Louisa May Alcott: A Saturn

by Diana McNiff

Foreword by Safron Rossi, PhD

The planetary archetypes are personified by a manifold variety of figures, even one as conservative and leaden as Saturn. While we are familiar with Saturn in the guise of the Devouring Father and the Wise Old Man in myth and legend, there is another little known figure who shines a light on the self-knowledge, authenticity and maturity that are the golden gifts of Saturn and the potential in our work with this principle—the Kore or Virgin.

I explored the relationship between the archetypal Kore and the astrological Saturn in a two-part seminar at Astrology University drawing from my book “The Kore Goddess: A Mythology & Psychology”. Diana McNiff, a student in the Professional Astrologer Training Program, was inspired by the possibilities of a redemptive feminine face for Saturn and set out to study how that appears in the chart and life of Louisa May Alcott, beloved author of Little Women. In her insightful and soulful analysis, Diana shows how the rust encrusted challenges that Saturn presents are also pathways to the gold of sovereignty and authenticity that belong to the Kore pattern.

—

The Kore archetype is evoked by Louisa May Alcott’s (1832 – 1888) life story and literary legacy. The following examination outlines the foundational importance of her Saturn complex (sign, house and aspects), and how its dynamic activation throughout the course of her life (via Saturn’s transits around her chart) led to a cyclic confrontation with the difficult choice between living out the Daughter archetype – defined by her relationship and subservience to her family – versus the Kore or Virgin – defined as an experience of being “wholly one’s own, undivided from oneself.”¹ Her response to these pivot points in her development illustrate both the struggles and the triumphs inherent in the dedicated pursuit of acknowledging and cultivating one’s inner nature, which is a leitmotif of the Kore archetype.

Natal Signatures in Early Life

A broad spectrum of Saturnian perspectives and experiences colored Louisa’s life story, as described by her emphasized Saturn complex. Her chart (above) features a prominent Saturn in the 1st house (8° from her Virgo Ascendant), ruling the 5th and 6th houses. Saturn also disposits several planets, including Venus in Capricorn in the 4th house and the Moon in Aquarius in the 6th house.

Saturn’s primary aspects are:

An exact square with Mercury (in Sagittarius in the 4th house, also holding the important roles of Saturn’s dispositor and the Ascendant ruler);
A grand trine with Mars (in Taurus in the 9th house) and Neptune (in Capricorn in the 5th house);
An opposition to Jupiter (in Pisces in the 7th house, and dispositing her Sun).

As a symbol of authority, Saturn’s placement can shed light on early experiences which shape the way one engages with authority throughout life, both on an internal and external level. Every aspect of Lousia’s Saturn complex (from the exact Saturn-Mercury square and opposition to Jupiter in Pisces in the 7th house – to the tight grand trine between Saturn, Mars and Neptune which adds a flowing triad of intense will and imaginative fuel to the fire), indicates that Louisa’s relationship to authority was full of dynamic tension. Mythologist and archetypal astrologer Safron Rossi explains:

Saturn describes something of the parental powers in our lives. The daughter’s rhythm is set by the parental authorities (who I am expected to be and who I need to please) and is defined by her relationship to powers whose authority provides the defining contours of her world (whether positive or negative). The labor of our Saturn is a labor of coming into relationship with our authority. It is the retrieval of our being-ness, out from under the voices and judgements of outer and inner figures of authority. ²

Louisa grew up in the shadow of service to her family, under the care of two strong and willful parents who were deeply influential throughout her life. Her father, Bronson Aloctt, was a writer, philosopher and teacher within the Transcendentalist movement. He brought these philosophies home, running a deeply idealistic household where he was insistent on strict codes of activity regarding diet, hygiene and behavior. Louisa looked up to him intellectually and, given the cultural context of the time, she dutifully followed his lead throughout her life, never directly pushing back against his decisions. However, her journals often express a degree of resentment at his inability to financially support “the pathetic family,”³ describing frustration at the heavy burden of responsibility that his leaps-of-faith often placed on the women of the household. Her mother, Abba Alcott, was famously compassionate and always in service to others (her own family or anyone in need). She was also known for her strong-will and hot temper, which set her apart from the traditional feminine image of the time. These qualities helped her (eventually!) contain her husband’s often quixotic lifestyle choices, and prepared her to parent Louisa, whose emotional intensity and boldness also set her apart from her female peers.

