you are what you believe

part one of my time with saturn dry humping my natal pisces mercury in my 6H

Before we begin, here is some key information about this transit (if you wanna know):

Saturn entered my 6H (WSH) March 7th, 2023, and will exit for good next Valentine’s Day.

My natal Mercury is in Pisces at 11° and in the 6H, in detriment (waaaaaa)

Saturn made 2 conjunctions to my Mercury: March 7th, 2024, and basically all of November (within 1 degree as Saturn stationed direct).

The ruler of my 6H, Jupiter, is Rx and in my 1H conjunct my ASC

My natal Mercury aspects my Sagittarius NN/Rahu in 3H (square) and Cancer Mars in 10H (trine)

6H ruler (Jupiter) aspects Mars (square), 7H Aries Venus Rx + Sun (opposition), and NN/Rahu (sextile)

---

Source: Pinterest

Mercury is the planet that governs our intellect. It’s not only how we absorbed information, but also how we process, organize, use, and share it. It is how we communicate and the vehicles we use for that communication. It is how we learn and what we create from skill building. It is our interests, the ways in which we develop them and the intentions behind doing so. Mercury is domicile in both Gemini and Virgo, but it is in detriment in Sagittarius and Pisces. I happen to have a Pisces Mercury. Mercury is not fond of this sign because the information is too lucid. It has no shape, no form. It is an attempt to derive a message not only written in a different language but communicated through an unknown medium. This is the challenge with Mercury in this sign. How do you make sense of seemingly nothing?

But there is also where it’s strength lies. Mercury is Pisces doesn’t do so well with the concrete, but it thrives in the abstract. This can make for incredible creatives and profound psychic mediums. Mercury in Pisces natives are channels, tuned into a frequency only some can decipher. A skill most others have to work to cultivate, they are born with. While this is an incredible skill, it forces you down a much different path in life. One that is unknown, except maybe to a few on similar trajectories. Your life doesn’t align with the rest of the world’s expectations, because you are experiencing an entirely different reality simultaneously. One foot in this world and the other in another. The only way to make it work, is to ground it in Virgo-esque (Mercury’s domicile) rituals and habits. Where you find a Pisces Mercury is the same place you will find someone who must live life in very specific way to maintain balance.

For example, I need to journal every day. I need to wake up in the morning, and practice self-reflective divination, take a walk in the sun as I read a book, and not eat until my body is ready, in which I really should break my fast with fruit followed by heavier foods such as protein and carbs if I want to survive the rest of the day. My mind cannot function without my rituals that get me in my body after a full night of wandering about the cosmos. My habits and rituals are specific to me, and when they are somehow impacted by external forces, it can really mess me up. I’m energetically sensitive to my environments and the people in them, so I am very particular about it. Having Virgo in my 12H means I need to do a lot of this maintenance in solitude.

An underdeveloped Pisces Mercury may be manipulative and deceitful. Some are prone to lie or gloss over details, make up stories, detach from reality. There is an awareness that one can hear what isn’t spoken, can feel the intentions behind actions. A Pisces Mercury knows even the things you don’t know. This mind in the wrong hands can do some damage and you’d be none the wiser as they exit the scene in the misty haze they arrived in. But, we aren’t all bad. A person is made up of so many layers, as are our astrological blueprints. It would be wrong to assume all Pisces Mercury natives are the same.

The 8 of Cups represents Saturn in Pisces. Making personal sacrifices, dropping illusions, to follow the path of true fulfillment (source: Pinterest)

Now Saturn…Saturn is cold and hard. It is barren and restrictive. Saturn rules time, traditions, and structure. Think of the oldest religions. Those have taken form over thousands of years, building upon a specific foundation and sustained through devotion to traditions. It is not something that could simple vanish overnight. No matter how hard anyone tries, it will likely never be destroyed or dismantled. There will still be those who uphold it and the power (whether real or perceived) that comes from doing so.

Saturn is a teacher, similar to Jupiter, except this teacher is anything but jovial. This is the military sergeant up in your face, telling you how to do it the right way and expecting you to fucking do it or else. Saturn quite honestly doesn’t give a rat’s ass about how you feel about it, or how you want to do it. Saturn is going to show you how you need to do it, so you don’t get caught falling off the damn edge. There’s good intention, and usually you find after a Saturn transit that you actually needed that tough lesson…but that knowing doesn’t make it feel any better.

Saturn in Pisces is not in detriment, nor fall. It’s said that Saturn finds it’s joy in the 12H, Pisces’ natural abode. When Saturn finds itself in Pisces, it is finding it joy in letting go of control and releasing attachments to the material. I often find that the most controlling people really just want to relax. They want to be free of restrictions and let it all hang loose. They want to be free without having to worry about life. Here Saturn is doing just that. It’s finding it’s power in releasing the outcome. It’s discovering the treasures that lie in wait when you decide that actually, there is something to this vast, boundaryless landscape that is the cosmic void. Suddenly the potentials are not bound by time, or form, or space. Anything is possible, and the vision becomes expanded as we step out of the limitations of the body and mind.

However, to unlock all this potential, you have to move through the fires and be purified. The control, the ego, the attachments have to go. You can’t waltz into Jupiter’s realm and have it your way. A sacrifice is demanded, and you must pay the price for eternity. There are heavy karmic implications here, and this Saturn transit has been nothing short of what would be expected from its time in Pisces. We’ve all been making choices towards what we want and what we are willing to lose to gain it. Is any of it worth it in the end? Is there even an end?

