Saturn in Virgo Comprehensive Analysis
Below you will find a comprehensive analysis of the Saturn in Virgo natal placement. Read this and re-read it if you have to. Upon a firm understanding of the study, you will have completed the final step of our Four Part Study to Mastering your Saturn Return!
Saturn in Virgo Birth Dates
Those born roughly between September 19, 1948 and April 1, 1949; May 29, 1949 and November 19, 1950; March 7, 1951 and August 12, 1951; November 16, 1977 and January 3, 1978; and July 26, 1978 and September 20, 1980 have Saturn in Virgo. The last Saturn return was September 2007 to April 2010. Saturn in Virgo appears after Saturn in Leo but before Saturn in Libra in the transit.
Issues facing Saturn in Virgo
These are some of the issues that those with Saturn in Virgo have dealt with through the ages:
• mental health
• soul
• mind/body connection
• nutrition
• order and chaos
• details
• precision
• perfectionism
• service
• slave and master
• small animals
• daily routine
• work
• avocation
• religion (not spirituality)
• nuns and monks
• virgin vs. whore
• redeeming the whore
• redemption
• “works” versus faith
• integrity
• guru
• teaching by example (silently)
• expertise
• focus
• economy in all its senses
• anal compulsive or wound up too tight
• a particular refinement of intellect
• crusade
• Knights Templar
Click here for your Free Numerology Reading
A paucity of Famous People with Saturn in Leo
In a way there aren’t so many famous people with Saturn in Virgo because Virgo is absolutely not about fame or doing something for recognition. As each sign on the wheel — Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces — complements or completes the one right before it, Virgo is compensating for the excesses of Leo, the sign that will do anything for attention.
As for the symbolic virgin of the sign, Greene herself comments that the word “virgin” was not originally synonymous with chaste. “[T]he prostitute is the same as the mythic virgin for she is an archetypal image of the free woman who is wedded first of all to her inner being and only secondarily to a man.”
Virgo energy doesn’t flow from one’s relationships
The prominent virgin goddesses in ancient Greek and Roman astrology were Diana and Athena. Of course there were also the Vestal Virgins, ritual temple priestesses. Not technically virgins, Diana, Goddess of the Moon, roamed the woods with her hunting hounds. Athena was the Goddess of just wars. Athena was a strategist and artisan. None of these goddesses let their identity flow from marriage and motherhood. Virgo energy is about an identity that does not flow from one’s relationships.
In some way this energy gets expressed with those who have Saturn in Virgo. They may begin life borrowing identities and values but eventually this becomes painful. As integrity grows, each person with Saturn in Virgo must become their own person on their own terms. It is at the first Saturn Return that this difficult birth should occur. The task set by the first Saturn Return spreads out over the next thirty years, until the second Return, but the theme, the choices, the agony, the blind endings all occur between 28 and 30.
Saturn in Virgo and Redemption
Saturn in Virgo is also about redemption. The act of forgiveness figures prominently in true redemption. This usually occurs after a period of genuine suffering. The film The Mission depicts a good contemporary rendering of this, which you might view for contemplation. Another example is Les Miserables written by Victor Hugo, a French writer with Saturn in Virgo who deeply influenced on later scribes such as Albert Camus, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Forgiveness is vital to Saturn in Virgo
The act of Forgiveness need not occur through religion, but is a natural human process. Forgiveness is for your own sake, not the other person’s. That’s something some of you may struggle with for many years. Is there someone in your life you need to forgive? Sometimes it’s just getting over the Virgo need to fix everyone for their perceived imperfections. Other times it’s bigger than that.
Pope John Paul II, born with Saturn in Virgo, forgave the man who tried to assassinate him after meeting with the would-be killer in prison. “What we talked about will have to remain a secret between him and me. I spoke to him as a brother whom I have pardoned and who has my complete trust,” said the Pope. (You can pretty much always count on Virgo discretion!)
You should be health-conscious
Those with Saturn in Virgo are either the best or worst examples regarding health. The ultimate goal is to take responsibility for one’s own health, growing to realize it is not the doctor’s health or the government’s health but your own responsibility. Lifestyle choices, alternative (natural) healing modes and preventive health care are big issues. As those of your generation reach positions of power and influence, we may expect to see big changes.
An example of this is how attitudes toward smoking have created an entirely different atmosphere around personal and corporate responsibility over the past thirty years. Similar change is taking place today regarding obesity. As Virgo is concerned with healthy lifestyle it also extends to ecology. As Pope John Paul II has stated, “Modern Society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its lifestyles.”