Louisa’s father’s larger-than-life personality and controlling hold on her life can be seen as an embodiment of the two symbols associated with the Father archetype in her chart: a critical and service-oriented Saturn in Virgo in the 1st house and a Sagittarian Sun (disposited by a well-resourced Jupiter in Pisces and trine fiery Pluto in Aries). Her experience of her mother is also tied into her Saturn complex, as it disposits both of the Moon and Venus in her chart.

While Louisa’s early experience of her parents holds one side of her natal Saturn story, her own childhood behavior holds the other. Living during a time when “feminine” traits of gentleness and self-denial were prioritized, the willful assertiveness she expressed from an early age was met with punishment and shame. Her father wrote of her “deep seated obstinacy of temper,” which led him to spank and shame her for being too aggressive. When she was two, “the naughty little Louisa was sent away to live with her cranky old grandfather” during the final weeks of her mother’s difficult pregnancy.”⁴ One of Louisa’s earliest memories is her fourth birthday party, during which she was giving out cupcakes to the other children and realized that if she gave away the last one she would not get one herself. She writes of this memory:

As I was the queen of the revel, I felt that I ought to have it, and held on to it tightly till my mother said, “It is always better to give away than to keep nice things; so I know my Louy will not let the little friend go without.” The little friend received the plummy cake, and I a kiss and my first lesson in the sweetness of self-denial — a lesson which my dear mother beautifully illustrated all her long and noble life.⁵

As young Louisa presented her raw, unpolished self to the world, she was met with Saturnian challenges of shame, separation and lessons in self-denial. While these experiences are described by the whole of her Saturn complex, they especially highlight the square between Mercury and Saturn and Louisa’s Saturn-Mars contact, the latter of which is described by psychological astrologer Liz Greene as having the potential for “early frustration of the will by one or both parents…[including] powerlessness and curtailment of freedom [which] often occurs through strict discipline, early responsibility, and rigid religious training, or subtly directed emotional control resulting in guilt.”⁶

It is important to point out that several pieces of Louisa’s Saturn complex also introduced support alongside the more challenging realities of her early experiences. Her father’s respected place within the venerable Transcendentalist community provided her with one of the greatest gifts of her upbringing: a connection to some of America’s most inspired literary minds (including Emerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne) and a role model for becoming a successful writer through disciplined effort (Jupiter in Pisces on the Descendant opposite Saturn). The personal philosophies he developed through these contacts also set the stage for her parents to see and value her unique creative spark (Jupiter dispositing her Sagittarian Sun and Mercury), encouraging her growing interest in writing over the years.

Both of her parents also modeled a deep and compassionate commitment to service (Saturn in Virgo), which she integrated as a strategic channel for managing her inner emotional intensity (grand trine between Saturn/Neptune/Mars). Her mother’s guiding words served as a framework for her life: “Rule yourself. Love your neighbor. Do the duty which lies nearest you.”⁷ With this moral code as her anchor, she sought tangible control of her inner and outer worlds, pulled intensely between the duties and limitations of her role as a daughter versus her strong personal will and uncontainable need for freedom and creative expression. Greene elaborates:

[Saturn in Virgo has a] fundamental psychological need for rhythm and ritual. The careful ordering of external life as a symbol of the careful ordering of the inner life which should, and rarely does, parallel it, is often denied in childhood. If Saturn’s darker side is considered first, the lack of this ordered rhythm of both inner and outer life will often be felt later as an area of inadequacy and fear. A heavily structured discipline or routine in childhood is common with this placement…Chaos threatens perpetually to intrude on the inner level…and an almost compulsive ordering of outer environment often ensues…He experiences frustration for he has attempted to make tangible something which is essentially an inner process.⁸

An early poem, “A Song from the Suds” beautifully illustrates this experience, reflecting how she tried to bring tangible order to chaos (externally and internally) through service and purposeful work:

“A Song From the Suds”⁹

Queen of my tub, I merrily sing,

While the white foam raises high,

And sturdily wash, and rinse, and wring,

And fasten the clothes to dry;

Then out in the free fresh air they swing,

Under the sunny sky.

I wish we could wash from our hearts and our souls

The stains of the week away,

And let water and air by their magic make

Ourselves as pure as they;

Then on the earth there would be indeed

A glorious washing day!

