Written in the Stars: An Introduction to the Notorious Saturn Return

Those approaching the big 3-0 know that diving into your thirties can be both daunting and exhilarating. Adding that extra candle on your birthday cake can signify a new chapter in your life, whether it’s a new relationship, an evolving career, or personal growth. From an astrological perspective, the reason for these changes is guided by a very specific planetary event—your Saturn Return—or the time in your life when Saturn completes its orbit around the sun, returning to the position it was in at your birth. In this excerpt from Codex of the Soul, author VerDarLuz describes the infamous Saturn Return. Astrostyle.com also provides an easy guide to calculating the date of your own Saturn Return, as well as predictions for the types of changes you can expect.

Saturn Return: 28–30, 58–60, 88–90

In his book Cosmos and Psyche, archetypal astrologer Richard Tarnas writes, “In examining many hundreds of individual biographies I regularly observed that the succeeding three decades—the persons’ 30s, 40s, and 50s—could have been decisively shaped by the structural transformations that took place during the first Saturn Return transit between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty.”¹ It is during their first Saturn Return that many artists, philosophers, musicians, and other cultural creatives deliver their works to the public sphere for the first time, essentially defining their personalities and becoming recognized, in what Tarnas calls a “biographical crystallization.” It was during his first Saturn Return, for example, that Beethoven composed his first symphony and gave his first public concert.

Writer Jack Kerouac completed his most famous work, On the Road, at 29. During her first Saturn Return, Oprah Winfrey became the host of a low-rated half-hour morning talk show in Chicago. Just a few months later, the show had the highest rating in Chicago. With her soaring popularity, The Oprah Winfrey Show began just two years later on television. Friedrich Engels was 28 and Karl Marx 30 when they published The Communist Manifesto. During his Saturn Return, Steven Spielberg directed two of his most famous films, hallmarks in the history of cinema, filled with the taboo and edgy themes that would prevail throughout his career. Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, released in 1975 and 1977, respectively, served as a template for Spielberg’s career and cemented him as a Hollywood icon.

Besides playing the pivotal role in the development of your career, the Saturn Return gives a sense of gravity to your life and your relationships as you reflect on the conditioning of family, social class, education, and religion. Life-changing and life-shaping decisions, often involving endings, occur with the Saturn Return as you mature your perspective on what is considered tangible and real.

References

1. Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View (New York: Viking, 2006), 121.