Living inside the cycles

How the planets help us proactively participate in the sacred transition of menopause

Painting by Victoria Gilpin

Astrology is a tool for understanding ourselves and the phases, cycles, and seasons of our life. The astrological principle is: as above, so below. The planets are archetypes, symbols of divine energy and possibility. They represent, and are in active relationship with, the different parts of our psyche.

Through their movement and positions within the constellations (i.e. signs), their location in the sky, their relationships with each other, they send energetic invitations, they teach us how to harness and embody their energies, they model how we can express all their peculiar potential. They teach us that we, like them, are always shifting, that we are multifaceted, that we are directly wired into the mystery and majesty of the universe.

We live inside the cycles of the planets. Our lives reflect the movement of the universe, but time is not linear here, it is cyclical. We are interwoven with the planetary cycles and phases. We are sacred geometry incarnate.

birth > childhood > adolescence > adulthood > old age > death

This is a human cycle we know we’re inside of, with some level of consciousness. We see these phases, we feel them, we witness others going through them.

For those with female reproductive systems we also come to understand there is a repeated cycle our bodies go through once we reach puberty. We bleed, we can become pregnant, we experience emotional changes, physical discomfort. Within the culture I grew up in, this cycle was something private, inconvenient, frustrating, embarrassing or even shameful. Most of us were not inducted, taught or guided to see this cycle as something sacred, as a direct embodied connection to the mystery of the universe, as a natural and mystical relationship to the Moon. Menstruation is a reflection, a fractal, of the Moon’s cycle.

Statue of Greek Moon Goddess Selene: Musei Capitolini, Rome

The word menopause comes from ancient Greek, which can be translated to: Moon Cessation. When our reproductive organs are no longer directly mirroring the active cycle of the Moon. Even less of us understand, are prepared for, or are spiritually guided through the cyclical, and just as sacred, changes that happen to us as our bodies shift slowly into the transitional phase of perimenopause toward menopause.

Fortunately, the planets can serve as those sacred guides for us.

The core of all astrological exploration starts with our individual birth chart.

It is a snapshot of where exactly the planets were the moment we were born. It is a blueprint of our soul’s mission, our evolutionary arc for this lifetime. When we engage with it, when we learn and believe the map, when we start knowing the planets, and the signs and houses they are in, we can start to see more clearly all the different parts of ourselves and what they need.

Once we have a sense of our own blueprint, we can start looking at what the planets are doing as time marches on. Transits mark the movement of the planets since we were born. This gives us an ever-evolving map that provides insights and guidance to us for navigating the major phases of our lives. We are living inside the cycles of each of the planets as they relate to our unique blueprint.

Before we go deeper, I want to say that astrology can be a very heady place to be. There are an infinite number of things to look at, to learn, to zoom in on, to connect, to THINK about.

I LOVE my mind. I love to think and study and learn and solve puzzles. Mercury is my ruling planet and Mercury represents our mind. BUT, astrology is inherently a mystical system. We cannot approach astrology with just our rational, logical, intellectual minds.

Symbolism and archetypes are a vital part of engaging with astrology. Archetypes are ideal forms that manifest through an infinite number of expressions. Things are rarely exact and literal in the archetypal realm…

The meaning and truths we find, the reflections of ourselves and our lives we discover through astrology take place, at least partially, outside of our thinking brains. These are the kind of truths that resonate at a soul-level knowing, that are felt and sensed with our intuition, our heart, our spiritual wisdom.

So as we explore the three key planetary transits of midlife and menopause see if you can shift just a little out of your thinking, rational mind and sense into this with your intuition.

Everyone experiences the transits of midlife, not just people with female reproductive organs, but these transits do map potently onto the physical, hormonal, physiological, emotional, mental, and spiritual changes of the menopausal journey.

The three big midlife transits provide us more specificity when we look at them in the context of our unique birth chart and transit timing, and they offer us a more holistic, evolutionary lens to view these inevitable transitions and changes so we can move into alignment with the power of each phase of life.

1. The Uranus Opposition (around age 42)

2. The Chiron Return (around age 52)

3. The Second Saturn Return (around age 59)

The Uranus Opposition

It takes Uranus 84 years to make one cycle around the Sun - roughly the average length of a human life.

