March 7, 2023 at 5:34 am PT / 8:34 am ET / 13:34 UT
Saturn will remain in Pisces through February 14, 2026
* * *
Early tomorrow morning here in California, on the same day as the Virgo Full Moon, Saturn, Lord of Karma, planet associated with structure, limits, obstacles and difficult lessons, will leave Aquarius, where it's been transiting for the past three years. Saturn entered this sign of society back in March of 2020, in perfect synchrony with COVID lockdowns instituted worldwide. Leaving Aquarius, a sign it rules and where it strides particularly strong, Saturn will now begin a transit of alien territory: the Neptune and Jupiter-ruled sign of Pisces.
Over the next three years, our most earthy, pragmatic planet, Lord of the Realm of Ordinary Reality, will be taking a trip through the sign of non-ordinary reality. When two such contrasting "flavors" are combined such as this, it always makes for a complex and unique stew: one that will take, however, extra effort, extra pains to get right. Let's examine the concepts that lie at the heart of what it means for us all when stoic Saturn moves through Pisces' Sea of Love.
* * *
Coincidentia Oppositorium: The Lord of Form and Structure in the Sign of Dissolution
The heart's wave would never have risen up so beautifully in its cloud of spray, and become spirit, were it not for the grim old cliff of destiny standing in its way.
— Friedrich Hölderlin
The glyph for Saturn shows the cross of manifestation above the curving crescent of spirit, which curiously resembles the sigmoid curve of the yin-yang symbol. With the cross of matter on top, Saturn represents the first law of manifestation: the law of limits. What I am, what I'm not. Where I end, where you begin. Concerned with one's standing, effectiveness, and practical, earthly achievement, Saturn is the builder of structure and 
boundary. When traveling through boundary-dissolving, Neptune- and Jupiter-ruled Pisces, however, its fundamental form-and-structure nature must function in a sign that aims to transcend these same Saturn structures, to merge with — rather than separate from — all else. Needless to say, a difficult combo. Yet, like all complex pairings, the yield can be uniquely fertile creative potential. Saturn-in-Pisces is integration and synthesis, the sacred marriage, the coincidentia oppositorum: the one in the many and the many in the one: a phenomena at the very heart of creation itself, and in mystical understandings found in spiritual traditions and philosophical thinking through the ages worldwide.
For example, Empedocles, Greek, pre-Socratic philosopher, known as the originator (in the West) of the four Classical elements — same used in astrology: fire, earth, air and water — theorized two opposing powers, Love and Strife, as foundational forces that catalyzed all life through the blending and separation of the four elements. Love and Strife, according to Empedocles, while opposing forces, were also equal, balanced and comprised the "stuff" of life. Without the presence of both, he argued, nothing could come into existence. Love and Strife correlate strikingly well with Pisces and Saturn.
Empedocles envisioned Love and Strife conjoined in a circle, symbol of integration, infinity and wholeness, rather than a cross or straight line of opposition/division. The circle and its sister symbol the wheel both represent integration and non-duality: up eventually becomes down, rising and falling, beginning and ending, the circumference and the center, the infinite and the finite. The eternal movement and flow, the dance of life is represented by the circle.
Similarly, another pre-Socratic philosopher, Heraclitis, noted that it is through the tension between the 'warring' ends of the bow that give the arrow the power to fly, as well as the tension in the strings of a musical instrument that give rise to melody. All of which is, as philosopher and neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist pointed out in his recent book, The Matter with Things, what Heraclitis meant by saying 'war is the father of all things' a sentiment commonly misunderstood. "What looks like a waste of effort — pulling in opposite directions — is the essence of generative vitality," McGilchrist writes, adding that "harmony is the reconciliation of things that contend with one another and that "bringing together elements in a manner that is fitting, draws peace out of conflict; and gives birth to beauty out of this reconciliation."
* * *
"Round each 'here' rolls 'there.' The middle is everywhere. The way of eternity is a curve."
