Saturn Conjunct the South Node in 2019

See my other writings:

• Saturn Conjunct the South Node in the Birth Chart – An article on Saturn Conjunct the South Node as it occurs in the birth chart
• Saturn Conjunct the South Node – Karmic Transfer – A review of Saturn and the South Node’s extended conjunction in 2019

Saturn and the South node conjoin on April 30, 2019, just as Saturn stations retrograde (the South Node’s primary direction). Usually, this once-per-twelve-year conjunction would only last about a week. But this time, they roll together in reverse, and Saturn is conjunct the South Node for six months! Thus, a short opportunity for karmic balancing becomes a major energetic influence.

What does the South Node signify in astrology?

• The South Node is an opening through which energies can be released and excreted.
  • Ideally, the exiting energies are the unessential, the unhealthy, those energies which do not contribute to fullness, to full expression of a planet. The effect can be described as deepening through diminishment, to borrow a phrase from teacher and writer Stephen Jenkinson. Like a strengthening by way of pruning.
  • If the non-essential energies are clung to and not allowed to leave, they quickly become our undoing, pressurizing the affected planet so that it becomes a point of weakness. The lessons of the South Node revolve around unattachment.
• The South Node is inherently tied to Earth energy. We can learn a lot about the South Node by observing and witnessing the behaviors of Earth’s ecosystems, and the beings all around us.

The State of Saturn

• A strong, healthy Saturn:
  • Serves as a guardian for the other planets, keeping their energies in balance.
  • Acts as a keeper and deliverer of wisdom
  • Protects sacredness
  • Represents elements of the sacred masculine
  • Creates systems that retain balance and efficiency. In medical astrology, Saturn rules the bones, the skeleton. It’s the framework that holds it all together.
  • Seeks to align all beings and structures with their state of grace. And with the word grace, I hope to mean true essence, purity, and fullness and potency of presence. I mean actual power.
  • Acknowledges and embraces limit and ending.
    • Our concept of time is part of this

So, upon considering what a healthy Saturn looks like, it becomes simple to accept that we live in a time when Saturn’s well-being has been severely corrupted.

• Toxic representations of all planets, Saturn included, run amok.
• The divine masculine only survives underground. In dominant culture, it’s become very cut-and-dry: a man of power is a man of material wealth. And you can bet he’s unsatisfied, and gunning for more.
• Elderhood has been lost to a disrespected and sequestered aging population.
• Wisdom has taken second fiddle to what’s-new-ism and its partner in crime, confusion.
• Sacredness is overshadowed by a paradigm of knowledge that rests on life being random and meaningless, eliminating the sacred.
• Unsustainable systems based on speed, greed, and constant, accelerating, unchecked growth. 
  • Consider the capitalist economy. If the incessant growth even slows down, the financial world rings the alarm. 
  • A natural system, on the other hand, has determined limits. For example, my skeleton might shrink, but at this point, I’m not getting any taller. This is what healthy Saturn looks like. Acknowledging limit is what leads to true flourishment in the here and now.

Saturn conjunct the South Node: What is the time ripe for?

• Dysfunctional structures and systems will struggle. The time to pay their karmic debt has come. 
  • Large-scale farming that robs the soil
  • Conventional construction that’s obsessed with cheapness and speed 
  • Large companies in general.
    • But, the bigger and more thoroughly engrained these institutions are, the more adversity they can weather. And their back-up plans tend to draw their contingency resources from the bottom up. These resources–the earth and the labor pool–will pay the immediate bill.
• Those people who recognize that the corrupted systems of dominant culture do nothing but take from them—these folks may finally elect to turn the tables, begin their abandonment of the global economic system, and gravitate to more localized economies.
• People, systems, institutions that are more oriented toward the South Node will not struggle as much as those more oriented toward the North Node. They may feel quite at home, and flourish. Subtly, of course, as they do. The time is very rich for spiritual pursuit.
• A significant cultural shift toward:
  • Seeking out our ancestry and past lives
  • Ancestral lineage repair—connecting spiritually with our ancestors
  • Finding our way to functional indigenous traditions and techniques: ways that recognize and imitate nature.
• For those approaching old age and/or retirement, this is a really good time to clock out, and begin devoting that energy to the next phases, coming to terms with your mortality. 
  • To seek within and become more attentive to self. 
  • To wonder about elderhood and what that truly means. 
  • To age like wine. To deepen and enrich.
  • To bring focus to quality and dearness, and to detach from worries of quantity and scarcity, of not enough time, of “I wish I was young again.”
• It is time for all of us to find our grace. 
  • Perhaps you’re there. Or on your way. Or it feels quite distant, or cloudy.
  • Well, it’s time for Essence. Time to slide the non-essential to the side. We’re reaching for grace. We’re seeking to align with our truth.
  • And keep in mind, often the best path to our grace begins with a fall.

Dates

• April 30th, 20’31” Capricorn. Saturn stations retrograde on this day as well, further amplifying the effect of Saturn conjunct the South Node.
• June 14-19 Mars (with Mercury and the North Node) in Cancer, opposite Saturn and Pluto, with the South Node.
• July 16: full moon, lunar eclipse along the nodes. 
  • Venus is exactly opposite Saturn. 
  • Moon, Pluto, Saturn, and South Node are opposite Sun, Venus, and North Node.
• August 3rd – Sept 9th: Saturn and the South Node are outside of a 2 degree orb, so the conjunction’s effects may be lesser.
• Sept 28 at 2:22 AM EST is the final conjunction at 13’59” Capricorn.
• October 13: the conjunction loosens beyond the 2 degree orb for the final time.
• October 2007 was the most recent Saturn-South Node conjunction.
• This will not happen again until October 2030, weaving into February 2031.

Spirit channeler Sacha Louise at Bare Root Awakenings delivers channeled messages from elemental spirits regarding this conjunction. Fascinating symbols and remediations appear! Check it out.