“I wear my sunglasses at night, so I can, so I can see the light that’s right before my eyes.”—Corey Hart, Sunglasses At Night, 1983
“We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.”—Goethe
On October 5, 2012, the planet Saturn moved into the sign of Scorpio, where he will reside for close to three years. There’s a turning point in any good story when the tension mounts, the suspense heightens, and despite the increased intensity of the experience, something deep within compels you to stick around—fixed at the very edge of your seat—to see how it’s all going to work out. This would be akin to the Saturn in Scorpio point of the story.
Things get dark when Saturn moves into Scorpio. If Jim Henson can go there in order to create “The Dark Crystal,” which came out right when Saturn last entered Scorpio in late 1982, my hunch is we all can. Interestingly, “The Dark Crystal” captures the symbolic essence of Saturn in Scorpio with uncanny precision, and for his efforts Jim Henson even won a Saturn Award (seriously!) for Best Fantasy Film. While I can’t promise Saturn Awards for everyone, suffice to say that Saturn in Scorpio is really a time for recognizing that there’s a whole lot more going on in life than typically meets the eye.
EYES THAT SEE IN THE DARK
The late, formidable depth psychologist James Hillman, who was born in 1926 with Saturn in Scorpio, often noted about his work, “I have a dark eye.” Probably a good quality for the eyes of a depth psychologist!
On February 2, 1985, a little girl named Melody Gardot was born with Saturn in Scorpio in her birth chart. In November 2003, young Melody was hit by a car while riding her bicycle (transiting Uranus was square her Saturn), landing her in the hospital for a year, on her back. Since the accident, Melody rebuilt her life and has become a highly-acclaimed, exquisitely elegant jazz singer, playing her music in dark, intimate clubs all around the world. Her songs include “Deep Within the Corners of My Mind,” “Your Heart Is As Black As Night,” and “So We Meet Again My Heartache.” Curiously, “The most noticeable effect of the neural injuries she suffered is that she was left hyper-sensitive to both light and sound, therefore requiring her to wear dark sunglasses at nearly all times to shield her eyes.” (Wikipedia)
Meanwhile, an interesting phenomenon occurred between 1983 and 1985, the period of the entire Saturn transit through Scorpio, when a huge surge in the sales of Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses led to the height of the company’s success.
Olivia Newton-John sported shades on the cover of her 1983 hit single, “Twist of Fate.”
Tom Cruise danced in his underwear and sported his sexy Ray-Ban shades while going about his "Risky Business" (1983).
At the same time, sexy Corey Hart hit the big time with his song "Sunglasses At Night": “I wear my sunglasses at night, so I can, so I can see the light that’s right before my eyes.”
In 1983, country singer Kenny Rogers released a pop album called “Eyes That See In the Dark.”
In 1984, Tina Turner launched her massive comeback album “Private Dancer” with the lyrics, “I’m a new pair of eyes every time I am born.”
Movie Director James Cameron, born with Saturn in Scorpio in his birth chart, included the now-famous line “I see you” in both of his top-grossing movies “Titanic” and “Avatar.” In "Titanic" Rose says to Jack, “You have a gift, Jack, you do. You see people.” To which he replied, “I see you.” Jack could see into people, see their gifts, something about their inherent nature hidden in the dark.
Looking back to an earlier Saturn in Scorpio cycle, William Golding published his "Lord of the Flies," featuring the infamous Piggy’s shattered lenses on the cover. The shattering of his lenses left Piggy in the dark, unable to see in the manner he was most accustomed.
When Saturn is in Scorpio, we see "through a glass darkly,” like x-ray vision. The x-ray machine was actually invented while Saturn was in Scorpio. We can see what is not typically seen under bright-light conditions. It’s as if we all don Ray-Bans for the duration of the transit.
When our eyes enter darkness, our pupils dilate. The muscles of the eye relax, causing the pupil to fully expand in order to obtain more light. Dilated pupils enable us to see better in the darkness. This is significant for Saturn’s transit in Scorpio and is the essence of the “in-sight” often associated with Scorpio. The darkness has purpose.
Now, stretching our expanded pupils way back to the year 1542, we see that the young man who would become Saint John of the Cross was born with Saturn in Scorpio in his birth chart. Amidst the toughest of life circumstances he would glean insight into what he called the Dark Night of the Soul and from that darkness he wrote one of the most mysterious and magical pieces of mystical poetry ever written. The poem, with its reference to moving through life with “No other light, no other guide / Than the one burning in my heart” (Starr) is resonant of the particular experience of darkness we encounter with Saturn in Scorpio.
ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT
Both Saturn and Scorpio rule over the cold and dark places on earth—everything from cellars and mines to refrigerators and freezers. Similarly, both Saturn and Scorpio rule over the cold and dark places of the human psyche. Like a Detective exhuming a long-buried grave or sweeping away cobwebs to investigate cold-cases long-forgotten and left behind, Saturn in Scorpio asks us to look deeply into the dark of the present, the past, and ourselves, to find important flickers of life, valuable new evidence that may have been overlooked, neglected, or not recognized for its full worth when interrogated under brighter circumstances. It’s a time to let the dark be the dark and allow our eyes enough time to adjust enough to expand intimately, inwardly, so that we can more fully see through the light that is already there.