Here psychology is conceived as a necessary activity of the psyche, which constructs vessels and breaks them in order to deepen and intensify experience. -James Hillman

In the heart of my first Saturn return, on my 29th and half birthday, my first astrological piece, “Re-Visioning Saturn”, was published in Archai: The Journal of Archetypal Cosmology. This piece represents a vision and understanding of the planetary archetype of Saturn I have held in my heart and practice through my 20s—bringing in a feminine understanding of the planetary archetype. “Re-Visioning Saturn” is a multi-tiered and holographic offering.

First and foremost, my piece is an offering to Saturn. The realm in which we live, the guardian of the threshold. Saturn is the one through which we enter and leave this world of spacetime. Incarnation and the experience of self and the divine is impossible without Saturn. My piece is an offering to the Great Mother from where we came, where we are going, and whose name we do not speak enough.

Second, this issue of Archai is dedicated to the ground-breaking archetypal psychologist, James Hillman, whose work fundamentally changed my worldview and therefore my life in my early 20s. Hillman’s great work, Re-Visioning Psychology lucidly articulates the need for an “archetypal eye”, to “see through” and turn the archetypes back on themselves to see the god that inform and shape any perspective we may have. For me, to study and integrate the fields of archetypal astrology and depth psychology helps illuminate, in what Hillman describes in Re-Visioning, one’s transformative path in life and divine connection to the Self and Cosmos. Hillman’s piece, “On Senex Consciousness” was republished in Issue 5 of Archai. My piece enters into a  critical dialogue with Hillman’s piece where I use the perspectives and methods he put forward in Re-Visioning Psychology and turn these concepts toward “On Senex Consciousness” and the contemporary view of the planetary archetype of Saturn.

Lastly, my piece is an offering to the astrological tradition. Tradition carries so much power. As comes with being a part of any lineage, I inherited many of the gifts and challenges of the astrological tradition. My piece is an honoring of my lineage and an attempt to shed light on aspects of it that I feel we are outgrowing as a human species.

Thank you to my partner, Travis DiRuzza, who helped me bring my vision into words and also wrote a kick-ass piece for this journal titled, “The Lighthouse and the Many-Hued Waves: The Saturn-Neptune Complex in the Life and Work of Virginia Woolf”. To my mentors and teachers with whom I have worked most closely —Rick Tarnas, Stan Grof and Chris Bache. Each have each given me so much that I will unfold and embody for the rest of my life. To the editors of Archai, Becca Tarnas and Grant Maxwell who helped refine my words and provided a platform for this piece. To my astrological and psychological colleagues whose conversations and ideas breathe through my life. And to the other awesome contributors to this journal of Issue 5: James Hillman, Rick Tarnas, Delia Shargel, Becca Tarnas, Matthew David Segall, Max DeArmon and Drew Dellinger. Please check out their work here in Archai: Saturn and the Theoretical Foundations of an Emerging Discipline.

Sal Sapiente. Amore Fati.