Saturn in Pisces and the Floods

Saturn in Pisces and the Floods of September 2024

Astrologer Maureen Richmond, Ph.D.

The heavy hand of severe Saturn has struck again. Stern archetype of cold truth and unavoidable consequences, Saturn often deals out hard lessons. Now in the water sign of Pisces, the taskmaster of the zodiac has of late spoken through the very element of the sign where now it transits: water. Swollen rivers and cataclysmic floods have engulfed the southeastern United States, destroying infrastructure, buildings, and whole communities. The entire city of Asheville, North Carolina is surrounded by uncontrolled flood waters, all ground routes into the city completely severed by collapsed bridges and washed out highway pavement. Many are shocked and bereaved beyond comprehension. Why has Mother Nature turned against us with such unimaginable force, they poignantly implore.

The answer is not hard to find. In the areas hardest hit by raging floods, the entire natural tree cover was brutally and wantonly eradicated by heedless timber companies in the late 1800s and early 1900s. With no thought of the health of the ecosystem and no regard for the magnificence of the centuries-old hardwoods towering with mighty branches reaching into the clouds above them, these titans and barons of finance laid waste to some of the most breathtakingly majestic of all the hardwood forests on the planet.

Insensible to anything but short-term profit motive, timber companies devastated the natural ecosystem of the eastern U.S., especially around the Smoky Mountain area where now sits the city of Asheville, North Carolina. With the soil denuded of its native cover, erosion was the inevitable result. Then came the massive paving associated with urban development, forcing flood waters rolling off the naked land to rush all the harder. The result is plain for all to see: excess water can no longer be absorbed by the soil, for  it’s already been largely washed away. What’s left has been paved over for highways, roads, parking lots, and the like.

Although the floods of September 2024 in the southeast United States will surely be referred to as a natural disaster, that is an incorrect terminology. The truth is that the floods of September 2024 are a man-made disaster, caused by decades of disregard for natural principles of the ecosystem.

Saturn in Pisces has now come along to make that point in a dramatic and even punishing manner. This is how stern taskmaster Saturn often does his work. The unemotional and highly efficient agent of karma, Saturn has no mercy for heedless fools. For folly, Saturn returns a slap in the face. For insouciance, tragedy. For arrogance, utter defeat. No one really likes to see Saturn operating in his mode of unsheathed karmic kickback, but this does not stop him. His method of operation is to squarely face us with the truth over and over until we get the message.

This is the case before us now, as we solemnly view the horrible images of loss and destruction emanating from the current flood scenes. The only appropriate response is to be deeply sobered, reprimanded even. What have we done wrong that such a thing could occur? Simple, replies Saturn. You, humanity, have grossly ignored and disrespected Mother Nature. And here is the result.

The floods materialized just with and following the opposition of Mercury to both Saturn and Neptune in Pisces. Spawned by a hurricane rising out of the Gulf of Mexico, the floods followed massive rains. The Neptune and Pisces symbolisms are written all over this event.

Neptune, the Roman equivalent of Greek Poseidon, is God of the Oceans. It was in Neptune’s territory, the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico, where the hurricane began, whipping up ocean water with which to shortly deluge the land. Both Neptune and Saturn are now in Pisces, a mutable water sign ruled by Neptune and connoting water in restless motion. Mercury in Virgo came along and opposed both Saturn and Neptune in Pisces during September, the last of the two oppositions occurring in late September as the hurricane gathered power, hit land, and commenced to deliver its payload. With Mercury in Virgo opposite Saturn and Neptune in Pisces, the stage was set. The water theme was emphasized and intensified. Here came the rain, and then the remorseless floods.

The bottom line is simple. Mother Nature is more powerful than man. This is the lesson brought by Saturn in Pisces in late September 2024. In many ways this is a sorrowful realization for those who have lost property, lives, loved ones, and more. Yet the message stands. It is not possible to treat Mother Nature with disregard and avoid the consequences. Those consequences may come in various ways, but when Saturn the karmic agent is in the water sign Pisces, the consequences come in the form of raging waters.