Hexagon considerations on Saturn
“We are leaving the Era of the Sun as planetary lord (1980–2016) and entering a new era where Saturn will be Lord of the new planetary cycle (2017–2053.)” I read this in a posting by an astrologer I follow. I don’t know how he came to this assessment, but it caught my interest. So I started looking at Saturn.
It is the outermost planet that is visible to the naked eye. Our week begins with Sunday, the day of the Sun, and ends with Saturn’s day. The Sun, at the centre of the domain of planet Earth, brings warmth and light. It shines on all alike. At the other extreme, Saturn marks the outer limit, the boundary.
While the Sun is the domain of ‘yes’, of allowance, of possibility, Saturn is the domain of ‘no’. Saturn provides the walls of the territory we live in, so that we can have a place to be, to build who we are. It delineates what we are not. The domains of ‘yes’ and ‘no’, in tandem, give definition to our world. How can we live in a house without walls? Where is the safety in that? It is only by bumping against boundaries that we find out who we are.
The Sun has a cycle of electromagnetic ebb and flow, which can be seen through the 12-year sunspot pattern. At a peak of the cycle the ejections of plasma from the sunspots provide a cocoon of protection emanating through the solar system, preventing most of the cosmic rays emanating from the rest of the galaxy from reaching planet Earth. The cycle itself goes through peaks and troughs. The last solar cycle was the quietest in over a century and many believe the next one will be quiet too. The Sun may be entering a quiescent phase.
One Saturnian year is about 30 Earth years. In other words, Saturn takes thirty of our years to complete its orbit around the solar system. This year, just at the time when the Sun’s ability to shield us from cosmic rays is in decline, Saturn is directly in line with the bright centre of the Milky Way galaxy, as viewed from planet Earth. It is in the constellation of Sagittarius.
Then there is that hexagon around Saturn’s north pole. It was first seen in 1981. In 2016, during the Cassini flyby, it was noticed that it had changed colour from blue to golden-yellow as Saturn moves into its spring. It looks like the end of an Allen key, albeit one with sides 8,600 miles long.
What is it? How did it get there? Nobody seems to know.
Is the Saturn Allen Key in a process of locking or unlocking, I wonder? Maybe we are moving from a time in which anything seemed possible, in which the only limit was our imagination, to one in which we are defined by what we say ‘no’ to. Maybe it becoming more important to set the boundaries of what we will not mix with.
Read more at medium.com/@jane.cobbald
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