Your Uranus opposition happens when Uranus reaches the halfway mark, when you are around 42 years old. In astrology this is the symbolic marker of the beginning of perimenopause.

The opposition means Uranus is staring directly across at where it started - now in the opposite sign, wanting to pull you across to the other side.

Uranus is often called “the planet of earthquakes and thunderbolts” because Uranus is a disrupter, an irritant, a storm, here to shake you awake.

Uranus rules the electrical circuitry in our bodies, and the evolutionary purpose of Uranus is to create change - through sudden bursts and dare I say, hot flashes?!

You may already be sensing how Uranus is connected to perimenopause symbolically and literally. It starts agitating our hormonal balance – we feel irritated, unsettled, we start feeling physically, mentally and emotionally different.

Painting by Spectral Gardens

This prompts us to start considering who we are becoming, compared to who we have been, in all kinds of ways. That is what Uranus wants, the invitation has been signed, sealed and delivered.

We start to question things we never questioned before and long for more authenticity and freedom. Uranus is the rebel, the revolutionary, who takes no shit and doesn’t care what people think.

This is all neurologically connected. In the book, Your Brain on Menopause, author Dr. Louann Brizendine explains that because we have higher levels of estrogen during the first half of life, our brains prioritize social harmony and caregiving. As estrogen and oxytocin levels start to drop as we approach the second half of life, the intense biological drive to put others’ needs above your own begins to short out.

Uranus energy often sparks crises, internally and externally, that we have to face, and in doing so, starts to reveal what we have outgrown. Not just what we’ve outgrown about ourselves, but how we are outgrowing society’s patriarchy’s “rules” about how women should behave, what we’re supposed to care about, how we’re supposed to look. Uranus sparks changes to our hormones and to our physical bodies that allow (or force) us to grapple with our culture’s definition of youth, beauty, desirability, worth.

And it’s more than just rejecting patriarchy’s definitions of what “women” are “supposed” to be, but a process of rejecting and rebelling from the beliefs and behaviors we have internalized and justified because of that conditioning.

Uranus charges in to help us realize how we’ve duped ourselves into believing some bullshit that has squelched our power and our magic, and (hopefully) to realize that we alone have the power to liberate ourselves and reclaim it.

Ultimately, Uranus serves up a kind of prolonged identity crisis - but this crisis is a catalyst for our evolution. We have to navigate all these changes, many of which are deeply uncomfortable. But it is through this process, of our lives and bodies and emotions being disrupted, that we learn to proactively participate in the disruption, and over time, in the building of a new identity and a new sense of personal power.

The Chiron Return

Chiron is a prominent asteroid in astrology. Chiron is the archetype of the Wounded Healer. In our birth chart it shows us a core wound we are here to work on healing in this lifetime - and how embarking on that healing journey equips us to be a powerful support for others who are healing similar wounds.

Artist: Tino Rodriguez

Chiron is between Uranus and Saturn and considered a bridge between the seen and the unseen, the material plane and the ethereal plane, the bridge from perimenopause to menopause.

Occurring around age 52, this transit is when Chiron has moved through every other sign in the zodiac and has returned to the place in the sky it was when we were born, closing out its full 52 year orbit and symbolizing a full cycle of healing we have now completed.

And that cycle ends with transformational journey through perimenopause.

Going through the tumult of perimenopause that lasts for many years, we have undoubtedly faced a lot of pain and chaos, but also healed and transformed in profound ways. It was probably a messy, imperfect shedding of the old self and perfect comfort may still elude us, but by stepping into this fire with an open heart, our personal struggle becomes wisdom that can be shared with others entering this phase of life. We emerge past fifty transformed into wounded healers, wise guides ready to light the path for others.

The Second Saturn Return

Saturn is the planet of time so we feel Saturn’s movement and cycles deeply in our psyche, even if we have no idea it’s Saturnian energy interacting with us. Saturn also represents maturation, the development of self-respect, and the legacy you’re building and will leave behind.

The Saturn cycle is about 29.5 years and divides our lives into three distinct phases (and a small number of people who live beyond 88 years old, get to experience part of a 4th cycle)

1. birth to 29.5

2. 29.5 to 59

3. 59 to 88

These three phases of life are often depicted through a set of archetypes: the maiden, the mother and the crone.

