Saturn in Pisces - Compassion and Deception

Saturn’s passage through the sign of Pisces began in March of this year and will end in February 2026. I have been reflecting on the personal and collective themes that are connected with Saturn in Pisces for several months when the recent Israel-Palestine conflict brought some of them into sharp relief. There is a lot to say about Saturn in Pisces and I will only be able to touch on one or two themes in this article but maybe I will cover more about this topic in a future newsletter.  

The individuals and organizations that embody or express the Saturnian archetype of authority and conservativism will focus their attention on matters pertaining to the sign Saturn happens to be in but also the very way they express their authority can also be coloured by this sign. Many areas of life come under the domain of Pisces such as the seas and oceans, chemicals, drugs (both recreational and pharmaceutical) and many facets of popular culture such as TV and film especially where creative imagination is involved and feeling is evoked or manipulated. So we are likely to see restrictions and new regulations in these areas over the next few years. We have already had Hollywood writers and actors go on strike this year which will both restrict and cause lengthy delays to many major tv and film productions. With regard to recreational drugs Saturn was in Pisces during the mid-sixties when the decision was taken by numerous governments to ban LSD which was being experimented with by a wide range of people. Saturn is still in the very early degrees of Pisces at the moment but already the UK government has just announced it intends to make nitrous oxide or laughing gas illegal. However, there are also strong indications that cannabis will continue to be decriminalised, especially within the western world.  

If the authorities themselves become more Piscean, that could mean that general governance might become more chaotic and confused. It is good to bear in mind that when I refer to authorities in the context of Saturn I am referring to all types of authority from government, the judiciary, central banks etc on a public scale to the boss at work, teachers at school and parents at home on an individual scale. Thus most adults in their daily life must contend with Saturnian authority figures as well as being one to others. The nature of Pisces likes to be flexible and to change plans as the mood takes it so it can be hard to pin down. Therefore any rules laid down by authorities during this time may not be set in stone, also goalposts may be moved and policies reversed etc. Taking this tendency further we come to evasiveness and even deception. If a big corporation is found to have acted unethically in some way then those responsible may well manage to slip through the net like a slippery fish and avoid accountability.  

Examining Saturn in more depth we tend to find that Saturn can also hold back and restrict some of the natural characteristics and qualities of the sign it is in. One of the best qualities of Pisces is the feeling that the whole human race and the world is intimately connected and makes up an interdependent whole. Out of this feeling of connectedness and unity a natural compassion arises for all one’s brothers and sisters on this planet. The sign of Pisces is well known for engendering in some a deep sympathy and empathy for all those who are suffering, irrespective of whether we know them personally or not, or whether they share our race, religion, gender, political views or not, or even whether they brought about their own suffering through their inept or immoral actions. The gift that Pisces can bring to the world is the unconditional compassion for suffering. With Saturn in Pisces this compassion can become held back in some people especially those who have authority and this more cold-hearted attitude taken by leaders and the media can go on to influence many people. The sign opposing Pisces is Virgo which seeks to go into details, to analyse a situation and to criticise where it sees fault. These Virgoan traits are of course very necessary especially once a crisis has passed so that it can be understood and to prevent it from happening again. However, with Saturn currently in Pisces this is not the time to get caught up in determining who is most to blame but to put all that to one side and to do what Pisces does best which is to attend to the needs of sick, injured and vulnerable.  

While it is fairly clear in humanitarian crises such as in Palestine at the moment that aid and support is urgently needed to save and protect lives, in other situations the question of what it means to truly help another is not so straightforward. Many people who have Pisces emphasised in their natal charts are drawn into helping vocations and charitable actions. However, like all things, this healthy desire to help can be carried too far and lead to various unhealthy expressions of the rescuer archetype. One aspect of the rescuer complex originates from guilt where there was a failure to give help that led to a negative consequence and now the individual tries to compensate for that. In such a case the rescuer can be exploited by people who, consciously or not, play the role of helpless victim to draw on that guilt and get them to give help where it is not essential. Another possibility is where the rescuer is seeking to rescue someone who may genuinely be in need of help but does not want it. This occurs with people that have addictions or other problems but refuse or are unable to acknowledge them. They may well be heading for a precipice but there is not much that can be done until they recognise that they have a problem. So while there is a danger of Saturn damming up the flow of compassion there is also the other danger of Saturn seeking to impose help on those who do not need it or who are not ready to receive it.  

Another more sinister side to the rescuer complex is when the rescuer deliberately brings about the crisis and then steps in to rescue all those who are suffering as a result or wildly exaggerates a potential problem and intervenes to prevent it from becoming a catastrophe. As mentioned earlier, Pisces can be deceptive and fraudulent so there is a danger of authorities distorting the reality of a situation to suit their own agenda. One example of this was western governments using Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction as the main reason for going to war, when it turned out that the evidence Iraq had these weapons was suspect to say the least. One highly bizarre and fantastical rumour doing the rounds on the internet at the moment is that the authorities in America are planning to feign an alien invasion through a combination of sophisticated holographic projection technology and some experimental military aircraft. If this were to happen it would get the public panicking and calling on their leaders to defend them from this false threat. Psychologically it would lead to a feeling of helplessness and we would gladly give up some freedoms and power to the state in return for safety and security. This is of course just a rumour and Piscean rumours are always much more ‘out there’ than most but like all good science fiction and fantasy stories they tap into the collective fears and struggles of the times and it does describe the darker side of the rescuer archetype very well.  

On a more positive note, as planets pass through different signs it is possible, for those who are interested in looking, to see and understand the themes of the planet/sign combination much more clearly than can be done at other times. While Saturn is in Pisces deception and camouflage operating within authority can become more obvious to the observer and likewise it can be easier to spot when people have shut down their humanity and compassion and are indifferent to the suffering of others. The key thing is developing the courage to see the truth for there is a strong tendency in most of us to not want to observe these less than desirable traits in the people we look up to or, even more so, in ourselves. 

So during these strange and distressing times it is important we keep our hearts open to all those who are suffering and for help to flow to the truly needy irrespective of politics and criticism and at the same time to be wary of deception, especially the kind that seeks to manipulate the feeling life or to generate sympathy or antipathy towards specific individuals and groups.

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