---

When Saturn first entered Pisces, I was hot off my Saturn Return and experiencing a peak and somewhat disturbing increase in my psychic abilities. Dreams were intensely prophetic, auditory and visual experiences were terrifyingly profound at the time. I could feel and sense everything, and to be honest it was a little disturbing at in moments. I hadn’t yet begun to feel the effects of Saturn entering my 6H and approaching my natal Mercury, as the sextile from transiting Uranus in my 8H—which was also conjunct my moon at the time—was kind of rocking my world.

March and April of 2023 was chaotic, and I’m sure plenty of people saw me seemingly losing my mind, even though most of them don’t know the half of what I experienced. Saturn spent it’s time in the first degrees of Pisces for a year as it retrograded back to the beginning of its transit, before it ever hit my Mercury in 2024. During this time, how I used my mind started to go through a shift. My intuition was still at a peak, but I began to feel indifferent to it. I began to doubt it and feel hindered by it. I began to get angry that I had this connection to the divine because at that time I felt like my life was shit and this “gift” wasn’t making anything better. I began to really give up on it all, and by the end of the year I had completely numbed out and turned on myself and my faith. My creativity vanished, my zest for life. I gave up on my dreams and began to try to just create a “regular” life. You know, the kind society expects you to have. But still, through all of it, there was a tugging. A calling, pulling me towards the direction I was attempting to walk away from. However, I continued to ignore it. I was mad, about everything. The world was on fire, and everyone was just ignori…wait.

March 7th, 2024 is the day Saturn was exact on my Pisces. At this time, I had JUST started working as an administrative assistant for my sister, and we were making massive changes and taking big leaps for her company. My brain was like a machine leading up to this conjunction! It was plugging away, piecing things together and problem solving like I didn’t have just 2 single working brain cells remaining. My Mercury may be in detriment, but it’s at home in the 6H. It knows how to create something out of nothing. It can sense the problem and the solution like nobody’s business. It is a great, flexible, worker here, attuning to the needs of others. But the work isn’t always fulfilling, and that in itself is a major issue.

I noticed something shortly after Saturn’s pass. My mind started to struggle. I couldn’t quite keep up with things. I kept making mistakes. Tasks were taking me longer than I expected. I wasn’t sleeping much, and I felt stressed. Those rituals and routines I mentioned before, they had been disrupted as I prioritized work and attempting to achieve financial stability as a single parent. I was really not doing great, and I knew at the time I wouldn’t be able to continue working. But I felt like I needed to do it. This is what I need to do to be the “right kind” of successful. I was sacrificing my physical self for something I didn’t really want to do.

Meanwhile, my intuitive gifts started to kick up again. The numbness was replaced with shocks to my system, an awakening from a long slumber. Suddenly I felt, even if just for a moment, I could see the way forwards again. I could understand the whispers on the wind again. From March until Saturn’s retrograde in July, my more logical mental capacity began to dwindle while my intuition gained traction again. My physical body wasn’t doing great, but I felt alive again and I was financially more stable. This is what I’m supposed to do right? This is what’s going to work…right?

And then the retrograde hit, and everything came crashing down as Saturn made its way back to my Mercury. You see, Mercury in the 6H means it’s in my house of health, habits, rituals, and servitude. It is the daily work you must do in order to maintain optimal performance. That is why its associated with health AND work. It is what we have to do, even when we don’t want to. Having Mercury here means my intellect is always oriented towards these things, and in Pisces, the nuance is spiritual or even hidden in it’s nature.

As Saturn backtracked through the middle of my 6H and again applying to my Mercury, I became ill. First it was an unknown gastrointestinal issue, immediately followed by a stint in COVID penitentiary, and then—without a moment to breathe—a clinical diagnoses of Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. That last one may not seem like a big deal, but when there are things “wrong” with you your entire life and you can’t for the life of you piece anything together, just to find out—rather nonchalantly—that it’s because you have a genetic disorder…it fucks you up a little bit. You begin to back-track and wonder where the obvious signs where. You have to fight your mind because for ages you’ve been gaslighting yourself out of acknowledging your daily pain and exhaustion. I had been so hard on myself for YEARS for not having a normal supply of energy. For feeling so damn tired after giving minimal effort. For finding exercise more painful and exhausting than it probably should be. For not being able to just be “normal”, no matter what I tried or did.

From June until the end of the year, I was in recovery mode. I had lost 10lbs, which for anyone else might seem like a win, but I can never get over 125lbs so that was a catastrophic hit. I looked like the fucking crypt keeper, and I felt like it too. On top of that, all the stress from the summer caused me to start losing my hair. It was similar to when you have a child, and the aftereffects of those hormonal changes catch you by surprise. It was coming out in globs, and I was terrified my illness had progressed to something worse. But I had no way of finding out because I was back to broke, having to quit my job because I couldn’t handle trying to remain alive and work a job that paid, but was not fulfilling.

It wasn’t just the physical implications of Saturn in my 6H, while also occasionally squaring the ruler of the sign it was currently occupying. Health is not just physical, but mental, emotional, and spiritual as well. And with Pisces as the residing sign of my 6H, it especially meant the wellness of my subconscious was up for discussion too.

And that, that is where the root of all of my problems lie…

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: * Part 2 of this essay!* :☆ﾟ. ───

Have you had a Saturn-Mercury or Saturn in the 6H transit? Let me know in the comments! What impact did it have on you and your life? What hard lessons made way for profound personal revelations?