The Sun and Mars Squaring Saturn and Why It’s Not So Bad

Hey everyone, this is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology. Happy Monday, everybody. Today, we're going to take a look at the Sun and Mars both moving into the sign of Sagittarius this week, where they will both immediately square Saturn, who's just recently turned direct in the sign of Pisces. Most of the time, when people hear things like Sun square Saturn or Mars square Saturn, they think Ugh, just immediately you go, Oh, no.

So we're going to talk about why these two aspects are often looked at as difficult, and then I'm going to tell you why I don't think it's so bad, and I'm not going to blow any smoke here. These are both challenging aspects. But I think that there are really overlooked benefits to these transits and positive significations that people usually miss.

The reason we miss it is because of the way that we are programmed to think about Saturn for the most part, and so I will hopefully shed some light on these aspects that maybe you haven't thought of before, or that will give you something to look forward to this week or something to help you through any of the difficulties that you may face as these transits approach. That is our agenda for today.

Before we get into it, don't forget to like and subscribe. Share your comments and reflections in the comment section, especially if you have a story to share. You can always use the hashtag #grabbed and tell us your story or email us your story at grabbed@nightlightastrology.com. Make sure you include the transit and your story. Don't say anything that you don't want to share in a future storytelling episode. You can find transcripts of any of my daily talks on my website, nightlightastrology.com.

I am also very excited to announce that today is the first day of this year's annual Kickstarter. So, our Kickstarter campaign has launched. If you are new to the channel, this is my 10th anniversary. This is the 10th annual Kickstarter that I have run, and the thing we do is every year, we have a goal in mind that we set out to support the creation of another year's worth of free content that I make.

I make an average of about 300 videos a year if you count bonus episodes and live streams and things like that. But it's five days a week program that we run year-round; I've been doing it for ten years. Two years before that, I was doing it in another written form as well.

Anyway, I'm going to take you over to the Kickstarter; here's the pre-launch page. I haven't launched it at the exact time of this recording; you'll find the link to the Kickstarter in the comment section of today's video, as well as the description of the video, and when you head over there, you'll see that you can back the project and what you're doing when you donate is you are supporting this channel and the creative work that I do year-round. To make all the videos that I make. This last year, we had 1776 backers. It was kind of an interesting number this year; our goal, like every year, is to just see if we can get a little bit more support than we did the year before in terms of the subscribers and the number of backers.

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The number one thing that it does is it supports my ability through the school, and so astrologers have a lot of different ways that they earn a living. But for me, it's primarily readings and classes that I teach, and so one of the ways that I make sure that I can keep providing really flexible tuition models for all of my programs, which are the need-based tuition and the flexible pricing that we offer for probably around at this point, I think it's like 60 to 70% of our students over 1314 years of doing online astrology training programs have been on some form of tuition assistance, we're able to do that because of the Kickstarter. So the, Kickstarter acts as a support for all of the need-based tuition models and flexible pricing; when the Kickstarter does well, that sort of has been over the years what's ensured that I can have this flexible pricing system.

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So, the staff that supports me in the development, publishing, and editing of all of the daily content is a huge thing that the Kickstarter supports, and obviously, you support me and my family; this is a part of how I earn my living.

Some of the things that you can pick up when you donate, we have a whole bunch of different rewards so that when you donate, we're also saying thank you for your donation, and we hope we can give you something back of value.

So, we have a lot of really cool things that you can get when you pitch in and support this channel. I'll go through them really quickly; you can take a look at them on the website yourself. You can also bundle them and add a few different rewards if you want to. We have the Astrology of 2024 calendars at our most basic pledge level of $25, and when you donate, you can pick up that calendar. It's a PDF calendar that shows you all of the major transits of the year that I'll be covering on the channel so you can kind of know in advance where each month is going to be heading in terms of what I'm making content about.

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So you can pick up a rising sign horoscope for the entirety of 2024, where Alex and I break down all of the major transits for each of the 12 signs. So that's an awesome reward that we offer, and we don't, we're not going to be publishing that anywhere else.

The Oracle Speaks, which is my new book, if you want to hop in before it's in print form and pick up the audiobook and the text as each chapter is being released. You can hop in on that and read the new book that I'm writing as it comes out chapter by chapter throughout 2024.

I'm so proud of this work, and I'm so excited about it. I should say I don't have an idea if it's any good or not. I think it is, but anyway, it's the first book I've written since my first book came out in 2010. So it's also really nice to be writing again about astrology and divination. Check that out.