Along the path of a useful life

Will heart’s-ease ever bloom;

The busy mind has no time to think

Of sorrow, or care, or gloom;

And anxious thoughts may be swept away

As we busily wield a broom.

I am glad a task to me is given

To labor at day by day;

For it brings me health, and strength, and hope,

And I cheerfully learn to say-

‘Head, you may think; heart, you may feel;

But hand, you shall work always!

Saturn Cycles

As we see from the unfolding of her early life, Louisa’s dynamic Saturn complex was the stage upon which her personal development was set to unfold. We can observe her evolving journey by following Saturn’s transits, which marked key turning points in her development. Archetypal cosmologist and historian Richard Tarnas describes the significance of Saturn’s square, opposition and return conjunction:

These transits marked with an almost clocklike regularity periods of critical transformation, maturational crises, pivotal decisions, and biographical contractions and stresses of various kinds. Transformative encounters with authority, with limitations, with mortality, and with the consequences of past actions were highly characteristic. Different forms of separation from parental, familial or social matrices often occurred, requiring a new level of existential self-reliance, inner authority, maturity and competence, individuation, concentration of energies, and consolidation of resources, and bringing a fundamental realignment of one’s life and character. Distinct patterns [are] often visible connecting one Saturn quadrature alignment period with another – seven years later, our 14-15 years later, or 28-30 years later.”¹⁰

In an ideal situation, this journey would lead Louisa to eventually establish healthy boundaries. She would find ways to meet her own needs while also leaving space to carry out caring and compassionate duty to others, which provided her such meaning and purpose. But no journey comes without its detours. Louisa’s life-story illustrates the common Saturn “traps” that often accompany the path to maturity. She overextended herself in the name of her responsibilities to the point of total exhaustion and physical illness, and often let others define her responsibilities and choices, rather than owning her inner authority to choose her actions.

Viewing her story through the lens of the Kore archetype allows us to view these experiences as the forge within which Louisa discovered her selfhood. It becomes clear that the Saturn “traps” which colored this dynamic tension served a valuable purpose: Louisa ultimately used these challenging foundations as a source of grounded inspiration, mining and transforming her calloused roots into creative opportunities.

The key time frames we will consider are:

*Age*	*Years*	*Aspect*	*Sign*
6-8 years old	1838 – 1841	Opening Square	Sagittarius
13-16 years old	1846 – 1849	Opposition	Pisces
20-23 years old	1853-1856	Closing Square	Gemini
27-30 years old	1860 – 1863	Return	Virgo
35-38 years old	1867 – 1870	Opening Square	Sagittarius

Age 6-8: 1838 – 1841 (Saturn Opening Square)

Between 1839 – 1841, transiting Saturn traveled through the sign of Sagittarius in Louisa’s 3rd and 4th houses. During this time, it made its opening square with Louisa’s natal Saturn and conjoined her natal Sun (purpose/spark), IC (home, family, inner/private world, foundational taproot) and Mercury (communication, writing, siblings). This time coincided with one of Louisa’s first profound experiences of a tension inherent to the Kore archetype: the push-and-pull between her responsibilities as a daughter and the freedom and creative opportunity that flowed when she spent time outside the bounds of her family life.

After her father’s reputational downfall (challenging side of Saturn-Sun contact), their resulting financial instability led them to move to rural Concord, MA (IC/4th House). It is here where Louisa first experienced the bottomless service she would provide to her family throughout the course of her life (introduction of Saturn labors via opening square). But it was also during this time that she began to develop a fondness for writing (productive Saturn-Mercury), and learned the liberating effects of having freedom to roam (productive activation of Saturn on her Sagittarian Sun).

She writes of that time:

I always thought I must have been a deer or a horse in some former state, because it was such a joy to run…My wise mother, anxious to give me a strong body and to support a lively brain, turned me loose in the country and let me run wild, learning of Nature what no books can teach…I remember running over the hills just at dawn one summer morning, and pausing to rest in the silent woods, saw, through a great arch of trees, the sunrise over river, hill and wide green meadows as I never saw it before. Something born of the lovely hour, a happy mood, and the unfolding aspirations of a child’s soul seemed to bring me very near to God; and in the hush of that morning hour I always felt that ‘I got religion,’ as the phrase goes. A new and vital sense of His presence, tender and sustaining as a father’s arms, came to me then, never to change through forty years of life’s vicissitudes, but to grow stronger for the sharp discipline and poverty and pain, sorrow and success. Those Concord days were the happiest of my life.¹¹

