First Saturn Return

Posted on September 15, 2017July 28, 2019 by Celestina

When is the First Saturn Return?

Saturn is the planet that matures us with its transits, and the First Saturn Return transit is what separates people under thirty from people over thirty. The first Saturn Return happens when we are between 28 and 30. Invariably, this marks one of the most important times in your life, a time of endings and beginnings, a time to discover your authentic self and correct your course in life if it seems you’re heading in the wrong direction.

When Saturn returns, he has a few questions to ask: Who are you? and Where are you going? These are simple questions but the truth is, at 29 you are beginning to wonder about the answers to these questions yourself. This is because your “real life” is just about to begin!

Saturn’s here to teach us that nothing is for “nothing”. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Karma balances itself out. Resistance only makes it worse. Saturn is a hard task master but just. Work hard on the task at hand and you’ll get the reward. And you’ll get to keep it, too, because you earned it. That’s a Saturn secret … you can’t hold on to something you didn’t earn.

Respecting the First Saturn Return’s Energy

The First Saturn Return energy is like pruning. Not all directions in life are bad ones, but they may not be the best ones. Saturn Return asks us to forsake so-so directions and have the courage to find the one that is most like us, the one we were intended for when we were born.

The trouble is, this may not be the one our parents had planned for us.

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The First Saturn Return is a time to consider your unique individual needs, the contribution you want to make to the world, the resources that are important to you, inner and outer, and who will go with you on your journey.

Making the right choices, the authentic choices, at 30 guarantees more happiness and fulfillment later in life and usually better health because it is stressful to live a lie. Stress is a major contributor to all physical illnesses.

The best approach with Saturn is to be respectful, even if you’re not normally a respectful person — especially if you’re not normally a respectful person.

Saturn is the great teacher

Saturn is the Great Teacher, so find out what Saturn’s class is all about. Show up on time. Sit in the front row with your notebook open, pen in hand. Ask intelligent questions. Turn your homework in. You’ll pass with flying colors.

Up until the age of 29 we are living out our “past lives”. By the way, if you don’t have an experience of having lived before (reincarnation or past lives), then please consider this a metaphor for your childhood. It works just as well. Don’t let terminology get in the way of the point I’m making because it will help you so much to understand this.

Up until the time of our first Saturn Return, we are living on the fruits or harvests of past lifetimes, so to speak, good or bad … you know the answer to that one yourself. In other words, if your life up to 29 has been wretched, you can now look forward to choices and experiences which may be much more positive because they are of your own making.

Karma is the name for this but don’t be afraid of “karma”. It’s like a mathematical equation. Whatever starts ends somewhere and things tend to even themselves out over lifetimes. If, on the other hand, your life up to 29 has been easy, good, blessed, etc., then you will now have to begin “earning” these privileges in the current life time. You may have been working off credits that had accumulated in former lifetimes, so to speak.

Saturn Return is a time to consider your unique individual needs, the contribution you want to make to the world, the resources that are important to you, inner and outer, and who will go with you on your journey.

Making the right choices

The best approach with Saturn is to be respectful, even if you’re not normally a respectful person — especially if you’re not normally a respectful person.

Up until the time of our first Saturn Return, we are living on the fruits or harvests of past lifetimes, so to speak, good or bad … you know the answer to that one yourself. In other words, if your life up to 29 has been wretched, you can now look forward to choices and experiences which may be much more positive because they are of your own making.

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Karma and the First Saturn Return

You may think you know the answer to the questions that Saturn asks but perhaps you don’t. If Saturn asks, “Who are you?” some possible answers are:

1. My father’s son.
2. My family has always been very hard working and interested in business and education.
3. I think I’m pretty much like every other girl/guy my age here in Omaha.
4. Me and my brothers are going to take over my father’s business, so I guess you’d say I’m a rancher from way back.
5. All I saw was people grow old in my hometown and die, so I struck off in the Navy as soon as I could. I don’t really know what I’m doing here other than that.

If Saturn were rating answers on a scale of 1 to 10, answers 1 through 4 would get a “1” and answer #5 would get a “10”.

A Time for Self-Examination

The first Saturn Return is a time of serious self examination. The Quakers would call it a time to “take stock”. The Universe conspires to make this possible through the transit of Saturn. Sometimes outer events will precipitate greater self knowledge or sometimes it is an inner pressure. Either way, most people consider their first Saturn Return to be one of the most difficult times of their life — and the most rewarding.

If you rise to the task at hand during your Saturn Return the entire rest of your life will be easier because you will be on your path and the universe will support you. If you take a wrong turn here, the Universe will keep trying to correct you but each time it does, it will be harder for you to respond because you will be more and more entrenched in your way of life and it will be that much more difficult to make a change.

In a way what we are saying is that you don’t really know yourself until after the first Saturn Return. We don’t really know ourselves until after 30 but this seems to be a lesson that can only be learned in the fires of life and not by being passed on from mouth to mouth. People under 30 can’t understand and often don’t trust people over 30 precisely because of this threshold which is crossed. After all, one of the ancient names for Saturn is “Dweller on the Threshold”. You are being initiated into another life.

The First Return’s Sense of Urgency

If you have been pursuing a career or lifestyle to please someone else, there is a sense of urgency at the Saturn Return to make important changes. Sometimes this means retraining for a career, lowering income to make a lateral move or even divorce. Statistically, more divorces take place in America when people are between 28 and 30 than any other time. On the other hand, some people marry and take on big responsibilities at that time.

With a sense of urgency, it can seem like everything has to be done all at one time but the transit actually takes place over a couple of years. Not all the changes have to happen at one time.

Naturally some people are more comfortable with change than others. For example, those with SATURN IN TAURUS may need to make the most changes and they may be the most resistant. Change can also be frightening to the other earth signs: Virgo and Capricorn.

The Pressure of the First Saturn Return

Saturn Return also brings pressure to change attitudes toward parents, those in authority, develop a new relationship to God or begin a spiritual path, make adjustments to the community you live in, move to a more compatible place or embrace a new religion or culture, sometimes through marriage.

Naturally these are some of the reasons people “over thirty” are so different from people “under thirty”. Coming of age doesn’t occur at 18 or 21, as our culture asserts, but rather at 28-30 during the Saturn Return.

Liz Greene, internationally famous astrologer, explains in Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil that Saturn “… is never easy to deal with because his function is that of promoting growth, and it is only frustration and pain which at present are sufficient goads to get a human being moving.”