SadeSati - Should we be terrorized by it? - Part1

Hello all,

Namaste! Hope all of you had a great weekend and had a fun time being with family and friends. Last week's post 'Saturn/Shani - Astrologically speaking', was a bird's eye view into the astrological realm of Saturn. That post was a curtain raiser for this post, which is another area that comes very much under Saturn or Shani. To really understand this post we really needed to dissect the qualities and the intentions of Shani as an energy in our life. The previous post was an attempt to clarify the aspect of honesty, being authentic and really taking care of one's Karma ( work in the form of career, duty towards ourselves, family and friends) in this physical realm, which very much comes under the domain of Shani. 


Shaniswara
Raja Ravi Varma [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons,
Sade Sati caption by Swaroopa

Today we will discuss SadeSati. Now, what is this SadeSati (साढ़े साथी )? All of us now know that there is a Graha called Saturn and the energy it brings to our life. Saturn is considered the slowest moving planet in Astrology. It takes 2.5 years in every sign (Yes, we have to discuss the horoscope, which I am planning to write about soon and we will be discussing the South Indian chart, which I am comfortable with) and takes almost three years to really move into the next sign. 

SadeSati is the movement of Shani over our natal (the placement when we were born) Moon, the previous house to it and the next house to it. So SadeSati is the movement of Shani starting with the previous house to our Moon, over our Moon and then the next house to our Moon. As in each house, Shani takes 2.5 years to traverse, this becomes 2.5 in the previous house, 2.5 in Moon house and finally 2.5 years in the next house to our natal moon. So 2.5+2.5+2.5 = 7.5 years of Saturn movement. 

From reading on the forums on the internet and from many other sources it seems people are literally terrified about this 7.5 years of Saturn or SadeSati to their core. Do we really have to be terrified about this 7.5 years? Will the taskmaster planet Saturn cut us to our core using a sword or machete? This post is to illuminate that. Before describing Sade-Sathi, we have to elaborate more on our other Graha, Moon.

Moon (Chandra): What is Moon in Astrology? Moon is our mind and the way our mind responds to or reacts to circumstances or situations that come up in our life. Now like our mind, Moon also is very fickle. It is considered a very emotional planet in Astrology. Also remember, the Moon we see in our night sky waxes and wanes every fortnight, the same concept applies to Moon in Astrology as well. The fortnight that Moon waxes is called the light phase or the 'Sukla Paksha' (शुक्ल पक्षा ) and the fortnight the Moon wanes is called the dark phase or 'Krishna Paksha' (कृष्ण पक्षा ). It is considered, as the Moon reduces or wanes during the dark phase, Moon in the horoscope in which it is in Krishna Paksha has less strength compared to that of the Sukla Paksha. So in every horoscope, the Moon has the strength according to the phase that particular day the Moon was in. This is a very simple description of Moon as our mind and the way Moon can have different kinds of strength in each horoscope.

Moon (Chandra)
By Jessie Eastland (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Another thing, Moon is considered a watery or emotional planet in Astrology and due to the changing phases, it is considered fickle as well. Now consider another thing. How much percentage of our body is water? It is in the range of 50-65% for a human adult. That is a lot of water that we have in our body. This water gets affected by the placement of our natal moon as well as the transit Moon phase at any given time, the same way tides in the sea gets affected by our physical Moon (If you ask me for proof, sorry I cannot provide as these are things written in Jyotisha (Astrology) books as well as things I have noticed through my own observations. Jyotisha is the realm of intuition, inner knowledge, and the divine wisdom, not the realm of proof or evidence). So these are some things to keep in mind as we now go to the discussion of our 7.5 years of trouble.

One more point, this SadeSati (7.5 years) comes once every thirty years and in an average human life most probably it comes around three times if we take our human age as 90 years.

SadeSati:
Phase 1: The Subconscious (Ascending) phase:  This is the 2.5 years when Saturn comes to the previous house to where our moon is situated. So in an Astrology chart, there are twelve houses and if we take the house where the Moon is placed, as the first house, then this house becomes the twelfth house. The twelfth house in Astrology denotes our subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is our mind that sleeps when our conscious mind is awake and wakes up and becomes alert when we go to sleep. This is the mind which shows us dreams, gives us clues via dreams or the realm of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. Our conscious mind has really no idea what we carry in our subconscious mind.

Subconscious mind usually carries our behaviors, socially acquired patterns and many of our social conditioning, about which many times we are not consciously aware of. Now here comes our Saturn sitting squarely on top of our mental twelfth house (There is also another twelfth house in relation to Lagna or the ascendant and same way you can calculate any twelfth house from any planet and the flavor of such each twelfth house will change according to the planetary energy we are discussing).  As we discussed before Saturn does not care about our emotions or our soft subjective mentalities. He is here to clean the house, sweep all the outdated ideas and ideals,  break open the foundation, give this house a good restructuring, a fresh coat of paint, a new garden to go with it and finally a solid structure we can be proud as our twelfth house. As previously mentioned, it is always better to explain concepts through an example.

Say for example a person, let us call A who has been born into an orthodox family in a remote village in some country. He/She has been brought up in a strict culture where everyday rituals and religious functions are the norms. Now let us think, our A is very good in studies and got himself/herself a scholarship to a fantastic University in the city. Suddenly A is thrown fully into a fast-paced life where people don't have time for daily rituals, beliefs or Sadhanas. First, he/she would have a huge culture shock and many times their mental foundation as a whole would have been torn apart and they would find that their rituals and culture doesn't mean anything in a University or an urban setting. 