Just after this transit, Louisa’s mother wrote her a letter on her 10th birthday that reveals her growing interest in writing:

Your tenth birthday has arrived…I give you the pencil case I promised, for I have observed that you are fond of writing, and wish to encourage the habit. Go on trying, dear, and each day it will be easier to be and do good. You must help yourself, for the cause of your little troubles is in yourself; and patience and courage and age will make you what mother prays to see you — her good and happy girl.”¹²

In gaining the freedom and space to spend time alone in her natural surroundings, and in the quiet company of pen and paper, she found a part of herself that was all her own. Rossi explains:

For a woman to be psychologically virgin, it is a transpersonal necessity to dedicate some measure of her vital energies to the discovery and affirmation of her self, separate from her relationship to others and the sense of identity that comes from those other areas of life…Cultivating this quality of integrity rooted in our essential nature requires processes of containment where resonances of being, feeling and doing can develop. One form of this is privacy, wherein such recognitions can be made through inner dialogue. Containment is the necessary condition for the slow gestation of being that occurs in the deep recesses of one’s virginal interiority. This indwelling is the precondition for action rooted in authenticity. While paradoxical, this ability to act in accord with one’s nature is cultivated by stillness…and suggests that stilling ourselves in order to listen to the unconscious is itself a creative act.¹³

Unbeknownst to Louisa, this time in her life would become the beloved setting for the March family’s story in Little Women – her most famous writing (Mercury) which focused on her siblings, neighbors, home and family (3rd & 4th house topics) that would ultimately become her best-known work (Sun & Saturn) due to its embodiment of the resonant, collectively-rooted archetype of the Kore which it so masterfully brings to life (Saturn-Neptune).

Age 13-16: 1846 – 1849 (Saturn Opposition)

Between 1846 – 1849, during Saturn’s opposition to its natal placement, Louisa experienced a dramatic end to her childhood, a critical pivot-point in the development of one’s Kore consciousness. During the first half of the opposition, Louisa could be found in her first “room of her own” in the back of the cottage in Concord where she spent much of her time writing. On her 14th birthday in 1846, her mother once again gifted her a gesture of support for Louisa’s life’s work: a pen. Louisa calls this time her “romantic” period, beginning at age 15, when she was in touch with a creative muse and “fell to writing poetry, keeping a heart-journal and wandering by moonlight instead of sleeping quietly.”¹⁴

However, by 1848 the tides began to turn. The Alcotts had run out of her mother’s inheritance and were forced to move to Boston where her mother secured a job with a charity to support the poor, which in turn enabled her to support her own family. Gone were the days of writing in the back room and roaming free in the country landscapes, replaced by city-living that weighed heavily on Louisa.

As transiting Saturn crossed the Descendent, it moved – for the first time in her life – above the horizon of her chart, shifting away from a focus on home, family and development of the self toward a focus on the “other”. Louisa began reprioritizing her activities to meet the needs of her family. As it moved on to oppose her natal Saturn, she tucked her own needs to the side, imitating her mother’s commitment to service in an early experiment with her own adulthood. Rossi writes of this dynamic tension:

Sensing what her mother wants of her, the daughter hides who she has become in order to appease. Staying related to one’s mother can sometimes feel just as essential as being oneself, and the collision of the fundamental needs can present a significant psychological challenge…By hiding her identity to stay within the relational bonds as defined by the mother, the Kore is silenced in the woman.”¹⁵

Louisa wrote at that time:

Since coming to the city, I don’t seem to have thought much, for the bustle and dirt and change send all lovely images and restful feelings away. Among my hills and woods I had fine free times alone, and though my thoughts were silly, I daresay, they helped to keep me happy and good…So everyday is a battle, and I’m so tired I don’t want to live; only it’s cowardly to die till you have done something. I can’t talk to anyone but Mother about my troubles, and she has so many now to bear I try not to add any more. I know God is always ready to hear, but heaven’s so far away in the city, and I am so heavy I can’t fly up to find Him.¹⁶

