Saturn In Aries Placing Its Orders

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/].

Today we're going to take a look at Saturn's upcoming entrance into the sign of Aries, which is taking place this weekend. I will outline for you the entire timeline of the transit, and then we're going to take a look at five themes to watch for today.

I'm going to give you a little trick when it comes to delineating planets, especially when they're not in their own sign, but they're the guest in another planet's temple. So in this case, Saturn is a guest in the temple of Mars and the Sun. So what does that mean? And how can you use that as a way of starting to delineate a planetary placement like this?

So it'll hopefully be a little educational, as well as giving you some very practical themes to watch for over the lifespan of Saturn's transit through Aries. So I will be doing horoscopes as the week goes on for Saturn in Aries as well. So stay tuned for more of that.

All right, but before we get into it today, remember to like and subscribe. It really helps our channel to grow. We want this channel to be a place for your daily spiritual practice. If astrology is a part of your spiritual path in life, then we hope that this will be a place where you can, you know, water that plant every day.

You can find transcripts of all of these daily talks on the website. My website is Nightlight Astrology.com, not to be confused with Nightlife Astrology, which sounds like a nightclub. Anyway, go to Nightlight Astrology.com, check out the upcoming programs that we have.

A couple of things to note: in-person events on the solstice. We are having a summer solstice gathering here in Minneapolis at the Grapevine Collective. You can RSVP to attend. It's free. We just need to know you're coming. You go up to the Events page, click on Speaker Series, you'll see that our summer Speaker Series is coming up.

These are also free talks. If you can't attend live to get the recordings, go to the Events page to—excuse me—Live Talks, and you will see my monthly webinars. I just did one on Jupiter in Cancer in June. You'll find me doing one on Uranus in Gemini trining Pluto in Aquarius, called "When New Objects Appear in the Sky."

These are real deep dives for people who are a little bit more advanced in astrology. I'd call it like intermediate level. If you know even a little bit about astrology, you should be just fine with any of these talks, but I hope to see you there. You get the recording with all of our stuff if you can ever attend live.

So go to the Courses page. Click First Year Course. You guys know we're in the midst of enrollment season for the next year. One course, Ancient Astrology for the Modern Mystic, begins June 22. At the bottom of the page, you'll find enrollment options.

After the end of today's video, you will find a promotional video that explains everything the program includes, so you know exactly what to expect, exactly what you're getting. Probably all of your questions will be answered either on this page or in that video after the end of today's talk.

Tuition assistance is available for people who need it. So if you are someone who could use a little help making the program happen, please take advantage of the need-based tuition that's there to make sure that people who are on a fixed or limited income but really want to study astrology in a meaningful way are not priced out.

We think that, you know, spiritual topics should be accessible, so we've long provided those options for all of our programs. Anyway, that is it for promotions for today. Let's shift our attention now to the real-time clock and heading over to the real-time clock.

We are here. We are Tuesday, May 20. NORWAC is this weekend, by the way—that's a conference in Seattle that's held every spring. I'll be giving a couple of talks there, so I hope to see some of you. If you're a Nightlight student, we'll be having a Nightlight student meetup Friday night in the atrium at 7:30, so maybe we'll see you there.

Anyhow, now what we're looking at here is Saturn's entrance into Aries today, and you can see Saturn at that anaretic degree. I wonder how all of you are doing with Saturn at the anaretic degree. We explored that last week.

If we look at this, we're going to see that it's Saturday night into Sunday morning that Saturn changes signs. So the change of signs late Saturday night, Central Time. I think it's around 11 p.m. my time in the Midwest here, but you'll see that transition happen from Saturday into Sunday.

So after that, now I'm going to isolate Saturn, and we'll remove everything else from our perspective, so we can just look at the life cycle of Saturn in Aries. So this is our ingress. And ingresses are important because as soon as a planet changes signs in ancient astrology and a whole sign house format, that means that you've got a new set of topics in a new whole sign house that are being activated.

So that's why we'll do horoscopes later this week for everyone, but taking a look at this ingress, Saturn is going to get up to the first degree before turning retrograde. The station happens in the middle of July. This is July 13 that Saturn is stationing.

Saturn will then turn retrograde and work its way back through those first two degrees, zero and one, and return on September 1 to Pisces. Now we then have the final push through Pisces, taking place in retrograde fashion, all the way until late November.

