AS MENTIONED last month, the great Saturn has just entered Virgo for its first stint through that sign in 28 years and it occurred to me what an interesting dance this will be, between two very paradoxical energy systems. Each has an initial surface appearance of superficial worldliness, potentially very effective and yet somewhat limited. Each has an extraordinary depth of wisdom, potency and even magic underneath the initial manifestation, the gaining of which demands a progressive and sometimes painful journey through both the power and the limitations of the mind and conditioned ego.

Saturn represents the formative influences of early structures and conditioning on us as children, and the creation of inner psychological structures in response to those influences and pressures that inform our developing sense of identity as we are growing up. As they come primarily from masculine sources – our fathers, teachers, early authority figures etc – the quality of these mediators and their messages to us deeply influence our view of the world and our beliefs about our own natures. While we absorb our parents’ conscious and subconscious beliefs about who we are and how to deal with the world, we also absorb the reality systems of the time we were born in – what is called culturally agreed reality. If those beliefs are out of sync with who we really are, then we’re in trouble, because the structures we create for ourselves in the world are based on someone else’s reality and beliefs. And then we wonder why our lives lack meaning and true purpose!

Saturn is a mediator of this process, this descent of conditioning, and yet, paradoxically, is also part of the antidote. As the old Lord of Karma, he rules the law of cause and effect, which says in this case “if this is what you’re going to believe, these are the results”. If you believe in your conditioning, then he just sits back and watches the inevitable pummeling that life gives us – until, that is, we start to wake up and say “hey, what’s really going on here?” Then he gets interested and turns off the default button to see what we can do, because his real work is to actually help us dive more deeply inside to connect with our true self and its power to create appropriate structures in the world. So there’s a hidden but powerful benevolence driving this crafty old taskmaster and while hard Saturn transits can be a bugger, by showing us the consequences of our actions and beliefs, they push us towards greater consciousness as we sift through our conditioning to find more of what is ultimately true for each of us as individuals.

Virgo knows much of this process, as the sign is very prone to suffer under the kind of conditioning that reinforces the limiting aspects of its work ethic, its preference for order and control, and its tendency to misinterpret the nature of service as a form of subservience. For an energy that is so intelligent and powerful at its deepest, Virgo paradoxically suffers from a profound sense of inadequacy that makes it, at least initially, compliant, conformist and very receptive to negative messages about its own worth. Virgo knows how to work, how to apply itself with great focus and has a keen eye of what must be done in any situation, but while the conditioning rules, the way that things are done comes at great cost as its personal needs are denied, its true potency is buried and its (work) life can become a routine of almost self-abusive proportion. The same conditioning also tends to disconnect it from the body, a major trauma for any earth sign, while exaggerating an already very active mind and bringing about great imbalances that can manifest as various illnesses. It can look more like an air sign that an earth one.

The above nightmare is obviously an extreme version but anyone with strong Virgo in their charts, particularly the whole generation of people born with Uranus and Pluto in Virgo, will recognise many of these elements in themselves to various degrees. Saturn then will confront us with these imbalances, as a way of forcing us to review how we work, how we treat our bodies as an extension of our deeper needs, what routines and rituals in our lives either imprison us or bring us life, where we hand over too much of our power and our individual needs to ensure acceptance and, in what situations we accept less than our true worth requires. This applies to all, whether we have strong Virgo energies or not.

For the sign itself, Saturn’s demand to go deeper, to bore through the layers of conditioning and belittlement, supports the reclamation of the earth goddess at the core of Virgo. Still, yet as powerful as cousin Scorpio, there is nothing inconsequential about her and it is always a joy to see her rising within an individual, as the intelligence of the sign is empowered with earthy wisdom and instinctual awareness, and a deep intuition to the natural flow of things – all of which allows the person to be more at home within themselves, their body, sexuality and primal potency. A wonderful transformation.

Daniel Sowelu (BSc DipEd) is a therapeutic astrologer, primal therapist and group leader in his 21st year of private practice.