Did you have a favorite teacher in school?

I’ve been thinking a lot about former teachers and professors lately, especially Ms. Cherry, my 6th grade social studies teacher, and Michael Berk, my architecture professor at Mississippi State. I’ve actually thought about these two many times since taking their classes because both of them saw me in a way and at a time when it made a deep impact on me.

In astrology, the planet Saturn is considered our cosmic teacher. Last Friday, the 13th, Saturn moved into the sign of Aries for a two-year visit it hasn’t made since 1996-1999.

What lessons were you learning during those years?

In 1996, I was eleven. I’d just discovered a budding passion for writing. Synchronistically, as Saturn returns to Aries again 30 year later, my mind is once again consumed with the pleasure and fulfillment of writing. At eleven-years-old, I’d started writing short stories in a royal blue, spiral notebook. I ended up losing the notebook, and Ms. Cherry found it and read it.

One morning, she returned it to me. In front of the whole class, she told me, “I showed it to Ms. ___, and I said, That girl can write!”

Although Saturn gets a bad reputation for being strict, it ultimately wants us to live our full potential and seeks to realign us with our purpose. Ms. Cherry, my literal teacher, was a Saturnian influence in my life. With her perceptive powers, she spoke a single sentence that awakened my sense of possibility.

Several years later, another Saturnian influence tried to offer gentle and compassionate guidance. My architecture professor, Michael Berk, asked me one day as I sat in his small office: “Would you rather wake up every day and go to the architecture studio, or would you rather wake up every day and write?” Professor Berk saw me before I was ready to see myself.

But I ignored his subtle, Saturnian guidance, despite how depressed I felt in architecture. It took a much firmer and more direct approach from Saturn to finally get the message across. The next semester, a visiting professor gave me the “D” I deserved, which shook me awake. With this harsher lesson, I conceded that architecture wasn’t it for me, and I transferred to the English department, where I belonged.

Saturn gets firm when we’re ignoring its early, more gentle guidance and nudges.

While Saturn travels through Aries every 30 years or so, this time is quite unique because it’s making a conjunction with Neptune at 0 degrees of Aries this Friday, February 20th.

Think of this as a mental power-up.

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Zero degrees of Aries is the very first degree of the entire zodiac, so this new cycle is new new and filled with possibility. While Saturn is the teacher, Neptune is the dreamer.

With their powers combining to kick off this new era, the highest potential is that we dream fiercely, bold, audacious dreams, and we also have the discipline and we build the structures needed to ground our dreams into lived reality.

To top it off, as Saturn and Neptune meet at zero degrees of Aries, they begin to form a supportive angle with Pluto and Uranus. That’s four generational planets all working in harmony. By their powers combined, this new cycle is pushing us to the brink of a new era that is deeply transformative and liberating.

One one hand: Neptune will say, let’s build this fantastical piece of architecture! And Saturn will coach us to engineer a rock-solid foundation on which to build that fantasy so that it stands the test of time.

On the other hand: Saturn will ask us, what’s practical and where do we need to put in the hard work? Yet Neptune will remind us that there’s so much more to life than checking off our to-do lists. Neptune will also remind us that it’s okay to dream a new dream beyond what already exists.

In other words, Saturn and Neptune can balance each other out, like an odd couple with the perfect mix of yin and yang. They make good collaborators, even if they annoy each other at times.

This balance is what I encourage us to focus on— The wisdom of Saturn with the imagination of Neptune can help us create a life and a world that’s truly remarkable!

Even in saying that, I feel called to add that imagination itself has its own kind of wisdom… But I’ll put a pin in that for later.

I suspect that if we’re paying attention to our lives, we’ll organically notice where we can channel more Neptunian imagination and where we need to channel more Saturnian knowledge and structure. Here are some journal prompts and affirmations to stoke your awareness, keeping in mind that these slow moving planets speak to themes that unfold over time.

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A beautiful, astrology inspired live musical performance!

Sincerely,