On May 24, Saturn, the great gatekeeper of the sky, enters the hot and daring sign of Aries. For the past two-and-a-half years, Saturn has been cruising through the last sign of the zodiac, Pisces, and is the final planet of four to embark on its back-and-forth dance over the Aries-Pisces border.
Saturn’s entrance into Aries is notable for many reasons, but one of the most significant being that it marks the end (and beginning) of a 29-and-a-half year journey through the entire zodiac. Once it enters the first sign, Aries, Saturn enters a period of infancy. This is not a comfortable position for a planet that symbolizes crystallization, culmination, and consequence.
Saturn is said to be in its “fall” in Aries. This means that the planet is exiled and in a situation of antithesis, farthest away from its most empowered place (Libra). Saturn doesn’t settle into Aries for its uninterrupted stint until February 2026, but we will get an introduction to its projects for three months before it retrogrades back into Pisces in September.
While Saturn was in fluid Pisces, we witnessed attempts to restructure waterways and regulate water usage, the legitimization of psychedelic drugs for therapeutic application, the effects of viral and environmental toxicity, cultural shifts in alcohol consumption, the mass adoption of streaming platforms to access entertainment, collapsing systems of governance and infrastructure, attempts to dissolve borders, and collective grief. When Saturn moves into Aries, those stories don’t magically disappear, but we enter a new phase in our involvement with them. When a planet moves to a new sign, there’s a shift in priorities.
Saturn’s main jobs are to concretize the nebulous, deliver tangible results, dole out rules and restrictions, test for durability, and to be the threshold between two discrete things. It’s the planet we look at to describe things that are well-worn, tried and true, and sobering. Saturn symbolizes authorities and father figures—basically anyone who sets the standards that we measure ourselves by. The weight of time is attributed to Saturn along with anyone who has the power to tell us “no,” including our own power to say “no” by creating boundaries. To the ancients, Saturn was the farthest planet they could see with the naked eye, and therefore represented hard evidence and limits.
In a sign like Aries, which is all about immediate expressions of energy, the untried, and the assertion of personal will, a conflict of interest arises. Saturn has to figure out how to express itself through the sign of the warrior and rugged individualist when it would much rather form committees and quorums. This is one reason Saturn thrives in hierarchical and bureaucratic settings; these are places where rules are created by social processes of agreement, amendments, and formal contestation. When I think about how Saturn might create rules while expressing itself through Aries, I think about unilateral behavior and displays of force. In this sign, Saturn is less concerned with consensus and will question if the “proper channels” that are in place are relevant to its desires of the moment. We could witness a rise in “DIY authority,” vigilantism, and generally going rogue. Under pressure, Aries will reliably push back against rules, cultural norms, and systems that complicate the fastest and simplest routes to completing its tasks. So, with Saturn in the picture, Aries might fight by writing its own rules.
In our personal lives, we’ll have the opportunity to examine how successful we’ve been in following through on our own codes of conduct. Where have we let ourselves down due to social pressures, lack of confidence, or an inability to internalize our own authority? Collectively, we could witness organized expressions of anti-authoritarianism and purposeful acts of transgression. The punk rock movement of the 1970s perfectly exemplifies the values and aesthetics of Saturn in Aries—stripped-down, violently energetic, and hyperindividualistic. Paired with imaginative Neptune’s concurrent occupancy in Aries, we could experience a revolutionary shift in the arts and humanities, perhaps a revitalization of independent filmmaking, self-published manifestos, and guerrilla theater.
In the oldest teachings, Saturn symbolizes reverence for the realities of nature and death. The natural world is a feral place, whose rules we can’t cheat. Our modern representations of Saturn display more of its shadow side of resisting death and controlling the wild with manufactured civility. May Saturn’s time in Aries serve as a rewilding for the individual human spirit and a resistance to organized, sanctioned brutality.
