Saturn Re-enters Pisces
September 1 until Valentines’ Day 2026
September begins with a karmic invitation: Saturn retrograde re-enters Pisces, the last sign of the zodiac, before finally crossing into Aries in 2026. What does this mean? Well it’s a bit of a time travel moment for all of us. The final degree of Pisces and first degree of Aries are the Omega and Alpha of the entire zodiac. The cosmos is re-structuring and we will notice it in our words, relationships and karmic work.
Saturn Impacts With Collective Karma and Individual Karma
Something has to end before something new begins, and it has to do with karma. Collective karma, or group karma, and your karma, or individual karma. Working with your astrological chart can give you an insight into what’s going on. What karma is finally setting and what new world is opening up. Is it a relationship (7th house)? Is it with your energy (planet Mars)? Or perhaps it is completely rebooting who you are (Ascendant)? That’s for you to discover within your chart.
On a broader scale, Saturn's re-entry into Pisces prompts a crucial question for us all: What have we been avoiding, escaping, or spiritually yearning for—without even knowing it?
What’s Behind The Words?
Our words are tools of manifestation, but their true power lies in the underlying desire that constructs them. Every phrase, sentence, and tangent we explore is born from our deepest longings. For example, we can say something offensive, and then apologize afterwards, but the root, the reason why it was said, remains unchanged. And that desire will be repeated until we change the desire, we will stick to the karmic script.
Saturn, ruled by The World archetype, represents the world we create based on our desires, an archetype ruled by The Empress. These two have a powerful and inherent connection for what we desire tends to manifest. Even petty things like wanting to be right, or getting attention. Another example, Someone who gossips might think they desire attention. But at the root, what they really desire is belonging. So what’s the solution? Nothing new here people: transformation.
Find Your Inner Light Root
Until Valentine’s Day 2026, we have an auspicious time to work on our desires. Our goals, wishes, wants and needs. We pray that our desires are wholesome and for the highest good of all life everywhere, but we all know that’s just not the case. Often, unresolved 'mother issues' (connected to The Empress archetype) can manifest as challenges to our desires. Our unwholesome desires scare us. We shame ourselves and our desire goes underground and shows up worse for it.
Transformation requires awareness and practice, not repression.
In the game Tears of the Kingdom, there’s a part of the world called the Depths—a vast underground realm filled with shadow and hidden dangers. We can’t see unless we find and activate light roots—powerful energy sources that illuminate the darkness.
That’s what this moment is about.
Saturn retrograde in Pisces is like a quest to find our inner light root—the higher origin of our distorted longing, and bring it to the surface, to light the way.
We don’t “kill” the darkness. We light it up. We don’t fight desire. We trace it back, and then lift it up.
By recognizing the deeper root we begin the process of finding a higher expression, so we can shift the energy without suppressing it. That’s the real work of the practical exercise of atonement.
Outer Karma and Inner Karma
Albeit temping, when we harm someone else, in most cases, the mere word “sorry” isn’t enough from a karmic point of view. The true atonement and correction is transformation of the desire that fueled the words, the action, the activity.
If “sorry” doesn’t show up as changed behavior or desire, then the repair hasn't occurred.
That’s when judgement is activated in our life, often as a blessing hidden in disguise. When we ignore the root causes we are eventually confronted with a judgement that guides us to see the gap between words and deeds. That gap between the spoken word (outer karma) and the desire (the inner karma).
As Saturn is back in Pisces, we are revisiting our desires of the invisible, emotional, spiritual longing that drives our actions. Saturn is the karmic corrector, the teacher that shows us where we’ve misused that desire in the past. So, Saturn in Pisces is reviewing how inner distortions of desire led to outer actions that must now be corrected from the inside out.
Meanwhile,until desire is transformed, karma recycles. If we don’t bring light into that darkness, just like until the root desire is healed, the harmful speech (or action) will keep re-emerging in new forms. New people, new places and new situations, contaminated by the same old patterns birthed by the unchanged desire.
How Saturn In Pisces Can Manifest
I’ll leave us with a couple examples of this in action:
Escaping Through Spiritual Bypass
Behavior (Misused Words): “Everything happens for a reason, so I’m just going to forgive and forget.”
Hidden Longing: Craves peace, but is avoiding the emotional pain of betrayal or loss. Forgiveness is a shield to avoid confrontation.
Pisces dynamic: Uses vague spirituality to bypass real emotional healing. The desire to avoid pain is stronger than the desire to repair the relationship.
Saturn’s transit: The same issue resurfaces. We are forced to either confront it or retreat again—but the lesson stays until the root is addressed.
Creative Sabotage
Behavior (Misused Words): “It’s not good enough anyway. I’m not really an artist.”
Hidden Longing: Desperately wants to be seen and appreciated—but fear of vulnerability leads to self-dismissal first.
Pisces impulse: Diffuse identity + low boundaries = internalized criticism. Passive rejection of self as pre-emptive defense.
Saturn’s transit: We feel the urge to create again, but shame blocks it. Saturn is pressing: Can you define your gift clearly and commit to it, even if no one applauds yet?
Continue the Work
If you’d like to go deeper, you can book a personalized Saturn in Pisces reading with me to see how this karmic moment is affecting your individual chart and your transformation timeline.
