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Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil - Greene, Liz (Highlight: 145; Note: 0)

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◆ Introduction

▪ There is always the same hero, the same beautiful princess, the same stupid giant, the same treasure

▪ before Christianity, evil was not quite so evil

▪ in Christianising astrology, we have lost many of the subtle paradoxes which this rich symbolic system contains.

▪ Most maligned of all astrological symbols is Saturn, whose face as the Beast is well–recognized but whose alternate face as the Handsome Prince is not often considered;

▪ Saturn symbolizes a psychic process as well as a quality or kind of experience.

▪ not merely a representative of pain, restriction, and discipline

▪ The psychic process which Saturn symbolises seems to have something to do with the realisation of this inner experience of psychic completeness within the individual.

▪ educational value of pain

▪ with the difference between external values—those which we acquire from others—and internal values—those which we have worked to discover within ourselves.

▪ it is only when the Beast is loved for his own sake that he can be freed from the spell

▪ In traditional astrology Saturn is known as a malefic planet

▪ Even his virtues are rather dreary—self–control, tact, thrift, caution—and his vices are particularly unpleasant because they operate through the emotion we call fear.

▪ devoid of any sense of humour.

▪ bringer of limitation, frustration, hard work, and self-denial,

▪ with wisdom and self–discipline of the man who keeps his nose to the grindstone and does not commit the atrocity of laughing at life.

▪ Lord of Karma

▪ he is the Dweller at the Threshold, the keeper of the keys to the gate, and that it is through him alone that we may achieve eventual freedom through self–understanding.

▪ That there can be joy in this kind of experience is usually not so easily recognised

▪ it is not enjoyment of pain which Saturn fosters, but rather the exhilaration of psychological freedom.

▪ This is not often recognised because not many people have experienced it.

▪ repeated delays, disappointments, and fears which usually coincide with a strong Saturnian influence;

▪ usual advice of patience and self–control

▪ Perhaps what is really asked of us by Saturn, and by our psyches, is that, like Parsifal when he finds himself in the enchanted castle and sees the Grail, we try asking why

▪ each delay, disappointment, or fear may be utilised as a means for greater insight into the mysterious mechanisms of the psyche, and that through these experiences we may gradually learn to perceive the meaning of our own lives.

▪ nothing stimulates a man into this kind of exploration faster than frustration, which is the gift of Saturn.

▪ chance, bad luck, bacteria, or a poor diet. All of these channels are the means through which Saturnian experience comes

▪ his favourite channel, loneliness

▪ gnawing inner pain of a sense of futility and purposelessness.

▪ destructiveness is connected with guilt and fear, and this is one side of Saturn’s expression

▪ It has often been termed evil and given personification as an external energy or person known as Satan—who is of course very close to Saturn, complete with the hoofs and horns of Capricorn the Goat

▪ anything standing in the light casts a dark shadow.

▪ no fast and easy method of making a friend of Saturn

▪ ancient art of alchemy was dedicated to this end;

▪ the base material of alchemy, in which lay the possibility of gold, was called Saturn, and this base material, as well as having a concrete existence, was also considered to be the alchemist himself.

▪ if one is persistent, it is possible to extract the gold, and in the end one may find, if the effort is made, that Saturn has a sense of humour after all—when we have become subtle enough to understand his irony.

◆ Chapter 1: in the watery signs and houses

▪ limiting and delaying influence upon the material plane or the world of events

▪ hindrances and the frustration of the even flow of material and emotional comfort in life

▪ spinal column of the natal chart from the point of view of character

▪ what the individual wants (the Sun), what he needs (the Moon), the style in which he goes about getting these things (the Ascendant), and the thing within the man which causes him either to fail or to be dissatisfied once he has achieved his desire (Saturn).

▪ volumes could be filled on all the known meanings of the Moon alone

▪ There is no chart which does not contain Saturn, however dignified and admirably aspected he may be, and there is no life without struggle

▪ the physical plane is the plane of effects, the last and densest of a progressively more subtle series of states of consciousness

▪ planes refer to states of being

▪ planes refer to states of being, or of awareness, rather than of place

▪ all coexist simultaneously at the same time and all the time, in all planes, and at the same point

▪ The worlds of the body,

▪ the feeling nature

▪ the mind

▪ the intuition

▪ are essentially the same as

▪ the physical

▪ astral

▪ mental

▪ spiritual planes

▪ event or mundane circumstance

▪ set in motion by an idea

▪ charged with emotion,

▪ manifested as an action

▪ Beyond these three stages

▪ intuition

▪ The world of feeling lies directly behind the world of events, and it is this world with which the watery signs and houses are concerned.

▪ astral plane symbolises the”wish life”or feeling nature of humanity

▪ the astral body—or feeling nature—of an individual man is often the world of causes for everything which happens to him in external life.

▪ largely unaware of the potency of this feeling nature

▪ emphasis is placed on external behaviour rather than on the quality of desire.

▪ As long as something is not”done”, the individual will convince himself that he has no desire to do it;

▪ the power of the feelings increases because they are forced underground

▪ into the realm of the unconscious

▪ From this subterranean position the feelings will force a man to action or attract certain kinds of illnesses or behavioural patterns which he does not understand, and which may hurt him,

▪ and which appear to be coming from somewhere else

▪ Psychic energy, like physical energy, cannot be destroyed

▪ they are the same,

▪ responsibility which Saturn requires

▪ sense is to be made of a watery Saturn

▪ soul of the earth itself is preparing for initiation into a higher sphere of consciousness

▪ There is an aspect to Saturn which is given insufficient attention yet which holds much of the key to his meaning.

