Transit South Node Conjunct Natal Saturn

The past few weeks, I’ve been having debilitating back pain. The kind that shoots into other parts of your body. For me – it’s been accompanied by nausea – so I’m assuming it’s probably a pinched nerve. It’s been especially brutal this week, and concurrent with worse than usual pain in my knees and hands.

What does this have to do with astrology? Well – I have the transiting South Node conjunct to Saturn. Today it’s exact.

Transit South Node in conjunction with natal Saturn is said to create blockages and difficulties both within the natal House it is transiting and related to the significations of the house(s) Saturn rules. It’s associated with health problems related to bones, skin, and teeth as well as the emergence of chronic health problems in general.

Interestingly, my Saturn is inconjunct to natal Mercury. Mercury rules over “nerves”. Inconjunctions are often related to illness. A transit can “unlock” natal potentials. Natal Mercury is also being challenged by a square with transit Pluto on the cusp of my 6^th house.

Saturn is the ruler of my 6^th house and the traditional ruler of my 7^th. The 6^th house is the house of health, daily routines, and employment (among other things). It is probable that I’m genetically predisposed to the issues I’ve been having with joints/bones/tendons – but I think that wear-and-tear from my job has exacerbated the problem.

While it could be a mere coincidence, this is a pretty good piece of evidence (for me) that “astrology works”. This transit describes conditions in my life at the moment exceptionally well.

In addition to the musculoskeletal issues, work has been incredibly frustrating recently. My boss of the past 8 years – an older man (Saturn)– recently retired. The transition in management has not been particularly smooth.

The South Node is said to be of a similar nature to Neptune in that it can “dissolve” things. With Saturn, it dissolves things related to Saturn; stability, structure, and relationships with people who have provided stability and structure such as parents, grandparents, elder relatives, mentors, or bosses. It can dissolve the things you’ve worked hard towards, such as a career. Dissolution of anything old or long-standing.

The last time this transit occurred for me was in August 2003. I can’t recall anything super significant happening that I can pinpoint to that month and year. I did develop eczema around that time – which has persisted. But the truly significant events didn’t happen until a few months later when the North Node was conjunct to my Sun/MC.

In trying to answer the question as to why this transit is more potent this time around – my best guess is that transiting Saturn is also very active. It is currently approaching a conjunction of my Moon by 1 degree, and a square to my Sun/MC by about 1 degree as well. It’s square to my natal Nodes along with natal Saturn. So there’s a Saturn theme going on.

18 years ago, the theme included Saturn but was not dominated by Saturn. When doing any kind of astrological forecasting, you can’t rely on just one piece of the puzzle, you have to look at the chart as a whole. I think it’s easiest sometimes to focus more on the aspects and rulerships than the signs, otherwise, you run the risk of getting too bogged down in detail and confusing yourself!