Last fall, Saturn briefly left the constellation of Virgo and moved into Libra, where it stayed until the spring. Then it retrograded back into Virgo, once again reminding us of Big Daddy Saturn’s lessons of the last few years. Today, Saturn returns to Libra, where it will stay until 2012. We’re revisiting two blog entries we posted last fall to review the themes we’re leaving behind and those we’re about to encounter….

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RIP: Saturn in Virgo 2007-2009

Bet you’re more than ready to say goodbye already, aren’t you? Especially those of you born with Saturn in Virgo. Pull out your party hats because this little sucka is leaving on October 29th and turning out the lights on his way out. It’s now time for the Saturn In Libra folks to step up to the plate and deal with their karma. (Note that Saturn will briefly return to Virgo in a retrograde phase next March; more on that in a few months.)

But before we part ways with this two-and-a-half-year phase, let’s review what we’ve been through. After all, we’re not going to make progress if we don’t process, right? Food has been Saturn in Virgo’s favorite topic. We’ve endured endless food scares, including E coli outbreaks, listeria rampages, and the most deadly food-borne, life-wrecking story of all: the saga of Stephanie Smith. She ate a hamburger and now she’s paralyzed for the rest of her life. If that wasn’t a Saturn in Virgo wake-up call, I don’t know what is.

Virgo rules not just the food on our tables, but also our health. The health care debate, especially during the summer of ’09, has roared on full of myth and distortion, fueled by manufactured rage from corporate lobbyists shilling for the health care industry. And as Saturn pushes for its last bit of justice on the way into Libra, it was just announced that we may yet get our public option.

Here is the upside of all the anguish, where Saturn’s work gives us consciousness and moves us forward. Locavore was the word of the year in 2007, the first year Saturn was in Virgo. We had the amazing work of Michael Pollan and the ubiquitous repetition of his quote from In Defense of Food: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” And tomorrow night, the very night before Saturn leaves Virgo, gorgeous vegan celeb Natalie Portman (who is about to have her Saturn Return) will appear on Top Chef – for a vegan cooking challenge! And just a few days later, we’ll see the publication of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals.

If you’ve survived your Saturn Return, you know that Saturn doesn’t allow short-cuts, cheating, or going backwards. If Big Agra doesn’t get that it’s time to fundamentally turn the beat around, the industry will fail in the next few years. As they say at Farm Sanctuary, “A compassionate world begins with you.” Let that be the epitaph for the Saturn in Virgo years.

Coming Soon to a Constellation Near You: America’s 8th Saturn Return

This is just a preview of coming attractions. Saturn enters Libra on October 30th, 2009. The Cosmic Taskmaster hasn’t visited this region of the zodiac since the early 1980s. Before we look forward, let’s review some of the historical events and cultural themes we experienced back then.

The last Saturn in Libra era saw worldwide regional conflicts, unemployment, inflation, recession, the dawn of AIDS (Reagan wouldn’t mention it in public until 1985), assassination attempts (Reagan, the Pope, Sadat), Reaganomics, Thatcherism, Cabbage Patch Kids, MTV (which was born on August 1st, 1981 with Video Killed the Radio Star), strikes (air traffic control workers, baseball players), the Falklands War, conflict in Northern Ireland, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, and South Africa, the first test-tube baby, wild weather extremes, debt crisis in Latin America, the Tylenol murders, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and Madonna at New York City’s Roxy.

Needless to say, the world was in crisis, but at least we had our music and our fashion to fall back on. Escapism was all the rage with Dynasty and Fantasy Island on television. In the coming years of Saturn in Libra, things may get much more serious. A T-square involving Uranus, Pluto and Saturn will put us all in a major crucible during this trying time. The USA, born with Saturn in Libra and wearing its sense of justice on its sleeve, is already being tried mightily by events and circumstances. If this Saturn return is anything like the last seven we’ve had since 1776, we’ll experience trade wars, isolationism, and military skirmishes.

When it all goes to hell in a handbasket, at least we may have an art scene like we had in the early 80s, with music and fashion to match. That’s the stuff that Libra lives for.