Saturn in Your Astrology Birth Chart
It is actually crucial in your life to have a clear picture of the Saturn destiny you were born with. Saturn in your particular individual birth chart is like a key portion of your destiny. He represents a totally key and inescapable portion of your learning task in this life time on earth. The whole point is, if you do not express and act out and then transform and heal your Saturn destiny with perception, fullest possible awareness and ethics, you will harm yourself – and all the others in your life, including those you love.
How do you achieve a clear picture of the destiny Saturn has set for you? First, you need to get a clear picture of the raw energy coming from the planet, Saturn: Saturn as a God, as a refraction of the divine. This is the Saturn that affects each person.
Then you need to decode your particular individual Saturn destiny. And you do this by the Sign House he falls in in your birth chart, by the House he occupies in your birth chart, by the aspects to Saturn from other planets, by the chart aspect shapes that Saturn is part of in your birth chart. It is a case of seeing the refined distant inescapable cold fire of Saturn through filters of sign, house and aspects.
You need to consider how you will experience him psychologically through your western birth chart. And you need to consider how his total destiny sets up your life path (including your psychology) from your Vedic birth chart. And in the vastness of the declaration of Vedic Astrology you also need to see how he appears in the divisional charts, what yogas apply to your Saturn, etc.
Your Saturn will be so different if he is conjunct Mars or in Libra, and your destiny will be so different if he is conjunct Pluto or if he is conjunct Chiron the Hounded Healer, and so on.
My Readings: It is of such help to find out your destiny, and discover how to heal or empower your own individual Saturn. Have one of my worldwide astrology readings which always combine Vedic astrology with Western astrology: www.starwheelastrology.com.
My Courses: Or, study one of my worldwide astrology courses: these are very thorough study of each of the planets in turn, in tandem with a wide study of the astrological techniques, always studied with reference to two charts: yours and mine, always with option for Western Astrology / Vedic Astrology crossover if you wish. See: www.mastervedicastrology.com and www.enlightenedastrologycourse.com.
And there’s always option of engaging in an exceptionally wide range of worldwide healing modalities, See: www.maggiepashley.com
Saturn Appearance:
I find it is always useful to gain a good picture in one’s mind’s eye as to the appearance of a planetary energy, or a god. This is the basis of Tibetan Buddhist tantra, for example: to gain ‘clear appearance’ of a god so as to be able to call that being in to one’s mind / consciousness at will when needed. Here is the traditional vedic depiction: ‘Saturn has a tall thin body, has yellow eyes, and is airy (Vata) in constitution. He has large teeth, is lazy, lame and has coarse hair.’ Parashara, 3-28
Now we can begin to develop a concept of some of the characteristics with which Saturn energy manifests in our astrology birth chart and in our lives:
Negative Saturn: The Greek Myth:
The Greek myth of Saturn, or Cronos as he was called by the Greeks, is useful for giving us understanding of the negative side of Saturn, but not the positive. Negative Saturn is a tyrant. When Uranus was Lord of Heaven, the Sky Father, and his wife was Gaia the Earth mother, Uranus became despotic, and so Gaia persuaded one of their children: Cronos or Saturn to overthrow Uranus, and so Cronos castrated his father Uranus.
A golden age was supposed to ensue. Remember that Saturn is Lord of Harvest. He is Lord of the Harvest of your Talents. He was an agricultural deity for many of the Indo-European peoples and for the Babylonians.
But In fact, the intended golden Age did not last. Saturn is our Inner Teacher, but our Inner Teacher can turn Tyrant. Limiting Attitudes can be embraced by us and trash our life.
Cronos/Saturn, then came to fear that his children would overthrow him, in the way he had overthrown his own father, Uranus. And so, Cronos started to eat his children.
He thus came to represent the tyranny of repressed instinct and potential and joy.
Rhea, Cronos’ wife, was horrified when this happened, and so she kept their baby Zeus from being eaten (by feeding her husband a stone wrapped in a blanket that he thought was the baby Zeus), and hid Zeus away. And when Zeus was grown up, he then caused his father to vomit up the other children, and then Zeus banished and imprisoned Cronos in the pit of Tartarus.
But Zeus too in his turn became tyrannical. Zeus slew the healer God, Asclepius, and Zeus then tortured Prometheus for giving the Fire of Heaven to humanity.
