Seed Post #10: Liminal

On November 19, 2007, author and legend in her own mind Dianne Sylvan will celebrate her 30th birthday.  (Actually she'll celebrate it on the 17th, a Saturday, enabling her to get wasted and sleep in, necessary both to honor her birth and to prepare her for Thanksgiving.)

I was always proud of myself for my apparent immunity to the typical American's dread of turning 30.  Marriage and children aren't big priorities for me, so landing a man by that Momentous Birthday never hung over my head with the swinging terror that it does over many women's.  The specters of crow's feet and other signs of aging likewise don't stir me much.  Given my emotional history I always figured I would be lucky to be alive and sane at 30.

I also had the advantage of hearing over and over throughout my young adult life that 30-35 was when my mother finally felt "like life made more sense and things came together."  I met similar sentiments in women all over the place--after the chaos of the 20s, the 30s, while not a walk in the park, at least marked the beginning of true adulthood.  And so, I greatly enjoyed being able to say honestly, "I can't wait to turn 30!"

It's still true, but for slightly different reasons--less because I'm looking forward to the onset of my 30s and more because I want my 20s over with already.

Among Pagans, the Grendel of young adulthood is the much-feared Saturn Return.  Saturn, the icky planet of karmic yuckiness, is supposed to roar into your life like some demonic Santa Claus, leaving you gifts of disaster, meltdown, and existential angst.  Saturn Return is spoken of with the same hushed terror as cancer and tax audits.  But what is it really, and what does it really mean?

Astrologically speaking Saturn is the planet of responsibility, maturity, karma, and authority.  It is the stern father figure of the solar system, imposing limits and consequences that seem unfair but are really for our own good.  Where Saturn lands in your natal chart--both its sign and its House--tell you the sort of challenges you'll face when Saturn passes back into the same place it was at your moment of birth.  For adults that usually lands between the ages of 28-31.  (You can find out more about this at SaturnReturn.net, website of the authors of Surviving Saturn's Return.) 

Saturn is now in Virgo, where it was when I was born.  It will be there until around the end of October, 2009. 

I am not an astrologer and my grasp of the subject is rudimentary at best, but I know when I'm screwed. 

The lead-in to my Saturn Return--depression, anxiety, personal crisis--has already been such a teddy bear's picnic that when I think about what else the next two years have in store I want to run away to a cave somewhere in Nepal and wear live animals as hats.

This is, of course, the wrong attitude.  Saturn, much like the Death card in Tarot, the Yew Rune, and other mystical bugaboos, will only plague you as much as you let it--it's all in your point of view.  If you approach transformation groundedly, with the understanding that you will come out the other side a better, more mature person, you're a lot more likely to have a smoother ride than if you run around screaming with your hair on fire. 

Being a double Scorpio with a Pisces Moon, I'm no stranger to darkness and emotional tumult, and my life has been a study in painful unraveling followed by long periods of weaving with unsteady hands.  This past year I've drifted from end to end of the emotional spectrum: one minute I'm panicking about my impending birthday, the next minute I'm feeling crazily optimistic, the next I am in the fetal position under the covers wanting my Mommy. 

Oddly, however, after this past week of personal hell and hormonal excess, I seem to have found my way to another place entirely:  an almost eerie degree of calm.

Zen-like grace?  Eye of the hurricane?  Lexapro?  Who knows? 

In Brian Froud's Faery Oracle, the initiatory process is described by three cards:  The Guardian at the Gate, the Singer of Initiation, and the Singer of Transfiguration.  The Guardian represents the choice to walk through the threshold, from one way of being into another.  The Singer of Initiation is the ritual or process itself, the liminal stage, wherein breakdown transforms into breakthrough.  Transfiguration is the final gate; by the time you face the Singer, you have become a new version of yourself, and the changes you have made are now a part of your existence. 

Sometimes the most important moments of our lives--those Guardian at the Gate moments where we choose between one life and another--pass by seemingly without notice.  I read a memoir not long ago called Wasted, the excellent and disturbing telling of a woman's experiences with eating disorders.  At the lowest point she starved herself to under 60 pounds and was given only a few days to live.  How did she come back from that?  Was there some big epiphany in which she decided to stop hating her body and reclaim herself?  Not really.  She decided, almost offhandedly, that she was through with being sick.  Every choice we make, no matter how small or thoughtless, is witnessed, and one way or another, we are held to it. 

