Welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. I’m your host, Jessica Lanyadoo. I’m an astrologer, psychic medium, and animal communicator, and I’m going to give you your weekly horoscope and no bullshit, mystical advice for living your very best life.

My darlings, are you surprised to hear from me? I am dropping an extra Ghost of a Podcast episode all about astrology. I figure while we’re all at home, and many of us have extra time to learn astrology, why not, eh? Why not? 

So I’m going to unpack Saturn for you. That’s right. You all send me so many questions about Saturn, and I want to talk all about it. So I’m going to break it into two parts. Part one: I want to talk about Saturn in your birth chart, and then part two is Saturn by transit, including, but not limited to your Saturn Return. 

Man, do I get a lot of questions about the Saturn Return. And if you haven’t already heard, I’ve dropped two or three episodes already about the Saturn Return, so you might want to scroll back through past episodes and check those out if you’re really excited about Saturn or on the brink of your first or second Saturn Returns. Yes, there are two. 

But let’s start off by talking about Saturn itself. So Saturn is the slow moving planet. It takes about 29 and a half years to move through every degree of all of the 12 signs. And when looking at Saturn in your birth chart, understanding the implications of Saturn in the sign it’s in is very important. It describes your personal issues, but it also describes your generational issues—in other words, the time that you live in, the circumstances that you’re experiencing as a part of the collective. 

And this is something that I find really inspiring and fascinating about astrology is that it reinforces in all ways that everything is connected, both within you, but also, your role in the world is a part of the world. And whatever is happening in the world is a part of you. It’s written into your birth chart. Isn’t that fucking fascinating? I think so. 

So Saturn. Saturn when we look at the placement of Saturn, so the house placement of Saturn, it’s deeply fucking important. So if you have Saturn in the first house in a particular sign, let’s say in Capricorn, then it’s going to function completely differently than Saturn in Capricorn in the twelfth house. 

When we have Saturn in the first house in our birth charts, we tend to have lessons around figuring out who we are and embodying the truth of who we are. That’s a Cliffs Notes, okay. Saturn in the twelfth house people, another Cliffs Notes, is they tend to really need to learn how to develop backbone and to give themselves the kind of directive but also the permission to have boundaries. 

Whatever house we see the planet Saturn in, we see themes of responsibility, limitation, restriction, and reality. Saturn in the birth chart says a ton about how you relate to reality itself. You want to see Saturn in the sign, Saturn in the house, but also natal aspects to Saturn are essential. 

Now astrology 101, an aspect is basically geometry. It’s the geometrical relationship between planets in your birth chart or planets and points in your birth chart. Astrologers work with a few different points in the birth chart. If this is a little over your head, when you’ve looked at a wheel, if you’re using Western astrology, it’s always a circle. When you look at the wheel, all those lines in the center, those are aspects. And if you’re looking at an aspect grid, that’s not a birth chart, but it’s literally a grid with symbols and numbers in it, that is basically how astrologers will often draw out the aspects. 

So, in any case, aspects to your natal Saturn are very fucking important, my friends. And where we have Saturn, it feels heavy. Our relationship to responsibility and scarcity and obligation, to good and bad and right and wrong, to our place in society and community, to our sense of feeling lonely or isolated—Saturn governs all of it. 

Interestingly, Saturn also governs your bones and teeth. It governs your epidermis. So not your skin, like your complexion—that’s Venus. But it governs your skin, the organ of your skin, the thing that makes it so that you can’t see all your blood and guts and your fascia and your muscles and all that kind of stuff. 

Saturn holds us together. Saturn is the stuff that holds us up—wonderful. But it also keeps us separate. And because of that, where we find Saturn in the birth chart is where we can also find depressiveness or ennui or heavy heartedness, loneliness, scarcity, straight up depression. It’s where we can find our sense of being limited. It is one of the planets that speaks to perfectionism, that sense of if I’m not good enough, no one will like me. I have to prove myself in order to get any kind of attention or be valuable at all. 

Saturn governs our sense of ambition. Now, not in that Martian way. Mars also governs ambition. It’s like, “I want to run the race. I’m going to stretch. I’m going to practice.” Saturn is more of a keeping up with the Joneses kind of vibe. It's I need to prove that I am a contender. I need to get more than other people. Because of this, Saturn is related to capitalism and hierarchies. 

When I’m looking at a birth chart, the first thing that I tend to look to is the outer planets. So that’s Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. And I look to them because they indicate inherited issues. So in the context of Saturn, what that indicates is the issues that we have inherited from one or both parents and grandparents related to our sense of duty and responsibility. 

Depending on where it’s placed, Saturn can indicate a myriad of different things. Anything from money and class, health, and inherited body issues. It can be related to a sense of safety and security in the system as it is, and I mean the system in a societal sense. 

Where we find Saturn in the birth chart is where we need to work. So wherever you find Saturn in your birth chart you are unlikely to be like, “That’s chill. That’s easy for me. Everything is nice here,” even if you have a lovely, happy, well-adjusted Saturn. Saturn is work. Saturn has to do with the lessons we learn over time. Saturn requires effort. Saturn requires patience, and Saturn loves to hand you your ass. 