▪ This is his penchant for disguise

▪ Egyptian myth of Osiris

▪ remnants of this disguise in the mountain goat

▪ sea creature’s hind quarters

▪ Roman god Janus, god of gateways, for whom the predominantly Capricornian month of January is named

▪ two heads—so that he could look backwards and forwards,

▪ no sign other than Capricorn which is represented by two distinct glyphs, drawn in totally different ways. This may seem like a small point, but those acquainted with either the esoteric realm or the realm of psychology in its deeper aspects will recognise the fact that there are no coincidences.

▪ It would pay to look twice at our hard–working, self–disciplined mountain goat for no one overcompensates as readily as he.

▪ Only Saturn calculates his defense, in the same manner as a competent solicitor, both to protect himself from the attack of the environment and to protect himself from the conscious discovery of the individual himself. Yet it is the individual who initiates the protection in both cases

▪ It is the free will of the individual, contingent upon the degree of his self–knowledge, that decides whether Saturn will be lead or gold or any of the intermediate states

▪ Things are never as they appear with Saturn

▪ whenever there is light, there is shadow.

▪ Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces and their corresponding houses—the fourth, eighth, and twelfth

▪ directly concerned with emotion and with motivations which lie below the surface of consciousness

▪ Saturn in any of these signs or houses is extremely elusive

▪ Saturn in any of these signs or houses is extremely elusive because the average individual is rarely aware of the unconscious emotional frustration which lies behind his actions

▪ he only knows that he is isolated and emotionally vulnerable, if he knows even that much.

◆ Saturn in Cancer and the fourth house

▪ Saturn in Cancer and the fourth house

▪ domain of childhood, origin, family, and roots

▪ it represents the base of the individual himself both literally—in terms of the home he has come out of—and symbolically in terms of his inner sense of security and safety.

▪ emotions and atmosphere which surround him before he is old enough to make a conscious and rational choice

▪ Jungian idea of the personal unconscious

▪ areas of conditioned instinctual reactions imposed by the early environment.

▪ Because of this association with influences that occur prior to the development of the discriminating mind

▪ any planet placed here is highly suspect

▪ it points to something in the psyche which must be first discovered and brought up to the surface before it can be dealt with constructively.

▪ The influence of this house lies like a great moving subterranean river beneath the surface of the later personality which is developed in accord with the Sun and Ascendant; and this river may be powerful enough to dominate the behaviour without being seen.

▪ Because it is so personal, it is that much more difficult to approach with a clear and unbiased eye.

▪ fourth house is generally considered to be the indicator of the father and his relationship with the individual

▪ fourth–tenth house axis refers to both parents

▪ problems with one automatically create compensatory problems with the other;

▪ father is faired by circumstances to be away much of the time

▪ There is often great emotional instability with Saturn in the fourth house

▪ often

▪ his influence seems to be more obvious in the houses than in the signs

▪ can rule the life with an iron although invisible hand by undermining the sense of self–worth and making it difficult for the individual to permit any close emotional contacts

▪ By denying a component which ordinarily comes from the environment

▪ Saturn’s influence forces an individual to create that missing component himself

▪ withdraw identification of the value with the external world and find its reality within himself as a part of his own psyche

▪ Thus the opportunity is offered, when Saturn is in the fourth house, for the person to build an inner sense of security and self-acceptance based on an understanding of his real origin

▪ This solid inner psychic structure cannot be destroyed or shaken by circumstance

▪ this inner strength becomes the inviolable possession of the soul

▪ the field of its expression is expanded.

▪ This kind of security on the feeling level is extremely rare.

▪ security

▪ ith Saturn in the fourth house is likely to have developed it on his own

▪ because he has had to.

▪ Saturn always drives a man to understand the nature of his pain

▪ understand the vulnerability of his own feeling nature

▪ and the needfulness which underlies his apparent coldness toward all family and domestic matters.

▪ very personal and intimate world of the feelings must be acknowledged and encouraged

▪ This is particularly difficult for men to do, and for this reason a fourth house Saturn is more dangerous on a man’s chart

▪ who has taken the time to descend into his own emotional depths, as do the heroes of mythology into the underworld, will display that rare integration and serenity which comes from a balancing of the masculine and feminine sides of the nature.

◆ Saturn in aspect to the Sun

▪ Sun and Saturn may be seen as polar opposites

▪ In mythology these two functions of the ego and its shadow are often represented as the hero and his trusted companion,

▪ Theseus and Pirithous

▪ they are also the hero and his longstanding enemy

▪ such as Parsifal and the Red Knight

▪ whose armour Parsifal later dons

▪ Sun is always symbolically pitted against Saturn on the birth chart, whether they are actually in aspect or not

▪ Sun-Saturn contacts seem to be the mark of the individual who has the opportunity to shape an integrated and finely edged tool out of his personality components and to put this tool to work as a servant of the perfected will.

▪ Sun-Saturn individual often deals with life by pitting himself against it,

▪ those things which are of value to him must be worked for.

▪ Sun-Saturn person is often more acutely aware of responsibility than other people

▪ Sun-Saturn person is often more acutely aware of responsibility than other people, perhaps more so than is healthy for his self-expression

▪ never really had the chance to be a child, and so he has never learned that naive trust in life’s bounty

▪ The person with a strong Sun-Saturn contact often experiences a kind of guilt if he is too happy or if he relaxes too much.

◆ Chapter 7: conclusion

▪ I wish to end with a quote from Jung’s The Undiscovered Self:

▪ I am neither spurred on by excessive optimism nor in love with high ideals, but am merely concerned with the fate of the individual human being—that infinitesimal unit on whom a world depends, and in whom, if we read the meaning of the Christian message aright, even God seeks his goal.