| remarkable reorientation to the world, with major intrapsychic alterations occurring. In fact, this period of life can be quite fallow because limitations and restrictions are occurring subjectively as well as externally. For Madonna, this period was not one of tremendous artistic creativity or output. Very little original music was released from Madonna during this time, only a few tracks accompanying the release of the film, Who's that Girl would constitute new material. However, the Saturn Return can be a significant seedtime psychologically, whereby we mature and deepen. This appears to be the case for Madonna. The musical material released in the 1990's—although it is unmistakably Madonna—is unhesitatingly more serious in tone, more seasoned, and more adult in theme and approach. Ironically, although Madonna's musical output was curtailed during the Saturn Return, arguably without the maturation that occurred during this period, she would never have been able to later sustain her popularity. The lighter, more poppy faire that she produced in her twenties would simply not have been as appealing or novel as the deeper, more mature works she would produce after her Saturn Return.
However, Madonna's Saturn Return could be evidenced by more than just her lack of artistic output, it inflected her entire approach to life at this point in time. Serious, conservative, reflective, more mature, Madonna took on projects and surrounded herself with people that were more representative of the Saturn archetype. Madonna stretched herself at the time and devoted much hard work and energy to David Mamet's Speed the Plow, which pressed her acting ability to its greatest possible depth. At the same time, with the Saturnian gifts of commitment and sobriety, Madonna became heavily involved in the fight against AIDS. With several of her New York friends infected with HIV, Madonna felt she was accountable to use her celebrity to help this cause. Madonna stated, "I want to do anything I can to promote AIDS education, awareness, prevention-whatever. I think because I am a celebrity, a public person, I have a responsibility to be a spokesperson."(12) It's the deep feeling of duty and conscientiousness that manifests from an active and well-functioning Saturn.
The Saturn Return can also affect the qualities we deem attractive in others. For heterosexual women, often the internal masculine attributes that are projected on males-called the animus figure in Jungian psychology-deepens, matures, and becomes more conservative. During the Saturn Return, Madonna would involve herself with two men that reflected this internal change. Distancing herself from Sean, Madonna would have romantic involvements with JFK, jr. and Warren Beatty. Simply the age difference between Beatty and Madonna alone—twenty-one years—suggested that Madonna was becoming more attracted to older, more wise, and worldly men. Relative to the spirited and irrepressible Sean Penn, Warren Beatty was more secure, even-tempered, and responsible. Although younger than Madonna by two years, JFK, jr. also reflected changing attributes of attraction and facets of Saturn other than age, maturity, and wisdom. One of Saturn's various faces has much to do with achievement, the status quo, old money, and the establishment. Certainly, there could not have been another bachelor available for Madonna to be attracted to that would have embodied these qualities more than JFK, jr.
Finally, Saturn and the Saturn Return allow us the ability to say "no," to define limits, and to end periods of our lives that interfere with our long-term ambitions and plans. As much as Madonna might have still have had passionate feelings for Sean Penn, she was fully aware by the end of her Saturn Return that the relationship was damaging her career and her marriage of Sean couldn't be sustained in the end run. As painful as it might have been for her, Madonna cut her self off from the source of much difficulty and stress in her life by filing for divorce.
On turning 30, Madonna stated, "Oh shucks, I can't be twenty anymore. It seems like when you're twenty there's more of an opportunity for you to behave childishly and get away with it. When you're thirty, you have to really grow up and get responsible." (13) And yet it would be the added responsibility instilled through the Saturn Return that would allow Madonna to grow in her thirties, through having a family, deepening as an artist, and creating her own music label.
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