Mars and Saturn conjunct during solar return

A couple of years ago, I had my solar return chart read by a professional astrologer. There was a Mars/Saturn conjunction in it, in my SR fifth house/natal eleventh. The astrologer said it meant that this would be a year to put in work but not see much results.

That was the year I started learning astrology. But in other ways, my life was pretty stagnant: no great change in my work or living situation, which I wanted. I did feel frustrated with that.

The following year, Mars and Saturn were no longer conjunct, and they both had some nice trines to planets in my natal chart. The SR eleventh house was heavily emphasized. (Incidentally, my natal north node is in the eleventh, trine natal Saturn and in a close but out of sign opposition with natal Mars.) Moon was in the SR twelfth/natal ninth house; most of my other planets, including sun, were in the SR eleventh/natal eighth.

A month, month and a half after my birthday, I got a new job, which I didn't even think I wanted at first, but it turned out to be a welcome change, and I liked it much better than I thought I would. Four months after my birthday, I got an email out of the blue announcing a new herbalism school taking applications for its first class ever... and going to herbalism school had been one of my dreams. I started there in February, about a week before my solar opposition. I took that to mean everything was moving forward, the stagnation was over.

But this year, on my solar return a month from now, Mars and Saturn will be conjunct again, even tighter this time. And in my SR chart, that conjunction will be right on the AC (still in my natal eleventh house).

So, the questions: does a Mars/Saturn conjunction in the SR chart always mean frustration, delay, and hard work without seeing much result? I've been interpreting it that way because of what the astrologer told me, but are there other possible meanings that I'm missing? Mars and Saturn are going to be in orb of conjunction for about a month and a half, so everyone with a birthday in August or the first half of September will have that conjunction in their SR chart this year. Are we all going to experience that frustration and delay?

Next question: what does it really mean to have Saturn sitting on your SR AC? I interpreted that very placement for someone else recently, and from that conversation, I gather that Saturn on the SR AC indicates that you have to face reality and limitations. In this person's case, they'd been following a course of study for years that was leading nowhere, and they'd been making a point of traveling to avoid "bad" SR charts and were upset that they couldn't do it this time. Their SR AC, with Saturn on it, was in their natal ninth house.

I don't have those kinds of things going on. I have a commitment that won't let me travel for my birthday even if I were making a point of avoiding particular SR placements, which I'm not, and the course of study I'm doing is very clearly what I need. Aside from the Saturn/Mars conjunction (which is in Sagittarius in my natal eleventh house), the big emphasis in this year's solar return chart will be in the SR ninth house. I take that to mean my studies, and possible travel. I just got invited on an international trip next winter, although I'm not sure if I can afford it.

So, what do I really need to pay attention to here? And aside from me personally, what meanings could an SR Mars/Saturn conjunction have? I'd like to have a better sense of that when I interpret other people's charts.

It won't make much sense without reference to your natal chart and profected year. If it echoes the natal chart, that's going to be problematic, but if it doesn't, I wouldn't worry about it. E.g., if return Saturn/Mars is squaring natal Venus, but in your natal chart, neither of those planets aspect Venus, nothing's going to come about. It can't.

If your profected chart brings Saturn or Mars angular, or one of the signs they rule to the ascendant, that could be problematic. Without knowing the specifics of the chart, all you can do is generalise.

For profection, use the table below. On your first birthday, the second sign (not house, if they're different) becomes the profected ascendant for the year, on your second birthday, the third sign, etc.

Oddity said:

It won't make much sense without reference to your natal chart and profected year. If it echoes the natal chart, that's going to be problematic, but if it doesn't, I wouldn't worry about it. E.g., if return Saturn/Mars is squaring natal Venus, but in your natal chart, neither of those planets aspect Venus, nothing's going to come about. It can't.

If your profected chart brings Saturn or Mars angular, or one of the signs they rule to the ascendant, that could be problematic. Without knowing the specifics of the chart, all you can do is generalise.

For profection, use the table below. On your first birthday, the second sign (not house, if they're different) becomes the profected ascendant for the year, on your second birthday, the third sign, etc.

Click to expand...

