Saturn is the Place
the Arkestra comes to Waldoboro
In my free time I love to scroll ThriftBooks.com looking for astrology books to read. I love to pour over a book about astrology, or that will support my practice as an astrologer. Earlier this year, I finally made the time and space to read Alice Sparkly Kat’s Post Colonial Astrology, and it really opened my eyes up to the ways I could be using mythology, philosophy, and theory to inform my relationship with the planets. They write about the ways that astrological mythology can propagate the values of the Roman empire, and the Enlightenment era’s obsession with the roman empire, but with active participation and mending, the symbols can be used to reflect the values of the astrologer.
From there, I wanted to read a book specifically about Venus, the ruler of my rising planet. But every single astrology book seems to be about Saturn! A huge proportion of the planet-specific astrology books that I find are about Saturn! It always makes me go ugh! and has turned me into a little bit of a Saturn hater (even though I really did like Liz Greene’s New Look at an Old Devil). Why is everyone so obsessed with the planet of boundaries, restriction, with the Saturn return that has a reputation of making your life a living hell at the end of your twenties?
One of my new best friends is Willoughby. She also works at my job. When I introduce her to people I usually say that she is a multidisciplinary artist who works with a variety of mediums including textiles. She’s worked in academia as an adjunct professor. She is a powerful Aries with a Capricorn moon, born and raised in Alabama, and I feel that I am always learning from her experiences as a white person involved with anti-racist organizing. Her Alabama roots are part why Willoughby was inspired to become a student of Sun Ra.
Sun Ra was a jazz visionary and afrofuturist who lived and worked in the 20th century. He was born in Huntsville, Alabama in 1914 - almost fifty years after the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation, now commemorated by Juneteenth. One day Sun Ra had a Vision where it was revealed to him that he was not a human, but a being from the planet Saturn who was sent to Earth on a mission to preach peace. It could be my Catholic upbringing, or my strong desire for magic to be true and real in this life, but I do really believe that Sun Ra, somehow, was literally from Saturn.
The Sun Ra Arkestra - Sun Ra’s band who have continued to perform after his retirement in the 1990’s, and his departure from this planet in 1993 - came to perform in Waldoboro, Maine this past weekend. Willoughby and her husband Josh and I sat together in the balcony, giddy with excitement. She had never seen them before, and neither had I! In the crowd were a handful of other queer young people, almost every single one of our coworkers, and a lot of people I’d never seen before. The room was teeming with a reverent excitement while we waited for the band to appear on stage.
Living in a small, rural, predominantly white community, it is rare that I get to see incredible, live jazz. As the Arkestra took the stage, each member wearing a glittering costume and afrofuturist head dress or hat, it was impossible to stay seated. Following the lead of a middle aged lady on the main floor, I stood in the aisles and danced while the Arkestra sent us into outer space. Baritone saxophone rocked my chest cavity and the percussion section kept me rocking back and forth. The trumpets would call me back to attention and the vocals reminded me what I was meant to meditate on. “We’re living in the space age.” “My home is somewhere there, out in outer space.”
It’s funny to think of Saturn as a mechanism for transcendence. In astrology, it is the planet of restriction, of boundaries. Of hard work. But that is the planet that Sun Ra was from - while the Arkestra played, I thought a lot about what this person and his band could add to our ideas of what this planet means.
What freedom can we find in the labor of the harvest? What presence can we find with our hardship? What can we learn from a practice of discipline? How can our paternal lineages nurture us? There was a young guy playing in the Arkestra, surrounded by old timers, who would sit with his eyes closed in a studious reverence while the other musicians soloed. Sometimes he would lean towards another musician and ask them a question, and an older player would point to his sheet music to explain. Sun Ra has been dead for 30 years and the band plays on in his legacy, preaching a message that his body told him to deliver to the earth, from Saturn.