And so, Prometheus suffered under Zeus decree for millennia, until the Centaur Chiron brought liberation and the Fire of Heaven was at last given to humanity.
Saturn Significations:
Saturn is the Great Malefic. His Sanskrit name is Shani = He who moves slowly. Above all, Saturn is the planet of Time. Ideally time will bring wisdom and maturity. Saturn is the planet of Fate, and can seem to bring fated and unpleasant conditions into the life.
Negatively: whether strong or weak, negatively Saturn is the significator of Fate, term of life and longevity, also of disease, poverty, ugliness and perversity; sickness, old age and death; bad luck, misfortune, bad karma and unfortunate scripts in our Destiny, alienation and loneliness; darkness, doom and delay. Negatively, Saturn is the Miser. He causes pessimism, restriction and ill-fortune, limit and handicap, slowness or weakness. Prominent negative Saturn brings self-defeating attitudes to life, distrust and criticism of everything, detachment and coldness, a reluctance to find anything good in anyone, failure and scarcity, a miserly hanging on to things that are no longer useful. Such a Saturn brings negative life through fear of rejection. Such a negative Saturn brings the Letter of the Law rather than the spirit. In this way, he thus is the tyrant who devours. Such a negative Saturn also brings delay and depression, aging, melancholy and self-pity, worry and pessimism, fear and despondency, chronic situations, bondage and servitude where our life is beholden to the rule, cruelty and meanness of others, authoritative institutions, and hard work for little remuneration. Saturn can bring lack of self-worth, insecurity and miserliness and ‘marry for money’, subordination at work or in society. Negative Saturn brings dirtiness. In this sense, Saturn is darkness, death and sorrow, but he seeks to cause us thus to experience the revelation of the light of the true Sun. Saturn is the son of the Sun.
Positively: But a prominent, strong and positive Saturn can bring us great reward: objective practical realism, belief in work ethics. He can inculcate the person who is not easily fooled; care, thrift and prudence, but an ability to discard that which is no longer useful. Such a Saturn is not unduly swayed from what he believes to be right or necessary through fear of rejection. Strong, positive Saturn can bring determination, ambition, patience and perseverance, endurance but not stubbornness. Strong positive Saturn brings logical analytical thinking and planning, the ability to structure your life, to organise it and to strategize, promotion and rewards for hard work. There will be a positive humility rather than false pride and self-aggrandisement. Saturn has an ethic of service. Saturn thus brings necessary boundaries and structures and support systems. A strong, positive Saturn gives us the ability to endure despite short-comings. Such a Saturn protects us against failure.
The Role of Saturn in your life:
Saturn is the measure of our capacity for focus, determination, endurance and needed hard work, thriving in adversity, enduring hardships, and not letting lower ego need prevail over responsible living and the creation of higher fulfillment. The better the dignity of Saturn in our chart, the better his gifts will be in our life. Saturn in low dignity may shy away from needed structure, continuity and effort. We need to assess if any of the other planets in the birth chart are harming Saturn and making him too weak to do the crucial task that is his in our life, letting difficulties in our life make us weak or passive, letting the slightest thing upset or crush us.
Alternatively, our Saturn may be shamed. This may make us feel bad about taking breaks or enjoying ourself in life. Or it may make us feel ashamed about our work ethic and desire to accomplish. Saturn shamed can make a person feel bad about taking breaks from work or getting rest. This can make a person push themselves too hard. It can also make a person feel bad about the very desire to work hard and try to accomplish great things.
Saturn at his most spiritual can bring renunciation and the state of the Sanyasi. Saturn calls us to face the Truths of impermanence and universal suffering.
All the negative scripts and karmas that are inherent within our birth chart, including for example the declaration of our emotional reality in the Nakshatras. All our tricks, games, glamours, evasions, bullying and lies will be of no avail before the gaze of Saturn. All our most deep-seated an obstinate ego-desires, habits and scripts – all are barriers to our greatness that Lord Shani causes us to face in this life. None can escape having to face Lord Shani, Lord of Karma. All must purify and renounce negative mind-sets and behaviours. Lord Shani calls each of us to become a Great Soul. A Mahatma.
Saturn’s great tool is suffering, and if you have Saturn as your Atmakaraka in your birth chart (your ‘soul indicator in Vedic astrology), your particular call is to avoid giving out more suffering to others, and to experience suffering, yourself, in a spiritual way.