So September, October, November, Saturn's back in Pisces, closing shop. We'll be doing some review on that, of course, and it's not like we'll forget about Saturn's work in Pisces because it's not entirely done yet. But after that takes place, Saturn's direct motion will bring it back into Aries by about the middle of February 2026.

Then if I take this forward, let's watch how Saturn rolls through Aries with its retrogrades back and forth, not entirely leaving the sign of Aries and dipping into Taurus until April of 2028. So from May of 2025 through April of 2028, we're mostly getting Saturn in Aries.

This is the sign of Saturn's fall. I have given several talks about that dignity category, what it means, and how I hope that people will think about it, rather than just throwing their hands up and going, "Oh my god, it's the worst thing in the world." You know, like it has a meaning. There's a reason behind the dignity category. So we hope that we can understand those things.

So what I want to do today is I want to give you, first of all, not a trick—it's a method, but it's a kind of handy tool or technique that anybody can use. Once you've understood just a little bit about the planets, you get a little understanding of the planetary symbolism down, you can use this technique when crafting your own delineations.

I'm going to give you delineations that I crafted, but more importantly, I hope what you'll take away is the tools that will allow you to make your own because that's when we really get freed up inside. And magical things happen when we create our own delineations, just like you're learning the Tao.

It helps to have teachers. It helps to have people you really admire the way they read, because that helps you grow and learn. But it's, you know, you also want to have your own deck. So anyhow, on that note, one of the best ways that—well, first of all, philosophically—ancient astrologers thought about a planet, the sign that a planet rules.

It wasn't really considered a ruler as much as it was considered a steward or a host. So if you're at my house, I'm your host. If you're in Aries, the home of Mars and the Sun—Mars being the natural domicile ruler and the Sun being the exaltation ruler—then when you're in the home of Mars and the Sun, Mars and the Sun are your hosts.

Now, every planet outside of its own sign is considered a guest in the ancient philosophical foundations of astrology, as planets are moving through each other's temples all the time in their transits. In fact, most of what we do in natal chart work is trying to understand what it means when one planet is in another planet's temple in the zodiac.

And then what place that occupies, in terms of the 12 houses, and how that relationship between a planet in another planet's sign and the location of its host works to facilitate a delineation regarding a topic. So when we have planets like Saturn coming into Aries, the way that ancient astrologers thought about that was that Saturn is now going to be a guest in the temple of the Ram.

And in the temple of the Ram, its hosts are Mars and the Sun. Now, anytime a guest is moving through life—if, let's say, I'm traveling in Europe, I'm not from Europe, I'm from the States—I'm going to be traveling through Europe. Maybe I'm getting one of those Euro passes. You can go on the train and go all around.

But the thing is, is that I'm going to be largely dependent upon the good graces of the people I meet and the people who act as my hosts in another country, whether it's people at the rail station, you know, I'm getting on one of these trains, or if it's someone in a restaurant or someone guiding me to, you know, a B&B or a hostel or something.

So the way that it works is travelers—the planets, who are called wanderers—as they move through each other's homes, they have needs. So this is an analogy you can use, sort of to, uh, to work with. Well, in other words, when Saturn enters Aries, Saturn comes in as a traveler, as a guest with needs, and it will rely upon Mars and the Sun to get those needs fulfilled.

This makes it very exciting to track Saturn in Aries in a more dynamic way. We sure we can sit back and come up with all sorts of, you know, kind of archetypal delineations that will sort of always be there. But as Saturn tracks through Aries, notice, for example, how important it will be to simultaneously track the major aspects taking place between the Sun and Mars, respectively.

Looking at what they're doing in the sky is going to be really important, because their situation will be the means by which they provide for Saturn's wants in Aries. So you can always do that level of tracking, and especially when you're working with clients' charts and so forth.

You have to do that level of tracking if you want to be accurate and say more than, you know, just roll out more than a bunch of clichés. So what we need to think about is whatever planet we're dealing with as a guest in someone else's home. What does that planet order? Let's say it's a B&B, and the host of the B&B—this is their house, but they're there to serve you.

You know, it's this very generous kind of idea. So what does Saturn order at the B&B of Aries? Well, whatever a planet orders is always going to be in alignment with its own natural significations—in other words, its own nature.

So when Saturn goes through any sign, it tends to order the same stuff, because it's Saturn, and Saturn has basic wants and needs in terms of how it is going to express itself. So what Saturn orders—before we think about how Aries will service Saturn's needs—let's talk about what Saturn orders first.