We are now at the twilight of the year.  Everything I look at and touch seems to be in a state of flux.  Everyone around me seems caught in transition--some moving forward with aplomb, some trapped between doors, some still so shocked by the idea of having to uproot their comfortable ruts that they are spinning in place.  I myself have resisted what's coming--whatever it is--with tooth and claw for months, dragged kicking and screaming as always into where I know I need to go.  Depression is a miserable place, but misery is comforting in its way, or at least comfortable.  It is the devil you know.  Change is the devil you don't, but its gruesome mask hides the faces of angels.

Autumn, the Season of Water, is all about surrender.  Surrendering life, surrendering pain, surrendering the year gone by.  What is it you are clinging to?  What do you need to release in order to move on?  What is holding you back or holding you down?  In time, Water carries everything away.  It erodes mountain ranges and builds fertile deltas from their remains.  To quote Finding Nemo,  "All drains lead to the ocean, kid."

The river is flowing
Flowing and growing
The river is flowing
Back to the sea
Mother, carry me
Your child I will always be
Mother, carry me
Back to the sea...*

I've spent most of this year staring at my ceiling fan for long hours at night, trying to figure out what to do with my life.  My plans, such as they were, seem to have come apart at the seams, my coach has turned back into a pumpkin, my magic beans turned out to be, well, beans.  And while I understand the greater purpose of dissolution, all this time I have driven myself into a frenzy of doubt and confusion, demanding answers of a strangely silent universe. 

I'm not what you would call a "nice" person in the best of situations.  I'm not sweet, I'm not warm and nurturing, and I tend to be a bit bitchy toward everyone without really intending to be.  That goes double for the girl in the mirror.  It is well known that my gifts do not lie in being a ray of sunshine, and the older I get the more okay I am with that.  Nobody really likes chipper and bouncy people anyway; they tend to be annoying.  I'm smart and profane and moody and my wit is acidic and sharp.  I'd rather be genuine, and a bit of a bitch, than be a ball of sparkly unicorn poo.

It is also well known, however, that I put way too much pressure on myself, and am so hard on myself it's a wonder I put up with myself at all. I still get angry with myself over dumb crap I did ten years ago.  You know, when I was 20, and fresh off the boat, and didn't know dick about dick--who on Earth would expect a 20 year old to have life all figured out?  Apparently I do, and I've never entirely forgiven myself for proving to be a fallible human being with the marvelous ability to blunder into the exact wrong choices...just like anyone.  I'm human!  I screw up!  My god! 

And as much as I know I need to let these things go, I think part of the reason I have been unable to is that I have had a fundamental misunderstanding of how "letting go" actually happens.  The nature of the phrase itself is the nature of surrender--not of effort, but of the release of effort, breathing-out, opening your hands and letting their burdens simply fall to the sea.  That's not something you can force, or something that you work at the way you study for a college final or earn a paycheck.  Dragging your burdens uphill trying to find the right place to put them down leaves you with an aching back and a trail of beautiful moments you couldn't take the time to enjoy because you were too focused on making it up the mountain. 

So, as I watch my Saturn Return grow around me and the year slowly decay, I have decided to stop fighting, to save my sword for a battle worth the blood.  It wasn't a big aha! moment, it didn't have a swelling musical theme behind it to alert the audience that This is Important.  In fact I was thinking about it as I drove from my hometown back to Austin yesterday afternoon after spending the weekend with my family.  I was singing along to Maroon 5, speeding past the cotton fields that are ready for harvest, and I thought, "You know what?  I'm done being worried.  I think I'll just stick with that whole 'I can't wait to turn 30' thing."   Then I went back to fantasizing about me and Adam Levine and a cozy dungeon built for two. 

Whatever my life is moving toward, I'll meet it when I get there.  For too long I've prayed for the gods to send me a map while overhead I had the stars as a compass and the long-sleeping wisdom of my own sense of direction to guide me.  I have obsessed over point A and point B, always looking back and forward but never around.

For now, I have decided I don't mind being inbetween.  I have plenty of work to occupy me without worrying so much about the outcome--besides, "outcome" implies that there's an ending to the story, and there are no endings, only sequels.   

I will place my trust in the Goddess, and try to remember that the answers will not be kept from me; one way or another, no matter how lost I might get or how long I wander, I'll find the way in time.

All drains lead to the ocean, kid.

---

* - attributed to Diana Hildebrand-Hull

Comments

[R]

My own Saturn Return is just starting so I know exactly what you are going for. I expect a wild ride into 30 as well.
Thanks.

[sravana]

Hiya Dianne,
I took the liberty of looking at your natal chart - no time or place, but it will give me the goods on exactly when your SA return is happening.

The good news is that you've already had the first hit of SA to SA - that happened when SA first moved into VI, because your SA is at 00Vi. I think that your "to heck with it, I'm going to *enjoy* turning 30" is part of that process - see, it's already started and you're moving to use it well! Most outer planet transits take a while to pass, and your SA conj SA will have 3 hits (when SA is moving direct, then retrograde, then direct again) - the last hit is June 28, 2008.

