Saturn conjunct Neptune and Venus: the "Unfolding Story" of Love and Illusion

Dear Kendra~


We got to Zurich in the pouring rain and wandered through the streets of the old town looking for a place to stay. Finally, near exhaustion, we stopped at a café for coffee—cappuccino (!) and I spotted a marionette-puppet shop across the street… so we ducked in there, and I turned into a kid again looking for the lost Pinocchio… but instead I left with one scruffy-looking marionette of a street musician playing a fiddle! Don’t know why I treasure these little guys so much, but being as I was a rather lonely only child, I can only suspect they were special “friends” to me when no one else was there.



As it turned out, the shop-keeper rented rooms above his shop, so we finally found a place to settle into, and Sophie and I took our computers out and set them up in private corners of the quaint high ceiling room. How strange they seemed in this history soaked room—! Here’s a photo I took of the painting that hangs on the far wall of our room. I’m totally transfixed by its quality of “yearning.” Sophie says it’s by one of the pre-Raphaelite painters—an artist named “Waterhouse” and is a painting of Dante’s ‘Beatrice’~



So, we agreed to spend a few moments checking our emails—this was the first one I saw:



Dear Isabelle~


             Take a look under the musician’s hat. There’s something there for you…


~Sophie


“What’s this?!” I turned around to see Sophie grinning like a cheshire cat.



“Check your marionette again—he has something for you…”



I slowly unwrapped the purple tissue and untied the package and looked at the marionette’s quixotic face. And there, under the stove-pipe hat, was a tiny silver mandala on a long delicate chain. A perfect sphere, inclosing an equal sided cross.



“And this one is for me-- she took out a little green velvet bag and held up what looked to be the same. But it was different—this was a circled cross, a Celtic Cross with the vertical cross longer than the horizontal….



“They’re different—but, almost the same—I found them in Whitby that last afternoon when I was out walking by myself, and I love how they’re similar—but different, like us.”



My first thought was terrible. I wanted to take a scissors and snip off the long end of her cross. I wanted to make hers the same as mine—to take off the unequal long end and to remove all the painful connotations of that long center cross-post—like the one Jesus was nailed to. I wanted her to have a perfect astrological mandala. I wanted her life to be a perfect balance of opposites….these were “mother instincts”….yet my life was so far from a perfect mandala. Instead I broke into tears and hugged her.

                                                                  *****

So here we have: Saturn conjuncting Neptune and Venus. Sometimes the easiest way to get to the meaning of aspects is to break apart all the words that describe each planet and then combine them together….so with Saturn one might say: solitary, disciplined, melancholy, re-structuring, serious, practical, harvest, maturing—and then with Neptune: dreamer, visionary, imaginative, permeable, illusion, escapism, ego-less, spiritual, addiction, yearning, sacrifice…..so what do you get: a solitary dreamer, disciplined imagination, melancholy re-structuring, practical addictions…that’s a good one! I think there’s an important distinction between preferences and addictions. Preferences you choose, and have control over, whereas addictions have a hold on you. So if we can upgrade our addictions to preferences, and find the path of moderation, this is ideal. This “taking control” or disciplining is Saturnian, and the watery, ethereal qualities of Neptune can be held and used well when they are combined, like water being held within the banks of a river.



Now, we can add the third element: Venus. Astrology is never simple; it’s like a complex puzzle or crossword, and so it’s a good idea to solve the clues you can see first and work up to what seemed at first too difficult to understand. So take the planetary meanings apart first, and then look at what they do when they’re combined together. With Venus added to this Saturn/Neptune puzzle we get the clue that we are dealing with the Venus realm—the realm of the heart, beauty, and relationships. But though Saturn sounds harsh, it actually is “exalted” in Venus-ruled Libra and in the ancient texts because Saturn likes the way Venus desires to structure relationships.



Adding the illusory “yearning” nature of Neptune softens the picture, and we get a picture of what is happening, but not an answer. Will the yearning for Venusian love be compatible with the illusory nature of Neptune? Will Saturn show himself as the wise inner guide or a stern inner critic? Will transiting Saturn on this Venus-Neptune conjunction in Libra survive the reality (Saturn) and the disciplined duties (Saturn) or will Neptune obscure all the outlines of reality and true feeling, and turn this into a hauntingly beautiful dark painting one can barely see….?



Till later, dearest Kendra~