Pause at the Threshold
Sensing the initiation before crossing the threshold, compliments of Saturn
A week from now, I’ll be landing in Brazil to visit my mother, who is ailing. Going to Brazil has always felt complex and unsettling in the best of times. For many, a ‘return home’ feels like replenishment for the soul. I’m not one of those folks. I have a complex relationship with the ‘motherland’ in more ways than one.
This trip feels like a descent into the Underworld, the very stuff I’ve often talked about. But now I’m the one who stands at the gates, facing the gravitas of Dweller of the Threshold - not one of my clients.
I can smell the whiff of initiation because to see an aging parent with health issues burning faster through their thread of life, as given by the Fates, brings up a jumble of conflicting emotions and thoughts.
So, while there, I won’t be writing. Focus on the path will leave little oxygen for creativity. I’ll return to the digital pen once I return home - here.
Saturn (1636) by Rubens
Into the chrysalis, we go.
One thing I often say to clients is that Saturn delivers. Do the work, and you will be rewarded. Slack off, and you’ll reap what you didn’t sow. Saturn wasn’t only Father Time, but also an agricultural god of the golden age. That’s why a lot of its symbolism reflects planting seeds, tending to the earth (incarnating is a Saturnian principle), and harvesting what was seeded.
In a way, we can see this in our relationships - it’s hard to heal what was sown poorly. The harvest may be uneven, brittle, dry, or bountiful and tender in its juiciness.
Saturn is also related to ENDINGS. Think of its scythe, the same as the Grim Reaper. Until the discovery of Uranus, Saturn was the last planet seen with the naked eye. The buck stopped with Saturn. Now we have Pluto, and its more psychological death/rebirth analogies. But Saturn still has something to say about endings because it comes to ‘trimming the fat’ of what is unnecessary for the path forward.
When we approach the threshold, Saturn, as its Dweller, has us stop, show our credentials, and move through with only what is essential for the journey ahead. This makes me think about the idea that every transition into a liminal space starts with an ending - a death of sorts. We can’t take forward what will not be part of what we’re becoming. No wonder Saturn is also related to depression since endings speak to the sadness of death in its many permutations.
However, as the astrologer Erin Sullivan writes in her Retrograde Planets book:
“Not all Saturn stationary-retrograde periods coincides with endings. Although externally they may appear to do so, they are truly a beginning of an entirely new relationship with one’s environment and one’s inner feelings of power and authority. The station begins a process win which a container, a chrysalis, is constructed, within which mysterious unconscious processes begin to metamorphose. … what emerges at the end of the nine-month gestation cycle is considerably different from what was imagined.”
Another image that feels appropriate is ENTOMBMENT for incubation before its eventual birth. Like the caterpillar will face death and be born a butterfly, Saturn Retrograde times speak to the ending of something that will be born anew in its due time. It’s not so much a REBIRTH, but a new BIRTH.
When in a storm - keep driving through.
Years ago, one of my mentors told me that if I’m ever caught in a rainstorm, it’s best to keep driving instead of stopping and waiting at the side of the road. Slow and steady seemed to be her advice.
As Saturn has just stationed retrograde and I’m about to see what my work ahead is in terms of my mother’s ailing life force, I can take solace in the wisdom of Saturn. Squirming right now will not do. The threshold awaits, and I can trust that I have support from the seen and the unseen realms.
It’s part of our human nature to avoid and delay at the threshold. We’re not graceful in going gently towards the liminal. Our Mars may fight valiantly, our Sun avoid, and our Moon cling to old securities, but in the end, Saturn’s scythe cuts through all the outmoded, damaging values and thought patterns that are way past their sell-by-date. It’s the proper trimming that allows the rose bushes to grow and blossom again.
Now on to you.
What is going into a chrysalis in your life? What threshold are you standing in pause?
What might be on the other side?
Enjoy & Thrive!
Vanessa Couto