Where we have Saturn, we are not just the writer; we must be the editor. We are not just the farmer who’s picking fruits from the tree; we are the farmer who has to cut back. Saturn in the birth chart describes our sense of futility, agency, and also, it’s related to hyper-vigilance. Not an obsessive form of hyper-vigilance, but it’s related more to perfectionism. 

So Saturn is a really important planet to notice in your birth chart—to know the sign it’s in and understand its implications, to know the house it’s in and understand its implications. I would even say the house is more important than the sign. I mean, honestly, they’re both very fucking important. You don’t have to choose. 

Looking at aspects to your natal Saturn is a really important thing to do. And if you guys are interested in me talking more about what aspects are, I would love to do that. Pop me questions—Ghostofapodcast.com. But when I’m looking at aspects between Saturn and, honestly, any planet, I am interested. It’s going to give you a lot of information about your sense of reality, your sense of kind of effeted or karmic feeling with situations or people, relationships, stuff like that. 

So Saturn in the birth chart can be a place where we tend to feel lonely or isolated or misunderstood or maladjusted—Saturn. But it’s also the place where we have work to do and the tools with which to do the work. Saturn is a damn tool. That was funnier than I meant it to be. Saturn is a tool, but also, it’s a tool—use it. 

Part of being in a body, part of being incarnated is being in fixed time reality. Some of you may grown when you hear me say that. Some of you may think that is the worst. Others of you are like, “Yes. Yes, I am a Capricorn. I am a Virgo; I understand what you’re saying.” But the moral of the story is that the lessons that Saturn wants to teach us are very human. And accepting your humanity is so much about accepting your Saturn. Learning to work with your Saturn is an essential part of being a human—not just a human, but a mature adult human. And that’s because whenever we go through transits by Saturn or to our natal Saturn, we are learning how to grow up. We have to mature. 

Want to learn more about Saturn? Of course you do. If you haven’t already picked up my book, Astrology For Real Relationships-Understanding You, Me, and How We All Get Along, you are in for a real treat, my friends. Within it, I unpack Saturn and all the other planets through three different sections. The first is friends and chosen family, the second is casual dating, and the third is long term committed relationships. Understand astrology in a way that directly relates to your lived experience. And whenever possible, support small businesses and local bookstores. Shop local. Think global.

There are transits from Saturn and transits to Saturn. What that means is your birth chart—it’s the snapshot of the sky at the moment and location of your birth, and it doesn’t change. I mean, people progress, there’s ways to change it, but for the purposes of this conversation, it never changes. It’s just—it’s your hard drive, right. 

And, so, what can happen is any planet that is moving through the sky IRL can form a transit to your birth Saturn, aka your natal Saturn. That will be a learning experience. It will be an experience, my friends. However, there’s also transiting Saturn. So Saturn moving through the sky IRL hitting your birth Saturn or any point or planet in your birth chart. That shit is called a Saturn transit. 

Whenever Saturn forms a transit to one of your birth chart planets, you are going to go through a time of work. It might be that the work is—it’s a time of reaping what you’ve sown in a really lovely way. It’s like you’re the farmer, and you’re pulling in all the fruits, and you’re cutting all the veggies. And it’s a lot of work. It’s work to pull in that haul. So it’s hard work, but it’s all about accomplishment. And sometimes Saturn is about, you lost your yield. There’s no crops this season. In fact, there were some bugs that came; it destroyed the land. 

When we go through Saturn transits, we need to edit. We need to cut back. We need to learn a heavy lesson, which is why people don’t like Saturn. Saturn is a pain in the ass. Saturn is a pessimist. When we go through Saturn transits, in particular, to our personal planets, our Sun, our Moon, Venus, Mars, Mercury, we can be depressed. We can feel stuck. We can feel lonely, go through a breakup, lose a job. No matter what you do, you just can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. Fucking Saturn. 

A big part of why that is is because Saturn wants us to turn within, to find our own inner wisdom through lived experience. And this is a really important part of Saturn. It takes 29 and a half years to move all the way through the zodiac, as I mention. And every seven years, it forms a hard transit to itself or to other planets. And every time it does, we mature, or we get more twisted up on the same roadblock. 

And, so, what’s important is to look at the patterns that we are experiencing in our lives over the course of time because we are always the common denominator in those patterns. And Saturn does an excellent job of describing those patterns. And the easiest ones to track, because they’re the same age wise for everyone, is Saturn’s transits to itself. 

So our first Saturn square is at seven years old, approximately seven years old. It’s a really important moment for individuation, right. You grow up. You become a little bit more self-aware that you’re a kid and that your parents don’t know everything about you. 