Painting by Tamara Adams

29.5 years after we’re born we experience our first Saturn return, ushering us into our 30’s, into the period of our lives where we really feel the pressure to fully “grow up” or have things figured out, to mature in some considerable way. Our culture makes a big deal out of turning 30, but this is not random, it is astrological.

Most of us feel this turning point pretty intensely. We start questioning what we thought we wanted and the path we have been creating for ourselves in our 20’s (intentionally or unintentionally). Big shifts and major decisions in our lives usually happen in the couple of years surrounding this age and transition. People get married, divorced, have children, move to a new place, change careers - big foundational life shifts.

Our second Saturn return happens around age 59. This is seen as a symbolic marker that we have fully completed our reproductive years, we are postmenopausal (maybe for a few years now) and have reached a new level of maturity and wisdom. Hopefully we are also feeling a new sense of liberation and peace, from the chaos of the perimenopausal fluctuations, and all the identity and healing shifts you grappled hard with through the Uranus opposition and Chiron return.

Hormone levels are now more predictable and emotional stability has likely improved.

But this can also be a potent time for reflection and transition. The structure of the life we built for ourselves to support the last phase is up for re-examination. Likely our day-to-day responsibilities have changed or are changing (especially in terms of children, if we have them).

Unlike hot and flashy Uranus, who rewires our internal circuitry, Saturn shows up more gradually and asks us to re-evaluate the structure of our life. Saturn wants to show us how we are still living inside a structure that was built for the motivations and activities of our 30’s and 40’s. Likely our day-to-day responsibilities have changed or are changing (especially in terms of children, if we have them). The couple of years as Saturn moves closer and closer to its return can be a potent time for reflection and incremental transition.

I have worked with many women approaching their 2nd Saturn return, who had poured themselves intensely into their career and into their kids over the past couple of decades, but start realizing their kids are grown or gone now and they don’t feel connected to their career like they used to, but aren’t sure what to do with all this potential freedom…

A client of mine, around 56 years old, was recently sharing in a reading that she used to do absolutely everything for her husband. She just included his needs with all the care she provided for her kids, without even realizing it. But once her kids left home she finally looked around and thought, “why am I doing all this basic stuff for you? This is ridiculous and I’m not going to do it anymore. Do your own laundry, make your own appointments, cook your own food!” She was also the CEO of a company and she just felt done with that too. Almost whispering like she was afraid to say it out loud, she said, “you know what I think I really want to do now? Become a hospice worker.” She had four planets in Scorpio, including Saturn, so I knew she was on the right track and that Saturn was helping her with this clarity.

Where Uranus brings more of a lightning strike energy of shifting instincts or emotional flash-points, Saturn is more of a slow burn. We start gradually sensing what we are done with, questioning what we want now, feeling the space that has opened up, imagining what we want our life and purpose to be, in this third phase of life. Often people are drawn to do something really meaningful and more personally fulfilling after the second Saturn return, something that utilizes the wisdom, maturity and foundation we have built over the past 59 years.

We grow into our Saturn placement over the course of our lives, so looking at the sign and house Saturn is in your birth chart can hold many clues. This will tell us more about what your Saturn wants as it matures, and what area of your life will be most affected.

Astrology is a support system for your conscious evolution. As I wrote in my last piece, changing is not the same as evolving. Change is inevitable. Evolution is a choice. If you desire to be an active participant in your own evolution, if you are willing to honor and surrender to the natural cycles, changes and challenges of life and embrace them as opportunities to grow – to claim and embody this cosmic rhythm - astrology helps you do that.

Astrology gives you a map, but you still have to open that map, learn its symbols, and choose to follow it. It requires faith and effort, but I would argue it takes more effort to resist changes that are inevitable, more effort to refuse to let go of a version of yourself or your life that you have outgrown.

The planets carry us through their cycles with them, our lives are imprinted with their energy, they want us to grow, to follow the spiral out and out, they are always singing and inviting us to dance with them.

Women, our bodies, our cycles, our lives are sacred.

They are directly connected to the cosmos, to the planets. We are the mothers of this earth and our life-giving capacity, including menopause, is actually divinely timed, connected, and part of the continuous cycle of time. It is part of our natural evolution.

Painting by Margaret R. Thompson