SATURN ENTERS ARIES: THE FORGING OF THE CONSCIOUS WARRIOR
It started with Neptune in March moving into Aries. This week, we have the long-awaited shift of Saturn into Aries on May 24th. Then, of course, we have Jupiter shifting into Cancer in June, Uranus shifting into Gemini in July. Things slow down as we begin the retrograde season at the end of the summer and into fall and winter. Then next year, early next year in the spring, things really begin to click on.
We get these waves, and as we know, part of this lived experience of living on this organic, rich, nutrient-dense, fruitful earth is that we move, grow, and expand through contractions and expansions. We ebb and flow and move in a non-linear way.
Now we're moving into a period of rapid expansion. Expansion doesn't always happen with ease. Sometimes it's a bit pushy. Sometimes it forces us to look at the spaces and places and corners within our psyche, our subconscious, our shadow, that we're afraid to look at. It pushes us to act, to change, to evolve.
In some ways, things can get really uncomfortable in an expansion period, and I have a feeling that's what some of you are feeling right now—the growing pains. I know I am personally, and I'm gently, not so gently reminded that when you're moving into an upgrade, an up-leveling period, when you're asking for something to change or shift in a way that is positive and aligned with your growth, it will require your full participation and really looking at the spaces where you play into the patterns that are keeping you where you currently are.
Because we always participate in our current reality. We're always in some way, shape, or form participating.
I heard something recently, and forgive me because I can't remember where it came from for the life of me, but it's a concept that has been shared in so many different ways, so many different cultures and traditions and languages: Our thoughts are not shaping our reality. Our thoughts are our reality.
When we think about it in that way, it really hands us the keys to shift our reality. It also puts a lot of responsibility on our shoulders to shift and change what isn't working in our lives.
SATURN
I can already feel Saturn doing its work. The shift of Saturn into Aries is ownership. full ownership over the circumstances of our lives.
I spoke a little bit about this last week, but I am in this sort of crunchy, uncomfortable period. It almost feels a little bit like the pause, the quietness before the storm, where I feel this expansion wanting to take shape within my life. This freedom, liberation, taking off, maturation, and elevation.
It's really testing me right now because things are so quiet. What I'm posting isn't really getting seen. It's not getting traction. Even some of the podcast listens are a little down. It's just really intriguing because before I would have totally spiraled, gotten caught in this loop of fear, really fearing that it was all going away, that it was slipping through my fingers, that the rug was being pulled out from beneath me.
But through this work, through time, space, maturation, I've learned that this is the gift. This time, this quietness, this space to stay present with my truth, my authenticity, my medicine, my purpose, my faith is the key.
This quiet space is where everything begins to take shape and form. I've walked enough women through their own initiations to know that when you land in that space where everything's quiet and you feel like all the lights have been turned off and things are very uncertain, your intuition sharpens, things come into focus in a new way, and your faith deepens. Your anchor roots in a deeper layer of you.
If anyone else is feeling this right now, know you aren't alone. This is a very, very magical stage within the process where we get to believe in not only ourselves, but also our support from source, the other co-creator.
After that extremely pushy week, this week is a big week, but it's a little bit different. We have some trines and sextiles that will just feel more supportive. When I say more supportive, it doesn't mean that the energy of last week wasn't supportive, but it was really pushy. The squares can really be pushy, gritty, intense conflict, especially when Pluto and Mars are involved.
This week we're moving into Gemini season, so things are getting fast. They're getting mobile, moving from fixed earth—the slowness, the presence of Taurus—to mutable air: fast, free, quick.
May 20th we enter Gemini season, and then on the 22nd we have Venus in Aries trining Mars in Leo. This is going to be an opportune time to connect with your passion, to connect with your partner, to connect with what truly drives you, what lights you up, what excites you. Things that you want to change within your relational framework, things that you want to change within your value system, conversations that maybe want to be had.
FIRE TRINE
Things might feel more urgent this week. We have that beautiful supportive trine in fire. Trines are supportive, harmonious aspects. It means two planets are in the same element, communicating in a way that is understood, that is supportive, that is harmonious. They're working together.
Venus and Mars. masculine, feminine, relationships, values, money, drive, will, passion, desire. With both of those personal planets in fire, things are going to heat up in a more harmonious way this week, moving out of those squares of last week.
This invites some repair, perhaps repair to some relationships that might have ruptured last week, some conversations that were challenging. This could be really supportive to really discern what feels good, what feels in alignment, what feels true and real for you right now, and to create perhaps an internal repair if things didn't go as planned last week.
How can you be with the pivot, the reroute, the medicine that arose from the conflict or the challenge or the rupture?
SUN TRINE PLUTO
On the 24th, we have the Sun trining Pluto. Pluto's retrograde right now, so this will give us an opportunity to see perhaps our challenges, our shadow, our fears in a new light. Pluto was squared last week by Mercury. This week it's forming a trine with the Sun.
