Wise Elder planet Saturn moved into Pisces, the last sign of the zodiac, on 7th March. This indicates an almost three-year change of rhythm in the ways we structure and move through our lives.
Pisces is the soulful, compassionate final sign of the zodiac. It’s where all life forms eventually dissolve and where new life is gestated. Emotionally, it’s the sign where we long to return to the safe womb of ‘Mother’, held by the larger presence of life’s great mystery. Pisces is known in states of being such as falling in love, blissing out through music, the experience of beauty, immersion in art, or spiritual practices. Intuition, vision, and bliss are its numinous states of mind.
The symbol for the watery sign of Pisces is two fish swimming in different directions, tied together by an umbilical cord. This symbology speaks profoundly of Pisces paradoxical nature, representing the intimate links between spirit and body, our capacity to swim in either direction, with the necessity to integrate both for a healthy fulfilled life. To embody Pisces energy fully, we need to have one foot in peaceful connectedness to the deep mystery of life, and the other prepared to emerge ever new from that spaciousness into third dimensional reality.
Pisces energy is fluid and utterly immersive; it goes with the flow. It represents the spaciousness of realms such as sleep, the subconscious, meditation, our individual and collective psyche; it is the realm of infinite possibilities of expression. It’s where we let go, forgive, and surrender to a vaster reality than our own experience or knowledge. Pisces shadow calling can be as much to escape as to healthy surrender. As such it expresses through fantasy and illusion, rose-tinted spectacles that create issues in seeing and facing reality. Addictions and substance abuse fall in Pisces realm, as do confusion, avoidance, and lack of discrimination. The fish is slippery creature after all. It can swim away into hidden depths rather than face what it needs to. Pisces says, ‘What is reality anyway?’ There is truth in that, yet the Pisces shadow can use that awareness to spiritualise and escape its responsibility for being fully here in a body.
The planet Saturn, and its sign Capricorn, is in many ways an opposite to Pisces. Yet the two can work together. As ruler of the final earth sign, Saturn stands for our processes of embodiment and self-mastery. He is the builder of the zodiac, our calling to responsibility, maturity, and contribution. He has two feet firmly on solid ground, motivated by making a tangible achievement in life, either for his self in less-developed Capricorn energy, or for the benefit of family and community. Saturn’s symbol is the sea-goat; his realm the high mountains where life is tough and food scarce. Ever-resourceful Saturn thrives in this environment, yet there is one aspect of his symbology that is often missed – his fish’s tail. This means two things: as last earth sign of the zodiac, he can attain mastery of the whole of the earth element, from the depths of the ocean to the highest mountain peak. Yet also, more importantly, that he needs to return to the ocean that gave him birth for nurture and sustenance.
Divorced from the watery womb of life, Saturn can become dry, hard, and rigid, focused only on the next mountain peak challenge. This face of Saturn is about drive and achievement without care for other elements of life. Its endemic in our patriarchal cultures and we can see its results. With Saturn now moving out of his two home signs, Capricorn and Aquarius, where he has been for more than five years, there is a fundamental shift happening. We have seen the shadow of patriarchy beginning to deconstruct, albeit slowly, aided by Pluto’s passage through Capricorn. Saturn’s move into Pisces brings some much-needed nourishment to our souls now.
The vast energetic oceans of Pisces, its infinite, fluid possibilities, do not suit Saturn’s desire to structure, plan and manifest. Saturn is not in his element here. He cannot hold onto his much-loved structures. Pisces is the sign ruled by Neptune and Jupiter, planets that represent expansion and dissolution, mystical awareness, and intuitive capacity. Saturn loves to pull energy together to create, build and manifest; it’s a planet of contraction. As this placement comes in more strongly, initially we may struggle to reconcile our soulful, creative needs with our practical ones. We simply can’t get it together no matter how hard we struggle. Effort disappears into ‘too tired’, ‘can’t be bothered’ or simply dissipates as other more pressing needs take over.
Water generally flows through the existing available channels, so with Saturn in Pisces we can find ourselves taking the path of least resistance, despite a conscious desire not to. This can be frustrating if our focus is solely on results. Or if we berate ourselves for not achieving what we would love to. An integrated Saturn in Pisces key here is to bring understanding and kindness to these challenges, to recognise our humanness. To allow Pisces compassion to soften Saturn’s hard edges. Conversely, Saturn’s gift in Pisces is the capacity to stick with our evolutionary processes, to pull ourselves out demotivation and start again. It can support us in transmuting subtle aspects of avoidance, grief, ancestral karma, and relationship illusions. It helps us get more real with avoidance, more grounded and realistic about how we express the subtleties of our soulful callings. It encourages a keep-moving-gently approach.
Pisces is the sign of gestation before the impulse to action of Aries. As such, an ethos of act-then-wait-and-see is entirely supportive to this placement. A capacity to nurture gestation is essential. Where we don’t, the goals we are trying so hard to achieve will simply fall away as we try to grasp them too firmly. Or we fail to move towards what we are truly here for – to embody our soulfulness. The watery element of Pisces helps Saturn to loosen up; Saturn supports the anchoring of the more subtle nudges arising from soul and spirit. He can provide a container for our intuitive direction, our creative and soulful expression.
Despite Saturn’s discomfort in the watery ocean of Pisces, there are great gifts to be revealed in this synergy. When we consciously have a foot in both worlds – the unknowability of life with its infinite possibilities and the necessity to take responsibility for how we live – we can be a conscious conduit for soulful gifts yet undiscovered, and life’s infinite mystery that takes us beyond what we already know. Of course, this requires great trust in ourselves and in the unseen aspects of life’s potentials. Trust is a quality that has potentially been developing over Saturn’s more recent gritty transits. We have learned that life is not within always our control, yet we can respond consciously to its challenges. The key in this current placement is in not shutting down the innate mystery of oneself or life’s ultimate mystery. It’s to stay connected to the magic of synchronicity and serendipity. In truth, anything is possible, and Pisces is the sign that reveals this.
As representative of the inner ocean of consciousness, Pisces contains both our greatest treasure and our deepest fears and doubts. There’s a subtle synergy between inspiration, feeling, transmuting, letting go and action that can be embodied with this placement. As we move through this next three years, the evolutionary frequencies call us to deepen in consciousness, becoming a living embodiment of soulfulness. As Saturn is in the same sign every 29-30 years, pointers to the unfolding of this gentle dissolution and embodiment process can be found in the periods 1993 to 1996 and from 1964 to 1967. Experience now will be different, but how you evolve will have a theme. The Pisces house in your chart reveals the playing field for these energies.
The interplay of planetary energies always brings potential for revelation. When Pisces is involved, this is often a long-term process seen only with hindsight. The Great Mystery is at play; as individuals we are but one aspect of its unfolding. One intriguing aspect of this current process however is that Saturn –symbolising the boundaries of what we see as physical reality – and Neptune – planet representing the boundless nature of our true reality – are occupying the same sign now. In sharing this same sign, they will become better acquainted. Their synergy can unlock a more holistic caring approach to our human frailties, the shadows of trauma and karma, and a tangible connection to realities beyond body and mind. They are also gestating a deep change in how we live. Saturn and Neptune get close from May 2025, both entering the sign of new beginnings Aries. When they are eventually conjunct at 0 Aries in February 2026, the potential is the arrival of an utterly new reality. We will cross a threshold. In the meantime, we are called to dive into the watery ocean of Pisces, to collect our hidden treasures resting in the deep. Where is the subtle calling in you? It’s time to listen, to deeply rest in your truly unknowable nature, yet to gently act on what inspires, attracts and moves you.