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So, I wanted to introduce you to all of that today on this very first day of the Kickstarter coming back. We were launching it today, so I'm taking a little bit longer, but you'll hear me promoting it and giving you updates at the beginning of videos between now and the new year. It runs until New Year's Eve, so you have some time to take advantage of this.

I just want to say in advance. Thank you last year for everyone who supported this channel, and all of my work really doesn't work without the Kickstarter doing well. So it's a leap of faith that we take every year; I put a lot of time and energy. Watch the video on the Kickstarter page if you want to learn more about what goes into my process, but every day for, you know, ten years plus, I have the same routine that I follow Monday through Friday when I create content; it's time for prayer, it's time for study, it's time for meditation, it's time to make sure that I center myself and focus and write something that I feel will be of spiritual value.

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Thank you a little bit longer intro than you will experience in days to come, and I will be doing lots of live streams in the weeks ahead, too. So, during this time of year, I also come on live during the afternoons, and I'll often just do free readings for people as a way of promoting and generating interest in the Kickstarter, too. So, if you have any questions about the Kickstarter, email us at info@nightlightastrology.com.

Otherwise, you can find the link once more in the description of this video or the comment section and help us get off to a great start today. Thanks, everyone.

Okay, so we're looking at the Sun, and we are looking at Mars in the sign of Sagittarius, just about to move in. Here's Monday, November 20, but let's take this forward just a couple of days. So we're going to see that the Sun comes in. Here we go, November 23, and makes the square within about a day. So, if we back this up just a little bit, you'll see the Sun's square to Saturn happens early in the morning, Thursday, November 23. So you're going to be feeling it this Wednesday, through Friday, maybe oh really, I would say even Tuesday through Friday are the really kind of intense days.

Then, just a couple of days later, on November 25. You're going to see that Mars square Saturn. So here is Mars going into the sign of Sagittarius and immediately squaring Saturn, and right as Mars goes into Sagittarius, of course, the cazimi happened recently, and now they're still traveling together. But the Mars will also square Saturn. So, in the course of just a couple of days, this is by Saturday, you have the Mars Saturn square. So now it's Sun square Saturn, Mars square Saturn within a very brief period of time.

So what I want to do today is talk about why people tend to freak out about these squares or these kinds of aspects and then give you what I think are three benefits that are sort of hiding in plain sight that people often miss. So, first of all, let's just talk about why people freak out.

The first one is that anytime Saturn is involved, people think oh, this is going to be difficult. This is going to be hard. A Saturn word that's not inaccurate, the word hard or frustrating. I'll feel blocked or limited or restricted or constrained are all Saturnian words.

Okay, fair enough, and then you blend that with the Sun in a square. People know that squares are a little bit more difficult. They were considered by ancient astrologers to be of the nature of Mars. So you take the Sun into a square Marsy dynamic with Saturn, and you think my light is going to be limited. You think of my joy, my happiness, my purpose being blocked or constrained, or just the idea of, you know, putting some kind of box around a light so that it can't shine. These are the kinds of things that people generally think about when they think of the Sun squaring Saturn; they think of, you know, sickness or getting a cold or feeling frustrated or dealing with some kind of impediment or limitation when it comes to your joy, your happiness, your purpose, all solar themes or images and that's fine because those things will actually happen. If you think of the Sun, and I've explained this many times, but if you think of the Sun as something like a platonic idea in the mind of God, right, an old kind of mystical idea, then the Sun is always in a chart because this was one of the ways that ancient astrologers actually thought about the sun symbolism.

The Sun will always represent the ideal image that is driving or motivating our actions, and it changes all the time, and it changes from day to day and situation to situation. One place that you go to, there is a platonic ideal that will drive what you're looking for, from a shopping experience at Target. There's something I need, there's something I need to have, and there's the way I imagined this going. If you bring kids with you, of course, then your platonic ideal is shattered, you know, you're not gonna get what you were hoping for, and that will, but that will change then when it comes to what is the platonic ideal for how dinner should go, or how my workday should go or whatever.

So it can be, you know, we're always working with an image in our mind of what we want to happen, or what we desire, or what outcome we're imagining, and that will be what is motivating us to use our will using our choice to, hopefully, affect things so that they conform to the shape of that ideal image and that's very solar.