Your natal SA is in a not-so-nice out of sign square to your sun - so transiting SA has also been in a difficult aspect to your sun... which is what's been going on with the depression recently (problems with authority much? - I have the same aspect), that was exact 8/12, and is OVAH for the next 14 years, until it squares it from the other side (of course, it will conjunct it in 7 years). Transiting SA is also trining your Chiron - the wounded healer. That's a *great* aspect for helping you get through this time, IMO.

Make the most of this. The SA return is hardest on folks who: haven't dealt with their issues, are immature, are refusing to grow up, etc. You don't strike me in that category. SA is also about manifesting, discipline toward a goal, maturity, etc.

BTW, I'm not a professional astrologer. I just talk to many, and read a lot. You might have a look at cafeastrology.com, see what they say about the above mentioned aspects. I've gotten some very interesting information there, as well as the reports they offer.

Sravana

[Hecate]

Being a double Scorpio with a Pisces Moon

You poor, poor dear.

My sun: Pisces

Son's sun: Scorpio

G/Son: Sun in Pisces, rising Scorpio.

Can you imagine??

[makall5]

I've always thought it's not so much about surrender, as accepting that all those stupid, horrible mistakes played a role in the "me" that I am now. I like 'me' now. I didn't start liking 'me' until just past my 30th birthday, when I quit depending on other people's good opinion of me to make me happy. It's not to say that I don't care what other people think, I do. But I know the difference between me and thee.

Those burdens are still there. They never just dropped away into the sea, never to be seen again. Instead they are woven into the fabric of me, a small nasty little color that blends into the background when the whole tapestry is viewed. And the bigger the tapestry, (the older I get), the less visible are the stupid spots. I know where they are, and periodically I have to eyeball them up close, but mostly I can sit back and just enjoy the beauty.

The question is: do you like you and can you accept all the parts of you?

[Sarah]

You've grown a beautiful post from that seed, my favorite word: liminal. Though I'm facing a different kind of threshold in my life, I've encountered the Guardian at the Gate and the Singer of Transfiguration in my readings of the Faeries' Oracle lately, too. I'd do well to keep your grounded approach in mind as I walk my own path.

Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, especially this:
"Whatever my life is moving toward, I'll meet it when I get there. For too long I've prayed for the gods to send me a map while overhead I had the stars as a compass and the long-sleeping wisdom of my own sense of direction to guide me. I have obsessed over point A and point B, always looking back and forward but never around."

It's just what I needed to hear.

-Sarah

[Carrioncrow]

I turned 30 just a few months ago, and thus far the ride hasn't been so bad. I do feel more at ease with myself. I've started to forgive myself for being a stupid idiot when I was younger.
I love this post, and its one of my favorite words - It can't be coincidence that you chose to write about the Liminal on the day that my Patron's offerings are laid out... when she is a Goddess of thresholds. I guess I'll have to keep my mind open today and see what pops up out of the woodwork.

-thank you for sharing such a wonderful blog
Sara

[max]

I am not an astrologer and my grasp of the subject is rudimentary at best, but I know when I'm screwed. The lead-in to my Saturn Return--depression, anxiety, personal crisis--has already been such a teddy bear's picnic that when I think about what else the next two years have in store I want to run away to a cave somewhere in Nepal and wear live animals as hats.

Somebody else's old blog post linked to this post, so sorry for the delay. (And saw Svrana and said, 'Oh, look, it's Keera's friend...') Happy birthday from a November 16th'er about to turn 40.

Now that that's out of the way: you have Saturn @ 0Virgo05. Very very early in the sign. Outer planets retrograde a lot, so when one does go retrograde, they back up quite a way, but it won't quite make it back to the previous retrograde point. And when one goes forward again, it'll go a bit past where it went retro the first time. In between are points that only get crossed once. So: guess what? Transitting Saturn only touched your birth Saturn once, back in September, and that's it. Your Saturn Return is over. (Looks it up) September 3rd, 2007 was your Saturn Return. So you don't have to worry and obsess about that anymore. Promise. (Mostly an SR is about not getting in trouble with law, more than anything. But people freak out about it.)

For last coupla years, Saturn has been dinging your various natal positions. And you have a square in your birth chart: Neptune conjunct Mercury square Moon in Pisces. Saturn will be hitting that (forming a t-square) for a few months next fall. That'll probably be a period of unpleasantly hard work and setbacks careerwise. And then, that'll be over, and it looks like fairly smooth sailing for 4 or 5 years.

max
['So chill.']