First, death and endings. Saturn rolls into any sign and says, "Hey, I am the planet that is exalted in the time of the fall equinox, the place where the darkness takes over from light. I have one of my homes in Capricorn, the darkest point of the year, and in Aquarius, in the middle of winter."

So Saturn is a planet that has long been associated with the natural recurrence of death—properly understood in an animistic cosmos that is considered sacred and divine. Death isn't bad. Death is just a part of the process of the cycle of life.

So there's—it doesn't necessarily need to be—it doesn't always have to be literal, and it doesn't have to be a negative, dark, ominous, terrible thing. Death, endings, transitions from one era to another that are metaphorically represented by things like autumn, fall, winter.

I know some of you live in the southern hemisphere, so just think of them as metaphors. So when Saturn arrives in Aries—or in any sign—it will always order up, express death and endings.

Another thing that Saturn will order, regardless of where it is, is maturation, seriousness, and severity. If we think about the seasons of the solar year in terms of a developmental arc that maps itself onto human life, the dark half of the year was typically associated with the latter part of life, adulthood.

When things—where there's more responsibility and seriousness, and there's also a feeling of things being more severe. You're—there's more of a gravitas and a feeling that there's more—things are more consequential. That's what I'm trying to say. And the need to be mature, responsible, to take things seriously, to know that actions have reactions and consequences.

Saturn can also be a little severe in terms of being, like, overly strict or, you know, limiting. If you think about the severest forms of weather in the cold part of the year, there's a feeling of oppression or of, like—it's in Minnesota for sure, right? It's like super cold. This feels severe.

So Saturn also associated with things that are a little heavier and weightier, but also more adult. So Saturn will order those things up at the Airbnb of Aries. Saturn will order things like sobriety, boundaries, and discipline.

This is interesting because Saturn will often say, like, one of the qualities of youth is excitement and almost like being drunk on life—that's the spring, that's the summer—and also maybe of trying to escape adulthood or responsibility, you know. So Saturn comes in and says, "Let's sober up. Like, let's get real. Let's set structures and boundaries and a discipline in place, because there's something at stake here."

And whether that's survival or earning a living or paying your mortgage or taking care of your kids if you have them, or dealing with a health issue—like, life requires that you take it seriously when Saturn's around. And so that sense of—this isn't a place to get drunk on illusion. This is a place to be real, to sober up, to take things seriously, to set structures and boundaries in place.

Saturn will order that kind of thinking. I'm not necessarily saying that's the only thinking that everyone ought to adopt—Saturn's way of looking at the world—but nonetheless, that is the way that Saturn tends to look at the world, and we all have to work with that at times.

Number four is depression and melancholy. So the winter, the dark part of the year, death, the reality of death, impermanence, suffering, detachment, and having to let go. Those are hard realities for us to square up to and, in a sense, have to deal with. And so depression and melancholy are almost like byproducts that Saturn will often bring with it.

As you know, like, this is what I'm ordering for breakfast. Give me a, you know, dark comedy, or give me a little melancholic music or artwork. It doesn't necessarily have to be like Eeyore and there's just a rain cloud following you around, and nothing is good. Everything sucks.

Melancholy can be like, almost like a contemplative and artistic and very imaginative state, and even ancients thought that. But the depressiveness, the heaviness, the weightiness, the melancholic feeling that this world is just heavy because of death, right? Because of impermanence. Saturn will order those things up. Always does.

Number five: things that grow in time with hard work. Saturn, the Lord of the fall equinox, the fall harvest, right, as the exaltation Lord of Libra, place of the balance. Saturn looks at the arc of time and a life and says, "The things that you have built slowly, methodically, maturely, responsibly—whether it's a craft or a skill or an ability or an art form or a relationship—in time, the work you have put in will render results."

It is the ultimate in terms of—put in the work, and you will get a good result. So things that grow in time with hard work—Saturn is always ordering up. Now, we could probably list 10 more things. And I'm sure you—all of you listening out there—could probably add some things too. So this is just an exercise to get us going.

Now, to follow the little example I was using, we're at the Airbnb of Aries, so now the Mars-Sun host dynamic has to provide for its guest. And this is a super easy, fun, efficient, just a very effective way of creating delineations.

So what does Mars and the Sun serve to its guest, who wants all of these things? Well, it can only serve—Mars and the Sun together, as the two hosts of this sign, can only serve what it is in their nature to serve Saturn.