Natural Healers abound within Saturn in Virgo natal placement
Many of you with Saturn in Virgo are also natural healers, capable of laying-on-of-hands healing. You may be gifted, perhaps INFP personality types. I quote below Keirsey’s description of this type and invite you to learn more about Jungian based personality systems:
Healer Idealists are abstract in thought and speech, cooperative in striving for their ends, and investigative and attentive in their interpersonal relations. Healer present a seemingly tranquil, and noticeably pleasant face to the world, and though to all appearances they might seem reserved, and even shy, on the inside they are anything but reserved, having a capacity for caring not always found in other types. They care deeply-indeed, passionately-about a few special persons or a favorite cause, and their fervent aim is to bring peace and integrity to their loved ones and the world.
Healers have a profound sense of idealism derived from a strong personal morality, and they conceive of the world as an ethical, honorable place. Indeed, to understand Healers, we must understand their idealism as almost boundless and selfless, inspiring them to make extraordinary sacrifices for someone or something they believe in. The Healer is the Prince or Princess of fairytale, the King’s Champion or Defender of the Faith, like Sir Galahad or Joan of Arc. Healers exist in only 1 percent of the general population, although, at times, their idealism leaves them feeling even more isolated from the rest of humanity.
Seeking unity because of a continual sense of inner division
The Healers seek unity in their lives, unity of body and mind, emotions and intellect, perhaps because they are likely to have a sense of inner division threaded through their lives, which comes from their often unhappy childhood. They live a fantasy-filled childhood, which, unfortunately, many parents discourage and even punish. In a practical-minded family, required by their parents to be sociable and industrious in concrete ways, and also given down-to-earth siblings who conform to these parental expectations, Healers come to see themselves as ugly ducklings.
Other types usually shrug off parental expectations that do not fit them, but not the Healers. Wishing to please their parents and siblings, but not knowing quite how to do it, they try to hide their differences, believing they are bad to be so fanciful, so unlike their more solid brothers and sisters. They wonder, some of them for the rest of their lives, whether they are OK. They are quite OK, just different from the rest of their family-swans reared in a family of ducks.
Even so, to realize and really believe this is not easy for them. Deeply committed to the positive and the good, yet taught to believe there is evil in them, Healers can come to develop a certain fascination with the problem of good and evil, sacred and profane. Healers are drawn toward purity, but can become engrossed with the profane, continuously on the lookout for the wickedness that lurks within them. Then, when Healers believe thay have yielded to an impure temptation, they may be drawn to acts of self-sacrifice in atonement. Others seldom detect this inner turmoil, however, for the struggle between good and evil is within the Healer, who does not feel compelled to make the issue public.
A legacy tied to Greece
The ancient mystery and healing cults of Greece may be of special interest to the Saturn in Virgo possessor. The Greek god that healed was Apollo. Asklepios was his priest and Hygeia was Asklepios’ daughter.
Healing with herbs, crystals, laying-on-of-hands, energy work, therapeutic massage, nutrition, and healing diets are all the natural province of Saturn in Virgo. You may all start out as the greatest skeptics and end being great healers.
For many, healing will take place through a resurrected understanding of the mind/body connection: all illness is mental illness. For some of you, doubt and worry are a way of life. All sorts of little rituals are used to protect yourself from fears and phobias, sometimes to the extent of ACD or compulsive disorders.
Click here for your free numerology reading
A penchant for rituals
Rituals are natural to Saturn in Virgo, though this may not be recognized. Cleaning house is a ritual. Going every Sunday morning to the swap meet is a ritual. Carried to its logical extension your group understands that work is ritual. Some of you will carry the concept of avocation to its heights.
Many of you with Saturn in Virgo are true pagans, earth worshippers and nature spirits. You are interested in pure water, fresh air, and clean, healthy bodies. The nature religions such as Wicca and paganism may provide a welcome avenue for expression as well as working in the field of ecology and ergonomics.
Less is More — an ongoing Saturn in Virgo philosophy
Those with Saturn in Virgo understand that less is more and that space informs. Anything minimalistic is yours! “Where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and who can say which has the wider vision?” wrote Victor Hugo in Les Miserables. If you are accused of micromanaging or knit picking, you are holding the telescope by the wrong end.
Divine discontent is bound to occur to Saturn in Virgo. For a while everything is nailed down, neat, tidy, and in good working order. Then something happens, probably during your Saturn Return, and you’re swimming in an ocean of currents and tides. All those intricate walls you built to cubby hole everything in (a place for everything and everything in its place) are suddenly washed away and your certainty dissolves into oblivion. Congratulations! Your lifework has just begun. The task at hand will be to cooperate with this process of taking everything apart and putting it back together again. This must be done with your whole self this time, not just with your beautiful mind. The organizational principles must be elegant and holistic.
Saturn in Virgo values Solitude
Many of you with Saturn in Virgo natal placement are nuns and monks by nature, preferring to live alone or in monastic-like communities. There is nothing “wrong” with this. It is a choice many conscious people make. The relationships are there. They are just sister/brother in orientation, as when St. Francis speaks of Brother Sun/Sister Moon. Living alone on the other hand often contributes to the contemplative orientation of Saturn in Virgo, the need for peace and order in which to do so.
