The planet Saturn revolves around the sun in 29.4 years. Saturn the astrological symbol represents the energy of a 29-year cycle: maturity, recognition of time, recognition of mortality, and the crystallizing of our life. By this age, many have married and “settled down,” often having children.

If your Saturn return goes well, you have the maturity to understand that you life is finite yet also enjoy it in an adult manner. You can still play, but you are not a child. You can have wonder, but are not naïve. In your second Saturn return at age 58, you plan for retirement and maybe even buy your burial plot. Planning your demise in a way that protects your loved ones is both disciplined and mature.

If your Saturn return does not go well, you resist maturity. Maybe you play with younger folks even if your knees hurt. Even if your mind does not heed Saturn, your body will. Maybe you act like a child and find others who will continue to support it during your maturity. Or maybe you don’t and find yourself “in trouble” with authorities, the Saturn figures in our existence.

Saturn asks, “What have you done with your life?” Saturn has this urge for something called “success” which can be the Hollywood version of climbing to the top of some ladder somewhere. Or it can be success in one’s own term based on personal values. The opposite of this feeling is one we call “failure.” And like success, it’s in the eye of the beholder.

Accepting Saturn doesn’t mean you turn into an “old” person living in the past (although some do this). That is the fear that turns many a person away from this energy which, by the way, can’t truly be ignored. Saturn is acceptance of time and limitations, not the discarding of joy and pleasure which is how it is viewed by others. Finding the joy in daily life is true joy because most other joys are fleeting.

Really, Saturn is only bad when you ignore it, like the cracking walls or leaky pipes. Really, this is a life lesson that astrology teaches. There are many energies and cycles. Preference for some over others will bring us face-to-face with those energies we try to suppress.

Anna Delvey

Anna Delvey is the alter-ego name of Anna Sorokin, a young Russian woman who moved to New York City and fooled a few folks into thinking she was rich. Sorokin is still about a year away from an exact Saturn return. When it occurs, she may be in prison.

Sorokin’s Saturn return is not going well. In fact, Saturn came down particularly hard on her lack of maturity to the point where it’s going to be a life lesson. Like others before her, Sorokin faked an identity of wealth and privilege to draw those of wealth and privilege to her. Because she didn’t have the cunning to “create” money as some do (such as with a Ponzi scheme or wealthy spouse), she hit the wall of financial reality quickly and now is facing a prison term.

Sorokin’s Saturn

Sorokin’s Saturn is at 28 degrees of Capricorn. Saturn, our reality check, astrologically can point to where we are weak or insecure. Saturn rules Capricorn so the insecurity here is Saturn itself – success, time, and limitation.

Ironically, too, Sorokin’s Saturn is very close to the placement of Pluto in the chart of the United States. The United States is going through a Pluto return which takes 248 years. Pluto is transformation which often follows destruction and currently we are seeing a destruction of our corporate and political systems.

Sorokin’s behavior isn’t just a girl wanting more, it’s a girl caught up in the values of her times and finding the exact place where those values exist – New York City. Sorokin could have been more “successful” faking wealth in a small, Midwestern town. But achieving something is most satisfying where it has the most value. Being “someone” in New York City trumps being “someone” in some remote location.

Personal “brand” is also a trend of our times, which Sorokin employed correctly. Appearances are best supported by the ubiquitous social media of today.

Sorokin is of a generation that has many planets in Capricorn; for her, Mercury, Uranus, Neptune and Saturn are all in Capricorn. This is the generation that must determine the new structure of society. Born with all these planets in Capricorn, the ingress of transiting Pluto into Capricorn in 2008 made these issues the great theme of their lives. About this time, Sorokin moved from Russia to Germany which probably sparked in some way this desire for a privileged life.

How can you be successful in a society that’s ripping apart at the seams?

It’s a difficult challenge. Some will transform today into tomorrow and some, like Sorokin, will hang on to the old ideas of success and ambition even as the times scream out for change.

Other Planets

Although she has many planets in the earthy Capricorn, Sorokin’s sun and Venus are in air-sign Aquarius. Her Mars is in air-sign Gemini. Air, more than the other elements, is a natural at picking up on the image or idea behind a situation. With lots of air, there also can be detachment from the thing itself, such as wearing the beret and smoking the cigar but sitting out the revolution.

Sorokin’s moon is either in fire-sign Aries or earth-sign Taurus. The desire for wealth smells of Taurus yet the sheer audacity to create a fake life suggests the energy (and competitive nature) of Aries. Jupiter in Leo would trine and provide additional confidence and boldness.

There’s only one planet in a water sign – Pluto in Scorpio. Pluto is an outer planet and like Uranus and and Neptune, describes “the times” more than an individual personality. Sorokin, then, isn’t connected to others through the water quality of emotion, but the air and earth qualities of image and success.

Aquarius seeks the perfect universe and I suspect Sorokin simply couldn’t accept her fate. Much of being elite is the accident of your birth. When you explore the wealthy, there are few self-made men (or women) who actually were born in shacks and rose through the barbed wire of society. Yes, there are a few. But most of the people behind those high, view-obstructing, hedges were born behind the hedges.

Aquarius is also the great rebel of the zodiac. That Sorokin would choose the most traditional of roles speaks to allowing her planets in Capricorn to override a nature that would seek to be “different.” On the other hand, if she was born into moderate circumstances, maybe wealth and privilege is the “different” she sought. While Saturn is in Capricorn and her sun in Aquarius, technically they are conjunct (out-of-sign) which lends an additional “Capricorn” cast to her personality.

The Mantle of Saturn

An article in the New York Times asks if the female Sorokin isn’t being unduly punished for a crime that is often committed in much larger scale by men.

Increasingly, it seems, the law has provided an able hand to a culture that takes perverse, outsize pleasure in spectacles of female desperation. Like many young women, Ms. Sorokin had an insatiable desire to be something that she wasn’t: in her case, someone other than the daughter of a Russian HVAC salesman. She had come to New York without the pedigree or capital that buoys you in a city poisonously obsessed with status. New York is a transactional place, and Ms. Sorokin had nothing to trade, so she made herself into a rich, clubby, entrepreneurial German and lied and cheated a system already allocating so many unfair advantages.

When Mr. Vance was elected district attorney nine years ago, he promised to come down with the force of a broken dam on the rich and powerful. Many would say he has fallen short of that goal. In 2012 he backed away from an investigation of Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr., both suspected of misleading potential buyers of condominiums in a Trump building in SoHo. Earlier he chose not to bring Dominique Strauss-Kahn to trial when the former director of the International Monetary Fund was accused of sexually assaulting a hotel maid.

Nor did Mr. Vance call for arrest or prosecution of Harvey Weinstein in 2015 when he first had the chance. At the time, a police report had a young model claiming that the producer had groped her in his office. Mr. Vance moved on.

Unlike many men who “fake it until they make it,” Sorokin didn’t have the cunning to use her brand image to generate actual, tangible assets. While she did generate some credit, she wasn’t clever enough to prolong it until she had actual wealth. Although women have come far, authority is still male and for a female to generate wealth out of thin air (such as with a Ponzi scheme) is difficult.

Women often have to take the route of marrying into wealth. Why Sorokin didn’t do that, I’m not sure. Maybe she was working on it.

Sorokin earned her Saturn knockdown for sure. While there is the threat of a long prison sentence (15 years), Saturn will return in 2020 for her and then cross her sun. I’m expecting 2-4 years is the length of time she’ll be in prison. In 2023, Pluto then crosses her Saturn (and then sun) suggesting a transformed personality.