Harvest or Payback: Now is the Time to Take Responsibility for Your Career

During Saturn’s transit through the 10^th House of your Career, you are accountable for whatever career, status and reputation you’ve built. You’re ready to harvest the rewards for all your hard work and efforts to attain your goal. Now is the time when your diligence and preparation pay off and you achieve excellent results; or whatever results you deserve.

Do you remember those long hours and months of working overtime, not seeing much of your kids, and your spouse giving you the “evil eye” as you rolled in after 8 p.m. each night? Or, do you remember those weeks or months when you found a way to take leisurely lunches, leave work early and do only what was required? This is when “the chickens come home to roost.”

Be aware that if you haven’t worked in good faith or improperly prepared yourself, you may encounter great difficulties now. In fact, old astrologers had a saying: “Saturn in the 10^th is a time of a rise or fall.” In other words, during this period of your life you’ll receive cosmic payback for the good and bad deeds you’ve done.

None of us are perfect, so most of us experience elements of both the positive and negative in our own personal career harvest. Don’t forget that one of Saturn’s lessons and benefits is re-evaluating your actions so you can let go of unproductive ways in favor of more beneficial behaviors that will improve you. That means, for example, if you’ve been a slacker at work, you have the opportunity to re-dedicate yourself toward doing a more conscientious job.

Now is when you can discover what work you’re really committed to doing in your life. Saturn’s energies help you in this regard, because you will receive feedback from the outer world, be it the public or your employer, about your job performance. The response you get will help you realistically evaluate your career accomplishments to see if you’re doing the work you’re meant to do. If you’ve had any illusions about your talents and abilities, during this time you’ll receive some sort of objective evaluation you can use to decide whether to continue in your career or job; or consider a new one. Consider these assessments:

• “Based on your poor work habits and lackadaisical attitude, you’ll be on probation for the next three months.”
• “You’re lack of patience makes it clear why you haven’t been an effective teacher.”
• “I’m not confident you know how to lead others, therefore, I can’t recommend you for promotion.”
• “Because of your creative culinary skills we’d like you to be our new chef.
• “Based on your dedicated efforts to help our department make the sales forecast, I’m approving you for a 20 percent raise.”
• “With your superior grammar and writing skills you’ll make an excellent editor.”
• “Because of your leadership skills and ability to motivate others, I’m recommending you for promotion.”

Saturn’s influence demands that you critically evaluate your achievements in your career and outer world in order to decide whether to continue or change your direction. Here are some clients who received Saturn’s message.

Growing up, Kenny loved playing baseball. Because of his tremendous talent, he was drafted, right out of college, by a major league team. After seven years playing minor league ball for a Triple AAA team in Arizona, he’s never hit better than .260. He’s just been told that he’ll be cut because he’s not considered someone who can hit major league pitching.

Rhonda was a fantastic salesperson for many years. Then, three years ago she was promoted to regional sales manager replacing the old manager who continually missed his sales goals. She ended up inheriting an under-achieving sales force, requiring her to fire, hire and train replacements. So, Rhonda has had to work 60-70 hour weeks on the road, re-building the reps in the field. Finally over the last 12 months her efforts have paid off with her sales team beating the company forecast by 20 percent. Rhonda has just been offered a promotion to be the company’s new national sales manager.

Gene always enjoyed public speaking and it made him feel good to help people by delivering motivating lectures. He thought he had a great future as a paid public speaker. But before he “took the show on the road,” he wanted to gain some experience and see how the hometown crowd liked his talks. Gene convinced several local business organizations to allow him to speak before their members. After a number of lectures, he was uncertain how to gauge their enthusiasm.

Gene finally decided to sit down and get some feedback from several of the executives who had heard him speak. He was surprised to hear their feedback, “Gene, I hate to have to tell you this, but you’re not a motivating or inspiring speaker.” Another said, “Gene, you’re boring; your voice could put babies to sleep.” Gene has Saturn in his 10^th House, so this is a critical time for him to evaluate and determine if public speaking is a career he should pursue.