This move to Boston represented a significant severing for Louisa. She was unceremoniously removed from her first experience of freedom (via the physical space of solace in Concord and the free time which led to her burgeoning writing interest), asked instead to carry a heavy weight of familial responsibility through mundane work of sewing and teaching. She also experienced a newfound separation from her mother as she watched her become the primary breadwinner outside the home. While Louisa’s own words above reveal her feelings during this period, Rossi explains the potential inherent within these challenges:

Our relationship with the Kore is very often fostered by our having been disconnected from our authenticity, sovereignty, creative potential or spiritedness — this is an important part of how she becomes a reality in our psyche. Psychologically, for the Kore, the painful experiences of separation from parental figures and authority (and the protective containment that the parental field often attempts to prolong) are actually in service to emerging individuality. Without the rupture of the primal mother/daughter bond, Persephone would remain a nameless daughter forever sitting in her mother’s lap. By nature of the fissure, the Kore is released and she is born from the space between daughter and mother.¹⁷

Through the lens of the Kore archetype, this time period in Louisa’s life becomes one of unprecedented, weighty value. In experiencing the challenging and painful rupture from her childhood, she is confronted with an opportunity to step into a new role, one which may feel unfamiliar and heavy at the time, but which may ultimately serve as a foundation for, as Rossi describes, “the gravitas that comes from knowing what we’ve been through. One can no longer indulge in idealistic and naive games with ourselves about what really matters, what we won’t compromise on, where we stand, what inner ground we will no longer abdicate, the pure inviolable truths born out of our suffering.”¹⁸

Age 20-23: 1853-1856 (Saturn Closing Square)

Saturn’s closing square to its natal placement proved to be another growth point in Louisa’s developmental unfolding, showcasing the transformation of her defensive response to a transgressive experience (another intrinsic archetypal quality of the Kore) into the strength that fueled her commitment to writing and inspired her habit of mining inner experience as a channel for creative expression.

In the spring of 1854 (after having found minor success in selling short melodramas that she called “blood and thunder” tales under the pseudonym A.M. Barnard), Louisa completed her first attempt at nonfiction memoir. Its focus was far from the rosy home depicted in Little Women, instead recalling a jarring experience she had at age 19 when, tired and trapped by her work teaching and sewing, she impulsively agreed to “go out to service” as a companion for the sister of an elderly gentleman nearby. Unfortunately, the gentleman had other ideas in mind. The post turned out to be a nightmare, lasting only seven weeks, for which she was paid only $4.¹⁹

She worked up the courage to approach a serious publisher, James T. Fields, with the piece. Vulnerability at its peak in her honest portrayal of her experience, it should come as no surprise that his response – “Stick to your teaching, Miss Alcott. You can’t write” (challenging Saturn-MC contact) – evoked an equally powerful defensiveness, stoking the fire of Louisa’s stubborn will. The power of these words stayed with Louisa, made clear from her references to them in her journals over the years as she looked back with pride after finding her great success. Biographer Susan Cheever writes, “It was at that moment, in Field’s office, that Louisa May Alcott became a writer. A stubborn girl who had to fight for every privilege she had in her young life, Alcott was inspired rather than discouraged by Field’s dismissal” (Cheever 112). Rossi explains:

Intrinsic to the archetypal configuration of the Kore are experiences of violation, [meaning] that psychological violation and psychological sovereignty are connected, for sovereignty only emerges out of an urgent need for agency. When we don’t know the value of our psychic boundaries or where they lie, these are the very conditions that lead to their testing and transgression. The transgression of one’s deep values, which is one’s virginal nature, is paradoxically the wounding experience that can constellate the forces of defense…The connection to one’s inner terrain makes viable the psychological grounds one needs to inhabit one’s life and move effectively within it…Abiding within oneself without having to let other in is, at times, absolutely necessary. We need psychic boundaries, and these are created only when we have a sufficient sense of self to delineate what is ours and what is not…[In accessing/inhabiting korehood, we] come to wield a sword, an instrument of discernment that allows one to separate truth from external judgements.”²⁰

Later that year, Louisa proudly produced her first published work under her own name (productive Saturn-MC contact). She gifted the book, “Flower Fables” to her mother that Christmas, along with a prophetic letter, connecting this moment to her bright future:

Into your Christmas stocking I have put my “first born,” knowing that you will accept it with all its faults (for grandmothers are always kind), and look upon it merely as an earnest of what I may yet do; for, with so much to cheer me on, I hope to pass in time from fairies and fables to men and realities.

