Navigating a Chronic Health Crisis with Astrological Transits: My Journey to Awakening
I pulled an astrological focused tarot card sometime in February, and it was the energy of Hygeia. I didn’t know much about this energy other than the fact that it was related to health. So I got curious and started to read about her and then located her within my birth chart. When it comes to astrology I am somehow always shocked and yet not shocked at all to find things are always in divine alignment. There Hygeia was in my chart at 16º of Pisces and transiting Hygeia in the sky was exactly conjunct my natal placement finding me in a Hygeia return. What were the odds that would pull this card and be checking my chart on the exact day of my Hygeia return?
On top of this, I have been experiencing one of the most intense health crises of my life since the start of 2023, when Saturn moves into Pisces in my 6th house of health.
At this point in the year, I had been wracking my brain to understand why I still couldn’t figure out what was going on with me. I was doing all the right things, wasn’t I? (Hint, I was pretending to do all the right things while allowing psychosomatic illness to keep me in a loop of chronic fatigue and looking for answers externally instead of internally.)
Hygeia is the goddess of preventative health. She’s the energy in your chart that will illuminate the place you must develop a relationship with taking care of yourself - before you reach the doctor. This is the sign and house where you’ll have to develop a deeper connection to your body and support your physical system through the energy found there. A fun fact I found out during this Hygeia awakening - a lot of medical astrologers have their Hygeia in the 6th house!
Having Hygeia in my 6th house has guided me deeper into understanding how important what I do in my day to day life is to my overall health and how my routines are pivotal to me staying vital. And let me tell you… when I let my routines slip, everything else tumbles with it. But with the sign of Pisces ruling this energy for me sticking to routines has never been easy (this coming from a Virgo Stellium) and escape tactics have always been my go to. (Let me just melt into the bed for 74 days, won't you?)
I found this placement and I remember thinking “that’s it, I’ll change my ways!” I thought I was being guided deeply enough into being inspired to get back to my health habits and routines. But instead I feel deeper into my old habits, wasn’t moving my body enough, and I was isolating to the point of becoming a recluse.
I put on 10 pounds of inflammation, worse than I have felt since I was put on the poison that is birth control at 14 years old and my body blew up like a balloon. My back and neck muscles began to get tighter and tighter as I became more and more rigid and inflexible. (Ps, did you know one of the Virgo/6th house medicines is tolerance and being flexible? Not the easiest thing for a Virgo.)
I’ve been moving through what I can only describe as chronic pain spells. The traditional doctors have no answers. The naturopaths have no answers while doing their best to offer supplements that seem to work for a while and then crap out and I’m back at square one. Here’s me, back in bed, with a migraine that moves from my low back, up into the back of my skull, over the top of my head and down into my eyes. Oh, did I mention the freezing cold sensation that accompanies it?
I’m currently in bed in one of these spells right now as I write this, pondering on the karma of this health crisis and what I have yet to learn.
Currently, as I write these words, in the sky we have Jupiter in Gemini square Saturn in Pisces in my 6th house. This had me extra curious about my health crisis today and why this flare up would be happening now, and what it was showing me (while I of course am wondering why I choose to incarnate with what seems like endless health issues.)
After sifting through my medical astrology textbooks and psychosomatic illness books, I started to read a powerful article on Saturn transiting the 6th house from astrologer Jessica Davidson. While I was reading all the themes, absolutely nailing my experience of the last year and a half, I remembered Hygeia.
I opened up my chart and turned Hygeia in my reader. Again seemingly shocked and yet not shocked at all, I found Saturn right on top of my Hygeia, squaring Jupiter at 17º Gemini. (Oh, and the moon is conjunct Saturn right now as I write this - allowing for this download to drop deeply into my psyche)
I believe that astrology is learned by lived experience. We live through the energies every day to be able to understand how they express themselves in our charts. I imagine this is how people came to understand the energies of the planets, signs, and beyond over time. I also believe the current Neptune in Pisces transit is helping us as a collective tap deeper into the spiritual realms and download potent and ancient information so that we may change the world with it. This also happened during the Spiritualist movement in the Victorian Era when Neptune was also in Pisces. We’re tapped into the collective unconscious as if it's on speed dial right now. The only question is, are you listening?