So for example, one thing that Mars and the Sun in this fiery temple of the Ram tend to serve up are leaders, leadership, solar figures. A solar figure could be any person with central power or authority—like a boss, a CEO, a king, a queen, an emperor, a military leader, someone who has a lot of clout or power or executive decision-making.

So now take this and put it together. So what Saturn orders—death and endings. Who or what will it be involved in death and endings? Leaders and solar figures. How about maturation, seriousness, and severity? Well, Mars and the Sun will give leaders and solar figures—in other words, the maturation of your leadership in a job, or the maturation of leaders that you work with.

Or the need to grow more serious in your responsibilities and lead more, even as a parent or in a relationship. "I'm going to take more responsibility for the health of, you know, my family or my marriage or whatever the case might be." So you can see how the leaders and solar figures can be channeled into any of Saturn's needs.

Sobriety, boundaries, and discipline. What might that mean? Well, feed it leaders and solar figures, and you might get leaders that have to become sober. Oh, it sounds weird, but it's like, you know, sometimes leaders get drunk on their own power, or leaders might have vices.

And this is a placement that could somehow hold accountable leaders or solar figures. "You've got to sober up," or "You've got to become wiser," or "Take your job more seriously," or something like that. And you're also going to see that leaders and solar figures just have to step forward with greater discipline, boundaries, and so forth.

You will also see depression and melancholy in solar figures or leaders, meaning that there could be a way in which, if you work—let's say you work with a boss, and they are going through a period of exhaustion or fatigue, or you're going through that while being in a really important role of leadership or power or importance somehow.

So you can see how the two things work together to create kind of a weightiness around people who have authority. Things that grow in time with hard work—leaders, solar figures. If you put in the work, you may become more of a leader in some environment or space. You can see how all of them work together.

What else does Mars and the Sun serve up? Well, how about heroism, individualism, individuation? All of these are very Mars-Sun-like themes. So heroism—my life is an adventure. There's something to be accomplished. There's a quest, there's a mission.

Individualism—I have to develop my own confidence, my own resources, my own strength. Individuation—I'm becoming who I meant to be. These things are very natural to Aries with the Sun-Mars dual rulership. So then we just plug that in and we say heroism, individualism, individuation may happen through our encounter with death and endings.

May happen through a process of maturation, seriousness, or severity. May happen—we may individualize, individuate, or our journey may involve the very important process of becoming more mature, more boundary, more disciplined. In order to individuate, we may have to battle with depression or darkness or fear or any of the darker, heavier qualities like depression or melancholy that Saturn represents.

Or our heroism, our individualism, our process of individuation is something that is going to grow in time with hard work. You see how they all—you're just feeding one to the other. Willpower, ambition, and purpose—another thing that the Sun and Mars serve up. They serve it to Saturn.

And we say, well, Saturn delivers death and endings, and the Sun provides it with willpower, ambition, and purpose, which means that we may feel defeated. We may feel like something we've tried to push and do is just not working, or it's reaching a natural limit or expiration—our purpose, our willpower, our ambition is running into a brick wall, and there's a learning there.

Or we may find that our willpower is having to grow more mature. We can't just press the gas pedal. We have to have concerted discipline, focused efforts. We have to develop endurance and staying power. We may find that willpower, ambition, and purpose, in order for them to be nothing more than hot-headedness, need greater sobriety, boundaries, or discipline.

You see how all of the—and you could, you could keep turning this jewel in a million different ways. In order for willpower, ambition, and purpose to be truly cultivated within, we may need to overcome depression or melancholy—something that says life shouldn't be easy or it's hard, or depressing or heavy, and we may find that we're having to lift that weight somehow.

Not surprisingly, one of the things that really stands out to me with willpower, ambition, and purpose and Saturn is the potential with things that grow in time with hard work—get to the gym, right? That's like something that I really value, since it's kind of a hobby of mine. It's like, yeah, you know, take the opportunity to build your body, your physique, your health through hard work and discipline.

There's a refining of willpower and ambition. So then we look at pioneering, risk-taking, and competition. The Sun and Mars loves to serve up these things—loves to start new things, take risks. There's a competitive edge. Well, if you're trying to start something and you're met with death and endings, it could be that there are major obstacles you have to overcome while trying to start something.

There could be major obstacles you have to overcome, or disappointments or failures or difficult endings that somehow catapult you into a phase of pioneering. You see how they work together. And then the competitiveness—look, when we're defeated, we learn a lot, you know, or when we have to persevere to overcome something and win, we learn a lot.