While we might initially be inclined to think that Louisa persevered (productive Saturn) IN SPITE of external road-blocks (challenging Saturn) which came from Fields’ discouraging words, the Kore archetype opens up a different view. Rossi writes, “It is the Kore who personifies that force that compels us to resist outer influences and defend the integrity of our inner ground.”²¹ Perhaps it was precisely BECAUSE of this adversity that Louisa felt compelled to stand her ground and finally publish under her own name, a stepping stone toward her future success.

Age 27-30: 1860 – 1863 (Saturn Return)

Between 1860-1863, transiting Saturn returned to its natal position. As the guardian of the threshold to Louisa’s entrance into Korehood, Saturn was asked to hold up a mirror to itself, revealing the “symbolic pressures and ordeals that belong to initiation into our Kore nature.”²²

As the Civil War raged, Louisa sought to support the war effort by shifting her focus from teaching to nursing (Saturn in Virgo, ruling the 5th and 6th houses), enlisting with the Union in the fall of 1862. Little did she know at the time, this experience would be a pivotal turning point, ending her teaching career and beginning the next chapter of her life as a writer. Louisa arrived at the hospital in Washington D.C. on 12/13/1862 and worked hard for an eventful six weeks, nursing a wave of soldiers from the deadly Battle of Fredericksburg. However, she contracted severe pneumonia in January, causing her to be sent home to recover.

Upon coming out of her illness, she wrote: “Found a queer, thin, big-eyed face when I looked in the glass; didn’t know myself at all; and when I tried to walk discovered that I couldn’t, and cried because my legs wouldn’t go. Never having been sick before, it was all new and very interesting when I got quiet enough to understand it all.”²³ Ultimately, this physical diminishment would prove to be a persistent obstacle throughout her lifetime (challenging Saturn in the 1st house experience), but by April, Louisa was on the way to her initial recovery. She wrote, “I felt as if born again, everything seemed so beautiful and new. I hope I was, and that the Washington experience may do me lasting good. To go very near to death teaches one to value life, and this winter will always be a very memorable one to me”²⁴ (productive Saturn in the 1st house experience).

The “lasting good” which Louisa hoped for came soon. Building on her relatively recent (1860-62) success publishing pieces under her own name in The Atlantic, she was encouraged to publish the letters she wrote home while she was away in the antislavery newspaper, The Commonwealth. By June, she was asked to compile the letters into what would become her first successful book, Hospital Sketches, for which she was paid $200 and opened the door for the development of her literary voice and career as a writer.²⁵ By October she writes:

If there was ever an astonished young woman, it is myself; for things have gone on so swimmingly of late that I don’t know who I am. A year ago, I had no publisher, and went begging with my wares; now three (italics) have asked me for something, several papers are ready to print my contributions and F.B.S. says ‘any publisher this side of Baltimore would be glad to get a book.’ There is a sudden hoist for a meek and lowly scribbler, who was told to ‘stick to her teaching,’ and never had a literary friend to lend a helping hand! Fifteen years of hard grubbing may be coming to something after all; and I may yet ‘pay all the debts, fix the house, send May to Italy, and keep the old folk cosey,’ as I’ve said I would so long, yet so hopelessly.²⁶

The circumstances surrounding her Saturn return brings to life the complex and nuanced picture of Louisa’s Saturn complex. She travels away from what was familiar (9th house) through an act of disciplined service (Virgo) to the war effort (grand trine between Saturn-Mars-Neptune). Her dedicated connection to home provided an outlet for her creative expression during this challenging time period (Saturn in 1st + Mercury in the 4th), and ultimately created the circumstances through which she found her authentic creative voice (dynamic Saturn-Mercury contact) that would become the bedrock of her future writing career (Sun in the 3rd house).

Rossi writes, “We can’t touch the Kore without the Saturn work – it is Saturn that leads us to her.”²⁷ If we hold space for the possibility that our Saturn work is rooted in deep purposefulness, then our perceived afflictions or obstacles become pathways to the most treasured gifts within us. This is the beauty of our spiralic journey: even when we fall into these “traps”, we can see them as being in service to the development of Kore consciousness. The light of consciousness is kindled in the dark places where we stumble. These conditions, then, can be imagined, as serving the development of one’s gravitas: being thrown back on one’s self, so as to discover the reality of who one is as an individual.²⁸ That is a kind of soul-making shift, the discovering of the inner springs of one’s authentic nature, which poured so clearly from Louisa’s pen in the years ahead.