14/15 years old, that’s a biggy. Who doesn’t remember 14/15? Who liked 14/15? For most of us, it’s a very difficult time, and the reason why that is is because it’s our first Saturn opposition to Saturn. That is when we start to really realize that people don’t know shit. The adults around us don’t know nothing. They say things, and they don’t mean it. They’re imperfect humans. Life is unfair. You really get it around that age. Man, life is unfair, and you start to feel the heaviness of Saturn, the heaviness and world weariness of life. 

And then we hit 21, 21ish. And 21ish is a really important age because this is when a lot of people, conventionally, they move out, or there’s a greater expectation that you are an adult now, and you should go forth and vote and do things like adults do. You should be a part of society. I don’t know why I got Transatlantic, but you know I like to do that sometimes. 

And then we hit the Saturn Return. So, basically, when you hit your Saturn Return, when aka Saturn Returns to the place it was when you were born, around 29 years old, what happens at that point is you are at the closure of the cycle that essentially began when you were born. And you can track from seven years old to fourteen, to twenty-one, to now. Those are the hard aspects from Saturn to itself. 

And the way that you did or did not rise to the occasion, what you did or didn’t learn, the shit that you were kind of faced with—because the bulk of our Saturn cycle, when we hit our first Saturn Return, we’re kids. We don’t have a lot of agency in the world or in our lives. We go where our families tell us or our guardians tell us. We don’t have a lot of options, right. So the first Saturn Return is the closure of that, and it’s the opening to your adulthood. That’s right, your adulthood. 

But, hey, wait. What about sextiles and trines? you might be asking yourself. So here’s the thing, in between every square or opposition by transit, we have a sextile or a trine. And what those transits are, those, quote, easy transits is they’re a time of equilibrium, when the way we’ve set our lives up is flowing. It’s working as it’s set up to do. Anyone who pays any attention to the world knows when you have a broken system, and it’s working as it’s meant to, it is failing us, right. 

And the same is true in our personal lives. When your coping mechanisms are maladjusted, when your picker for dating is maladjusted, when you act like you really care about capitalism when you actually don’t care at all, and it actually brings out the worst in you, when those systems are in place, and they’re functioning effectively, then you’re unhappy. Then you don’t like your life. Then you keep on walking into a wall and being hurt, and being like, “Why is this wall hurt so much? I thought it was going to be something I could walk right through.” Saturn. 

So it’s valuable to be able to clock when we are going through all the Saturn transits. So that when the first Saturn Return hits, we can take responsibility for closing out our childhood with intention, taking responsibility for what we do and don’t do, right now, and set ourselves up for the next cycle, which is your adulthood. That’s right, it’s not over. 

First you have your Saturn Return, and then Saturn will square itself seven years later. 14 years after your Saturn Return, Saturn will sit opposite itself. You see where I’m going with this. 21 years there will be another square from Saturn to itself, and then you’ll hit a second Saturn Return, close to 60 years old. Guess what, friends? There’s a third. If you hit 90, you get to go through a third Saturn Return. And before that happens, you’ll go through, of course, the square, the opposition, and then another square. Fucking ’strology. 

You have lessons to learn in this life. You have lessons to learn about yourself, about the world, about having a fucking body, about your responsibility to others, about your relationship to fear, your relationship to community, and how you participate in all of these things. How you work, how you relate to time, how you manage your resources, including, but not limited to money. It’s all very Saturnian. It’s very reality based. 

So at the second Saturn Return, you have lived this lovely 29 year cycle of adult life, and at that time, you still have a lot of life in front of you—barring health crises and emergencies. And this is a relatively new thing in human development, right. People used to die a lot younger. People are expecting to live to their third Saturn Return now. And that’s a relatively new thing in human history. And I think it will change what astrologers see and do with the second Saturn Return, what we see people experiencing. Because there’s still a lot of life in front of you. 

And at this time, you are bearing consequences. The second Saturn Return is a time of great consequence and is very adult. It’s how you’ve managed your health, how you’ve managed your finances, all this kind of stuff—whether or not you have relationships. And a lot of people experience the second Saturn Return as a time of great loneliness, and that is because a lot of us do not prioritize working on our shit. And when we don’t work on our shit, then we can find ourselves in situations where we keep on choosing the same wrong person, the same shit job, etc., etc. And this brings us to a life we don’t love living or like living. 

And, so, it is important that you recognize you always have choice, and choice is not easy. When we go through Saturn transits, we have the desire to get conservative. We want to take the safe route because, again, Saturn is related to safety and scarcity and responsibility. 

But Saturn isn’t the time to take the conservative route. Saturn is the time to conserve your energy to focus on what matters. But it is not the time to be conservative. In fact, it’s the time to do what you need to do to make sure your life reflects who you are. And many of us, most of us are in imperfect situations, in imperfect times, in imperfect bodies, living imperfect lives. We’re not looking for perfection here. We’re looking for progress. We’re looking for self-appropriateness. And that is the work of Saturn.

My loves, it’s a little Hot Take on Saturn. Astrology Hot Takes, what do you think? You want more? Send me your Saturn questions. Send me questions about anything astrological, and I will endeavor to answer them. Let’s learn astrology together. Bye.