Saturn Return, a coming-of-age framework that’s resonating everywhere

In November of 2020, I went on my first mushroom trip.

I chose the date arbitrarily, eventually landing on Black Friday because of the poetic ring to it, a wink to the “hero’s dose” I planned on taking — enough to conjure an “ego death,” a temporary pause from the regularly scheduled mind loops and tensions. I waited for a day clear of any commitments, which in the middle of COVID wasn’t hard to find.

The trip lasted about six hours, almost precisely the length of the Johns Hopkins playlist I had found on Spotify to accompany me through the twists and turns. And there were twists and turns. When my consciousness finally floated back to the chimney that was my body, I walked outside to watch the soft, peach sunset as Louis Armstrong crooned from portable speakers, serenading me out of the psilocybin’s final moments. I didn’t know it then, but I was in the middle of more than just one ending — my Saturn Return was also coming to a close.

I was 31, living through an undoubtedly disorienting collective moment, and there was also recalibration occurring on a more personal scale inside. The years prior had been fraught with anger over Trump’s election, which ultimately fueled my detangling from Christianity, the belief system in which I was raised. I felt the distinct ache of being more distant from my parents, whom I still loved, as the gap in our perspectives was widening. I was venturing beyond where I had always belonged, walking the lonely path of differentiation — unmoored and unsure of where it might take me. I sensed a deeper self wanting to emerge, but still felt torn between two worlds; I knew what I was leaving but not yet where I was headed. I feared that changing might mean losing the people I loved, a very real risk I saw playing out around me. With the mushroom trip, it’s like my psyche had been looking for some kind of cosmic comfort, to help me turn the page.

I don’t remember when I first heard the phrase “Saturn Return,” but I do remember being immediately intrigued. My understanding of it was a slow burn, quite the opposite of the hot and heavy conversion experiences I was familiar with, having grown up Christian in Texas. Astrology had never been something on my internal dashboard, an unopened Rand McNally buried in the backseat. I grew up viewing astrology as not only unserious, but also a grave sign of misplaced trust, as prayer and Scripture were the only guidance one should ever need. Looking beyond those guideposts meant flirting with danger — at risk of becoming untethered and lost.

But the more I learned about Saturn Return — the idea that between the ages of 27 to 31 one moved through some distinct portal to adulthood — the more I felt a deep resonance and relief: finally, a coming-of-age framework that didn’t begin in one’s teens or early 20s, exhausted plotlines that made me feel behind, like I had missed something. The Saturn Return framework was a comforting thought: that there was some sort of cosmic force supporting the emerging self, on a timeline that matched my own life’s more closely.

And now Saturn Return seems to be popping off everywhere, or at least among the pop girlies. From Adele’s Saturn tattoo on her right forearm to Ariana Grande’s “Saturn Returns Interlude” (in which astrologer Diana Garland describes it as the time to “wake up!”) to Sza’s “Saturn” — the concept is orbiting the zeitgeist. “My Saturn has returned / When I turned 27 everything started to change,” Kacey Musgraves sings on “Deeper Well,” the title track of her new album, released earlier this year. At the Kia Forum in October, I watched Musgraves play an acoustic set underneath a hovering Saturn installation.

Kacey Musgraves performs an acoustic set underneath a hovering Saturn installation.

(Jasmine Safaeian)

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But even for its heightening visibility in pop culture, the term is still somewhat nebulous — evoking a range from curiosity to dread. There’s still this sense that we’re in a game of telephone about its meaning. What is it, and why Saturn? Is it something to brace oneself for or look forward to? And what exactly is supposed to be happening?

Chani Nicholas, one of the most prominent astrologers currently at work and founder of the CHANI app, translates the cosmos into accessible language. The app, which launched in 2020 and now has over 1 million downloads, includes resources like personalized birth chart readings, guided meditations, journal prompts and weekly astrological forecasts, which Chani playfully narrates herself. I’ve been following Chani’s work since reading her 2020 New York Times bestseller “You Were Born for This,” so getting to bring her my Saturn Return questions felt like getting closer to the starting point in the telephone circle.

“Saturn is all about age and … coming up against authority — boundaries and authorship,” Chani, who has lived in Los Angeles off and on since 2005, says over Zoom in her signature clear-rimmed frames. “Saturn’s always trying to get you to take responsibility and accountability for where you are and what you’re doing.”

She explains how Saturn moves in phases — similar to the moon, yet on a different timetable. Every seven years Saturn moves 90 degrees farther along in its orbit from the place it was in the sky when you were born. So by the time you’re nearing 30, Saturn “returns” to where it started in your birth chart, completing its first full rotation around the sun. If we’re lucky, we’ll experience three Saturn Returns in our lifetimes: the first when we’re nearing 30 years old, the second happening around 60, and the last around 90 — each one sparking an initiation into a new life phase.

During her own Saturn Return, Chani packed up her life in Toronto and moved to Los Angeles “with no car, no friends or contacts, and only $1,500” in her pocket. “All I had was a dream and a need to prove to myself that I could do something challenging,” she says. “I needed space and time to find myself, and distance from everything that had defined me.”

Chani refers to Saturn as “a threshold deity” because, for thousands of years in ancient astrology, it was the last planet we could see without a telescope. “It was what we thought was the last planet out there, the boundary of our known understanding of the cosmos,” she says. Because Saturn was so dim, as well as so far and slow, it had “this heft and heaviness,” and became known in traditional astrology as the Greater Malefic, a planet of hard things.