When this happens, there's a feeling of truth and joy and beauty and lightness, and you know, if you've ever strung a couple of days together, good solar days, where everything's kind of conforming to that perfect ideal image, and it's like, oh, there's a gold standard for how things can go, you know, how long can I keep this going? Until something happens with your kids or your family, or your friends or a partner or whatever, and all of a sudden, it's not, it's like, that's not what I wanted it to be, you know? And then, you know, how much of our lives do we actually spend struggling to get back onto that mythic train that takes us toward the kingdom of gold? You know, the gold standard?

Well, everything in my life is going and you know, what does advertising do? Advertising every day that I see on social media is telling us like, here's how things could be, you know, here's an image and ideal image that you could, you could, you know, you could reach with your clothes, or your body or with your parenting, here's some parenting tips and, or your marriage or whatever, you know, it's like, there is no shortage of glittering images of like perfect states that are being sold to us all the time.

But they're being sold to us because there's something very human, very archetypal about needing ideal images to move toward; it's what is life without some sense of an image that compels our action, you know. So, when the Sun comes into contact with Saturn, the great negator, we get something that says, No, you can't have that ideal image, or no, it won't be easy, smooth, and beautiful; it will be frustrating, you will need great determination and effort, there will be limits on how far this can go. Or you'll find that there's a limit being put around the image that you're seeking so that it can't go as high or wide or bright or beautiful as you intend it to, and so that's why people get stressed out, and when it comes to a square, it's the square with Mars. It is going to be frustrating.

You know, it's like a little like a minor fever, you know, the temperatures being turned up, and you're, you're kind of bashing up against a limit to the ideal image that you're seeking. For some people, this is so brief; this transit is so brief and so minor that it will literally just be that things aren't quite going the way you hoped they would at work for two days, and that'll be it, it really won't be that, and you may not even notice it, because you have good coping mechanisms, and you have a way of meeting frustrations and limits that's very accepting and patient and so you know, it's no skin off your back, a lot of people will experience it, and it's nothing more than that.

It's important to tell that side of the story because so regularly, when you tune into astrological content, you know, creators out there, as a way of, you know, in I can empathize with the position that people are in, you know, we need to try to be compelling and exciting and kind of entertaining and so we tell people, like, you know, this is gonna, this is a big thing and like, well, you know, frustrations and impediments that come up and block us from an ideal image are limited or negated or frustrated in some way, or a very basic human experience and as basic as you know, a physical weatherman, predicting that there will be conditions that make driving a little bit more difficult. They don't last forever, and we have all seen this a million times here in Minnesota; that's pretty regular during the winter, for example.

So we need to also just realize how regular and sort of mundane and basic, these, you know, more difficult transits are that most of us, it may not even register, if we are people who have some, you know, some small ability to work through and process frustrations, it may not, it really may not even register that much and for others, it will maybe because you don't have those skills in place, and so it'll be a much bigger deal.

On the other hand, regardless of what skills you have in place, it could be a really big deal and really frustrating, you know, and then you find that you're not able to tap into those resources that you have because sometimes life throws you curveballs that even the most prepared level, 10, Ninja Yogi breather, whatever, like, I'm a mindfulness person, you know, I eat every avocado perfectly or whatever. It doesn't matter; it'll throw you off. It'll negate you, it'll say no, and it'll smash the avocado, right, and you're pretty little face. So that's like, that's a sun Saturn transit.

This is also why, archetypally speaking, the Sun and Saturn will like it's a sun. Saturn is often the transit when Saturn is transiting your natal Sun, and your birth chart, for example, will often bring up the issues of mortality or death or loss, or suffering or separation, or just hard issues around fathers with a Sun is one of the natural symbols of fathers, and so Sun, Saturn dynamics will be about all of the same kind of impediments and frustrations or limitations with regard to our fathers.

Dad karma can come up in a big way when we're processing these things because of the archetypal role that a father is supposed to play, for example, and this is ideally no; I mean, in a sense, every parent's supposed to play this role. But just speaking now of the archetypal father, just kind of think about it like that as an archetype, not a literal gender or person, but as an archetype.

The father is supposed to affirm us for the fact that we are a being and nothing more. The father says, because you exist, you are beautiful. I affirm your existence, and then we may have all sorts of aspirations, and the father acts as someone who encourages us along the path of our individuation goal setting, and the father also helps us to stay determined and sort of moving towards some kind of singular image of our selves, like, I am becoming acorn, to oak tree, I'm becoming something and the father is sort of someone that's an affirming encouraging presence as we move along that hero's journey.

