Saturn: Page 1 | 2 | 3 Sometimes we feel like Sisyphus - continually rolling the boulder up the hill and continually learning the same old, hard lessons... "Saturn symbolizes a psychic process, as well as a quality or kind of experience. He is not merely a representative of pain, restriction, and discipline... He is also a symbol of the psychic process, natural to all human beings, by which an individual may utilize the experience of pain, restriction, and discipline as a means for greater consciousness and fulfillment." Liz Greene "When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on." Franklin D. Roosevelt On the Lighter Side of Saturn... In a section of this site called the "Crash Course" - I identify the Sun, the Moon, and the Ascendant as being the three most important points for gaining an understanding of the birth chart. Saturn is also a very important point to consider! However, Saturn is the point we most often avoid out of fear... Saturn is important and necessary, because he provides each one of us with a much needed sense of conservation, structure, orderliness, and awareness of our limitations. Saturn provides us with the natural maturation process and growth of the soul. And who in the heck told you that soul growth would always be easy? Defining Who We Are Saturn's lighter face is the archetypal energy of the "Wise Old Man," who has gained wisdom and insight through all the varied experiences and trials encountered through the living of a long life. As the "Wise Old Man," Saturn helps us better define ourselves through the process of limitation. (or better said - the process of elimination) Think about it for a second... Saturn's Wise Old Man, "senex" energies provide the much needed counterbalance to the unbounded, exuberant, youthful, "puer" energies of Jupiter... While jovial Jupiter is enthusiastically shouting out accolades like: "Hey! You have unlimited potential! The sky's the limit! Go for it!" Saturn soberly replies... "Excuse me a moment, young feller (Jupiter), but there ARE a few realistic, practical considerations to be made here..." And often, we best define "who we are" by first determining "who we are not...." Such as: "I am 6 foot 3 inches tall - therefore I will probably never be a world famous jockey..." "I don't enjoy studying all the complex intricacies of the physical sciences - therefore I probably shouldn't plan on becoming a world famous physicist..." "A man's got to know his limitations!" Clint Eastwood  27k wav Overdoing a Good Thing (or Back to the Heavier Side) Of course, our sense of realistic limitations can be (and usually is) severely overdone. And then Saturn ends up reflecting our greatest self-imposed fears and our greatest failures. You see... old man Saturn also needs the counterbalance of Jupiter's youthful exuberance... Saturn's Placement The placement of Saturn in the birth chart (sign, house, and aspects with other planets) - reflects what we: fear the most... and yet unconsciously want the most... We've grown to hate it, fear it, attack it, and defend ourselves against it so self-righteously... and it's all because "once upon a time" we wanted it so very, very badly... But it's escaped and slipped through our fingers so many times that we now proclaim and protest (all too) loudly to ourselves and to all those within ear's reach - that we want no part of it. Gaining our freedom... However, by facing and understanding Saturn (our fears, limitations, and failures) - we can then gain our true freedom and our true wisdom... Avoid the "Wise Old Man, " energies of Saturn... And we will never be truly free... Common Saturn Issues To Deal With The Alice O. Howell "Bottle Game"... (Seriously... you don't want to miss out on this little side trip! The "Bottle Game" is perhaps the most important thing you'll learn on this site.) Summing Up Saturn Illusion - As we just learned in The Alice O. Howell "Bottle Game," the baggage, chains, wounds, and fears of Saturn (and Karma) are ultimately an illusion! Yep... our greatest fears are an illusion of Karma. They are fears through which we entrap ourselves with past experiences. We have entrapped ourselves with our old baggage - and it makes very little difference whether this old baggage is: from a past life experience or from our current life experience. The result is ultimately the same... Gray Times Granted... despite being illusional - the baggage, chains, wounds, and fears of Saturn nevertheless feel rather real while we're living in this limited time/space existence... And there are those gray times - when life has seemingly lost its meaning and we're sure that life will never be worth living again. There are gray times in all of our lives when it's a heroic task just to keep breathing. We feel like the Fates are laughing with great glee and mirth at our misery. And during those gray times? In the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt: "When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on." "In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order... we are caught and entangled in aimless experience... It is a moment of collapse... Only when all crutches and props are broken, and no cover from the rear offers even the slightest hope of security, does it become possible for us to experience an archetype that up till then had lain hidden... this is the archetype of meaning..." The Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious. Carl G. Jung CW 9 Part 1, p. 32 "One thing that comes out in myths is that at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light." — Joseph Campbell Hang on... and believe in the process... there's always a cost (a psychic price) to pay for gaining our true freedom, true wisdom, and the growth of our soul... "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free!" A little known Hebrew prophet Jesus of Nazareth "The Ancient Fear" Short excerpt from the book To A Dancing God by Sam Keen that relates strongly to Saturn's fears "The Glue Factory" Saturn and the Karma of Love Relationships Suggested reading: Buy them now at Amazon.com "Jungian Synchronicity in Astrological Signs and Ages" by Alice O. Howell Saturn in Transit by Erin Sullivan "Saturn - A New Look at an Old Devil" by Liz Greene Back to the Astrology Menu Saturn: Page 1 | 2 | 3