— P. D. Ouspensky, The Wheel of Life from The Symbolism of the Tarot
We see this fundamental, complementarity in astrology in the zodiac wheel, itself a circle symbol. The six opposing pairs of signs are a good example, for they not opposing polarites, like the two ends of a magnet, but *share* the same yin or yang, positive or negative polarity, 
a significant bit of embedded wisdom there. Moreover, each polar pair also falls in compatible elements that harmonize. For example, Virgo and Pisces, are opposing signs, both fall in the receptive yin polarity and in the harmonious elements of Earth and Water. The dipoles of Sun and Moon, Venus and Mars are also examples of opposites/complements.
Perhaps the most famous — elegant and beautiful — representation of the integration of opposites is the Taoist taijitu, or yin yang symbol. Here we see the circle divided into two equal sections — and not by a straight line, but an organic, s-curve sigmoid line, suggestive of the perpetual turning of the wheel of life, the spiraling rotation that occurs throughout the universe from the smallest bits of matter to immense galaxies. The symbol's two halves, light and dark, are in harmony, balanced. Each contains the seed (or eye) of the other, simultaneously opposing and conjoining, interrelated: duality and non-duality.
Contraria Sunt Complementa
"Contemporary physics, as so often, confirms metaphysics."
— Iain McGilchrist
Insights into the deeper nature of reality that modern physics has given us, realizations uncovered while peering into the tiny sub-atomic realm, are also examples of the paradox of reality, this simultaneous, intermingled state of contrary forces that form the basis of existence throughout the universe. Modern physics, but also systems biology and fields of mathematics, have been moving, for over 100 years now, towards parallel understandings of the seemingly magical interplay of energy and matter: concepts that ancient wisdom systems, such as astrology, have understood for thousands of years. Ordinary earthly reality (governed by Saturn) and non-ordinary reality (governed by Neptune) are, in the ultimate sense, not contrary but complementary. As German physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker stated: "The first gulp from the beaker of knowledge estranges us from God, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting."
"How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress."
— Niels Bohr
Another interesting example of scientific acknowledgment of the paradox 
inherent in all of life is Danish physicist, Niels Bohr, who very early last century made huge contributions to our understanding of atomic structure and quantum theory, receiving the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. After the Second World War, he was conferred knighthood, and designed his own coat of arms, shown here, that featured the taijitu, along with the motto: contraria sunt complementa, "opposites are complementary." Bohr, who was also a philosopher, understood that paradox, those seemingly contradictory aspects of life, were not so contradictory as they appear. For example, he remarked that it is "the hallmark of any deep truth that its negation is also a deep truth." He noted that everything we call real is actually, at the smallest level, made of things that "cannot be regarded as real." If quantum mechanics hasn't "profoundly shocked you," he said, "made you dizzy, you haven't understood it yet."
"I myself find the division of the world into an objective and a subjective side much too arbitrary. The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a subjective side won't get us very far."
— Niels Bohr
* * *
Turning to a different field of science, we find an equally striking (but closer to home) example of the dual nature of reality: our own divided brains, their function and dysfunction. Dr. Iain McGilchrist, whom I've already mentioned, psychiatrist, neuroscientist, philosopher and former professor of English at Oxford, a true polymath, over the last two decades has been researching and writing about the brain's hemispheres, work which resonates profoundly with Saturn's transit of Pisces: the need for integration, cooperation and balance. McGilchrist argues that much of the imbalance in our modern era has to do with the left hemisphere of the brain — which is far less intelligent and capable of taking in reality than the right hemisphere — becoming more and more dominant. "A way of thinking which is reductive, mechanistic has taken us over," McGilchrist notes, and "we behave like people who have right hemisphere damage. The left hemisphere treats the world as simply a resource to be exploited and while it has enabled us to become enormously powerful, we have lost the means to understand the world, to make sense of it, to feel satisfaction and fulfilment through our place in the world."
"The two hemispheres have styles — takes, if you like, on the world. They see things differently. They prioritize different things. They have different values. The left hemisphere's goal is to enable us to manipulate things, whereas the goal of the right hemisphere is to relate to things and understand them as a whole. Two ways of thinking that are both needed, but are fundamentally at the same time incompatible."
— Iain McGilchrist
Iain McGilchrist discusses, in the talk below, this key theme the "coincidence of opposites" offering many thought-provoking examples from a wide range of disciplines: literature, philosophy, science and religion, some of which I've borrowed above, insights that lie at the heart of this Saturn-in-Pisces challenge we will experience together over the next three years.
