Lady Saturn's Return

When we are 28, our power comes to pay us a visit as a teacher....

Let me take you on a short Fairytale journey…

“I was walking through the woods, behind our house – dusk was settling with an unusual and ominous glamor.

One of those mists rose from around the fairy rings of the tree, with a shudder, I instinctively looked behind me….

That was when I saw her. Silently silouetted against the falling night and the tall wizard-like limbs of the trees.

She was stood in the middle of the path behind me, where I had come from.

I couldn’t see her face in the fading light, but I could make out her outline in the darkness.

Crazy, but I could swear she had bat wings, and indeed above her a solitary bat circled in the sapphire blue stained skies.

She called out to me – her voice was like bells and flutes, with a deeper resonant tone that I couldn’t place. Everything vibrated.

I hesitated, frozen in a softly spoken horror that I could not place. It was an earth-bound magic that was so ancient it scared me.

“You forgot this!” She called out to me. Her voice was woven with enchantments….and slowly my feet followed, as my mind recoiled.

Cautiously I walked back towards her, and looked down to what she was pointing to – a small crystal box on the forest floor.

As if spell cast, I bent down to pick it up. Slowly, I opened the lid and gazed down into the newly opened chamber.

I gazed into the luminous black liquid, and then turned my face towards her. The moon illuminated her face for a split second.

Then I saw it. Her eyes. Black, swirling, made of galaxies and time and memory. Pupils forged from old black holes.

Her dress was made from the deepest black volcanic lava where fire is spent into the mystery of stillness and structure.

“You forgot your power” she said to me, staring into me with those eyes. “It’s time to remember your feminine magic”.

I grabbed the crystal box and ran away as fast as I could out onto the open grass, terrified by this lady of the night.

As I got near the house, I stumbled and threw myself down to the wet ground, as the liquid poured out into the earth.

She shouted out to me, her voice rising from the tree tops, “don’t forget me, I am Lady Saturn, your teacher of power.”

The cadence of her voice echoed through the hollow, following me as I returned to the safety of the brightly lit house.”

For the last few years I have been under this enchantment, and compelled to look backwards and downwards for my magic, into the ‘heart of the matter’.

I have been on a pilgrimage to revisit times and places in my life and my ancestry where a dark yin magic is pooled, waiting for me.

I have been taken on a right old adventure and holy quest up the Old North Road, towards the most dazzling black vast skies, past deer parks and formidable wizards and feminine magicians, women who once knew how to shape and weave the world with their words and their wombs. Shapeshifters who wore Deer Crowns for magic.

I seem to be weaving two very interesting threads together, back into one ripping old yarn that tells tales of a lost and forbidden feminine magic.

Both threads emerged during my Saturn’s Return, aged 28, when the stars themselves force us to address our foundational rooting and asses our relationship to power. Back then I had no idea what a Saturn’s Return was about from a mystical perspective and it felt like my soul was being filleted into pieces.

This was a time in my life that was very difficult, and that I had a lot of shame about, especially because it didn’t feel very ‘spiritual’ – and it reflected an essential side of me that has been trying to get out of the hat like a magical rabbit for all my life, but I have repeatedly stuffed back down; the femme fatale, the enchantress, the magician.

Our Saturn’s Return is like the feminine magic school we never knew we wanted to enroll in, it guts us, and reveals us in a dark mirror that shocks us with reflections.

This was a time in my life of great suffering followed by great worldly success, when in a timeframe that could have been divided by a thin sheet of paper, I went from living off unemployment benefits with barely money to eat, to flying in private jets and having a Mercedes with a driver at hand, mingling in the heady world of fashion.

Within one year on the outro of my twenty eighth year, I hung out in Hollywood with the glitterati and moved back home penniless and slept in bed with my my mum, and experienced an ancestral restructuring under the watchful gaze of Mam Tor, the incredible mother mountain of Elmet in the high peaks near my birthplace in England.  

Now, in retrospect, I see that this portal of initiation doesn’t end at 28. It lives on inside us bringing us an incredible homeopathic medicine for our feminine power and individuation. I have dubbed the purveyor of this magical initiation as “Lady Saturn” – the glamorous, witty dark womb crystalline energy that structures energy into form.

There is an aspect of Feminine Magic that is little understood and acknowledged, it is cool and yin and dark, but also structured and strong. It’s realm is crystal light.

It is utterly feminine, but if you haven’t seen it in a few thousand aeons you might mistake it as masculine, if you think feminine energy can only be floaty and soft. This magic says....have pride and power in yourself. Stand up straight and tall. Be cunning and bold, and grow wet, dirty, wild roots. It wants us unapologetically switched on.

In a world of pink goo, Lady Saturn arrives. It’s not a ‘nice’ energy, but it is full of heart. In fact, every woman needs a homeopathic dose or a  ‘sprinkling of bitch’. Not to be a bitch, but to have a microdose of bitch on hand should it prove necessary. When we’ve been trained to be nice and compliant and agreeable we need an antidote.

Lady Saturn is an energy frequency that holds the power to recreate our world.

