Do You Want to Go to the Seaside?
Just 50 miles beyond Santiago de Compostela, the destination for pilgrims on “El Camino de Santiago,'' there lies a small craggy spit of land jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean. It is called Cape Finisterre and can be found at the furthest Western edge of Spain in the enchanted province of Galicia. The Cape is so-named because the ancient Romans literally believed it to be the “end of the earth.” Here stone, sky, and sea meet in the breaking of waves upon rugged sea stacks and the aerosolized spray of seafoam.
This past Friday, while Venus was applying to a conjunction with Saturn in Aquarius, we took a day trip west to see the coast. Although the drive took us through thick mists in the mountains, the clouds were scarce once we reached the shoreline, evaporated by the winter Sun. We came to our own ends of the Earth, where Turtle Island meets the Pacific Ocean. Here we strolled along the shoreline, drinking in the lambent rays of the Sun. Rising dramatically from surf and sand, a couple sea stacks stood resolute. The everpresent roar of the ocean engulfed my awareness, a low oceanic drone drawing my thoughts to Saturn and Venus in the skies above.
Cannon Beach, Oregon
Amongst the many significations attributed by astrologers to Saturn is that of bodies of water like rivers and seas, travel by water, and water-based trades. Wouldn’t a planet with their domicile or exaltation in a Water sign make a more suitable ruler of the sea, such as the Moon, Venus, or Jupiter? Although other planets retain their own connections to water, it becomes quite clear when standing on a rocky seaside outcropping why Saturn would govern such a place. The sea is such a clear and definitive boundary marker, a hard limit, a point where one can literally go no further. Bounded by his rings, Saturn wards the world with locks and limits, degrees and divisions. He curtails, constrains, and controls. And for much of human history, seas, rivers, and oceans served as clear boundary markers between tribes, cities, and nations. Without a boat or bridge, water is simply impassible.
As the furthest visible planet, there is also something inherently remote and removed about Saturn. According to Lilly, he is the planet of “obscure valleys, caves, dens, mountains” and other remote or abandoned places. Often in these hinterlands, we find hermits, true children of Saturn. Whether they be Christian monastics, Buddhist monks on retreat, or Vedic ascetics, spiritual people are often found dwelling in solitary places. They are self-imposed outcasts, set apart from mainstream society by their devotion to their spiritual tradition. Fittingly, wild Cape Finisterre is dotted with sainted stones and solar altars. While I saw no such sites of pilgrimage along the Oregon Coast, the air hummed with a spiritual potency.
A part of me wonders if that potency lies in the sea’s aura of mystery, its sheer vastness and unimaginable depth. What really lies beneath the waves? Sunken ships and dead sailors? Beyond Saturn lies objects invisible to the human eye and the black void of space. And beyond the twilight zone of the ocean lurk monsters that live without sunlight, grotesque beings of the black abyss. What a gargantuan, all-encompassing thing is the sea. Its immensity summons to mind the concision and humility of the Irish fisherman’s prayer:
“Dear Lord, be good to me.
The sea is so wide.
And my boat is so small.”
And yet, Saturn was conjunct Venus too, no? There is a raw, feral beauty to these desolate places, a gorgeous beauty that tears out the heart, a jaw-dropping splendor that crashes down with a skull-cracking gravitas, splintering the self into incalculable, forgettable pieces. We are inescapably drawn to these bare and windswept places where our self-importance is eclipsed by the endurance of much older, wilder things. Here at the edges we butt up against beauty in its most extreme and austere form. The Romantics named this immense confrontation with the natural world “the sublime.” The sheer magnitude of the land and seascape conjures a sense of awe, appropriate smallness, and a touch of horror. As the ineffable experience of nature comes crashing down, one loses their words and is left only with wonder.