A side that isn’t spoken of so often is the need for Saturn in Virgo to explore the relationship between slave and master. This grows out of the need to serve and is a step along the way to getting it just right. Ideally we should all properly aspire to acknowledging God or the Higher Power as our master and not another human being. Ask yourself: whom do I serve?
What makes a person engulfed and influenced by another? Sometimes it’s a lack of a core sense of self, called “integrity.” People who haven’t developed a strong sense of self will be drawn to masters such as the military, a demanding and overbearing spouse, in some cases a monastery. This is what I call “summer camp mentality”. Each day you get the schedule someone else created and you follow it.
Such workarounds may not work after the first Saturn Return. The truth is to have integrity we have to find ourselves and be ourselves. We need to know what rules work for us and when to change them if necessary. We can’t abdicate this responsibility to others as is the temptation of Saturn in Virgo.
Define your Spiritual Path
After the Saturn Return it becomes quite important to find and define your spiritual path and walk it. In past lives there were excuses and delays. There was confusion and escapism for those with Saturn in Virgo. There really was no path but a broad meandering through life, avoiding responsibility or setting a course. In this lifetime, without commitment, little results. That’s very important for those of you with Saturn in Virgo.
Mario Lanza was a great tenor of the 20th century. During his first Saturn Return he became so wracked with self-doubt due to wicked criticism from others who were jealous that he refused to perform at all. He died an untimely death several years later. With Saturn in Virgo, learn how to deal with criticism without letting it tear you apart or debilitate you from sharing your talent with the world.
Faith is Critical
Faith is a critical Saturn in Virgo task and orientation. Many people think that prayer is asking for something and asking for something is wrong. Others wait to pray until a situation is so desperate that their prayer is really a form of compulsive worry. Faith is the antidote to your fears and phobias, which result from using the powers of the imagination negatively. Instead try positive thinking or replacing a negative thought with a positive one. Patience and unshakable faith are the cornerstones of positive Saturn in Virgo energy.
Saturn in Virgo excels at understanding everything about work and thinking! The refinement of the Virgo mind is legendary. Virgo is able to focus and concentrate, following through on the details, and no one has a better grip on the power of the imagination, properly channeled. Inside everyone with Saturn in Virgo is a born efficiency expert. Let’s face it, in any group you are the ones that really know the best way to proceed and the most efficient way to process and complete the task at hand. The question then becomes, do you have the confidence to come forward with this?
The Essence is a Respect and Ambition for Service
The essence of Virgo is an understanding of service and knowledge that to be of service is the highest calling. Do things for the glorification and edification of others. Johann Sebastian Bach, born with Saturn in Virgo, is considered by some the greatest compose that ever lived (though they are wrong because surely it is Mozart!). Bach said that he composed “For the glory of the most high God alone, And for my neighbor to learn from.” Adopt his attitude about your own craft.
You will be learning after the Saturn Return to look at work as Dharma, a way of finding the right work to do to give back in gratitude to the Creator for the gift of life, work that is suitable for you. The Eastern concept of Dharma is very helpful. We find our unique individuality in finding the work that suits us. All work is sacred. To be is to do our work. The poem on work by Marge Piercy ends, “The pitcher cries for water to carry/ and a person for work that is real.” Such is your task.
The Gifts of Athletic or Artistic Ability
Because of this devotion to the sacred nature of work, perfected athletic or artistic ability is also associated with Saturn in Virgo. Meryl Streep, a graduate of Vassar and Yale, made her screen debut at her first Saturn Return, winning an Oscar at 30 for Best Supporting Actress with Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer. Many respect her as the greatest actress of her generation.
Besides excellence at her craft, many other things about her life exemplify the use of Saturn in Virgo energy. She has said, “Listening is everything. Listening is the whole deal. That’s what I think. And I mean that in terms of before you work, after you work, in between work, with your children, with your husband, with your friends, with your mother, with your father. It’s everything. And it’s where you learn everything.” This is the wisdom of Virgo shining through, for when you listen you honor others and honor yourself as distinct entities capable of connection, and you open the door to useful service.
Conclusion
Listening, serving, and having faith in others can lead you to your work. Most likely your Saturn Return will be about the concept of right action. When in doubt, meditate on what is the right thing to do. Learn to differentiate between the voice of the ego and the voice of God. God speaks in the silence, in the still, small inner voice.
When you get the answer to your issue, you must do it no matter what – no matter how tired, how scared, how lazy, how filled with doubt. Right action gives a person self-assurance and they can make much spiritual progress quickly. This is the path that will heal your wounds of doubt and disappointment, unite your mind and body, focus your intellect, deepen your faith, and lead you to redemption through noble service and excellence.