Walter was a senior executive for a major consumer food conglomerate. He was promoted to president of one of the company’s consumer products divisions five years ago. At first, he was very hardworking and dedicated to increasing revenues, and in his first year of operations, sales and profits were modestly up. However, over the last three years profits have been negligible. His efforts and enthusiasm have slacked off. Instead of being seen as a leader who works day and night to increase company profits, he’s well known by employees for leaving headquarters for personal reasons ranging from attending to problems with his errant son to taking Friday afternoons for long golf-weekends. Many of the department heads have suspected that his judgment at meetings may be impaired from too many three-martini lunches.

His boss, the group president, met with him today and fired him. Gene was told that he wasn’t “cutting it,” and they needed to make a change.

A Time for Recognition

From a positive perspective, Saturn brings rewards if you’ve worked hard, honestly and to high standards. If so, this will be a time of major achievement in your career where your life’s ambition and goals are realized. You may receive leadership opportunities, huge financial rewards and public recognition for the work you’ve done. This is when your promotion is announced in the business section of the local newspaper or your face appears on the cover of an industry magazine announcing your success. You now have the opportunity to impress the outer world with who you are and your talents. You’ll feel like the King or Queen of your profession.

Saturn’s influence brings you responsibilities when it transits your 10^th House, so if your goal is to be a leader, this can be a period of great achievement where you reach a high point and make your mark on the world. If you’re not inclined toward taking on the responsibilities of leadership, this may be just a more demanding but productive time in your career. Either way, this is when you’re able to work in a purposeful, disciplined, organized and diligent manner.

This was the case for Richard who for so many years made profits for his company while serving his community so generously. Richard could not believe he was standing at the podium accepting a lifetime achievement award from the Chamber of Commerce. He was now 62 and had successfully run his own business, employing 500 people; however, he still found time to have his company sponsor programs for the Little League, the Girl Scouts and several other community organizations, as well as raise funds to build three parks in the inner city. Richard had organized and funded scholarship programs at several city high schools to help underprivileged children go to school. He was a generous and philanthropic individual, and this was his day to be recognized and acknowledged. Saturn was transiting his 10^th House.

A Time for Karmic Payback

Saturn is a tough taskmaster if you haven’t prepared properly, taking shortcuts, sloughing off to avoid hard work, not operating with integrity, or being dishonest in order to get where you are. If that’s the case, you’ll harvest the negative energies of Saturn and arouse extreme opposition from those in the outer world. You may encounter people in your career, who are in a position to block your advancement and thwart your ambitions.

Since Saturn’s influence holds you accountable for your past actions and behavior, you may receive criticism, disapproval and dismissal for doing an ineffective job. Any time during the period that Saturn transits here, you may have to bear the consequences of what you’ve done in your past.

A famous historical example of this karmic bill coming due was President Richard Nixon and the infamous Watergate scandal. The discovery of his involvement in the Watergate burglary and subsequent cover-up led to his fall from grace and eventual resignation from the presidency on August 9, 1974.

However, long before Watergate, Nixon’s questionable actions and dirty tactics as a politician created a large opposition from those who were anxious to see him fall from high position. Ultimately, his dishonest and unethical behavior in the Watergate scandal brought about a near-certainty of impeachment, public disgrace and his own downfall. This all happened to Richard Nixon when Saturn transited his 10^th House of Career.

Always remember that just like Santa Claus, Saturn knows “whether you’ve been naughty or nice.” Make sure to prepare diligently for your success, rather than taking shortcuts as you climb to the top. By working hard, striving to operate your life with honesty, principles, and ethics you can help assure that you experience the positive rewards of Saturn’s transiting your 10^th House. 

If you want to know where your personal transits are — to see if they are affecting you, go to the Free Transit Calculator and enter your birth date. You may find that the transiting planet, Saturn is affecting your life right now.

 Like elephant spirituality on Facebook.

Ed: Sara Crolick