EYE ON ASTROLOGY: SATURN’S EXACT ASPECT TO KETU
Saturn is weak in the gandata area where problems seem unsolvable and where anxiety is heightened. In the mean node system, Saturn has an exact aspect onto Ketu from Scorpio to Aquarius at 28.52 today. The true aspects are exact on Oct. 9th. We will cover Saturn/Ketu in this article and Saturn/Rahu in our companion piece. People get bent out of shape by difficult and malefic transits. As my friend Linette Craul points out, “Malefic energy is not bad and yet only helps us to face fears with more faith and less worry through lessons & tests & personal experiences” With these difficult transits we have to take that perspective or get overwhelmed.
The Saturn/Ketu 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. 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. 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.
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.
While the aspect is now between Scorpio and Capricorn, the last major time we had the 60 degree angle with Saturn/Ketu was between Sagittarius and Aquarius. As my friend Juliana Swanson noted, the last time we had this aspect 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. Today we have a lot of saber-rattling with North Korea creating anxiety, NFL players protesting the American anthem, and people on edge and taking to the streets in St. Louis when justice does not seem to be working because a white police officer was found innocent. Surely more to come.
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.
It will lift when Saturn goes into Sagittarius in intensity but still be there because Saturn will be in Ketu’s nakshatra of Mula and Ketu will be in Saturn’s sign of Capricorn so you still have your work cut out. 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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