What Saturn Retrograde 2023 Means for You

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Welcome to Saturn retrograde, where our planet of boundaries, definition, commitment, and mastery begins its seemingly backward spin. This retrograde invites you to revisit and rebuild your relationship with structure, responsibility, discipline, and boundaries—whether physical, emotional, or energetic.

Saturn entered Pisces for the first time in 27 years in March 2023, and we have been learning to navigate this space ever since. There are strong invitations coming from this profound cosmic pairing, meaning space and time for integration are required. Saturn retrograde is exactly that—it is the moment of rest that allows for change to occur and it is the sacred pause that allows for all that is to come.

When Is Saturn Retrograde?

Saturn retrograde begins in the dreamy zodiac of Pisces on June 29, 2024, and continues until November 15, 2024.

What Retrogrades Mean at Large

As much as retrogrades can feel like a step backward, they are a necessary part of our way forward. Retrogrades ask us to stop moving long enough so that we may look within and around. They are the gift of reflection that allows for insight, the introspection that brings self-awareness, and the spaciousness that allows for assimilation of action already taken.

Retrogrades offer us a moment to catch up with who we have become and what experiences we have moved through along the way, as if the changes and growth we have been experiencing finally have an opportunity to seep into our bodies, integrate into our identities, and become available for us to experience.

What Saturn in Pisces Means for Everyone

As an outer planet, Saturn generally spends two to three years in each sign, whereas the inner planets, such as Mercury, spend only a few weeks in a sign. These longer transits represent larger chapters in our lives. The chapter of Saturn in the watery depths of Pisces began in March of last year and initiated a substantial shift and new chapter in all of us. How have you shifted and changed since then? Saturn retrograde retraces this journey you have been on.

Although Saturn connects with each of us in a unique way, its intention remains the same—to bring us into mastery of ourselves. It represents the innate need to realize one’s potential, to become what we are here to be, to journey the path that is ours. It is a road that requires responsibility, challenges, limitation, focus, determination, time, commitment, and structure. Saturn is both the inherent challenges steeped in the climb and the gift of who we become through reaching the top.

Saturn’s medicine isn’t obvious. It’s the medicine of limitation. There is an inherent restriction in our human experience and physical reality. Although energy and spirit are boundless in nature, the very act of incarnating into this reality is to limit that infinite expression. It is to take timelessness into the constraint of time, potentiality into frequency, and infinity into oneself. It is the act of separating ourselves from source, spirit, or all that is.

From an esoteric viewpoint, Saturn can be construed as ruling over our earthly human experience. The limitations it imposes can be related to time, possibility, health, movement, resources, perception, understanding, expression, connection, or something else.

The water sign of Pisces, however, represents that space of oneness in which we existed pre-incarnation. It is the dissolution of boundaries, where you are I and I am you. Where we are nature, the stars, and life itself. Pisces is limitless and exists beyond time and space. It can transport us into this boundless space of love and oneness through imagination, intuition, creativity, empathy, and emotion.

While Saturn is in Pisces, we are learning how to support ourselves spiritually, whether through boundaries, structure to bring our imagination into form, mastery of artistic expression, responsibility for our mental and emotional health, or resilience that taps into untold heights of oneness and empathy.

Here, Saturn acts as the form, structure, and doorway for our Piscean imagination, creativity, and compassion to flow through us and be realized as tangible, real, and experienced. How could structure contribute to your connection to the divine? How can responsibility empower your dreams, imaginations, and artistic expression? How can self-discipline feel like a love language instead of a punishment? And could limitation offer a focus and clarity for your dreams and desires?

Saturn retrograde, which begins on June 29, 2024, is our opportunity to be present with this new chapter and blending of energies within our lives and our psyche. We will be in this space until November 15, 2024, when Saturn once again moves forward.

Until then, allow yourself to slow down and observe the invitations of Saturn in Pisces that you’ve already experienced in the last year. How do you relate to the archetypes of Saturn and Pisces? Do you tend to sway more in one direction or do you hold a balance of these seemingly opposing directions within you?

What Saturn Retrograde in Pisces Means for You

Looking at your ascendant, also known as your rising sign, will show you where in your life Saturn retrograde will take place.

Aries Rising

Saturn in Pisces is a deeply inward chapter for you, Aries. This time speaks to completions, surrender, clearing, and rebuilding your connection to the divine through stripping away what is no longer supporting you.