This is one of the ways that Joseph Campbell talked about the mythic role of the good father; now, fathers are people, and real fathers are real people. So we're not trying to say that a father has to be an archetype, right? That either, in fact, I think a lot of the time, sometimes parents at any kind of parent or any kind of person will suffer when they try so hard to inhabit the perfect role that archetypes play, not people, right. So that can actually be really problematic.

But regardless, when the Sun comes to Saturn, that's when you get sometimes, in our family dynamics, you get the father that negates that doesn't encourage that limits that oppresses that restricts that denies, that doesn't affirm you for who you are, but says I'll love you if you get good grades only then or I don't love you for who you are because I resent you because you shine and it has to be all about me. You know any of those kinds of Saturn as the devourer of children, for example.

So, the Sun-Saturn dynamic can also be triggering for people who had suppressive or oppressive father figures or leadership or mentoring figures in their family growing up. Because when that negating presence comes in, it has a history, and so sometimes, Sun-Saturn dynamics will be an opportunity to say, I believe in myself, I can overcome, I can be determined, and I can encourage myself and affirm myself from within. There's no some there's negating or limiting presence externally, but I don't need that approval. I'm getting it from within, and in a weird way, the Sun-Saturn dynamic is there to encourage the development of inner affirmation. But we have to be able to look at the negating, or limiting or oppressing presence of something as a kind of cosmic opportunity, as a kind of psychic opportunity for inner affirmation, where we can identify that that archetypal role of affirming parental figure is within and we can say yes to ourselves and what we're trying to do, even if we're feeling limited or sort of stymied.

So, anyway, Mars hitting Saturn is similar to where effort or will is suddenly being negated or blocked or limited. However, it is also this, the Mars Saturn dynamic is representative of the discipline, the stick to itiveness, the perseverance, the commitment, the courage to work through limitations, to work through what feels like a resistant force that's coming in, and trying to limit your strength, power, individuality and so Mars will also have to push back against that introduces why Mars, Saturn will come up as conflicts with authority just like Sun-Saturn can be conflicts with authority figures.

But again, the benefit of Mars-Saturn dynamics for as stifling and frustrating as they can be, and believe me, people get really temperamental, and Mars-Saturn dynamics can be like people can get kind of authoritarian and rigid, and also can experience forces outside of themselves acting in such a way and then that kind of creates this reactionary impulse to fight or struggle with an oppressive force. It's all very real; that can all happen.

However, there are some really amazing benefits that come with that encounter. Mars is a planet of tremendous sacrifice. Mars is a planet whose, you know, we think of Mars often as the God of war. But what we don't think about is Mars is the planet of passion. Passion would be one of the meanings of the word passion is to suffer with something, to suffer alongside of something, to suffer with something that you're doing or carrying, and there's also an intimation of love, or tremendous commitment, and enthusiasm and from the word again, and entheos, which means the God within, to be passionate means that we're okay with what we're doing burning us part in the suffering of doing the hard part, you know, the hard parts, but also that it's burning us because we love it so much.

Mars has this weird doubling of excitement, charisma, and enthusiasm, along with suffering. There's a sense of sacrifice in Mars, which is why the word Mars and the word martyr are connected too. We're willing to die for something we believe in; you're a Marsy person. That kind of passion is sometimes rare, and I think because we don't always understand it, or we think of people who are super Marsy as like too much, then we don't think that there's a place for it archetypically. But how can you know what really matters? How can we know life without knowing that fire? Doesn't life? In part, isn't it sort of based on the belief that suffering and love combined in this cosmic cauldron and that it's worth it? You know?

So what are the benefits of these transits? One is that with sacrifice comes self-respect, wherever there is an opportunity to have to dig deeper, make some really important sacrifices and commitments, and work within frustrating limits. Develop discipline and a measure of meaningful sacrifice, not like a self-harming sacrifice, but a meaningful sacrifice. When we make those sacrifices, and we throw something of ourselves into the sacrificial fire of the universe, we come out not with less of ourselves but with more of ourselves, regardless of the outcome.

There's something amazing about putting in the effort and work that is its own reward, and that enhances our sense that who we are as valuable because we're capable of sacrifice, and that, weirdly, ends up being more important than if we get what we were hoping we might get by means of the sacrifice.