In this way, Saturn will reward Truth, diligence, patience and hard work. and his reward will be Golden Reaping for the effort we make. In this sense, Saturn is actually the highest of the planets.
Basically, Saturn calls us to renounce scripts and situations that are no good for our Dharma, or give false reality to the things of this world. And he does this through our experience of the suffering those limited or damaging scripts cause us, through the experience we bring upon ourself of separation and adversity, even through us experiencing darkness of mind, paranoia, terror, abuse, violence and wicked treatment of others and base values. These are the situations Saturn calls us to face through suffering and greater spiritual perception, so as to get us to change course and embrace a more spiritually rewarding path.
The destruction Saturn causes us to embrace is the necessary counterpart to creation.
If we deny Saturn’s call, we find ourselves in a ruined non-life of denial and delusion, of inauthenticity and falseness, hurting both others and ourself, creating great chains of endless negative consequences for ourselves and for others, that will run forward inescapably through time.
So, Saturn does have a higher and more beneficent side, but even this is stern and exacting, calling inescapably for the power of discipline, hard work, patience, perseverance, asceticism and solitude.
Saturn Represents:
Saturn generally represents the parents in the chart: sometimes more so the father, sometime more so the mother. Saturn represents: inhibition, concentration. Psychologically, Saturn is consolidation, perseverance, seriousness, economy, learning from experience, carrying out responsibilities and duties. Biologically: skeleton, old age, the process of hardening up. Sociologically: hard-working, inhibited or sad people, the proletariat, agriculture, mining, real-estate.
Saturn’s Negative Scripts:
Restrictive Life-scripts, Restrictive Self-definitions, Restrictive structures, Restrictive Traditions, Resistances, Damaging Inherited Models, Vulnerabilities, Feelings of ineptitude, Insecurity, failure, fears, worries, wounds, defeat, pain, denial of grief leading to a robotic life denied of joy and meaning. Meanness
Saturn’s Positive Scripts:
Connecting with pain, sorrowing, lost, victimized, depressed periods with a purpose. Facing up to pain, aloneness, separation. Separates the wheat from the chaff. The character-builder. The Healing Master Teacher. Serious, difficult and painful lessons.
Saturn polishes the values and principles cultivated by Jupiter.Saturn explains the leaden impact of grief, by descending into it forcing us to acknowledge it and explore it. Demons of shame and secrecy surface to be befriended; so, we are liberated. No short-cuts: we must go through the pain. This is the scary work of finishing off unfinished business.
Saturn Astrological Detail:
Saturn is the Ruler of the signs Capricorn and Aquarius
Exalted in Libra
Fallen in Aries
Saturn’s main element is Air, especially in Libra
The ‘Saturn Return’: the moment when Saturn completes an orbit round the Sun to return to the posiiton he occupied at the moment of your birth, is a most important watershed in any life. This is at age 29, 58 and 87. And remember, your third Saturn return comes on the heels of your Uranus return at age 84.
Here’s some more astrological details that are used to build up the needed good picture of your Saturn destiny in your life: Saturn is one of the ‘Separative’ Planets:
The ‘separative’ influence of certain planets has important effect, in that they have a tendency to remove or separate us from those things which they influence. These planets are the Sun, Saturn, Rahu and Ketu, plus the Lord of the 12th House.
The Sun can cause separation through being over-bearing or from having too much pride or independence.
Saturn through detachment or rejection.
Rahu through rejection of the secure and familiar for something more exotic, attractive or distant
Ketu through withdrawal, denial, introversion or excessive negativity.
The lord of the 12th house can also function as separative influence. Remember, it rules the house of loss.
Another important thing to know about is if you have a planet in yoru birth chart that is ‘Hemmed in by Malefics’:
If Saturn is to one side of the planet under focus in your birth chart, and another malefic planet is to the other side, then the focus planet is damaged by being hemmed in by malefics.
It is also necessary to know about Saturn’s relationship with the Other Planets in your birth chart:
Saturn is the enemy of the Sun and the Moon.
Venus and Mercury can refine Saturn to a degree, but in so doing Saturn can drain and harm them.
Only Jupiter has the power to balance up Saturn’s limiting influences. They are good for each other, and the great cycle of their movement in the heavens relative to each other is called the Samvatsara.