I believe that we are engaged in committing suicide: intellectual suicide, moral suicide and physical suicide. If there is anything as important as stopping us poisoning our seas and destroying our forests, it is stopping us poisoning our minds and destroying our souls.
Our dominant value — sometimes I fear our only value — has, very clearly, become that of power. This aligns us with a brain system, that of the left hemisphere, the raison d'être of which is to control and manipulate the world. But not to understand it: that, for evolutionary reasons that I explain, has come to be more the raison d'être of our — more intelligent, in every sense — right hemisphere. Unfortunately the left hemisphere, knowing less, thinks it knows more. It is a good servant, but a ruinous — a peremptory — master. And the predictable outcome of assuming the role of master is the devastation of all that is important to us — or should be important, if we really know what we are about.
Even if we could, by some miracle, reverse the course on which we are set, unless we change our way of thinking, of being in the world — the way that is destroying us as we speak — it would all be in vain. This is why I have written the last long book I will ever write: The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World.
— Iain McGilchrist
* * *
The Saturn-Neptune Conjunction of 2026
Pisces is the 12th and final sign of the zodiac wheel and marks a closing phase of dissolution, conclusion and letting go. When Saturn swings around to transit this sign, it signals the end of a 29 year cycle in which The Lord of Karma made the entire circuit of the zodiac wheel, and is preparing to begin again. The passage of Saturn in Pisces is even more pronounced this time around due to Neptune, transiting Pisces right now as well, the two performing a remarkably synchronous dance that will culminate in a conjunction right on the Aries point: the initial degree of the initial sign of the zodiac wheel. This marks a significant new beginning born of the marriage of spirit and matter, Saturn and Neptune.
Saturn will remain in Pisces until late May 2025 when he dips his toes for a few months in Aries, moving back and forth until entering Aries to stay on (interestingly) Valentine's Day 2026. Coincidentally, Neptune will perform the same dance, stepping from Pisces to Aries and back again in 2025 through early 2026. On Feb 20, 2026, six days after Saturn's final entry into Aries, he will catch up with Neptune.
If we do not rise to the Saturn-in-Pisces/Saturn-Neptune higher challenge and work to end destructive warring and division, if we do not begin the serious, urgent work to reverse the damage we've done to this beautiful, sacred planet of ours, we will indeed perish. We will not be part of this new beginning the world is moving towards.
The Saturn-Neptune Pas de Deux: 2023-2026
- Mar 7, 2023 Saturn enters Pisces
- Mar 30, 2025 Neptune enters Aries
- May 25, 2025 Saturn enters Aries
- Sept 1, 2025 Saturn rx into Pisces
- Oct 22, 2025 Neptune rx into Pisces
- Jan 26, 2026 Neptune re-enters Aries
- Feb 14, 2026 Saturn re-enters Aries
- Feb 20, 2026 Saturn-Neptune conjunction at 0 Aries 45
Blue Moon Astrology is free of ads and free to all. If you enjoy reading this blog — my "one-woman show" as writer, editer, graphic designer and coder, please make a donation if you can. The financial support is very much appreciated.
If you'd like notification when I post new articles: subscribe to my mailing list.
Book a Reading with Elaine!
Meigetsuin Temple · Kazuyuki Ohtsu
A quality astrology reading can help us navigate through life more effectively, to not only meet challenges with more awareness and power, but to recognize and make the most of opportunities.
What Clients Have Said
"I just wanted to take a minute to tell you how often I go back to the reading you did for me. I listened to it twice, taking notes the second time, and now when I am feeling a little lost...or pissed off (:-) or just like I can't make sense of anything, I go back and re-read or listen to sections of it and it helps IMMENSELY! Thank you for all your talented and thoughtful work!" — T.F.
* * *
"Elaine, your reading has enabled me to see the big picture as I've never seen it before. I've been aware of much of what you've spoken, but not had the clarity to deal with it. I really have had such an awakening with your reading, for which I will be forever thankful." — M.O
Find out more
© Elaine Kalantarian, all rights reserved