And if I could describe it simply I would call it the structural feminine, rather than the flowing feminine. In the world we hear a lot about the ‘feminine flow’ – rather than the structural feminine, and the cool, dark yin (think about a dark crystal in an earth cave). Saturn’s Return – is about how we embody our power. Power is the infrastructure of love. It’s how the changing fluid takes shape and form. “Taking shape and form” is actually the definition of much witchcraft, as feminine magic is predominantly about shaping energy with new templates and structures. This is the role of enchanting.

One thing to understand about this energy is that it is not ‘shadow’ or ‘underworld’ as the mainstream world formulates it. Far from that, it contains the structural light of diamond intelligence that underpins all creation and is the ‘philosopher’s stone’ that the mystics are seeking. It is the dazzling clarity of light embedded in the heart of matter. It has been known as “Sophia” or Wisdom. It is the energy signature of the rich blackness of volcanic rock that builds new land, and the glittering crystal caves deep within the earth that serve as Gaia’s organic quantum computers. It is the rich fertility of earth and roots, and the vast dazzling darkness of the cosmos, know as Kala, time and memory and birth and dissolution. It is the structural womb of life.

It is not something to ascend out of, or descend into, it is something to belong too.

Ancient mystics called it ‘Diamond World’ and enlightenment was the creation of a “Diamond Form”- it contains the faceted cutting edges that the Dakini’s used to cut through into new realities. It holds the architecture of all manifestation and creation.

So, on that note, here is something I wrote during a dive into Saturn’s Return I hosted with a Salon of feminine magicians, musing on my own brutally brilliant initiation….

Power/Money & Saturn Return

I woke up at 5am this morning, feeling a lot of energy. I breathed it through my body for over an hour, percolating on my Saturn Return and its relationship to money and power dynamics. It was a world I thought I’d left behind, but the map is still calling.

Let me time travel back. After years of being a nomad hedonist, age 26 I had decided to get serious about my dream of being a professional writer, and I had taken a position as a temp personal assistant at a publishing company. I was working in the healthcare division that published such wonders as "The Journal of Woundcare". I was on the lowest rung of the ladder. I was the person who ordered your new pencil sharpeners, or arranged for tea and biscuits at your meetings, or filed your holiday request form. Or ordered loo roll or booked meetings. I was beloved by everyone in the company, because I was always cheerful and always there to serve everyone else, down to the smallest, most mundane detail. And in many ways it was easy, but tedious work. It did not ask anything of me - the terrain of Lady Saturn wasn't in sight. I just had to be nice and helpful. That left my imagination free to be full of spaciousness and my mind to float out of my body. I worked to live, not the other way round.

But after a year, Saturn was drawing me close and I felt her pull....I had been in a car accident with a friend, that was her "fault" and she encouraged me to sue her. I did, and I won. Awkwardly, when I got the settlement we had fallen out. I decided to pay for me and a good friend to go to Tullum in Mexico. At this time Tullum was not developed. It was a remote little hideaway, just a few beach huts, hammocks between trees and one restaurant. It was deeply elemental and I felt the Spirit of the Land.

This was the era of my panic attacks, a constant friend to me. But in this magical place, my body opened again and my soul rushed back in. There was magic afoot and I understood in a very clear way that I was betraying my own destiny, and I needed to make some big changes. On the last day of the holiday I lay in the hammock, in our little beach shack, with wooden slats that let the sun through, and I wept as if my heart was menstruating, and the tears were flowing out from the very bottom of my womb, and the darkest anguish she was keeping safely stored away. 

I got back home and went into therapy, and began applying for other jobs. Even in that detail, Saturn arrived, peering over my shoulder. I felt shy of the task. How to present myself as powerful, full of initiative, enthusiasm and leadership? A desirable candidate? How to leave my safe little lair where I was loved with so little effort. 

The wheels were in motion, and with my first application I landed the 'dream job'  - a position as a personal assistant to the almost-all female management team of a women's magazine publishing division. These were women who were the real life "Devil Wears Prada" types, who lunched at the best places, wore designer clothes, were the power behind top fashion magazines like Elle. Immediately, I was in the "Lioness Pit".

It was a strange role, because within their little 'women's world' I was without power, at their beck and call. I remember an intense thunder and lightning storm with thrashing rain, when they decided they wanted latte's and made me go out in the rain to get it, without an umbrella, meaning for the rest of the day I sat at my desk with soaking wet clothes and hair. I learned that wealthy women are almost always "renovating their homes", and while they were meant to be working they were looking at designer curtain fabrics and ordering me around to get swatches. 

To anyone outside the publishing team, I had power by default - just by my proximity to power - and my bosses would often make me the mouthpiece for any unsavory communications. I was no longer beloved, held in that easy, container of friendship and camaraderie of my last position. I learnt that power was lonely. Power dynamics dominated every interaction, and if you didn't have that natural "magnetic upload" you were mincemeat. In this "Saturn Cauldron" I began to feel my frailty, my vulnerability, my need for everyone to like me, at the expense of power. 