“It’s not easy, breezy, light, kind or friendly,” Chani explains. “Saturn will always be like, ‘Here’s the bill. Here’s the reality check.’ But if you understand and work with your Saturn, then you’re going to be the one who knows how to be responsible, reliable, consistent and boundaried. If you’ve ever met someone who’s powerful in any way, shape, or form — they have exceptional boundaries.”

I ask about this pervasive idea that Saturn Returns are something to buckle up for — are they inherently disruptive? Chani shakes her head, eager to weigh in: “Disruption is not a part of Saturn Return; however, your cohort and the cohort younger than you — so we’re talking millennials and Gen Z — most of you have this thing where you have Saturn and the planet Uranus, the planet of disruption, together.” In Chani’s view, this misleading conflation of Saturn and disruption has become mainstream because millennials and Gen Z drive the conversation on the internet. But this flavor of disruption is unique to us — and not necessarily Saturn’s signature.

To determine the timing, texture and themes of your Saturn Return, you have to know what zodiac sign Saturn was in when you were born, which you can find in the CHANI app (in my case it was Capricorn). You also want to look at the house where Saturn is stationed in your chart, the planets around Saturn in your chart, and what time of day you were born. (Supposedly if you were born during the day, your Saturn Return just might be a little easier.)

After sending Chani my birth time, place and date, she tells me that my Saturn is stationed in the seventh house of committed partnerships and relationships. (In her book, Chani explains houses as “the sets where the planets’ stories are lived out.”) So in my case, the shifts, tensions and “growth edges” of my Saturn Return played out in the realm of my close relationships.

“Another big thing about Saturn Returns is that it’s one of the first times that we need to psychologically stand on our own apart from our origins,” Chani says. “There’s this thing around the age of 30 where we’re like, ‘time is limited. … If I’m going to take responsibility for my life, I’m going to have to disappoint people.’ That’s the boundary, the separation, in a way.”

In those initial steps of self-definition, deconstructing the political and religious maps I’d grown up with, I had feared my parents’ disappointment. Self-authorship felt risky because I thought I might have to forfeit connection. What came to the surface during my Saturn Return was a road map to the work I’d need to do, the inner belonging I’d need to find, if I wanted my life to be mine.

Our Saturn remains in the same house in our chart over the course of our lives, which means we can expect the same themes to resurface and “rhyme” in our future Returns. But what will hopefully make each one feel different, Chani suggests, is perspective. If we’ve been integrating Saturn’s lessons, we’ll have some wisdom to share.

“When I was growing up / We had what we needed, shoes on our feet / But the world was as flat as a plate / And that’s okay / The things I was taught only took me so far / Had to figure the rest out myself / And then I found a deeper well.”

Throughout her Saturn-coded album, Musgraves is remembering, saying goodbye to, and ultimately thanking the things she’s outgrown: misaligned relationships, bad habits, outdated beliefs. And in that clearing, there’s a deeper exhale into herself: an existential sobriety and awareness of time passing, making everything glisten in a new light.

With some distance from Saturn’s crucible, there’s the hope of alchemizing our discoveries into a more congruent self.

It’s been almost seven years now since my Saturn Return began, so I’m approaching a phase Chani explains as the “First Quarter Square” — when we get a glimpse of the seeds we started planting during the “inception point” of those initial Return years. By the time you’re reading this, I’ll most likely be in bed nursing a newborn, due early December. The tangible sprouting of a shift that I trace back to my Saturn Return.

During my 2020 mushroom trip, I had the very clear feeling that a soul wanted to come through me. As I had been preoccupied with existential questions like how to become myself, this flicker of clarity confused and surprised me. On paper, according to the cultural scripts I had ingested, motherhood was the Ultimate Threat to the self I had been working so hard to find, let alone secure. But that download became a quiet anchor I’d return to, a vision that reached beyond my analytical mind — a dare to my rational fears. Something dim and unknowable seemed to be asking me to trust it. I decided to.

I have no idea what motherhood will actually feel like, of course, as it’s felt mostly conceptual even during pregnancy. But from what I can make of it so far, it seems to be the ultimate paradox: the world simultaneously contracted to its most intimate, atomic form, and the explosion of an entirely new universe. It’s a path that my Saturn Return prepared me for, a lesson that’s only now coming into focus: that perhaps the self can actually blossom, rather than wilt, in the containers we choose and author for ourselves. What matters is who’s doing the writing.

And then there are the parts we’d never choose to write ourselves: I never imagined I’d be bringing a kid into the world amidst a second Trump presidency, a dark rhyme that’s catapulted me back into an uncanny loop of my Saturn Return years. Perhaps the most I can do this time around is bring a more fortified self to the moment. To repurpose my disorientation and anger into something more actionable, solid and firm.

As Chani puts it, this seems to be the gift of Saturn’s invitation to self-authorship: “a sense of your own internal bone structure.”

Just when we reach the edge of what we can make out with the naked eye, another dimension of self appears. Another new threshold, inviting us to pass through, again.

Rebekah Pahl is a writer living in Los Angeles. She’s pursuing an MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars and working on an essay collection exploring shifts in self during her Saturn Return.