Age 35-38: 1867 – 1870 (Saturn Opening Square – Round 2)

We will close our examination of Louisa’s Saturn cycles by considering transiting Saturn’s second opening square to her natal Saturn (traveling again through her 3rd and 4th houses and conjoining her Sun, IC and Mercury). Louisa was ~7 years old the last time this transit occurred. Recall that during this time period the challenging circumstances of her father’s reputational downfall brought the family to Concord, a setting where her two great life commitments – writing and service to her family – began to surface.

30 years later, we see these same themes echoing across time. In 1867, publisher Thomas Niles asked her to write a book for young girls and offered her a job in Boston editing a children’s magazine (natal Saturn ruling the 5th house, Sun in the 3rd house of siblings, and chart ruler in the 4th house). At first uninterested in the book concept, she took the editing job and moved to a garret apartment in Boston that she adored, once again reveling in a “room of her own”. In January of 1868 she wrote:

The year begins well and cheerfully for us all. Father and mother comfortable at home; Anna and family settled in Chelsea; May busy with her drawing classes…I am in my little room, spending busy, happy days, because I have quiet, freedom, work enough and strength to do it…My way seems clear for the year if I can only keep well. I want to realize my dream of supporting my family and being perfectly independent. Heavenly hope!²⁹

What Louisa did not know is that Niles also offered her father a book deal if he could convince Louisa to write the book for girls. By February, claiming family need (his tried and true strategy), her father summoned Louisa home to Concord, where she begrudgingly began writing Little Women.

Over the coming months, she became inspired and energized by the book, which ultimately became a fictionalized account of Louisa’s childhood featuring the everyday heroine, Jo March. A tacit embodiment of Korehood, Jo was a determined, brazen and independent woman living in an era when feminine ideals did not include such characteristics. As we have seen, these qualities were shared by Louisa herself, and while Jo was not her strictly biographical image, she lived her life in an idealized parallel. Jo was grounded in herself and accepted as she was, which paved the path to her happiness and fulfillment. Louisa, on the other hand, faced a harsher reality, living in familial and cultural context within which when her assertive authentic self-expression was met instead with punishment and shame. While Jo’s version is a powerful and positive presentation of the Kore archetype that still resonates with women and girls today, we see that Louisa’s corresponding life showcases how our more challenging transgressive experiences hold their own value and power upon the Kore’s path of unfolding.

In August, Louisa received a publishing contract that allowed her to keep her copyright, paving the way for the beginnings of her financial success through Little Women’s royalties. She wrote of the proof: “It reads better than I expected. Not a bit sensational, but simple and true, for we really lived most of it; and if it succeeds that will be the reason of it.”³⁰ And succeed it did. Little Women was an immediate hit after its September publication, launching Louisa’s career and finally enabling her to pay her family’s immediate debts and begin to invest the leftover money for future growth. The disciplined effort of mining her authentic, personal lived experience through her writing (Saturn in Virgo in the 1st square Mercury in the 4th) produced a work of creative expression that touched a chord in the collective (Saturn trine Neptune). Greene writes of individuals with Saturn-Neptune contacts:

The power of any work of art seems to lie in part in its capacity to evoke or constellate the collective psyche, and in acquiring this power the artist must first sacrifice his personality as an isolated unit so that he can become, at least partially, an emissary or transmitter of group feeling…He may be unaware of the slow purification of his feeling nature which occurs below the surface through each act of sacrifice and each contact with mass emotion…Thus art becomes an alchemical process by which the artist is slowly transformed and redeemed and in so doing, redeems others.³¹

Louisa’s simple review of her work in her journal says it all: “Much interest in my little women who seem to find friends by their truth to life.”³²

Conclusion

The chaos of Louisa’s childhood motivated her staunch commitment to support her family financially, guiding her toward disciplined work in many forms – first through teaching, sewing and nursing, and ultimately through an intense dedication to building a career as a writer. Through concerted effort, and an absolute unwillingness to give up, she plumbed the depths of the suffering and joys of her life to feed her spark. Over and over, she carved out sacred space for solitude – writing furiously in attics and back-rooms as a child, and as she grew older and independent, her own apartments in Boston or travels in Europe – a healthy distance from the family responsibilities that she so dutifully carried. She locked herself away in these spaces, separating from her daily responsibilities and relationships, committing to herself and her writing. Louisa’s Saturn in Virgo shines through “the process of inner synthesis, purification, ordering, or gestation which precedes the external and objective expression of the person in the world”³³ In these moments of solitude, Louisa slowly but surely found her voice. By creating the space within herself in the throes of her complex world, she creatively explored the limitations of her life, achieving the poetic goal she set forth for herself at age 10:

I do not ask for any crown

But that which all may win

Nor seek to conquer any world

Except the one within.

