After exploring themes of community and connection, systems and networks, Saturn leaves Aquarius for Pisces on March 7, 2023, a journey to the end of the zodiac and beyond. Over the next three years, we’re searching for meaning, cultivating our spirituality, and learning to let go.
Saturn is one of the most important planets in astrology. It’s the master timekeeper. It regulates our lives. It tells us what’s working and what’s not working. It pushes us to build and construct, to take on duties and responsibilities. Saturn also reveals the slow arc of what we are growing up to become in our lives.
For a personal look, read Saturn in Pisces: Sign by Sign.
The Long Arc of Saturn
Because Saturn takes 29 years to travel the zodiac, it spends between two-and-a-half to three years in each of the zodiac signs. And during that period, it creates a major focus on the themes and archetypes of the sign. For example, when Saturn was in Scorpio (2013-2015), we had to dig deep into our emotional underworld in order to transform, facing our darkest fears as well as the darkness in others. When Saturn was in Sagittarius (2015-2017), we had to search for truth and meaning in our lives, getting clear about what we believed in and what we stand for.
The last time Saturn changed signs was March 2020 and December 2020, arriving in Aquarius, where it taught us about humanity and society, social issues and social causes, friendship and connection, science and technology. (Read more in Saturn in Aquarius: Building Humanity.)
Over the next three years, however, the tenor changes. If Aquarius is rational and analytical, then Pisces is intuitive. It’s driven by empathy — a very different energy than Aquarius’s mechanistic thinking. If we’ve spent 2020-2023 building our awareness of society and the collective, then in Pisces our attention turns to the spiritual, mystical, existential, and the search for greater meaning.
Saturn pushes us to work, but in Pisces our work isn’t always so clear. That’s because Pisces is a water sign. It speaks to emotions. It rules over the non physical world such as dreams and inspiration, illusions and delusions … even hysteria and breaks with reality. Pisces reaches into the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows. Here we can feel a love that is transcendent … or struggle with a gnawing existential pain.
At the core of our time with Saturn in Pisces is the search for meaning. It’s not the meaning of Sagittarius, it’s sister sign, where meaning is found in the pulpit, or in a book, or in different cultures and different lands. No, in Pisces the search for meaning is internal and quiet. It’s reflective and rooted in feeling.
Over the next three years we’re searching for peace and reconciliation. We’re reaching into the esoteric wisdom that comes from spirituality and mysticism. We’re making space for meditation and prayer. We’re getting quiet and going on retreat. We’re exploring different types of modalities and practices. We’re examining our sufferings. We’re seeking healing and redemption.
Will we find what we’re looking for?
The Two Fishes
In astrology, Pisces is symbolized by two fishes swimming in opposite directions. What at first seems like simple imagery is actually deeply symbolic.
When we reach Pisces, we’ve come to the end of something — the end of life, the end of a cycle, the end of a journey. At the end of life, for example, the physical body returns to the earth and the spirit returns to source. One fish swims in one direction, one fish swims in the other.
But the two fishes also represent the duality of life. After all, Pisces is a mutable sign and shares space with Gemini, the next mutable sign, which teaches us about free will and the power of choice.
By the time we reach Pisces, we’ve made choices in Gemini that needed to be analyzed and refined in Virgo in order to build knowledge in Sagittarius. However, where do these choices lead us? Who do these choices serve? Are we the fish swimming towards the material or towards the spiritual?
It’s through this that we have to examine what pulls us towards the material plane in an unsupportive way, which means looking at our sufferings and addictions. We even have to take a stark look at our illusions, even if it’s difficult to accept a reality.
But on the other side of things we have a powerful opportunity to let something go that we’ve been previously attached to. For some, it means walking away from the past. For others, it may mean quitting a negative influence like substance or even going into rehab.
The End of the Zodiac
Pisces is the last sign of the zodiac. It represents the totality of life as well as the bridge from one cycle to the next, one life to the next. Here, we’re no longer on solid ground. We’ve left behind the known world (Capricorn and Aquarius) for the unknown.