And then finally—well, I'll say, I'll say, like, also, you can work through all of these. I don't, I don't know to spend labor every single one, but I would say that in order for most of us to accomplish something that we consider to be like starting a new business or learning something new or—you know, any kind of pioneering or entrepreneurial endeavor—will usually require that we learn staying power.

That we become more structured, that we become more serious, that we have to grow up to make something exciting be more than just the initial burst of excitement—something lasting, something that actually turns into something that we want. In order for us to pioneer, risk-take, compete—oh, but we can't, because we're depressed, or this is melancholic vibe, or it's something that you have to overcome again, right?

And also, things that grow in time with hard work. How about that company you want to grow? How about that risk you want to take? How about that competitive quality that's driving you? Well, it'll only work if you keep persisting over time and putting in the work.

Finally, I think the Sun and Mars at their worst can provide things like dominance, arrogance, bravado, bluster, bullying, or domineering attitudes. So could we run into hard endings in our life because of the way we're treating other people—being overly domineering?

On the other hand, could we go through a kind of a phase of death and of almost like reconstituting something in our life because we have to face an oppressor? That is a very common Saturn-Aries theme. You know, a lot of the times we grow and we become more mature when we look at aspects of ourselves that are too much, that are a little arrogant or a little domineering.

I think, you know, probably a lot of us well-meaning, good people may have little edges like that. This is a transit that can help us just get a little bit nicer and kinder and more mature in the way we wield that fire in us, because we all have it.

How about sobriety, boundaries, and discipline? Learning to stay disciplined, learning to not be overly reactive or confrontational or competitive, learning how to set boundaries, learning how to say no, learning how to tune certain things out while letting good things in.

When it comes to the Sun and Mars providing things like bullies and Saturn providing things like sobriety, boundaries, and discipline, you might have to learn how to defend yourself and/or be more boundaried. When I was in high school, Saturn was in Aries, and I went through a period of time where I experienced bullying pretty severely for about a year.

Not every day, but like constantly enough that I decided to leave school and go to a community college because they had this program in Minnesota—they still have it—where you can dual enroll and go to community college or junior and senior year, get credits for high school and start to get credits for colleges.

The credits would transfer in-state to different schools in Minnesota. So I took advantage of that as a way of also putting myself in a different environment so that I could focus on learning. And because I was—I was a very passionate, intellectual type of personality, I think I still am—anyway, and I had to make choices to separate myself from people that were trying to cut me down all the time and do something that was a risk—leaving school, going to college, you know?

So there you have it, right? How we deal with things like oppressors becomes really important. You can feel beat down, depressed, or deal with melancholy because you're dealing with people who are kind of walking on you. And also, things that grow in time with hard work—the courage to overcome oppressive forces, whether they are oppressive forces within ourself or in other people.

So anyway, that was a little like maybe hot and fast going through all of it. But again, think of it simply. What does Saturn order that is natural to Saturn? Then how does Mars and the Sun serve it things that are natural to it, providing it with the material that will feed into the things that Saturn naturally needs and wants and does.

So I find that exercise to be really useful. You can see how it works, and you can see how, if nothing else, it just really allows you to start turning that jewel of an archetype—Saturn in Aries. You know, what can it mean? What can it bring up? These are some pretty good examples, but you take that and come up with your own.

And if you would like, I would love to see some of you take this exercise and show me what you come up with in the comments section. What is Saturn order? How does the Sun-Mars provide? Tell me what you think about that, because that would be—it would be really fun to see you guys working with that.

Okay, after I sign off, there's going to be an informational video about the Year One program, which comes up at the end of June. This video contains everything you need to know about the class. I hope you'll come study. It is a fantastic thing to really like own into a space of astrological learning.

The ability to speak this language more fluently, more confidently for yourself and maybe serve others around you—even if it's just friends and family—is something that I think everybody who sees astrology as a part of their spiritual path should consider at some point.

And I think Nightlight, personally—just tooting our own horn—I think we're a great community, a full staff of wonderful people. If you resonate with the way that I teach and work with astrology, then you'll probably love the courses, because it really does represent the best work of my career.

The curriculum of our four-year programs, I think, is the best thing I have to offer people who want to go deeper with astrology. So anyway, on that note, hope you're having a good day. We'll see you again tomorrow. Bye-bye.