By Len Wallick
We are able to find everything in our memory
–Marcel Proust
Today is Memorial Day in the United States, a national holiday set aside in tribute to those who have given their lives in military service. It is synchronistic that this is also the first full day of Saturn out of retrograde, once again moving forward, affording us a review of the past and a clue to the future. The ringed one stationed direct yesterday (just after 19:08 UTC) at twenty-seven degrees, forty-nine arc minutes, fifty-seven arc seconds in late Virgo.
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Let us remember.
Saturn first entered Virgo on Sept. 2, 2007. While there, it exacted its first of five oppositions (180 degrees aspect) to Uranus in Pisces — this, on the same day Pres. Obama was elected. On Oct. 29, 2009 it dipped a toe into the next sign, Libra, much as Chiron (in Pisces) and Uranus (in Aries) are doing now. Soon thereafter it exacted its first of three square aspects (90 degrees of separation) with Pluto in Capricorn.
On April 8 of this year, Saturn retrograded back into Virgo as if to get its affairs in order. It will return to Libra this coming July 21st to exact one more opposition to Uranus, one more square to Saturn and one more square to Pluto in the weeks to follow. Then it will move on to enjoy a vacation of sorts in Libra, a sign in which the ringed one is exalted. That transit that will last until Oct. 5, 2012.
For now, until late July, there will be a glimpse of the future in remembrance of the past. Among other things, Saturn in astrology represents the principles of contraction, limits and boundaries. It has an affinity for definition in structure. Among other things Mercury, the ruling planet of Virgo represents adaptability with regards to our thinking as well as being amenable to variable means of communication. The challenge of Saturn’s transit in Virgo has been to integrate the qualities of the two planets — a challenge that for the most part, has been unmet. These are affairs to be gotten in order, yet two successive Mercury retrogrades in Earth signs, Capricorn and Taurus, have not helped. These disruptive transits have periodically placed the mutable at odds with the grounded at what seemed to be the worst possible times.