Maybe you felt stuck last week. This week could provide a new outcome, a new pathway, new choices. If you allow yourself to remain open to the new pathway, it has no choice but to reveal itself to you.
That same day on the 24th, which is a pretty big day this week, we have obviously the Sun trine Pluto, Mercury's also conjunct Uranus, and Saturn enters Aries.
MERCURY CONJUNCT URANUS
The same day Saturn enters Aries, we have Mercury conjunct Uranus as well. It's a good time to sit with: What did the Sun and Uranus conjunction reveal to you this last week? What revelations came forward? Realizations, surprises? Maybe it's something you've always known, but you were able to access a new perspective, a new way of seeing it and experiencing it.
These conjunctions are trying to help us liberate ourselves from something that feels rigid or stuck or stagnant within our lives, where we're leaning too far into safety and familiarity.
SATURN IN ARIES
Then we have Saturn's shift into Aries. I've talked a lot about this throughout the year because it's highly significant. Saturn is leaving the 12th sign of the Zodiac, and it's beginning a whole new cycle through the Zodiac. It's stepping into that creation point, the zero point of Aries.
I've talked about how both Neptune and Saturn are meeting together there next year. The zero point of Aries is such a significant point this year. We've had activations at this point since the beginning of this year and we will continue to into 2026.
I cannot overemphasize the importance of this point over the next few years, what it means for us collectively and individually. It's really a fresh new beginning, a reset point, the point of creation, the point where we begin again, a rebirth point.
SATURN IN ARIES: I AM
This is happening wherever you have 0° of Aries in your chart. Wherever this is, you are fully and completely stepping into your power. You are taking the reins of your life fully and completely. This is the "I Am" point. This is the point where you self-actualize.
Saturn takes about 30-ish years to move through the Zodiac. 29½. On May 24th it enters Aries for the first time in about 29½ years. This is initiating a new cycle of personal responsibility, initiation, self-leadership.
We're moving from the watery depths of Pisces into the fiery forge of Aries. This is about self-actualization, clarification, action, change.
SATURN’S MEDICINE
Saturn is the planet of maturation, mastery, devotion, structure, boundaries, authority, rules, restriction, structure. Aries is the emergence of self. It's the soul's instinct to become. the "I Am" point, to separate from the past and forge something new.
Saturn's entrance here says, "Yes, let's begin, let's initiate. But let's begin in right relationship with your power, your body, your boundaries, your truth. Let's begin in integrity, embodied, responsible, grounded, and clear."
This is about sacred initiation, movement, new beginnings. This is an up-leveling on wherever you have Aries in your chart.
This transit begins on May 24th, 2025 and goes until Saturn retrogrades back into Pisces on September 1st. It will be retrograde in Pisces until February 13th when it enters Aries again until 2028.
So Saturn is in Aries from May 24th, 2025 to September 1st, 2025, and then again February 13th, 2026 through April 12th, 2028.
If you're entering your Saturn return, if your Natal Saturn is in Aries, you'll want to note those dates.
Saturn is a malefic planet, so it gets this reputation as a punisher, a disciplinarian. It can feel rather oppressive and rigid and harsh and even severe, maybe even unforgiving. But Saturn is not here to punish, but to help us grow through lived experience.
It's here to reveal where we have opportunity to mature, to grow and evolve through pressure and hardship and challenge. Saturn represents maturation, mastery, devotion, structure, boundaries, mastery on the material plane, authority, rules, restriction.
It reveals where we develop authority not through ease, but through effort, discomfort, challenge, trial and error. It reveals our karmic contracts, the terrain that really holds info on what we came here to learn, mature, and grow through.
Saturn asks for self-responsibility, discipline. It's reparenting. It's looking at where we fall into our inner child without knowing it, where we fall into victim consciousness, where we create these protective loops within our subconscious that tell us that we can't do something or that life is happening to us simply because the opposite or the alternative is to face our own relationship with what's safe and familiar, even if it's uncomfortable.
I see self-responsibility as the acknowledgment of our higher authority, our higher self, our adult self that is always present with us. The acknowledgment that we have access to this higher truth and that we can always choose that part.
It's OK if we don't every single time. It's OK to feel the inner child. It's OK to be in the inner child, but to know that there's always an inner parent, an inner higher self, an inner adult that can create safety, that can create truth, that can create clarity. That is the self-responsibility.
SATURN IN ARIES: CONTRADICTION
Saturn in Aries is the exact opposite of Saturn in Pisces. Aries is action-oriented, mobilized. It is the emergence of self, self-actualization. It's the soul's instinct to become.
Saturn is actually in its fall in Aries, which means that there's contradiction. Saturn in Aries is paradoxical, and that contradiction is the medicine.
Aries wants to initiate. Saturn wants to slow down to do it right. Aries acts on instinct. Saturn delays for mastery. Aries is the fire starter. Saturn is the gatekeeper.
This transit is inherently contradictory. Aries is a cardinal fire sign—it wants to move. Saturn wants to contain. This push and pull, this difficulty, this conflict is where the potency lies.
