All Our Skeletons: A Meditation on These Times
CHAPTER TWO
Saturn in Capricorn can coincide with a hardening of hierarchical structures, an intensification of borders and walls, a reaffirming of patriarchal values. And, of course, we’re seeing that, but with Pluto right next to Saturn, there is the potential for transformation. We can, if we so choose, turn the Saturnian work ethic toward the Plutonic, to patiently do the work necessary for our evolution. Saturn is very realistic, and as such, can help us to face the truth of who we are. We can employ Saturn to work with the Plutonic, through various forms of shadow-work and other psychological and healing practices that can bring about inner healing and transformation, as well through just seeing ourselves with greater humility and realism, and then applying similar processes to the collective.
Consider how much reexamination of history there has been; think of the analyses of patriarchy; the painstaking conversations so many of us have been engaged in on colonization, racism, privilege, trauma; the examination of power dynamics; the uncovering of the extent of sexual abuse and sexual assault in our society; the revealing of abuses of power among the most powerful. So many of us have been doing this hard work. And this is just the sort of work that is required in order that we might transform the structures that have supported this corruption, into structures that truly serve the people, that are supportive and caring and just. This is what it looks like to accept the work of Saturn; to undergo the initiation.
In its shadow, Saturn can shut down, constrict, limit, control. It can show up as fear, punishment, austerity, judgement. One of the ways in which humans have engaged with Saturn is through control--controlling others, and controlling ourselves (the Superego). So, as Saturn approaches Pluto (they’ve been close for all of 2019, and the conjunction will be exact on January 12 2020), to the extent that we deny the evolutionary potential of Pluto’s call to shadow work, there is potential for the Plutonic to be shut down. When the shadow erupts, Saturn may want to control, limit, judge, and punish.
When we deny the shadow within ourselves, we tend to project it onto others. It becomes: we are good, they are bad (the most widespread and pernicious delusion). In its subtle form, it makes relationships difficult. But in a social context it leads to the logic that we ought to round up the bad guys and lock them away, or worse. And thus ensues the police state, prisons, fortification of walls and borders, internment and concentration camps, war, genocide. In short, horror.
Freud wrote The Id and the Superego during a Saturn-Pluto hard alignment, following World War 1 (1923), and described the process by which in attempting to shut down the Id in others, in seeing itself as all good, the Superego ends up being inadvertently fuelled by the Id, which leads to the worst violence and tyranny. Tarnas (2006) links this dynamic to Saturn and Pluto: In astrological terms, there is a potential dynamic whereby Saturn, in attempting to shut down the Plutonic in others, ends up being blindly fuelled by Pluto, and on a collective level, this pattern leads to the worst atrocities. In other words, it is not unleashing the shadow that leads to the worst in human history; but rather the fear of the shadow, and the attempt to shut it down.
Indeed, historically, Saturn-Pluto alignments have coincided with the worst atrocities in history. (I considered including a list, but decided that you may not want to read a list of the most horrible things). But when we look more closely at those periods of time, we also see that people were able to channel the Saturn-Pluto energy differently, through applying great effort toward understanding the shadow; the mechanisms of horror; the psychology that leads to war and genocide.
Melville, who was born in 1819 during a Saturn-Pluto conjunction, wrote Moby Dick during the following Saturn-Pluto conjunction in 1850-1851. The obsessive pursuit of the whale is as the Saturnian projection of the Plutonic onto nature: “all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down…” (p. 181).
Many other works that examine similar difficult themes were also produced during Saturn-Pluto conjunctions: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818); Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1950); Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852); Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1948). Fanz Kafka was born during the 1882 Saturn-Pluto conjunction, and wrote The Trial and The Penal Colony in the 1914 Saturn-Pluto conjunction. John Hersey’s Hiroshima came out in the 1946-1947 conjunction, Alan Pakula’s Sophie’s Choice came out in the 1982 conjunction. There are so many examples of deep explorations of Saturn-Pluto themes that were created during Saturn-Pluto conjunctions (see Tarnas pp. 209-288). These can model for us ways in which we might use this time wisely.
The research for this section is from Richard Tarnas (2006) Cosmos and Psyche.
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