I do know the basics of profection. I will be 41 this year, so sixth house profection year. My sixth sign is Gemini. Natal Mars is at 0 Gemini, so it's activated, isn't it? Every house system except whole sign places my Mars in the fifth, but if profection is by whole sign, it would be activated in the sixth.

Interesting to look at both the traditional and the modern perspective. The astrologer I consulted was modern, so would have been using different reasoning. Two years ago was a fourth house profection year for me, which would have activated Mars again because my fourth sign is Aries. This last year has been a Venus year. Now I'm entering a Mercury year.

If I remember correctly (I went to a talk about profections a few months ago), planets activated by profection also activate whatever house they're placed in (whole sign) and planets that share their sign. If that is correct, I've also had the ninth house activated this last year, and next, too, because natal Venus and Mercury are both in the ninth house whole sign.

SR Mars squares natal Mercury with an orb of only one degree, and natal Venus with a four degree orb. Natal Mars and Mercury are square with a six degree orb, and Venus is square Mars by sign as well. So the same square is in both charts, but with SR Mars opposing natal Mars. If you consider aspects just by sign, SR Mars is square everything in the SR ninth house except the sun. Sun is in Leo; all other SR ninth house planets (Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter) are in Virgo.

For reference, I've added the chart for my upcoming solar return. A picture is worth a thousand words....

I've been running charts for previous years for comparison, and I see I've had a solar return Saturn/Mars conjunction every other year since 2010. In 2010, Venus was in between them and closer to Mars, so it was actually a stellium. In 2012, the Mars/Saturn conjunction was exact and sitting right on my natal MC. That year, my solar return houses lined up more or less with my natal houses, so natal MC was in the SR tenth.

Worth some study, but if this has been happening repeatedly for many years, I may be too close to it to see how it's playing out.

Now I know what that conjunction means. It played out in a big way.

I forgot to note initially that SR Saturn and SR AC were sitting right on my natal Neptune (as transiting Neptune squares it). Significant, because... from the date of my solar return until just a few days ago, I had a coworker who was supposed to be my partner in pretty much every aspect of my job, who was hindering me from doing my job and gaslighting me.

Management kept stepping in and trying to correct the situation. It's a very small organization, so this wasn't an impersonal management, it's an everyone knows everyone fairly well kind of place... and right now, there's some turnover at the management level. A new person became my immediate supervisor two months ago, after their position had been vacant for about a month, and a new director just started transitioning in, while the old director, who hired everybody and has pretty long standing relationships with most of the team, is staying on in a supporting role for a couple more months.

What got them to step in was a combination of concern over how things were (not) going with us, and a few complaints I made about my coworker. What I got from them was some support, some mediation, and several instances of being told I needed to improve my communication with Coworker and my own job performance.

I got more and more stressed and anxious as time went on, as things went "well" for a bit, then badly. Coworker blew off a meeting that was set up as part of the mediation/improvement process, and was given a "get your sh!t together or you're fired" talk.

A few days ago, he finally got fired. My report on how he spectacularly failed to get his sh!t together, coupled with the glaringly obvious lies he told the director when she asked for his side of the story, plus some input from a third coworker who had witnessed much of it by (fortuitously) being in the "wrong" place at the right time, did the trick.

As soon as he was gone, I found myself feeling relieved, then numb, then... angry, shaken, and traumatized. I felt like I'd just gotten out of an abusive relationship. Then I realized that's exactly what it was. Then it dawned on me that the problems I thought I had with doing my job were really problems with having my mind messed with, subtly enough that I couldn't see it at the time.

The new director's first day happened to be the day my coworker got fired, so New Director was in on what was going on (although it was the outgoing director who made the decision). New director then addressed the situation with the remaining staff, in a very compassionate and reassuring way. Changes are being made, including changes in how things are done and some people's job duties (including mine), but he made it plain that they're not looking to get rid of anyone, and offered to talk things over with anyone who wants.

I checked transits for those couple of days, and Venus had reached the place where my SR Saturn/AC/Mars conjunction was. The conjunction squared SR Venus, natal Venus, and natal Mercury, and SR Neptune.