This occurs to everyone once in a lifetime. At 59-60, every one of us has our fifth Jupiter return AND our second Saturn return. Usually there's a time gap between the two, and seldom do the two occupy the same transiting degrees as they did at birth at the same time.

A Jupiter return brings a renewal of our Jupiterian sense. Whether of adventure, abundance, compassion, extravagance, or higher awareness, it's the end of a 12 year period and the beginning of another. A Jupiter return can bring us liberation, new life openings, greater possibilities. That's why it's such a big deal. Every 11 1/2-12 years we can get a new sense of an expanding life.

I explained it in greater detail in the article The Jupiter Return Pt. 1 – New Truths, New Views, New Freedom and A New Life Adventure. A list of when different people have had or will have their Jupiter Return followed in Jupiter Return Years for Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces

The Saturn return, on the other hand, brings us finality, completion, a sense of maturity and how we have authored our experience for good or ill. It also brings renewal, but a longer wave, slower pace of ending an old sense of purpose, duty, limitation, or fear, depending on how we have lived our purpose to our own ends or not, selfishly or not, responsibly or not.

The Saturn return most definitely shuts doors and opens others. Whether we experience life as a slog, or expressive of our sense of what truly matters to us, shows us how we've made Saturn our friend or not. Saturn symbolizes chains and age, but also power and experience.

By embracing Saturn's virtues and turning away from childish things at critical moments we come to know our mature power to shape our destiny through wise choices. We all have to "know our limitations," but these can show us the way to freedom to do our thing in our way without fear or feeling like life has lost its luster.

Since Saturn moves much slower than Jupiter, we have fewer Saturn returns. Our first one happens between 28-30. The second one happens between 57-59. I explained a lot more about what these most important life periods are about in The Saturn Return. Of course, there are other Saturn cycles as well, but that's beyond the scope of this article. If you want to know more about how the various Saturn cycles work throughout our life to bring us out of struggle and into personal mastery, you can find out more about your power to shape your destiny in my book Saturn: Spiritual Master, Spiritual Friend which has entire chapters on the Saturn cycles and conjunctions, squares, oppositions, as well as the Saturn Return which elaborates on the information on the article linked earlier.

Now to what inspired this post. Sometime in the early hours of May 9, 2010, Jupiter conjuncted my natal Jupiter at 26 Pisces. In a rare circumstance, Saturn also was at 29 Virgo, the exact degree of my natal Saturn. It is extremely rare that both planets will occupy the exact birth degrees at the same point in time.

So I had the extraordinary occurrence of Jupiter and Saturn on my natal degrees simultaneously. This lasted 5 days, as Jupiter moves into the next degree of Pisces even though Saturn will be exactly conjunct my Saturn for a few days after.

Saturn continued to be within a few minutes of longitude of my natal Saturn until mid-July, while Jupiter moved into early Aries before it retrograded back into Pisces in September 2010. Jupiter then transited my natal Jupiter in mid-October, with a third pass at that Winter Solstice, but by then Saturn had entered Libra, well past any conjunction with my natal Saturn.

The second Saturn finalizes certain crucial Saturn lessons and ends what we no longer want nor need to live with or deal with even as Jupiter renews our urge to embrace adventure for yet a sixth cycle. I see the time when Jupiter and Saturn both return to their natal places as a time of hello and goodbye, yes and no, present and past, accented by outer events that show us the key elements of our life as we have experienced both the Jupiterian and Saturnian energies.

When this happened to me in 2010, it was a very strange time to be sure. I had to deal with elements of my Saturn return for many months before it made it to the second decan of Virgo. Though it didn't become partile (exact) until quite a while after, I definitely experienced Saturn issues and choices for a long time. I elaborate on how we begin to experience the Saturn return at Saturn’s first entry into the sign of our Saturn, even if they’re not conjunct at that time.

I'll close with something I heard a long time ago. It was said in ancient chronicles that the archetypal human life span should ideally be around 120 years. That's why the ancient Chinese were of the opinion that true wisdom is not found until age 60. They also knew that was the point when the specific birth combination involving one each of the 12 signs and 5 elements recurred for the first time.

So for those of you are hitting the critical zone of the second Saturn return, take heart that you’ve reached true "middle age" and hopefully can distill some wisdom out of what you have realized in your first 28 years that you applied, skillfully or clumsily, in your second 28. If we learn what we need to learn, letting go of old things and embracing new roles based in our wisdom, the third 28 should be a great ride indeed, if we embrace whatever Saturn and Jupiter have taught us through their dance in our charts the first 59+ years.

Aum Namah Shivaya! And from here we go on.....

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