciplinarians, in general. We prefer the cool dad, not the nagging mom. Or we side with the relaxed mom, and resent the curfew-enforcing father. But think of where we’d be without that Saturnal element of control and structure—out smoking reefer cigarettes all night with Pisces.
We supposedly dislike Saturn but we secretly need and want it in our lives. The problem is that it will be functioning more like a confused step-dad for the next few years–not knowing where its authority lies, while enervated amid a slightly unruly and messy house.
What, then, are some of the trends to expect when Saturn goes into Pisces, especially around its major ingress on the March 7th (ingresses are big activation points for transits, where its themes get laid out on clear displays before becoming more of a subtle subtext for the remainder of them)?
Weaker Boundaries
We might find it harder to establish proper distances between friends, partners, family, and even co-workers. Because Pisces is such an emotional sign, we could start to form intense, perhaps even inappropriate attachments with people. Too much bonding. Too much feeling for a friend turned enemy or lover. We used to long for the days of emotional freedom and connection back when Saturn entered Aquarius, and social distancing became normalised. Now with Saturn playing a weak hand, we could be feeling emotionally suffocated by others–or we ourselves might be coming across as suffocating. In a nice bit of cosmic irony, we might now long for the kind of distance we used to lament just a short time ago.
The Rise of Hydropolitics
Saturn is going to be Saturn, even if it is debilitated. It wants to lay down rules, so there could be intensified issues over the next couple years related to hydropolitics–who gets water, who doesn’t; who gets to use waterways and consequent disputes over territories at sea. Pisces and Neptune are both related to oceanic elements, after all. The ingress of Saturn (rules and restrictions) into a watery sign like Pisces augurs vexed hydropolitical questions. A related issue could be water getting more unruly–more flooding, storming. In other words, bodies of water overflowing boundaries between land and sea.
Fake News Flash
Expect the continued mystification and confusion over what’s real and what’s not. If, on the one hand, we should anticipate disputes over water at sea, we can expect intensified disputes over what’s real in media and political spaces. Again, Saturn will do its work to regulate, but it could have difficulty doing so. When we asked earlier if it was a good thing that the Disciplinarian was going to be debilitated, it’s around questions of what’s real that we are most concerned.
Spiritual Discipline
We shouldn’t make this transit all out to be negative. There are always shadow sides and bright sides to any placement. For those spiritually inclined, Saturn will help add discipline and structure to your yin yoga practices and meditation retreats. Spirituality without structure is just navel-gazing. Saturn’s presence should allocate heft, weight, and direction to those seekers out there.
Saturn, Editor
Relatedly, Saturn-in-Pisces should help give shape to creative processes that would tend to drift forever without the editing power of the Taskmaster making its appearance around March 7th. Overly bloated ideas for stories, poems, advertising, scripts, screenplays, dissertations, political pamphlets could get winnowed down by Saturnal presence in the Fishes. Creative output, like spiritual practices, needs a strong hand. Though not iron-fisted with this placement, Saturn will at least help craft the wayward lurch of the imagination at play.
In the end, it’s hard to believe that it has been a few years now since we last wrote about Saturn changing signs at the conclusion of 2020, when it moved into Aquarius (Jupiter in tow). We compared that transit to the Game of Thrones , with Whitewalker Saturn marching toward us. It was our prediction that things were about to get real with those placements. Now, expect the next couple years to get more surreal, with Pisces resisting Saturnal strictures.
