EYE ON ASTROLOGY: KETU/SATURN LESSONS REVISIT
With Saturn stationary at 3-4 degrees Sagittarius and aspecting Ketu with a 60 degree aspect and within a few degrees, the intensity of this transit is heating up and deserves revisiting. This association can bring up emotional despair, melancholy, constriction, gloominess and selfishness. It can lead to stubbornness and fundamentalism and this will be a real problem when it stays in Capricorn for 1.5 years starting in Sept. 2017.
Ketu, the south node, is that funny headless mystical guy who tends to take away the material world to point us toward liberation and enlighten us. He is continuing his journey retrograde in Aquarius and is starting to get within 6 degrees exact aspect from Saturn the planet of responsibility and hard work. Saturn and Ketu get within about 3 degrees impact due to a 60 degree full sextile aspect from Sagittarius onto Aquarius in April/May.
What does it all mean? Since Ketu is like Mars, Saturn is one of its greatest enemies. They both are there to guide you toward your spiritual path but can create hard lessons. Saturn separates and Ketu renounces and Ketu forces us to revisit the past and the Saturn’s transit through Ketu’s nakshatra of Mula is forcing us to take responsibility for our past karma and do the right thing. In the 12 Step Programs, they are fond of saying, “clean up your own messes.” This is a time to re-address people that you have hurt in the past and clean up your karma, to repay debts and to learn the hard lessons of responsibility. Sometimes there is someone that we had an argument 20 years ago and we have not talked to since then and it festers in our mind like an old wound and blocks our joy from being expressed. This is time to clean up those messes and reach out your hand first and say you are story. Get over the Aries stubbornness of wanting to be right and reach out and say you are sorry.
I have done this and it is very powerful. Chances are the other person has forgotten or is just as stubborn and will be happy to clear the air. It is particularly powerful with parents and siblings. Why hold onto the past hurts? Even if you are right, clearing the air will free your mind and allow you not to be haunted with regrets. If you owe some old debt, this is a time to work hard and pay it back.
Saturn keeps us anchored in the material world and being responsible so we are going to have to bear down and learn those lessons. Saturn and Ketu are both wanderers so there may be a tendency to want to run away to an ashram or live abroad to flee the pain of the past but this transit is beckoning us to clean it up. Ketu is happy to live simply and not face up to the responsibility of the material world. He would rather refrain from doing the hard work to succeed and would rather hide away in the ashram and meditate all day and not deal with the world. With Saturn in Mula nakshatra there can be intense anger directed at others for the past but Jupiter, the owner of Sagittarius can provide the wisdom to move through the challenges of the subconscious and transform the old energy.
Saturn is also connected to Ketu through Saturn’s transit through Ketu’s constellation of Mula. If you have not found your spiritual path and or started your spiritual journey, the transit of Saturn in Mula nakshatra (Sagittarius 0-13.20) will awaken that energy. The aspect fosters Viragya or disillusionment and detachment. This is often misunderstood and in its highest understanding it is not about escaping the material world for meditation but learning not to be upset and thrown by the winds of change when material existence throws you a curve. It means staying centered in Being and recognizing the ever changing nature of the physical world when the winds of change hit. One has to find spiritual equanimity or feel suffering. The stronger part of the transit in 2018 will foster more mystical awakenings as Saturn in Mula can cause deep spiritual awakenings.
Still, I remember 1973-4 when the stock market fell 50% and people came to our meditation centers to find peace because the material world was changing so much. I am not looking for stock market crash in 2017 but even a 10-15% pullback this summer and fall will shake people up and turn them to the spiritual.
The Saturn/Ketu combination can be seen as one of the toughest combinations and if you have this in your natal chart or are running a Saturn/Ketu or Ketu/Saturn period or have key planets at 0-6 degrees Sagittarius or Aquarius, you may feel the intensity of this transit most. The US ascendent is 5 degrees Sagittarius in my rectification and the US moon is 7 Aquarius and I think the craziness in the US will continue for a while with these transits. As my friend Juliana Swanson noted, the last time we had Saturn in Aquarius aspecting Ketu in Aquarius was July-Nov. 1960 when it lead to the Kennedy election and there was a lot of civil unrest going on around Afro-American rights. Wikipedia notes that we also had more of the Cuban revolution with Castro nationalizing American interests in Cuba and Belgium threatening to leave the United Nations. Also during that aspect, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev pounded his shoe on a table at a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, his way of protesting the discussion of the Soviet Union’s policies toward Eastern Europe.
The energy of Saturn/Ketu can sometimes create pessimism and lethargy and it forces us to work hard and be mindful of depressive tendencies in order to move through . Again, initiation onto a spiritual path will lighten this transit, as without a spiritual path, you may find yourself suffering or mired in tragedy or if staying stuck in gloominess, selfishness or fundamentalism. The trick is to let go of the old and the old ways and to accept change and the new of way of doing things.
On the positive side, Ketu/Saturn can give a mastery of precision and detailed work so craftsmen may benefit from this influence. It also promotes deep philosophical thinking particularly as Ketu continues through Aquarius until September and Jupiter is lightening the influence with Saturn at least transiting in Virgo and throwing an aspect by sign (Rashi drishtri) onto Sagittarius. There is also a mystical side to Saturn in Mula nakshatra which will come out more when Saturn is out of the 1st pada of the constellation into 3.20-13.20 Sagittarius March 15th-April 27th and then after Nov 2017. May friend Juliana Swanson notes that it is “a higher more evolved expression can be about awakening sacred power and accessing those mysterious past-life and otherworldly gifts.” More of that mystical part will unfold in 2018.
So this influence will be there for a while for a few years and Saturn in Ketu’s nakshatra of Mula for so much time until late Nov. 2018 will continue this desire to clean up the past and free yourself. There is also a nadi nakshatra influence with Saturn in Mula, Ketu’s nakshatra aspecting its despositor Ketu in Aquarius a sign owned by Saturn. The intensity of this transit is most pronounced in April and the first half of May but it still has an impact through late to mid-June until Saturn goes retrograde back into Scorpio on June 20th. It then returns in September and October intensely when Saturn is in the late gandanta degrees of Scorpio again and Ketu in the true node system is in late Capricorn being exactly aspected by Saturn on Oct. 8th.
Find the courage now with Mars still strong to apologize to those who you have hurt or injured or apologize to them even if you think you are right. Let it go and find the freedom that Ketu so wants you to find.
Special thanks to my teacher Komilla Sutton and all my Jyotish Gurus and spiritual gurus for their wisdom and continual inspiration.
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