Be thou my guide until I find,

Led by a tender hand,

Thy happy kingdom in myself

And dare to take command.³⁴

Through her writing, Alcott touched her own essential nature, and her readers receive the gift of that reflective process. While her reality did not allow her to live exactly as she wished, her novels depict the idealized vision she held within her. Through Jo March, Louisa found the healthy balance between disorder and order – a flexible, healthful balance between the two, which she so longed for in her own life (Saturn in Virgo). As Jo lived out Louisa’s deepest inner dreams, she found her own form of earthly satisfaction in proving – time and again – the extent of her competence and capacity to achieve whatever task she set her mind to. Her Saturnian devotion ultimately became the defining characteristic of her most visible personas: the primary financial supporter of her entire extended family, and a literary master whose legacy has gifted a model of Korehood for generations to come.

Author Bio

Diana McNiff is a Year 3 student in Astrology University’s Professional Astrologer Training Program. In 2023, she founded Threshold Astrology to provide practical, personalized and professional astrological resources to guide clients across whatever threshold lies ahead – no matter how big or small – as they seek to unearth and explore their fullest potential.

Works Cited

Alcott, Louisa May. Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters, And Journals (Classic Edition).
Cheever, Susan. Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography. Simon & Schuster, 2010.
Greene, Liz. Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil. 2nd ed., Weiser Books, 2011.
Rossi, Safron. “Saturn and the Kore Goddess.” Astrology University, 2023,
Rossi, Safron. The Kore Goddess: A Mythology & Psychology. Winter Press, 2021.
Tarnas, Richard. Cosmos & Psyche: Intimations of a New World View. Viking, 2006.

Footnotes

Rossi, Safron. “Saturn and the Kore Goddess.” Astrology University, 2023, https://www.astrologyuniversity.com/shop/search-by-astrologer/safron-rossi/saturn-kore-goddess/. ↩︎
Rossi, Saturn & Kore.
↩︎
Alcott, Louisa May. Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters, And Journals (Classic Edition). pp. 82. ↩︎
Cheever, Susan. Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography. Simon & Schuster, 2010, pp. 7.
↩︎
Alcott, Journals, 13. ↩︎
Greene, Liz. Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil. 2nd ed., Weiser Books, 2011, pp. 118. ↩︎
Alcott, Journals, 38. ↩︎
Greene, Saturn, 35. ↩︎
Alcott, Journals, 37.. ↩︎
Tarnas, Richard. Cosmos & Psyche: Intimations of a New World View. Viking, 2006, pp. 125. ↩︎
Alcott, Journals, 15-16. ↩︎
Alcott, Journals, 10. ↩︎
Rossi, Safron. The Kore Goddess: A Mythology & Psychology. Winter Press, 2021, pp. 31-2 & 69-70. ↩︎
Alcott, Journals, 38. ↩︎
Rossi, Kore Goddess, 142. ↩︎
Alcott, Journals, 40. ↩︎
Rossi, Saturn & Kore. ↩︎
Rossi, Saturn & Kore. ↩︎
Cheever, Louisa, 100-01. ↩︎
Rossi, Kore Goddess, 94 & 103. ↩︎
Rossi, Saturn & Kore. ↩︎
Rossi, Saturn & Kore. ↩︎
Alcott, Journals, 108. ↩︎
Alcott, Journals, 110. ↩︎
Cheever, Louisa, 162. ↩︎
Alcott, Journals, 113-4. ↩︎
Rossi, Saturn & Kore. ↩︎
Rossi, Saturn & Kore. ↩︎
Alcott, Journals, 143. ↩︎
Alcott, Journals, 148. ↩︎
Greene, Saturn, 139. ↩︎
Alcott, Journals, 204. ↩︎
Greene, Saturn, 41. ↩︎
Alcott, Journals, 18. ↩︎