There’s a liminality to Pisces. It exists in the in-between. Through the haze of the intermediary plane, it picks up on emotions and signals and messages from beyond. It’s the sign of psychics and seers. It puts us in contact with the higher self as well as the soul.
The trick is to not slip away. It’s tempting, even seductive, better to feel into the world beyond this world than to be on planet earth. But if we learn to balance the two — heaven and earth, Pisces and Virgo, the sign that opposes Pisces — we can grasp a dimension of understanding that will transform us and put into perspective what truly matters.
We can’t stay in Pisces forever. Its waters are both the waters that transport us into the world beyond, but they are also the amniotic waters that hold our bodies before birth. If Pisces is the last sign of the zodiac, then Aries is the first sign. And any time spent in Pisces ultimately brings us to Aries and the rebirth of life.
Jupiter in Aries through Cancer
Jupiter, the ruler of Pisces, will spend the duration of Saturn in Pisces moving from Aries to Cancer. Which is to say that each year — the time that Jupiter spends in a sign — we’ll have a different phase of Saturn in Pisces.
The first phase is Jupiter in Aries. Despite Pisces’s reputation for endings, Jupiter’s encouraging us to move forward and take action. It’s giving us initiative and drive from March 7 to May 16, 2023.
Then things switch from May 16, 2023 to May 25, 2024 when Jupiter is in Taurus. How does our spiritual values align with our material values? It’s also a time when Jupiter lines up with Uranus, bringing big awakenings as well as the next chapter in a story that began in 2018, 2019.
When Jupiter arrives in Gemini on May 25, 2024 and brings us into a different phase until June 9, 2025, one that will examine our choices as well as the impact of our choices. We’ll need to get our intuition in harmony with logical mind, learn to trust our gut and listen more to our inner GPS.
Finally, from June 9, 2025, Jupiter is in Cancer, a sign that it will remain in for the duration of Saturn in Pisces. Both Cancer and Pisces are water signs, deeply emotional and caring. But in Cancer emotions are instinctual, tied to memory and the past. Our family connections or our sense of home and connection needs to reflect the deeper healing we’ve been doing while Saturn’s been in Pisces.
Saturn in Pisces: The Webinar
On February 12, 2023, I recorded a nearly three-hour presentation on Saturn in Pisces, its key themes, and what it means for you through a sign-by-sign look, including a look at the Saturn Return in Pisces and the Saturn opposition for those with Saturn in Virgo. You can still get the Saturn in Pisces webinar here.
Saturn’s Previous Visits to Pisces
Since Saturn has a 30-year cycle, it was last in Pisces from May to June 1993 and January 1994 to April 1996. Previous to that, it was in Pisces March 1964 to September 1964 and December 1964 to March 1967. And so forth …
Key Saturn in Pisces Dates
Saturn in Pisces — March 7, 2023
Saturn Retrograde 7 Pisces — June 17, 2023
Saturn Direct 0 Pisces — November 4, 2023
Saturn Retrograde 19 degrees — June 29, 2024
Lunar Eclipse 25 Pisces — September 17, 2024
Saturn Direct 12 degrees — November 15, 2024
Lunar Eclipse 23 Virgo — March 14, 2025
Saturn in Aries — May 24, 2025
Saturn Retrograde 1 Aries — July 13, 2025
Saturn in Pisces — September 1, 2025
Lunar Eclipse 15 Pisces — September 7, 2025
Solar Eclipse 29 Virgo — September 21, 2025
Saturn Direct 25 Pisces — November 27, 2025
Saturn in Aries — February 13, 2026
Saturn conjunct Neptune 0 Aries — February 20, 2026
Previous Saturn Through the Signs
Saturn in Aquarius: Building Humanity
Saturn in Capricorn: Accountability
Saturn in Sagittarius: The Quest Begins
Saturn in Scorpio: Hard Truths
Photo by Jonas Allert on Unsplash