WHAT DOES SATURN MEAN ?
Saturn is the planet farthest out from the sun that we can see the unaided eye. It is also famously surrounded by its rings, which help in understanding its astrological meaning of limitation and structure. The movement of Saturn around the Sun and likewise around our natal chart as a transiting planet, is important for us to see how we limit and structure our lives. As Saturn moves around our chart in a 29-year cycle it often represents the area of our life that we experience the greatest challenges of tension, pain and delay. Saturn is the planet that often activates people to seek a consultation on dealing with life’s challenging issues. Just as chronic or acute pain is the most common cause for which a patient might seek a consultation with a health-care professional, so likewise a painful situation, feelings of isolation, depression, loneliness, experiences of loss, a sense of constriction and perceptions of blockages in life often bring people to an astrologer.
In the symbolic language of astrology Saturn is literally the foundation of our life. It is associated with the first, or root, chakra called the Muladhara chakra in Sanskrit, which could be translated to English as ‘root support’. An illustration comes to mind in the practice of hatha yoga. Any seated yoga posture or asana is supported by the pelvic floor or the ‘root support’.
In chapter six of the Bhagavad Gita, which is titled ‘The Practice of Meditation,’ the verses 10-15 teach a complete course of meditation and contain some of the most positive Saturnine influence. Those verses include the lines: “Those who aspire to the state of yoga should seek the Self in inner solitude through meditation. With body and mind controlled they should constantly practice one-pointedness. Hold your body, head and neck firmly in a straight line and strive to still your thoughts. With all fears dissolved in the peace of the Self, sit in meditation with the Self within as your only goal. With the mind controlled through meditation an aspirant attains the state of abiding joy and peace.” These sparse directions are ancient spiritiual teachings for all the negative thoughts and feelings we are usually filled with.
On the physical level Saturn moves around the Sun and around our whole natal chart in a 29.5 year cycle. Jupiter, the other social planet in astrology, travels inside Saturn’s orbit with a 12-year cycle. Jupiter has an opposite meaning from Saturn, and is the principle of expansion, fortune, growth, optimism, abundance and magnanimity.
As the foundation of our life, Saturn is the sobering principle of limitation, structure, necessity, and stark reality. Saturn is associated with time and has to do with maturity, old age, time-keeping, tradition, and ritual. Saturn also has a great deal to do with fear and the termination or endings of things. As the planet of constriction Saturn also has to do with: inhibition, self-discipline, focus, solitude, turning inward, responsibility, consequences, material limitations, lack, insecurity, vulnerability, slowness, delay, conservation and strictness.
Another primary metaphor for Saturn is the skeleton, which is a symbol of death and the transience of life. The skeleton is also the reality of our structure, without which we have no form, no stability, no structure and no ‘backbone’.
From a more spiritual perspective, Saturn is the archetype of the Lord of Karma. Saturn rules the matrix of time itself, and it is usually during a Saturn transit that we experience the harshness of reality in order to make us stronger and more real. The whole purpose of Saturn is to become aware that we teach ourselves about who we really are. This is why we read in esoteric teachings that Saturn is the guardian of the threshold.
SATURN TRANSITING THE CHART
Saturn generally teaches through fear, caution, moderation, delay, frustration, disappointment, and slowness. After encountering a sufficient number to Saturn transits we learn the best way to “handle” a Saturn transit is to avoid fighting these lessons. We learn to accept that, at this time in our life, things need to move at a slower speed (even a snail’s pace).
It could also be that we need to learn to live without someone or something. Saturn pushes us to work hard, to put our energies into practical, useful, and meaningful projects, and to live in the here and now. It works best to understand that these lessons are necessary not only for our spiritual growth but for our physical well being as well.
As Saturn moves through our chart to indicate where, how and when there is a need to review and evaluate – there is likely to be a substantial change. These changes can be painful, but can be looked at as a kind of pruning in our life, or clearing the decks to prepare for a new phase of activity. If we hold on – we only thwart our own growth, and cause suffering. A Saturn return can often give us the push we need to review and drop an aspect of our life that is not really rewarding but only being tolerated because we find it too difficult to let it go of. If parts of our life are inappropriate or we are acting in an immature manner, there will tend to be a crisis to help us resolve things through a new level of maturity.
Any significant Saturn transit in our chart, including when it returns to its natal position, brings about a questioning of our effectiveness, self-worth, and daily habits. At the beginning of the transit, we may simply feel blockages in our life. We may also feel bogged down by what seems like undue pressure in our routines.
The key word with the Saturn return is “seems”, because the nature of Saturn is such that the lessons it brings are always something we can accomplish. A Saturn transit is a time in our life when things we may have previously neglected or disregarded need to come up for inspection and evaluation. Besides major changes Saturn can also bring questions: “Why am suffering through this?”, “How can this situation be better?” “How can I manage this part of my life better?” “Why am I being held back?”
