Take me to church

a review of Saturn in Pisces

This month we see the mid-season finale of Saturn in Pisces and who amongst us isn’t ready for a reprieve from the Piscean overload we’ve been wading through?

It follows hot on the heels of Neptune and ingresses into Aries on 24/25 May. With only a couple of weeks left, let’s reflect on how this 2-year transit has shaped us.

Incensed? You will be!

Saturn - no fun allowed!

Before William Herschel discovered Uranus in the 1780’s Saturn was as far as we could see and was the traditional boundary of our solar system. It straddles the bridge between the inner planets which impact our day-to-day lives and the outer belt of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, that effect more far reaching generational change.

Named after the Roman God, who evolved from the Greek Cronos - Saturn’s story is really quite unsavoury. He castrated his father Ouranos (Uranus) with a sickle, although he had his reasons, and it was at his mother’s behest. Fearing the same patricidal fate he later got into the habit of devouring his own children (really unacceptable tbh) and to cap it all he’s been muddled and mixed with the concept of Satan ever since. So, he’s hardly anyone’s favourite.

Although he’s often associated with spoiling everyone’s fun. I prefer the more nuanced idea of Saturn as a morally neutral ‘Matrix’.

He imposes reality with all of its limitations and restrictions, interwoven with opportunity for realisation and growth.

We can either regard the Matrix, Maya, Saturnian rules and regulations as a prison, or a playing field. Without the Saturnian shortcomings of flesh, blood, and gravity - we’d presumably all still be interdimensional shapeshifters unbound by time and space, tripping balls in a vibrant humming primordial soup of interconnected consciousness.

And that might sound like fun dear reader, but in reality a few hours of limitless potential experiencing everything everywhere all at once would probably leave you hankering for the 45 minutes you spent incarnated in this mortal coil, sniffling with a cold, on a rainy Monday, listening to interminable hold muzak whilst waiting in a phone queue to speak to someone at the tax office.

Old friends of the AstroTerica Substack Rudolf Steiner and Edgard Cayce both felt Saturn symbolised a foundational and karmic archetype within the tapestry of human consciousness. And who are we to argue with them?

Steiner viewed him as the archetypal end-of-term exam, testing our progress in our spiritual development.

Cayce described him more as an ever-present reminder of past life karma.

Classic CBBC - The Demon Headmaster (aka Saturn)

He’s a double-edged sword the old bugger, sometimes the strict taskmaster: you WILL study for the test, go on that diet and save those pennies!

But he also helps us lay groundwork, create structures, and build something solid.

What’s in it for you?

If you know your birth time, draw up a birth chart here and check which is your Pisces house.

Then reflect on where you have felt Saturn’s icy cold grip constricting you – and permit yourself a little celebratory dance - cos hurrah, that’s on its way out.

You can also ask yourself what you’ve been able to materialise in this area of your life? Has it happened yet, or are you on the precipice of achieving something concrete?

If your rising sign is Aries then Pisces is your 12th house and so on, find your rising sign here:

Aries: 12^th House –subconscious, deepest dreams, interior life, rest and regeneration

Taurus: 11^th House friends, social networks, clubs, or community

Gemini: 10^th career, public image, reputation, status, achievements, father/ father figure

Cancer: 9^th House - higher education, philosophy, teaching, beliefs, or foreign shores

Leo: 8^th House - sex, death, taxes, other people’s money, the occult

Virgo: 7^th House –relationships, love (marriage), contracts, business partners, audience

Libra: 6^th House – work, health, day-to-day routine, service, pets

Scorpio: 5^th House - creativity, children, fun, and love

Sagittarius: 4^th House – home, family, origins or mother / mother figure.

Capricorn: 3^rd House –neighbours, siblings, life in your local area, and travel (local

Aquarius: 2^nd House – money, possessions, values, what goes in your mouth

Pisces: 1^st House –body, ego, identity, personal goals

Saturn in Pisces - the wider world

What has Saturn in Pisces meant for the collective?

Since ingressing into Pisces in March 2023, the main headline (for me, anyway) is a materialisation (Saturn) and a reinforcing of rules, boundaries, and dogma (also Saturn) in terms of religion and spirituality (Pisces).

#FINDGOD

In the past decade the concept of what it means to be spiritual expanded exponentially to include the broad and whacky church of the New Age.

From UFO’s to Annunaki to crystals, sage, angels, and Galactics; whatever floats your boat became mainstream and available. The concept of energy is embedded in the common parlance, we all know our rising sign, (don’t we?!) and Mercury Retrograde is now an established calendrical event.

And yet the past 2 years of Saturn in Pisces sparked an interesting pushback of the old order.

Many have returned to the church, and organised religion seems to be making a bit of a comeback amongst the youth.

Is this an understandable reaction to the growing degeneracy and soullessness of popular culture (another aspect of Pisces)?

We could be forgiven seeking comfort from the pulpit when constantly confronted with wall-to-wall ‘ewww’ moments spewed all over the popular culture like: exhibit A - any campaign by Balenciaga, exhibit B - the Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony, and exhibit C - Kim Kardashian’s Christmas 2024 video message, which featured the aftermath of a festive meth-fuelled Yuletide gangbang). How lovely. (And no, I didn’t add links to that list, because I don’t want to put you off your dinner.)

To quote the great prophet Ian Brown memorably reviewing Marilyn Manson’s first hit video on a popular youth and music show back in the 90’s “It just makes me want to have a bath with a wire brush” - and don’t we all feel a bit like that after 2 minutes of scrolling Tiktok?

