Saturn in Pisces- the artistic intelligence of subjectvity

Photo: Lorna Sim

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

-T S Eliot Burnt Norton, The Four Quartets

 Once upon a time subjectivity was the realm of the artist. We were enthralled by someone’s unique and intimate vision of Reality manifest as their creative expression. We did not look for the familiar, rather we expected a revelatory experience, perhaps to be surprised, sometimes shocked, or moved. This was not always entertaining, but it was enjoyable nevertheless in a cosmos of expectation where we were not locked into rational and logical paradigms as the only lenses on Reality. We enjoyed the exploration, the dipping into the dark waters of imagination, archetypes and poetry, not as we have narrated it out of all its mystery, but as unfathomable and beauteous worlds.

An artist’s work is the cosmos of Saturn in Pisces. And these times when Saturn, the planet of matter, the finite, form and the measurable, moves in Pisces, the realm of the dark waters, artists may celebrate the time. And some celebration for artists is much needed, given the recent years where the arts were designated as non-essential and therefore artists as superfluous to a lively and joyful existence in this world.

In Indian astrology, Saturn is Shani. Shani shares many of the same characteristics as Saturn, but He is also the patron deity of arts, especially dance and music, which are more directly related to Body-led expression. Artistry is about bringing the unformed, the unknowable, and the undefinable into material expression. Indeed, we will not even have an awareness of the Divine, of mystery, and of the expansive dimensions of Reality beyond the mind’s linear lenses were it not for a poetic intelligence.

The Deity Krishna states in the seminal Bhagavad Gita that the Divine is the Kavi (poet/seer), whose poetic vision apprehends the true nature of Reality. It is the poetic vision and expression in this realm that allows us to taste the Divine, which is the expansive expression of Reality beyond our mind-led narrative. Most ancient scriptures are poetic revelations to be encountered through the imagination-drenched modalities of dance, ceremony, archetypes and song. We experience the Divine in movements, scents, colours, and sounds which take us out of the banality of the possible-impossible seesaw towards sensation as the deepest taste of subjectivity.

In Rasa philosophy of dance, the word Rasa, which literally means taste but in dance means sensation, invites us to recede into the dark waters of un-narrated and un-defined sensation. This is subjectivity that is free from “meaning” and the flattening dualities that attend meaning imposing paradigms. I invite people in my programs to seek to sense rather than understand or even feel, because even at a feeling and emotional level we have constructed meaning structures that stifle intimate subjectivity.

It is Shani or Saturn that provides us the structure we need as embodied life. So long as we do not materialise sensation, it remains unavailable as experience. Expressing the subjectivity of the dark waters is no easy task. Saturn provides the material dimensions—body, and craft or creative talent or modality (dance, song, words). And when Saturn decides to journey in the Pisces world, we can hold the hope that He will meet the unformed with His energy of manifesting, grounding and bringing into matter.

I feel the Saturn-Pisces encounter may support the emergence of subjectivity in the realms of the measurable everyday reality of matter. I feel that Saturn may invite attending to our deep subjectivity as a necessary part of expressing a whole living being in an embodied existence. I feel that the split between creative-poetic intelligence and the divine-spiritual wisdom that we have in these times will be reconciled so that we can experience the sensation-essence of the Divine divested of analysis, and returned to our subjectivity as the source.

Perhaps Saturn will bring the Divine home to Body, sensation, poetry, intimacy, simplicity, and beauty.

The artistic realm here is not of the paradigms of a mind-led narrative of Reality. It is not of activism, therapy or any other discourses. It is not in service of another narrative. Rather the artistic consciousness is returned to its subjective unfathomability and its sovereign existence before and beyond the paradigms we have generated from thought and word. This may appear abstract to those of us inhabiting the worlds of thought and word. There is nothing inappropriate about artistic expressions servicing other paradigms, it is just not the only expression of creative intelligence that is possible.

The other day I had an encounter with a woman who was interested in my individual program. During our meeting it became clear that she wanted something to service a pre-determined goal of “knowing” herself. In truth she already had the template, she just needed someone to certify or credential it for her. When I invited her to consider that perhaps her subjectivity is a mystery to her mind, she demanded a description of her subjectivity so that she had a conclusion even before she began. This is the nature of goal-setting and outcome focused processes. And these models work in many domains, but not in  the domain of an artistic, creative expression of our archetypal subjectivity.

Creative or artistic intelligence is a thing of itself. It is not simply an intelligence whose main function is to manifest the “knowledge” of other domains. We speak very loosely about creativity in our times as if it is about adding frills to something important. We speak of creativity in business or in politics but it is not the same as a creative intelligence that plumbs the depths of the subjective waters. It is not just an “innovative” way of improving a business. It is a radical insight and an autonomy of expression that opens up a space from which we can reflect upon the very nature of a paradigmatic approach to reality.

So, what else other than a paradigmatic, narrative, linear management of Reality? The subjective is the “yearning” within us, the ache we feel when we find those precious spaces where we are resting in our self without any distractions including so called spiritual practices. It is not the psychological self necessarily, rather it is something deeper than what can come to word. We overlook this fragile and transient sensation because we are blind to what is not of word. We do not have the confidence to plumb the depths where words do not and cannot go. Indeed we even think that this is not real, that something that is not of word does not exist.

This word-dominant time is a Saturn that has never had to contend with Pisces. He has been free to roam in worlds where He has been lauded and empowered. In this encounter between Saturn and Pisces, the language must be of dance, song and poetry as Pisces is not one for words.

So let there be more of those artistic expressions which we encounter, and we say, “I do not understand!” Let there be more times when we say, “I do not have words” or “I sense something I cannot name.” And then we may attend to that sensation as a poet, or a dancer for, in the beautiful words of T S Eliot, that space is not a “fixity” of labels and words, but a stillness that deserves a dance and is only apprehended as dance.