QUESTIONS FOR SELF MASTERY
It asks us to look at where we are impulsive, where we're letting our fire run the show. Can you move forward with intention instead of impulse? Can you channel your fire, your life force, in a way that is sustaining and life-giving rather than destructive?
Can you hold this push and pull, this conflict, this tension between raw instinct and impulse and earned wisdom, maturation? Can you let the fire forge you? Can you pause in the fire rather than act from it?
This transit is truly about self-mastery. Aries is a sign of self. So this is about you. This is about initiating a new path of sovereignty, self-realization, actualization, but with endurance and maturity and self-control rather than recklessness.
We're going to be looking at and healing any distortions around self-reliance, self-responsibility, where you may be over-doing or isolating or over-functioning, or where you can't access your power or you're afraid to access your power.
This will be calling us into right relationship with our inner power, our fire—not to suppress it, but to really master it, to integrate it, to befriend our anger, our rage, and to learn how to channel it through creation rather than self-destruction or external destruction.
This is about building and shaping and supporting the spine to act in alignment with your truth so that you can have the strong straight spine to support your higher heart. We need boundaries, we need security, we need safety so that our heart can act from a space of truth and integrity so that we can respond from that place rather than the wound.
I've been working with clients on anger recently. This has been a theme weaving into my work. Right now I'm noticing that anger is such a big one. This is going to be a time of reclaiming anger, instinct, raw life force—to not suppress it, which I see happen with so many women, but to befriend it, to learn how to dance with it, work with it, because the entire Zodiac is built upon it, begins with raw, primal life force, fire, initiation.
FIRE AS MEDICINE
We have to remember that fire is a huge part of initiation. It's the creation point. Even the medicine of fire has been one that I've been sitting with so much this year, having moved through the fires that ripped through Los Angeles early this year. What would it look like to actually befriend fire, to befriend rage, to befriend anger? What freedom could come from that?
This transit will also teach us about leadership—what true, authentic, mature, and ripened leadership actually looks like. I can tell you that it involves the integration of life force, power, anger, rage, so that we aren't run by it, but we allow it to fuel us in a way that is life-giving and supportive.
This is moving from the watery depths of Pisces into the fiery forge of Aries. This is less about dissolving and more about doing. Saturn in Aries will ask us to really clarify our identity, to refine our impulses, and to take brave, disciplined action that's aligned with who we truly are.
Not who we have been conditioned to be. Not from our wounds and our past, but our higher alignment and our higher self.
I think this Saturn transit really is going to shape and form the next few years for us collectively and individually. We've been doing such deep work, and now we're getting some heat to really carve new ways. But Saturn is keeping us in check. If we just had this uncontained Aries energy, it would be a disaster. Saturn is giving us a map to truly embody the conscious warrior.
Wherever this lands in your chart is where you're going to be pushed to evolve, grow, and mature, to ripen through this activation, to be forged by the fire rather than collapsed or activated. This is a controlled burn. This is proactively looking at where you need to liberate yourself and where you need to contain yourself. Saturn in Aries will teach us this balance.
So I ask you, what is your relationship with your fire? What is your relationship with your life force? Anger and rage is really just pure life force. It's our relationship with it that determines whether it's stored as stagnation and disease and suppressed grief, or if it gets channeled to creation.
We're either creating or destroying with our life force. Destruction isn't bad—we need to destroy to create new in the cycle. But are you destroying from the ego or from the wound? Or are you destroying from a higher alignment? Are you creating from a wound? Are you creating from your higher alignment to your higher heart?
This is the discernment that Saturn can teach us in this transit.
SATURN RETURN
For those entering your Saturn return, if you have your Natal Saturn in Aries, you're entering your Saturn return—a time of great initiation. We have a Saturn return between 27 and 30, then again in our late fifties (56 to 60), and then again in our late 80s (84 to 90).
We think about these points, and they're all about rites of passage that we have to go through. these underworld journeys to reclaim our true self, to meet challenge and grit with truth, life force, power. These points teach us that maturation is a marathon. It's always happening. We are always ripening.
We are always ripening and then dying and then being reborn. This process never ends. It's a spiral.
One of the easiest ways we can show up and meet Saturn, rather than let it have its way with us and create this feeling of oppression, is that we can meet it. Meeting ourselves through devotion, ritual, structure, routine, integrating the inner masculine, embracing the structure and the containment, the presence, the holding.
If you are entering your Saturn return, even if you aren't and you're just feeling this call to work with Saturn, it's a beautiful time to sit with your relationship with the masculine, your relationship with discipline, structure, rules, boundaries, your relationship with your anger, your life force, your power.
Are you someone who is ruled by it? Do you feel reckless? Do you feel out of control? Or are you afraid to embrace it? Does it need more containment, or does it need freedom and liberation?
— ALI OFSTEDAL
THIS BLOG IS A REVISED TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE 102 OF MY PODCAST “SOUL ARCHAEOLOGY’.
Tune into the latest episode of soul archaeology for a full energetic download. available on all platforms.