Although to be fair Manson himself, along with pals Ye and Justin Bieber managed to find God all the way back in 2022 - so he was slightly ahead of the Saturn in Pisces curve there.

casawi.magazine

A post shared by @casawi.magazine

(UPDATE - at the time of going to press - I’m not sure whether Manson is still on speaking terms with Jesus. Bieber is … but Ye has sadly lost his number).

Saturn is Pisces seems to have given many erstwhile bad boys the structure, discipline and let’s face it, the forgiveness. they needed.

Ask Suge Knight about The Egg.

And it’s not just about vibes - there’s even revision of revisionism. (Typical Saturn - so much revision!)

Just as we were all coming to terms with the fact that the Bible was misinterpreted and we weren’t descended from Adam and Eve but in fact from Reptililan Space Lizards who enslaved us to mine their Gold, and implanted their DNA into chimpanzees - archetypal spoilsport and churchy prefect Wes Huff bounds onto the scene.

If you like a cringe watch - go right ahead

Many of you will have watched the car-crash podcast where Huff, (imagine Ned Flanders if he did Crossfit), surgically dismantled the Archdeacon of the Church of Ancient Sumer Billy Carson on topics like Codex Sinaticus and Gospel of Barnabas.

Carson’s life seems to have been in freefall ever since, and Huff did a smug victory lap on Joe Rogan where he tried not to gloat in his best Christian fashion, but didn’t quite pull it off.

And yet this feels less like a return to the traditional church and more like a last hurrah. As impressive as Huff seems to those of us who can’t read Coptic or carbon date a papyrus, I note with interest that he has so far carefully chosen his debating partners, steering clear of scholarly theologians who have debunked him preferring to swipe at the lower hanging fruit of Carson and the Gaia TV type narrative.

It’s so typical of Saturn in Pisces really - just as we’d all started to prise open our third eye, there’s a resurgence of Christian fundamentalism. *Eye roll* (or should that be *3rd eye roll*?!)

I like David Palmer The Leo King’s take on this:

Religion right now is being used like a crutch, like someone sucking down their last cigarette before walking into the doors of a detox facility. It’s not because it’s wrong—it’s because we’re afraid. People are terrified of realizing how much of their identity, their morality, and their understanding of the universe has been handed to them, not discovered by them. They’ve been told what to believe, how to feel, who to trust, and what to fear. And the truth behind the veil threatens to unravel all of it.

I think we’re not yet at the end-point of organised religion (let’s give it till March 2026 at least) but we are witnessing a degradation of its former prestige and untouchability. The death of Pope Francis at the hands of Catholic convert JD Vance* on Easter Monday felt like a significant comma in this transit, rather than a full stop.

*just kidding!

Pope Donald XXXXVII?

For those independently and entrepreneurially minded, as Saturn ‘makes things real’ there’s also never been a better time to start your own religion! Maybe take the summer off to draw up some ideas, then launch it Autumn / Winter.

Grow Your Own, FFS!

There’s also a lot of chat that the fast-becoming mainstream use of psychedelics, and billionaire investment in pharmaceutical psychedelic rip-offs, is leading up to the creation of a new religion – or at least a mass-market for a religious experience.

This episode of the Danny Jones podcast provides an interesting perspective from Travis Kitchens, a Johns Hopkins researcher in the field of psychedelics. It’s worth a watch although Kitchens seems both overly nihilistic and spectacularly missing the point of psychedelics, and spiritual experiences - and I intellectually divested from his argument when he let slip that he was an admirer of Flint Dibble. (IYKYK)

But could there be a smidgen of truth here? After all, ever since Serge Monast’s Project Bluebeam theory we’ve been primed for the forthcoming attempt to psy-op us into a new Alien overlord scenario.

We also have the terrifying and/ or hilarious prospect of the UK’s Kier Starmer (puppeted no doubt by Bill Gates or whatever), threatening to block out the Sun.

The actual Sun.

Terrifying because it seems like folly of civilisation-ending proportions.

Hilarious because architects like Starmer, Gates or Ed Milliband (hasn’t he gone downhill guys? He used to be nice, right?!) make Mr Bean look competent and so hopefully we can rest easy that it’s just not going to happen.

AI Armageddon Outta Here!

We also have AI capturing the collective imagination. As a luddite who has not so much as downloaded it onto my phone, I’m heartily sick of hearing about it, and yet - it’s not going away.

Might this all-seeing eye of our collective consciousness as collated by the almighty Algorithm usurp what we formerly considered a higher power?

I mean - why go to all the trouble of hours sitting in disciplined meditation to connect with your higher self, when you can seek external validation from Chat GPT, and get a reassuringly sycophantic answer?

And amidst this Saturn in Pisces Rollcall of Shame - let’s not forget the strange and unsettling gazllionaire Bryan Johnson of ‘Don’t Die’ Netflix fame starting his own religion.

I’ll give it to him, the idea of a religion, like a member’s club where the perk is: you don’t die is probably going to do quite well. It’s not exactly original but it adroitly taps into our most primal fear, like any pyramid scheme / ideology worth its salt. So maybe he’s onto something?

I’ve not watched Brian’s show as I already have a cupboard full of supplements, and a pop-up infrared sauna, but the pathologically death-averse Johnson’s ethereally waxy and bloodless appearance makes me wonder whether he hasn’t already embalmed himself as a precautionary measure.

Anyway, I hope we can all evade our eventual demise long enough to come back for a second helping of Saturn-focused Substack action.

In the next installment let’s cast our gaze forwards to Saturn’s ingress into Aries and all that that entails. **Spoiler Alert** it’s less wet blanket, and more flamethrower. What fun!

Let me know how your Saturn in Pisces experience panned out in the comments, and whether you’re considering booking yourself into a convent, or perhaps starting your own religion anytime soon.

Until next time!