Biographical note:

Barbara Hand Clow is an internationally acclaimed ceremonial teacher, Mayan Calendar researcher, and the author of The Mayan Code, The Pleiadian Agenda, Alchemy of Nine Dimensions, and Awakening the Planetary Mind. A regular presenter at international conferences, she has taught at sacred sites throughout the world. She lives on an island near Vancouver, British Columbia.

Excerpt from book:

CHAPTER THREE
The Saturn Principle in the Cycles of Life

SINCE SATURN GOES around the Sun every twenty-nine to thirty years, there is a first Saturn Return around age 30, a second Saturn Return at ages 58 to 60, and a third return at about 88 to 90. Obviously, our age when experiencing the various Saturn transits through each house tremendously affects the nature of the process itself, and that is what we can become much more conscious of during our second Saturn phase. At each Saturn Return, we experience the maximum pressure to conquer the weakness in ourselves that is blocking growth; we have the opportunity to pierce the resistance that is keeping us from breaking through into our greatest potential evolution.

One of my favorite Saturn stories is of Helen, who drank her way all the way through two Saturn Returns. Helen became a heavy drinker in her late twenties, and she continued to struggle with alcoholism throughout her thirties. Saturn was in her 9th house, meaning that the process she needed to master was integration of spirit, but she had a severe emotional communication block, caused by profound, unexpressed grief over the death of her mother at an early age. This block intensified her separation from spirit; communication/integration of self is the subject of the house opposite the 9th--the 3rd house.

Helen managed to avoid integration of her emotional needs at her Saturn Return by drinking whenever she needed to go deeper into herself. She drank more and more to avoid facing the intense emotional pressure that was building inside, as it always does during one’s thirties. The most intense phase of her alcoholism peaked during her Uranus Opposition, in her case at age 42. When the family realized she needed to be “fixed,” she was “cured” by a hypnotist.

Helen could have progressed to a profound level of consciousness expansion had she undergone depth therapy to help her stop repressing her grief. Instead, she experimented with hypnosis, since it was prescribed by a doctor, which simply programmed her subconscious to avoid drinking.

Helen stayed on the wagon until about age 56, when Saturn was approaching its second return. The pressure again mounted to look at her severe inner pain, and she took another drink, right at a point when she was experiencing intense emotional blockage with one of her children. The disease progressed more rapidly this time, and she attempted suicide.

As soon as the uncomfortable push of Saturn lifted, she dried up and joined Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), which made it possible for her to stop drinking, just as hypnosis had done almost thirty years previously. However, her ability to communicate has remained almost totally blocked, because she missed a second chance to master the Saturn process. The block with her own child was a potential gateway to her own inner grief, just as the initial loss of her mother could have been a bridge to the spirit world had she been able to deal with it in a healthier way by getting therapy at that time.

Saturn motivates us to learn the lessons we need in order to evolve. Whatever the purpose of our lives, Saturn creates the process we need to accomplish that purpose. Since Saturn is the taskmaster, the disciplinarian, for many the natural reflex is to resist growth--like Helen. But if we avoid Saturn’s push, we’ll abort growth, because the only way to avoid the push is to cop out--List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Preface to the Fourth Edition

Introduction by Richard Gerber, M.D.

One   I’m in Midlife Crisis Now!
Two   The Fundamentals of Astrology
Three   The Saturn Principle in the Cycles of Life
Four   The Uranus Principle in the Cycles of Life
Five   Uranus and Personal Empowerment: The Lower Chakras
Six   Uranus and Enlightenment: The Upper Chakras
Seven   The Chiron Principle in the Cycles of Life
Eight   More Complex Key Life Passages
Nine   More about Our Friend Saturn: “For Everything There Is a Season”
Ten   Toward a Global Shamanic Paradigm

Appendix One
Key Life Passages Tables

Appendix Two
Key Chiron Passages Tables

Notes

Bibliography

About the Author

Index