Marie Antoinette and the Saturn Return

If you saw the film Marie Antoinette, you’ll remember that it was all played like she was in a dream. At the end, when you saw the street scenes of Paris, it was like coming out of a dream. It was showing us the feeling that Marie Antoinette had no awareness of what was going on in the world outside the castle walls. As is the outer, so is the inner. It’s a shock at the end when we see the revolution taking place. We were locked within her world, as unaware as she was.

The Saturn Return is all about awareness. Knowing what you're doing, and why.

Saturn takes 29.5 years to orbit the sun. When Saturn returns to the same place it was in when you were born, it is called the Saturn Return. Saturn, the stern teacher, is associated with challenge, fear, doubt, difficulty and – you guessed it – learning.

As historians continually revisit the misunderstood life of this beheaded queen, Marie Antoinette, it appears there were many misperceptions. Much of the problem lay in her ineffectual husband, King Louis XVI of France. He was easily led by others. We see in the movie the scene where his advisor is telling him to finance the American Revolution. He isn’t sure this is a good idea, this financing of the overthrow of monarchies, but ignores his instincts and consents.

Saturn Return is the time the chickens come home to roost so to speak. It can be in a good way, or a bad way. Saturn Returns challenge us to get past old limitations, rules, responsibilities, unfulfilling behaviors, and particularly unconscious living through fear. It’s your chance at your free will. To exercise free will you have to be mindful. If you are unaware of your agency, of yourself as the director of your own play, the one who takes actions, you may mistake the consequences of those actions as “fate.”

Saturn Returns occur at the ages of 28-30, 58-60, and 88-90. At Marie Antoinette’s first Saturn Return, the Diamond Necklace Affair occurred. Historians agree that this was what sealed Marie Antoinette’s fate with the French people. They also agree that she had little, if anything, to do with it. It led to her eventual beheading.

Marie Antoinette never learned how to manage her own PR. She did not project herself correctly so others would understand her intentions. Here is an example of the misconceptions. At the time of the French Revolution, the people of France were rebelling against the monarchy, and many were living in poverty, not even enough food. Allegedly, when informed of their plight, Marie Antoinette said, “Let them eat bread.”

First of all, this is an English translation, and ah, these are always tricky. Remember when Krushchev said “We will bury you.” The more precise translation would have been, “We’ll be here long after you are gone.” One is aggressive and threatening. The other, which he actually said, is simply assertive and implies no agency of destruction.

And so it is with “let them eat cake.” The words were in French, Qu’ils mangent de la brioche. We don’t have a construction like this – it‘s something like “that they eat …”
And if you’ve visited cuisines, you know that there are no desserts like there are in the US, and that many foreign desserts aren’t really even sweet, and not even really desserts by our terms. Sugar is so American, as it were. A brioche, if you were served it, you would say it is bread, a bun.
So instead of being a sweet luxury, it is a staple of life. Bread.

Now it is also debatable that she ever said this in the first place. The phrase apparently was written by Rousseau in his Confessions, when Marie Antoinette was still a child, living in Austria. Rousseau claimed that “a great princess” told the peasants to eat brioche when she heard they had no bread.

Even then, it probably wasn’t a cold, unfeeling statement. At that time in France, the law required bakers to sell fancy breads at the same low price as the plain breads if they ran out of plain bread. Remember it was the staff of life for poor people, not a little adjunct to the steak and potato like it is in the US today. This was to keep bakers from deliberately not making cheap bread. The statement might well have meant that the bakery laws should be enforced so that the poor could eat “cake” if the bread ran out, like "make it possible for them to eat bread".

If Marie Antoinette didn’t say it, people thought she might have. Marie Antoinette wasn’t conscious of the effect she was having on other people, how they perceived her. Living secluded as she was, out of touch with what was going on, she perhaps failed to be learning what she should have been learning. Whatever her spiritual path was, she was not aware of it. She deluded herself about what she was hearing. It is probable she was innocent of some of the things she was accused of.

Saturn teaches us the big lessons – what we can live with and what we cannot live with, what works for us and what doesn’t. It’s about living out your Dharma, your higher self.

Most people navigate the first Saturn Return (28-30) and then falter at the second Saturn Return (58-60), but of course the second one depends upon the first one. If you made good choices at the first one, it sets you up well for the second one.
At the Saturn Return, you may feel frustrated, angry, sad, confused, and insecure. If the second one is particularly difficult, sometimes it is too much and the person crosses over.

Karol Wojtyla was a man with a steady course in life, living his purpose. At his second Saturn Return, he became Pope John Paul II.

Beethoven released his first symphony at his first Saturn Return. Perhaps the most famous and popular composer we have ever known, his personal life was troubled and he died at his second Saturn Return.

Getting a Spiritual Path Reading and a Saturn Return Reading for you, or someone you love, can help with the confusion and frustration. It can help you learn the important lessons of our stern taskmaster, Saturn. A Spiritual Path or Higher Calling Reading can help you clarify what your purpose is – what you are here to do. The more you are in alignment on these two fronts – knowing your purpose, and then living it purposefully, the better your life is going to feel to you.
Peter the Great’s mission was to modernize Russia. To do this, he needed to get the church under his control. At his first Saturn Return he gained control of the church and its property and made the church a department of the state, subordinate to his will. Peter the Great did not live for his second Saturn Return.

Michael Vick is lurching toward an extremely difficult first Saturn Return. Who knows where he will be two years from now.

Got a Saturn Return coming up? Learn more about it, get a reading, prepare, and find out what your chart says about your Spiritual Path. It’s another chance and one you don’t want to miss.