So, a healthy sacrifice, I'll qualify with healthy because I know people will hear that and say, oh, there's some forms of sacrifice that are like, you know, masochist or your self-harming or something, not that kind. Healthy sacrifice and I'll let you guys define what that means. With healthy sacrifice comes self-respect, Mars-Saturn, also Sun-Saturn.

With effort and determination comes faith when you have to stick with something and remain determined, and you also have to know that you're doing it regardless of the outcome. To me, that is a kind of cosmic faith. It's not a faith that says, Well, I know what's coming, I know what's real, I know something, it's faith to me is not about knowing. It's rather a kind of trusting in the way that things will happen, that there is an intelligence and a beauty and a sensibility.

Everything in its right place, you know, you can feel that and tap into that, and that if you remain determined, and you exert, you know, effort and stick-to-it-ness, that, you recognize that there's value in that, that allows you to receive the benefit of the outcome, whatever the outcome is, and that in turn develops within you a kind of trust and faith, not trust in faith that you know how things are going to go, or that you're the ultimate author of everything, or that you know exactly how everything works, or that you have not some kind of self-righteous certainty.

But that if you remain determined, dedicated, devoted, and keep putting an effort to the things you care about, that you love, even when limitations come up, you just keep beating your drum, you know, just steady, you develop a kind of cosmic faith, and that's these transits are opportunities to do that, which is the thing that we miss when we just feel like oh, man, you know, something's gonna make it hard for a minute, you know, and, and we get into this, like, very limited way of thinking about experience itself. That's what we don't want. That's when Saturn really does become malefic when it limits our imagination.

Number three, with frustration, comes patience. Here's the other thing. Saturn is frustrating for the Sun for Mars; it can offer frustration. But if you work through frustration while remaining committed, not only due to develop self-respect and faith, but also patience, and I want to show you something that I think is cool about the word patience.

This is the etymology, the quality of being willing to bear adversities, the comb endurance of misfortune, from Latin, enduring and submitting. Right now, I don't believe that every situation in life requires that we be submissive, or I'm not preaching some kind of cosmic gospel of submission to circumstance or something. But if we don't know how to be submissive to the flow of our minds and our experiences, we actually lack flexibility and one of the things that can happen with any Saturn transit it can it can be about inflexibility, but a lot of the inflexibility isn't from something external, coming in and blocking us from what we want or desire. The inflexibility signified by the transit has to do with our tendency to respond to adversity inflexibly, and that, for ancient astrologers, would be a greater limiting factor for the soul than the actual misfortune.

Also, bearing supporting, bearing and supporting to endure; quiet or calmness in waiting. This is just my experience, I guess I'm saying you, but this is my experience; when I wait upon life to show me something I don't understand to take me somewhere I want to go or to give me a result, or you know or not and I just I wait with a kind of calm, curious, open-mindedness.

I am rarely disappointed because I will always find that whatever is being offered is interesting, and where there is an ability to stay interested, there is an exponential increase of my appreciating capacity. I can appreciate more because I wait, knowing that something worth appreciating will come no matter what.

These are Mars-Saturn dynamics and Sun-Saturn dynamics; we have to place our trust not just in the things and qualities that we consider to be light but also those that we consider to be dark, like Saturn. When we do that, we find that the light and dark are little wormholes moving in and out of each other, just like the light in the dark and the dark in the light of the yin and yang symbol.

It's not easy work, but these are the things we overlook when we talk about these kinds of transits because we just get bogged down in, like, well, I might have to deal with like three days of suffering or something, and I don't like that any more than anyone else. Trust me, I just, I'm like, you know, I can already imagine what might be frustrating for me this week looking at the house placements and so on and so forth. But, you know, it's back to our trust, back to our patience enduring.

So anyway, that's it for today. Hope you guys are having a good one. Don't forget if you have a chance to pitch in and support our Kickstarter campaign. I love this. I love making content for you guys. I love pouring everything I've got into this. I've been doing it for many, many years now, our 10th annual Kickstarter. If you like it, if you get something good out of it, know that you are supporting a lot of good things. I'll be telling you more about the stretch goals that we're reaching for.

We're pretty close to completing our donation-based clinic. We've built an awesome community herbal medicine garden; we've been giving tons of free medicine to people and hosting free events in it. Every year, we do really cool things, including supporting a staff and making sure that people can study astrology for, you know, affordable prices and making sure that you guys have free content year-round that will help you on your journey. So, if you enjoy it, please do consider pitching in and supporting us in trying to get to 1777 backers by New Year's. Alright. Thanks, everyone. Bye