As Saturn retrograde sweeps through your twelfth house, it journeys through the underworld of the subconscious looking toward your patterns, belief systems, and emotions that sit within your psyche and influence your experience in unhelpful ways. It matters little whether these belong to you, your parents, your family, or the collective.

Offer yourself the space and silence that allow for introspection. Explore what energetic and emotional boundaries mean to you, and what they could offer you. While we are in the 12th house we are attuned to the collective consciousness where separation ceases to exist. While there is a beautiful sense of oneness here, the gifts found in this oneness can only be offered when there are boundaries in place to differentiate what is you and yours from others. You do not need to take on everyone else’s emotions, nor do you need to hold the weight of expectations, fears, or anything that is not yours. How has Saturn in Pisces been reminding you of this?

Taurus Rising

When you think of your future, Taurus, where do your thoughts take you? When you think of the future of the collective, what is your place in that? As Saturn sits in Pisces, this retrograde invites you to reflect on your sense of responsibility to your future and your community. What are your larger-than-life visions? And how can the Saturnian realms of perseverance, effort, discipline, responsibility, and focus support these visions?

There is a beautiful connection to community with Pisces swimming through your eleventh house that holds an intuitive knowing and empathy for what the collective needs to move forward and how to be that for them. This transit is asking you to balance this empathy and care for your community with caring for yourself so that you may show up with your gifts to give.

Reflect on emotional boundaries and energetic hygiene. How can you build yourself up in a way that allows you relate to the needs of your community without being overwhelmed, drained, or confused in your direction? This is what Saturn is offering you.

Gemini Rising

Saturn in Pisces is inviting you to master your career, ambitions, sense of authority, and your reputation, Gemini. During this retrograde, allow yourself to reflect on the last few months. How has your sense of responsibility changed within your career? When you think of ambition, where do your mind, body, and emotions take you?

Saturn represents the need to realize one’s innate potential. This is a time to challenge yourself, take responsibility for your path, goals, ambition, and structure. Not in a way that drains or depletes you, but in a way that serves you, serves your vision, serves your fulfilment, and serves the dreams that are yours to live. You deserve to be supported in the building of your empire, and Saturn desires to be that support for you even if at first it feels heavy.

While this retrograde can slow things down, allow yourself first to reflect upon your career path and what you want for yourself, so that once Saturn turns direct you can step forward clear and inspired.

Cancer Rising

This is a philosophical chapter for you, Cancer. Saturn in Pisces holds an opportunity to rebuild your greater understanding of both the meaning of life and your place in it. This retrograde invites spaciousness so that you may reflect upon and integrate your many years of experience in the world.

You can then come to a more nuanced understanding of how to find meaning in everything. Whether it is found through studies, travel, or a new relationship with spirituality, it is an invitation to expand and define your beliefs so that they may support you as you move through the world.

The doorway to the divine that Pisces embodies can be supportive at this time in establishing your belief systems, whether you seek this through meditation, embodiment work, creative expression, or whatever it is that connects you to your spirituality.

Leo Rising

To journey through one’s inner shadow and face what sits within the discarded parts of us isn’t easy, Leo. Yet sometimes that is the path calling us.

Saturn retrograde invites you to be vulnerable as it peels back your layers so you can sit with what lies underneath—to witness parts yourself you may have disowned and cast into the shadow—so that you may reach for acceptance and reclaim yourself, piece by piece.

There is a transformation taking place around your relationship to power, control, compulsions, attachments, addictions, sex, and finances. In particular, how or if they hold any sway over you, whether this shows up in habitual thinking, patterns of acting and doing, escapism, or themes in your relationships. This retrograde is an opportunity to witness what has been keeping you in chains, dimmed, powerless, and fearful so that you may rebuild your freedom, power, and light.

Virgo Rising

Saturn is the structure that keeps us in place. It is the infrastructure that allows something to be built, remain steady, and expand. It is also the dismantling of what is built on an unsteady foundation and cannot stand the test of time.

Saturn retrograde is an invitation to feel into the foundations of the relationships around you, whether romantic, business, or friendship. What are these relationships built upon? What are your needs within these relationships? What are your responsibilities? Do these structures feel safe, loving, and inspiring? Do you offer safety, love, and inspiration to your chosen people?

Pisces is deeply intuitive and tuned into the waters of emotions. Let that part of you reflect on these questions. Let your body answer. Let your heart speak.

