When is my Saturn return?
Your Saturn return is when Saturn comes back to the place it was in the sky when you were born. Saturn takes about 29 and a half years to go round the Sun, so the first return arrives in your late twenties, the second in your late fifties. Put in your birth date and we'll give you the exact dates.
Dates come from Saturn's real path, worked out with the same ephemeris as your chart and accurate to within a day or two.
Why it can be three dates, not one
Saturn moves slowly, and a few months each year it appears to stop and back up (that's retrograde motion, an effect of the Earth overtaking it). So when Saturn comes back to your exact degree, it often crosses it, backs over it, and crosses it a third time, over about a year. If you see three dates above, that's why. When Saturn happens to be moving steadily forward at the time, there's just one.
Most astrologers count the whole stretch Saturn spends back in your Saturn sign, about two to three years, as your Saturn return, with the exact crossings as its sharpest points.
What a Saturn return is like
Saturn is the planet of structure, time and consequences. Its return is read as a reality check: the point where the life you drifted into gets tested against the life you actually want. The first one lands at the end of your twenties, which is no coincidence to anyone who's lived through it.
People describe the same things over and over: ending a relationship or committing to one, leaving a career or finally taking it seriously, moving, having children, getting sober, starting over. It isn't always hard, but it's rarely casual. Whatever you build during it tends to last, and whatever was only held together by habit tends to come apart.
The second return, in your late fifties, asks the same question with more behind it: what do you want the next stretch to be about? A third, for people who reach their late eighties, is a review of a whole life.
Where it happens in your chart
The sign Saturn returns to sets the tone, and the house it's in shows which part of life gets the test: work and reputation in the 10th, home and family in the 4th, partnership in the 7th, money in the 2nd. Houses need your birth time, and your full chart shows them.
Questions
How old are you at your Saturn return?
The first exact pass comes somewhere between about 28 and 30, and the whole period can start at 27. The second comes at about 57 to 60.
How long does a Saturn return last?
Saturn usually spends two to three years in your Saturn sign around the return. The exact crossings fall within a year or so of each other.
Is the Saturn return bad?
It's demanding, not bad. It's the sky's way of asking you to grow up on purpose. A lot of people look back on it as the point their adult life actually started.