THE SATURN/NEPTUNE OPPOSITION OF 2006-2007
Part Three

copyright 2006 Arielle Guttman

The Saturn/Neptune Opposition—August 31, 2006

The Saturn/Neptune Opposition—June 25, 2007

The above maps* show the first and last passes of Saturn and Neptune against the global map. As we observe, the west coast of North America, the east coast of Brazil, the Middle East, Japan, New Guinea and Australia may all be re-organizing themselves under the current thrust of planetary activity, and at least by the second passage in February 2007, Asia ought to be handling some pretty heavy issues, with the solar eclipse of that period pinpointing Asia, along with Saturn and Neptune. The latitudes of 14° to 15° are similarly impacted, both north and south hemispheres, which include countries in South America, southern Asia, and Africa.

Now that we’ve looked at the start of this cycle, let’s take a look at the last time Saturn opposed Neptune. The period was 1971 to 1972, and some of the history making events were as follows:

• U.S. troops are waging war in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos
• U.S./China relations begin
• Charles Manson killings occur
• The U.S. dollar is significantly devalued
• The Jesus Movement takes off in America
• The Concert for Bangla-Desh, a huge relief effort
• The election of Richard Nixon is fraught with unlawful and fraudulent incidents, namely Watergate scandal which eventually forced his resignation from office

Another war was raging, in southeast Asia, with U.S. troops spreading from VietNam to Cambodia and Laos. The country and world was consumed with the two very divisive sides of the issue. It was again a Republican presidency (Nixon who himself was a Saturn ruled sign, Capricorn, with the planet Neptune overhead in Washington in his Astro*Carto*Graphy© map** in effect bringing those two planets into a head-on collision to begin with). And during his term of office, Saturn made its opposition to Neptune, resulting in the shame of returning our soldiers home in defeat in a war that could not be won. Are we doomed to repeat the same lesson history has tried to teach us before? We also witnessed a president leaving office in humiliation because of the exposure of the illegal activities that occurred to seemingly get him elected to begin with. If a truly Supreme Higher Court were to judge such deeds, would they deem Watergate worthy of impeachment and not election fraud, not once but twice? Are we doomed to repeat this same lesson of history again? Everyone suspects the elections that put George W. Bush in office had the votes manipulated. During this coming Saturn/Neptune aspect, the truth of the matter, long suspected, surely cannot be denied. If the U.S. Constitution is worth the paper it is printed on, this issue will find its way to come to some court of law for due process.

History has shown us that on the political stage, the Saturn/Neptune opposition has the overall effect of weakening if not totally deflating one’s leadership abilities when one is not acting out of truth (Neptune) and integrity (Saturn). This is the message to our overall life pattern during this cycle. You can look at what lies or truths you are telling yourself to do your job everyday or stay with your current program. If the program resonates with your own deeper truth, the program will inspire you and others and lead to good fortune overall. If the program clashes with your own deeper truth and continues to shroud or mask your true self or your true abilities, it will collapse in one degree or another of humiliation.

The truth of the Saturn/Neptune opposition is that we must fact the truth or lies of our own existence in one way or another. We must not pretend to be something we are not, and we must look carefully at what we believe to be the truth of someone else who is at the helm of the ship we are sailing upon. If born with a Saturn/Neptune aspect that is not attuned to ease and comfort, but one that produces great stress for the individual, they will usually choose to give their authority away to someone else or a higher power or institution in which they believe. If so, they are more easily swayed into joining into a chorus already chiming a message they want to hear, and letting someone else handle the administration of such beliefs.

The airwaves, more and more, have been highly contaminated with the spread of stories that spread like viruses and scare people to death. Obviously this period can amplify this situation to an even more critical degree. But remember that Neptune, ruling the not just the worst of the sign of Pisces, but also the best, offers incredible charity, compassion and upliftment – not only from being able to shatter or dissolve Saturn’s boundaries, but also to merge, unify and come together with something much greater than ourselves – the acting of spirit upon matter -- to effect these great movements.

We can use this planetary period wisely—spreading good news that inspires peace and hope instead of focusing on just all the wrong things that are going on in the world. What story inspires us to be circulated and to emulate, spreading itself around the planet like the hundredth monkey? A case in point is this: The perfect Saturn/Neptune idea that has emerged right now is the message contained in Al Gore’s book and film, “An Inconvenient Truth”.*** Read the book, see the movie, but anyone who has seen the movie’s penetrating visual images of the dangers of global warming must certainly see Saturn/Neptune at work. The glaciers of the world (frozen water—shelves and sheets of ice – Saturn) rapidly melting, dissolving and running onto sea and land producing flooding and drowning (Neptune) of many of the earth’s surfaces portrays a clearly startling danger. Now to emphasize the good points of this book and film—do we sit at home impotent to act upon the situation, or do we do our part? There are hundreds and thousands of ways to help a struggling planet to hold itself back from sinking into the depths, so that our children and grandchildren are not left holding their fingers in the dam. If there’s one thing that makes us strikingly aware, it is that during the periods of Saturn/Neptune we are able to see and feel that the barriers that divide us are not real. We become each ever more able to belong to one human family and accept differences and dissolve prejudices that keep us from getting along with each other.

And if one is born with close aspects between Saturn and Neptune, especially those that will progress into exact relationship during the course of one’s lifetime, then there will be a great chance that the person is unwaveringly committed to helping the world divide those barriers as well. Some of these people have been tortured, imprisoned and even murdered for the peaceful ideals they were promoting, but they nevertheless stood their ground and became glorious role-models for millions to follow in their footsteps. And it’s not just because they desired to achieve peace and end human suffering—they exude(d) the peace they aimed to achieve. A few well-known examples include:

Saturn/Neptune aspects in the birth chart:
The Conjunction (0°): Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Nelson Mandela, Vladmir Putin, Ammachi, Marianne Williamson.
The Opposition (180°): The 14th Dalai Lama, Robert Redford.
The Trine (120°): Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Desmond Tutu, George Harrison.
The Sextile: (60°): Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Dennis Kucinich, Bono.

The next big history-making event or trend in planetary cycles following this upcoming Saturn/Neptune will be the Saturn/Uranus opposition of late 2008 to mid-2010, the latter half of it involving Pluto.

Watch for more about that in future postings.

* These maps are from Solar Maps Astrological Software, published by Esoteric Technologies Pty, Australia
** Lewis, Jim and Guttman, Ariel – The Astro*Carto*Graphy Book of Maps, Llewellyn (1989)
*** Gore, Al: “An Inconveneient Truth” published 2006 , Rodale Press