And so I began my ascent (or descent). Slow, grueling, with a huge impact on my body. People who are magnetic and can hold power, do so with a relaxed confidence, it is not stressful for them. That is the gift of magnetic rooting. I was not rooted, and every moment was fraught with stress. I felt like I was under an immense pressure.

Finally I got my first writing position (on a women's celebrity health and wellness magazine). If I thought the power dynamics were bad on the administration team, I had no idea what it would be like on the editorial team. On one hand it was an incredible, collaborative weaving of creativity, ideas, inspiration, possibilities, glamor, and on the other hand it was a world that demanded your most grown-up, powerful, initiated self. 

I remember my first few weeks, and we were missing a cover story. The Editor walked by and demanded we all "hit the phones" (a phrase I would come to loathe). I was tasked with calling Jennifer Anniston's agent in LA and directly pitching the idea of a cover story. Only a year ago my greatest task had been ordering coffee at the local cafe. I was terrified. It was a magical terror. It meant activating a buried part of me. I did not want to make that call. So for two days I avoided it, until my cowardice was uncovered, and under the steely gaze of the editor I had to pick up the phone and make the call. It is in essence a sales call, a pitch, to people who in their own little universe are incredible power brokers. I was shaking and sweating with fear.

I failed miserably of course. I was then given my first proper feature to write, with the all important 'byline' (my name "up in lights" in the magazine, so as to speak). I loved words and writing, I wrote extensively in my journal and in my never-ending novels, but I had no clue how to actually write a professional article. I then began my initiation into the art and craft of writing. Upon writing a feature, I would be called into the Editor's office 1:1 for feedback. These were not 'safe spaces' where people were trying to be kind. You would be crucified in there. Your writing was torn to shreds, as if it were your soul. Red pen would be everywhere - often with exclamation points on the sections that were the most offensive to the editor. The office was glass, so people could see you getting cut down in there, red cheeked, watching your words being trashed, knowing that you only had a few bad essays grace.   

By now I was 28, the magic doorway of Saturn, kicking my ass, saying grow up, initiate your power, be ready to birth your gift into the world. Destiny is calling. I remember I would fight back tears at first, wanting to run away and scream “be nice to me” and by the end, years later, I would be laughing, relaxed and open, accepting of the verdict and genuinely willing to see the vision that still needed to emerge out.

Looking back now, I can see what Lady Saturn was showing me. Power does not have to be 'lonely', but it requires adulthood. It requires valuing what you are creating and birthing above approval and safety, It is not easy. It requires a container of strong energy, and the desire to build it. It requires being comfortable in magnetic power structures, formed like a web of creative, connected threads that constellate.

That was how I learned to write, in an agonizing crucible with these amazingly powerful women, like modern day high priestesses of creative alchemy. I watched as they flicked their red pens over the page and restructured my flowing words with determined precision, as if their inner eyes could see something I could not - a secret or invisible form. And "as if by magic" from their correction, something powerful birthed from my creative flow. I learned the power of structure of the invisible patterns and grids that held words, and ideas, and later on vast spiritual transmissions. At the time that energy of severity and correction and the proximity to such power and leadership overwhelmed my nervous system, and I would have to retreat in order to restore myself and integrate what I'd learned. I judged these women too – as heartless, bitchy, selfish. “cruel queens”. I now see I was projecting my own maiden self, needing a safe mother world to coddle me, and casting them as ‘wicked stepmothers’ when they didn’t. I trained in Saturn's Cauldron with women who did not value my niceness (unless it was something serving them), who wanted to feel sharp creative edges, to see that inner ‘microdose of bitch’, who was resilient, gifted, quick, sharp, who had a cunning wolf-wise tongue that could speak the words of power.

I remember one day at the publishing company, on my birthday, my friend surprised me with a special delivery to the front desk. Everyone gathered round to see what had arrived for me. I struggled through the shiny, luxury wrapping to extract a brand new black Gucci bag and matching wallet, with the fine lettering GC plastered all over them. I cringed, I hated displays. My friend who was the natural embodiment of Lady Saturn, cool, elegant, naturally magnetic, glamorous and with a gift for making luxury and beauty look effortless. She could have given me them in private, but instinctively she knew a public spectacle was in order. At that time I carried a cheap beach bag from India. Now my bag was worth more than all the money I had in the bank.

I remember walking into expensive boutique’s in London, and seeing the assistant’s snooty gaze follow me until it rested on my bag, then her tune would change immediately, all solicitous and fawning. I imagined what it would feel like if that power was held, not in a bought black Gucci back on my arm, but inside my own womb.

I do not believe real feminine power can be made in a factory, it is forged and inhabited and innate, it is a movement, a feeling, a knowing, an embodiment.

So thus my journey with Lady Saturn had begun, and is still ongoing to this day.

Many times, I was once again asked to dip down into that cauldron, not as a terrified young girl trying to get ahead and find power, but to integrate and weave the gifts of womanhood, and to understand that every Tree of Life has dark roots that draw nutrition from the severity and flowers that open to receive the divine radiance.