Libra Rising

What is your relationship to everyday structure, Libra? Could self-discipline feel like a language of self-love? Could organization and commitment be a foundation from which you flourish?

Throughout Saturn in Pisces, there is an invitation of greater responsibility for the small steps in your life, Libra. The small steps that make up the whole. The daily habits, routines, rituals, and schedules that influence the way you feel about yourself, the way you support your body, and the way you feel in the world. This chapter is a clearing away of inefficient habits and routines and a simplification and infusion of purpose into how you show up in your everyday life.

This retrograde is an inspired opportunity to reflect upon how you desire to take care of yourself. The small habits that can support you. The way that you can empower yourself through them. The way structure somehow allows for greater freedom, and boundaries for more access to your own energy.

Scorpio Rising

There is an inherent spark of vitality, life force, creativity, and love that lives within us all, Scorpio. As Saturn dances with Pisces, there is an invitation to rebuild your relationship with that vitality, artistry, and expression of love.

Throughout this retrograde, allow yourself space to reflect on your relationship with discipline, structure, and habits in your artistic expression. Inspiration is bliss when it finds us. But inspiration is not the only source of creation. Discipline, effort, consistency, and patience allow you not only to trust in yourself, but to create the very self-expression you seek.

Sagittarius Rising

Saturn in Pisces is a returning home to yourself, Sagittarius. This time speaks to building security, tending to your sense of belonging, and creating a stable and safe home environment for yourself.

As Saturn retrograde sweeps through your fourth house, it journeys through the deep inner patterns and belief systems that run through your lineage, were learned in early childhood, and that still influence your experience. This chapter is an opportunity to reparent yourself, to create the environment and home that you need in order to flourish. We may have little control over our childhood, although this time is an invitation to nurture yourself in the way you needed. And perhaps still need.

Capricorn Rising

Pisces swimming through your third house can inspire a poetic and abstract mind, Capricorn. As Saturn ventures through this space in your chart, you are invited to bring practical knowledge, structure, organization, and grounded methods to expressing that artistic mind of yours.

Throughout this retrograde, allow yourself to reflect on how you feel about your relationship with learning and how free you feel to communicate your internal world to others. What comes to the surface? What do you desire to build in this area of yourself? This is a time to solidify and ground your mind, whether through studying, reading, finding a mentorship, or engaging a new mode of communication. The desire to do so will find you.

Aquarius Rising

Saturn rules over our Earthly experience. It is the tangible, physical, and practical aspects of life. It is hard work, stability, intentional action, and patience. And it invites you, Aquarius, to build structures that will bring you security for years to come.

Saturn in Pisces speaks to a chapter of increasing your security through resources material and psychological, whether your relationship with self worth, money, skills, possessions, or earning potential. It is how you build your knowledge, increase your finances and earning capability, and tend to your practical affairs. This chapter is about your value beyond your inherent and unquestionable deservingness simply because you are here.

During Saturn retrograde, you are given an inspired opportunity to reflect upon how you view your worth, how you value yourself, and how you perceive your relationship to money. Given Pisces’ empathic connection to the collective, it’s not rare to find yourself holding onto many beliefs and patterns that aren’t yours. Recede from the world around you. Ask yourself, what constitutes security to you? What is of value to you?

Pisces Rising

Saturn in your sign is a rebuilding of you, Pisces. A rebuilding through honest self-reflection, grounded and supportive steps, and devotion to the person you are becoming over the identity that you is being left behind. There is an opportunity present to come into an understanding of who you are with greater depth than you’ve experienced before, to learn what makes you uniquely you, and to spend time grounding and integrating this emerging you.

As Saturn retrogrades over these next several months, invite yourself to reflect upon the last few years. Prior to moving into your sign, Saturn was transiting your twelfth house, journeying through the hidden depths of your consciousness, and transforming your sense of identity and individuality. After this metaphoric death of self, you have arrived to rebirth and rebuild. How have you transformed? What identity is being left behind? And who remains?

This article has been updated. Originally published June 14, 2023.

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About Our Contributor

Jordane Maree is the founder of Girl and Her Moon, a platform and community exploring Soul through the lens of astrology, tarot, and energy healing. She is a writer, intuitive astrologer, energy and soul guide, and host of Girl and Her Moon, The Podcast. She is inspired, every single day, to be the mirror for you to see all that you truly are, you in all your infinite abilities, in total expansion, in infinite opportunity and love.