But this culture shock many times presents itself as a subconscious challenge where they find whatever behavior or cultural patterns till now they have embraced has absolutely no value and they become like a fish who has suddenly been put out of the water. Will they leave their previous subconscious behaviors, beliefs and mental patterns on the wayside or will they hold on to it even more tightly? Are these behaviors and patterns useful for them in their next stage in life? What will they do next? Also here as this is happening in the subconscious, the person has not really fully become aware of it. But his/ her intuition starts ringing bells to make the person aware of it. The true conscious awareness comes in the second phase of SadeSati.

So this is the first 2.5 years of the starting phase of SadeSati, where many times a person is removed from what he/she until now thought is the way of life and is thrown into a sudden chaos where they have to deal with the changes that are happening in their life. This change is many times at the subconscious level where the beliefs, faith or perceptions till now they had to lead a life falls apart or becomes challenged.


Will they become upset about it or will they embrace the change and use it to build a stronger subconscious foundation for themselves? The change can show up as major experiences of life like a death, divorce, going to a foreign country, becoming homeless, getting fired from a job, being cheated by somebody, getting a great position, winning a scholarship, winning a lottery or any number of scenarios. Many times it can shake us to our core either in a bad or a good way according to the placement of Moon and Saturn in our chart. So what are we going to do about it? This is the first subconscious phase and the first 2.5 years of ascending Shani.


Saturn with rings
By NASA [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Phase 2: The Conscious (core) phase: This is the middle phase or the conscious phase. Many people really fear this phase as the toughest phase. Now in the last 2.5 years, we have been torn apart to our bare bones in the belief, the structural and foundational systems till now we had for our life. Remember, Saturn is the Lord of structure and foundations. He comes in our 12th house to our Moon sign and inspects our foundation and many times sees long leading cracks in the foundation. He realizes we are operating on a system, which does not work for our life anymore and says, "Nah, Nah, Nah, Nah".

As stated above he throws in experiences (mostly hard, lucky if it is good, even the seemingly good experiences will be hard or is it many times our mind perceives it as hard?) which will bring our life to a grinding halt. Till now, we were operating in the subconscious phase and suddenly Saturn is over our Moon sign. Bang! now it is in our conscious mind. We are standing in the middle of the ruins of our structural and foundational systems and Saturn asks us, "Now build a new system for you, not the ones your parents or uncles had." But that was what we had lived with till now. That slate has been wiped clean.

Here many times we are left to our own means. For example, take the case of a  refugee family, let us call them Leons (something similar to Lion) from say Africa who has been given asylum in the United States. (The scenario I am going to describe here may not be fully correct as I am writing this from my imagination as well as from the news about life in Africa). Say in this particular country the families lived in large groups or tribes in villages and had each other any time they had a function, mishap or another occasion in the family. There were people who stood by their side during good as well as tough times. Now some major political mishap happened and our family is finding themselves as refugees in an entirely different country.

Let us put another twist as well, the Leon family does not know to speak English or Spanish. Till now the war and other things were happening around them and now suddenly they realize they are being pushed to take actions to build new foundations for themselves in a very different country. So what will they do, how can they survive? Also, think at the moment they are coming into the U.S.A., it is April and in November/ December, the winter months are going to come. Their native country could have been in the tropics and there could have been no winter at all. They cannot lead their life on whatever they used as a foundation in Africa.

So the first thing, they will have to enroll in English as a second language class (See the Hindi movie English-Vinglish ;-)), once they become comfortable with their speaking, the parents may have to go and get an ID and a driving license so that they can go to a grocery store, a bank or a post office or other sundries. But then how to get the money to buy their grocery items, milk or other stuff? Where can they get affordable accommodation? If they have kids, which school to enroll in for a good education? What type of neighborhood to select for their family. Suddenly they have to come up with whole new solutions for a whole new set of problems. Above this, there is the major cultural shock that is waiting for them in an entirely foreign country where their previous rituals or festivals are not celebrated or heard of. Of course, there will be people or groups to place them, help them and make them comfortable. Even then the Leon family have to do the major haul.

This is how Shani operates in the middle phase. Suddenly many times we find ourselves in an entirely new paradigm where our old methods, attitudes or belief systems do not work. But in the conscious phase, we cannot sit without taking actions. We have to put our mind to the problems and come up with an entirely new solution according to the situations thrown at us. Many times it will be 'Survive or Stagnate'. So because of the chaos, Saturn can put us through, many people fear this phase to the core. But the one thing we can be assured of is by the time the 7.5years is gone we would have grown mentally very tough. Small things that used to bother our mind would not bother us anymore.

Saturn here according to its tough taskmaster attitude relieves us of the useless burdens in the form of attitudes, behaviors, patterns, beliefs, perceptions or conditioning that we may be carrying, which does not work or add any value to our life anymore. Saturn gives us the life experiences first and if we don't care to change our old habits and attitudes he becomes, even more, tougher and keeps on giving us hard experiences till we learn our lessons.

As this post has become pretty long, we will tackle the last phase of SadeSati as well as the total analysis in the next blog post. Till then let Shani through his own ways and means make us stand tall in our true authentic power!


I wish you a good weekend and I'll see you next Friday! 😉

Next week: SadeSati - Should we be terrorized by it? - Part 2

Note:
Images taken from Wikimedia Commons.

Ralph Waldo Emerson writes, "There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance ; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried".  


 
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