Here are some Examples of planets’ effects on Saturn:
In my readings, I assess the effects that other planets have on Saturn in your birth chart, and vice versa. In my astrology course, I teach you how to do this. Saturn can have a positive or a negative relationship with the other planets, or of course have no relationship with some of your other planets.
As a general summary, I would say that Saturn may be strong enough to do the needed work in our life, but the question is: will he find it easy?
Saturn is happiest supported by his friends Mercury and Venus especially if they are in powerful standing in the chart.
But, crucially, we need to look whether Saturn is harming them, which can often be the case, though sometimes he boosts them.
Conversely, strong Sun, Moon or Mars aspecting Saturn can, however, frustrate Saturn’s efforts. And he in return may trash them.
The Moon might fluctuate or be too disturbed or sensitive for Saturn’s task to go well and may make him fail.
The Sun may make Saturn feel authorities are against him. Mars may rush Saturn and trash his needed structure.
Let’s look at a few specimen cases in a little more detail:
Mercury and Saturn in your birth chart: Saturn can harm the planets he aspects. Saturn can harm Mercury by impeding or blocking or shaming communication or thought processes. If we look at the Houses involved then we will see who is doing what in what areas of life. Equally, Saturn may starve Mercury, for example in one of Mercury’s ‘Karaka’ or ‘indicator’ areas such as friendships, weakening your friendships or misrepresenting them or discouraging them.
Or if the Mercury Saturn relationship in the chart is positive, then friends may support Saturn with his problems. Mercury is research, learning and study – but Saturn can trash that with unhelpful scripts.
Jupiter: If Saturn is in hostile aspect to Jupiter in your birth chart, Saturn may shame Jupiter in his task of giving the Meaning of Purpose that we all need. Or may distort the spiritual path into dogmatic imprisoning spirituality in one way or another. If Saturn starves our Jupiter we won’t be able to see the point in doing anything. But, alternatively, Jupiter delights Saturn when he is conjunct Saturn. Jupiter gives us the wisdom, purpose and faith to overcome Saturn’s fears and blocks.
Venus: If Saturn is hostile to Venus in your chart, Saturn can shame Venus to take an unfulfilling path in life (marry for money) and create a ruinous lack of self-respect and self-fulfilling prophecy of unworthiness. Indeed, Saturn can cause Venus to lack the self-worth necessary to maintain good relationships. Conversely however, Saturn delighting Venus gives fulfillment in your chosen path. Saturn with Venus can of course give suffering and delay in developing relationship. Saturn is the karaka of delays and suffering, but Saturn Venus can give great commitment and appreciation of love once it is found in the end.
Sun: Sun is authority. Negative experience of authority can dishearten and disempower Saturn. Sun can starve Saturn by making him hyper-aware of deficiency, or: has to be the best at everything. Saturn may block the Sun, or Sun may agitate Saturn.
Mars: Mars can trash Saturn in terms of Saturn need for structure. Mars can shame Saturn into feeling he can never win. Equally Saturn can shame Mars into feeling he never deserves a rest, he can never accomplish enough. Mars amplifies, so he can make Saturn inferiority or lack feel very magnified, thus disheartening and frustrating the person. Mars is in a rush and may make Saturn feel there’s not enough time to succeed in accomplishments or in emotional areas, depending on the signs occupied. Mars may be so in a rush that with Saturn there he will rush, rush, rush, and never feel his wants have been met.
Proud Saturn: But when Saturn is in a standing in the chart where he can feel proud, this gives Saturn power to thrive and gives Saturn what it takes to succeed. Such a Saturn can achieve his dream or a goal, even if it’s a struggle!
The Waning Moon is a malefic and agitates Saturn, making the person feel depressed, dissatisfied, miserable or even argumentative, and that he can never sort his problems out.
I hope this exploration of Saturn and his realm in your chart and your life has been useful, and has whetted your appetite to learn more so as to understand and heal your Saturn destiny scripts. To find out much more about his Karma and his effects in your life, and the way he will manifest, and how you need to manage his energy, you are welcome to have one of my worldwide astrology readings which always combine Vedic astrology with Western astrology: www.starwheelastrology.com.
Or, you are so welcome to study one of my worldwide astrology courses: www.mastervedicastrology.com and www.enlightenedastrologycourse.com.
And for the option of engaging in an exceptionally wide range of worldwide healing modalities, see: www.maggiepashley.com
I look forward to hearing from you, and to working with you,
Michael
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