Alice Walker wrote The Color Purple as an epistolary novel written by a woman determined to survive the cruelties of her life by recording every detail down. Before these letters are addressed to her long-lost sister, they are first addressed to God. This is because an abuser tells her to never tell anybody about her abuse, “nobody but God.” Celie begins her letters at 14, the year of the Saturn opposition, and so begins one of the most woeful novels of a spiritual captive. This woman bears not just her burdens but the weight of history. Walker’s intent demonstrates an innate capacity of all to recognize themselves as a radiant expression of the previously perceived as quite distant Divine. In the preface she writes:

So Dear reader, know that when I write you these letters, I am also writing to God. And because Mars and Mercury are in the last decan of Sagittarius as I write this, yet freshly ingressed into Capricorn by the time you will read, and since Mars is a primary time-lord for my year, and because the suffering we struggle through is ever persistent, since its time is true, I figured I should share something on this Saturnian decan of Sagittarius.

There are various ancient cultures that believe the soul occupies the skull, and the Horse is the psychopomp par excellence for many cultures as well, so in this decan we get the seat of the soul of the soul guide. There is no horse present in the Smith-Waite Ten of Wands image, there is only a man obscured by his burden. From the horse skull in Sagittarius 3 to the headless man in Capricorn 1, it’s apparent Saturn often demands decapitation. It is an almost universal trait that skulls are attributed mystical and magical power. If you have recourse to divination by skull you’d typically be some serious shaman. This decanic window precedes the solstice and like the others of a similar pre-solstitial, or pre-equinox period, a sacrifice is required to cross the threshold.

The children of Saturn are orphans, widows, land-laborers, hermits, secret-keepers. They struggle. In this decan are the grave robbers and diggers, but the suffering won’t end till there is a body in the ground and balance is restored. The Earth is owed a soul and when this card comes it means to collect.

Artistically, skulls feature frequently within the Vanitas paintings, depicting the fragile brevity of life. These paintings of stilled lives are the codifier for the passage of time, i.e. Saturn. More than a memento mori, the vanitas means to remind viewers of the inefficacy of pursuing the lush life, so their energies may focus toward a more pious daily existence. I know that enduring severe material hardship, or more abusive callous circumstances, such as those Celie survives, are soothed by authentic spiritual relationships.

Purple is a color of royalty but also of priests and prophets. When Celie thinks of what Shug Avery would wear, who she says is like a queen to her, she says something purple, “maybe little red in it too.”1

The Color Purple Steven Spielberg adaption was my Capricorn Mom’s all-time favorite movie and I think its because she saw in Celie a rarefied hero who succeeded her enduring ordeal, not with any flashy cape or powers of flight, though maybe some fancy pants, but with a superhuman strength of faith. And still her triumph is humble and human.

My favorite part of the story is when Shug and Celie disavow the white folks’ white bible and white God. Like them I lost all interest in God as a white man long ago, because as Shug says, like any other white powerful person, this God doesn’t seem to listen to our prayers. Shug says God is inside you, inside everybody and everything. We come into the world with God, and only those that search for it inside find it. Or it just finds you without you even looking, or if you’re unsure in your searching. Or certainly “trouble do it for most folks, I think. Sorrow, lord. Feeling like shit.”2

Once Shug left behind the old white male God she stepped toward trees, then air, then birds, then other people. But it was when she sitting quiet, still, feeling like a “motherless child” that the feeling of total harmony with everything came to her. And then my favorite, favorite part is when she tells Celie that God loves admiration and no she isn’t saying God is vain, just that God wants to share a good thing, that we praise God by loving what we love. Should you walk by a field of purple without noticing, without appreciating, you’d piss God off, because to Shug God doesn’t want to just be pleased but to please us back.

In the last decan of Sagittarius, the body and spirit come at odds, which is another way of describing a slave labor by which we betray our body for the Master or the Mister’s necessity. Celie was so concerned with that white man in her head that she says she never truly notices nothing God makes. Shug teaches us all about this decan as a face for evil inclinations when she tells Celie to get her mind’s eye completely off Man in order to actually see anything at all, because Man corrupts everything.