I was called to go off social media through the Jupiter square to Saturn we are currently experiencing so that I would be without distraction. I knew that right now I needed to listen. And yet, of course, I still find myself numbing out with endless hours of Gilmore Girls and Buffy the Vampire Slayer in a typical Pisces fashion - because, well, I’m sick, don’t you know? (Excuses and escape tactics are what got me here in the first place.)
This transit has illuminated so much for me, even with all the distractions.
While I am on the brink of tears because my body feels like it's constantly inflamed and in this dull pain and yet I have simultaneously been having some of the most powerful insights into my future (again, thanks to big picture Jupiter and Pisces greater vision energy.) Saturn's job is to ground this all into reality, or at least to help with the steps to get there.
Saturn transiting the 6th house is meant to help us purify our lifestyles, routines, and health. Each house that you find Saturn transiting will reveal the area of your life you are being called to get your shit together in. This means growing up, figuring out what is working and what isn’t working, and instituting health discipline and boundaries so that this area of your life can support the others. Our charts are holistic and symbiotic. When one area isn’t working, another will take the brunt of the imbalance. When one area is overdoing it, another will lose energy and begin to suffer. Ahem, I’m looking at the hustlers, over workers, and high achievers.
We are continually looking to create balance in our lives. Hence why we incarnate with the four angles, the spiritual incarnation cross in your chart. Your life will always be pulled in four directions between identity, home, relationships, and career. The sweet spot is somewhere where your nervous system has support in all of these areas. And yes, I know that’s easier said than done.
But what I’m connecting the dots around through this 6th house Saturn transit is how I have some major shadows around disassociating and escaping my daily routines and becoming a victim to my health.
Saturn in the 6th house is associated with experiencing a health crisis, convalescing and recovering from a health crisis, depression, and psychosomatic illness. Pisces is also connected with psychosomatic illness, escapism, depression, and isolation. (This would be a great time to ask yourself if you’ve been struggling in the area Saturn has been moving through Pisces in your chart.)
I’ve been sitting here for the last year knowing that there are habits that are destroying me and yet I wake up each day and repeat them over and over. Why? Because they’re comfortable… they’re known. It’s easier to fall into a Netflix hole than to muster my strength through the intensity of having powerful healthy habits like finding a yoga studio I love again after everything felt like it was ripped from my hands and shut down in 2020. It’s easier to have the smoothie I know makes my blood sugar spike and ultimately make me feel like shit rather than cooking up some eggs, avocado, and sweet potatoes to get a well rounded meal that I know makes me feel great.
I know it’s me standing in my own way.
And yet Saturn is forcing me to see what happens when I refuse to change.
Saturn is asking me to see what happens when I forget I am a child of the universe and disconnect from my trust in source.
Saturn is forcing me to see what happens when I don’t resolve this karmic loop.
Am I tired of this yet? As my astro bestie Renata Taravski always says we don’t change things because “you just haven’t suffered enough.”
But what’s not easy to face is the cliche that “your new life will cost you your old one.” This means the way I know how to be has to leave, and that’s terrifying to the ego, the identity, and the part of me that wants to survive. This is the only way I have known how to be.
The magick through this transit is that I have been shown the deepening of my work and the next steps in clearing karma through the birth chart. I’ll be deepening my studies into medical astrology, and hypnosis to assist more people in actually clearing the karma on a soul level through the many shamanic practices in my tool belt - and beyond.
Astrology is my tool of divination - I use it to help see the past pictures of what is stuck, unresolved, and keeping the soul stuck in these toxic and repeating patterns. Why? Because this is how we liberate and get out of the karmic cycles we’ve been replaying from previous lives, our ancestral patterns, and beyond.
This is why we came here.
And the cosmos never stop amazing me in what they reveal, ultimately guiding me into a deeper understanding of why I incarnated, why hardship is a part of the human experience, and how our darkest moments are catapulting us into the light - if we let them.
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