Saturn also makes us aware of all the extra “stuff” we have surrounding our home-life and our work-life, and may indicate a spring-cleaning is in order. Saturn transits are an excellent time for starting new regimens to bring greater structure and focus into a particular area of our life. In fact, we might be faced with life events that force us to do this, or at least provide us with the motivation.
During a Saturn return you may feel you have fewer resources available to do what you want to do. You may also feel that your resources have become limited or restricted as Saturn tends to narrow and focus our experiences. Saturn also tends to tighten or condense the structure of our lives which is indicated by the house and sign Saturn is in at its return.
Traditionally, Saturn is associated with the ending of things and the older way of doing thing. During a Saturn return we may try to hold on to the old way we have been doing things and unknowingly hinder our own evolution and growth.
For some people their Saturn return is a process of getting rid of old structures and allowing problems and limitations to point to a new way of growth and maturity even though this new way may at first seem restrictive and limiting. For some people the growth crisis of a Saturn return can take up to a whole year to complete.
Generally speaking, Saturn returns are times when we learn and grow, though they may also be painful or require more maturity or seriousness. They may signal the need for change in either routine or habit or both. By the end of the return we will have likely learned to be more productive, healthier, more focused, practical and mature about the aspects of our life that Saturn brought to our attention.
THE FIRST SATURN RETURN
The cycle of Saturn transiting around the zodiac and our whole chart is about 29 years. It returns to the exact position it was at our birth when we are between 28-30 years old, and again at around 57-59 years old, and for the last time at around 86-89 years old.
At our first Saturn return (28-30 years old) we are often in a time of critical choice about what to do with our life. These few years will be a threshold to full maturity, which brings with it some powerful encounters with responsibility. We will also be working through our inherited gender, racial, social, cultural, and familial security blankets. These include all of the people, places and things that we came into this life with. When Saturn helps us work through these inherited elements of our identity it is usually through having us slow down, and recognize the limitations and boundaries we have taken for granted in our life. During the first return, Saturn brings us through a deep critical evaluation of our hereditary environment. In order to be fully mature and to develop our complete individuality we must let go of our ‘attachment’ to the ties that bind us to our youth and the things we were dependent on in our young adulthood.
One measure of a successful Saturn return is if we are living as we know we are capable of and not as we think others would like us to. Depending on where Saturn was when we were born it usually coincides with changes in how we function in relationships, jobs, career, residence, marriage and becoming a parent. We may be having the feeling that we are being forced to change our ways; or if we do not make important changes in our life right now, that our time of opportunity may run out.
Anyone over thirty years old feels that beginning the third decade of life is a perhaps the greatest step in maturity and independence they have made thus far. Going through this threshold is often accompanied by lessons of loss, delay, added responsibility, physical, and/or emotional pain. However, this newfound maturity is almost always demonstrated by decisions and actions of a more fully engaged adult who is in greater control of their life.
THE SECOND SATURN RETURN
The second Saturn return at around 58 to 59 years old has to do with how to engage the deeper stages of reflection. This stage is where we are crossing a new threshold and entering the third 30-year cycle of life. In the first Saturn return we are entering the second 30-year cycle of our life, and the requirement is for intense effort to break away from our first 30 years of life and forge an individual path. At the second Saturn return there is the need for focused contemplation on how to move into the last period of our lives.
This is very typically a time of life where children have left home, where parents and relatives are beginning to pass away, friends are starting to retire, and we are beginning to see that we are actually getting older and that this life does not last forever. Our new position as a ‘senior’ can offer guidance to those who are younger and need the influence of wisdom, which comes from age and experience. As the first Saturn return takes a great deal of effort to overcome the past, the second Saturn return requires a great deal of patience and carefulness to set the direction for the conclusion of this life. The second Saturn return begins the last third of our life.
Between birth and 30 years old we are growing, accumulating and seeking position in the world. After the second Saturn return, between 58 and 86 years old, we are winding down and releasing what we have given birth to and accumulated. This does not necessarily mean we are stopping our work or relationships or engagement with life. In the lives of the great thinkers and artists in history these were often the years where their greatest realizations were made.
This is not meant to be a time to stop, but a time when our thinking and acting deepen and become more who and what we really are. We no longer are fulfilling anyone’s wishes of what we should be or have. Any reorientation at this time should be serving who we really are.
Saturn at the first return is the evaluator and mentor that helps us understand what direction our life should be headed. In the second return he is the reaper, and he reaps what we have been sowing for the second thirty years of our life. As the Lord of Karma he is the mower that cuts the field we have planted, cultivated and cared for. That is why Saturn is often depicted with the scythe over his shoulder to symbolize his position as the reaper. It is our actions that will be harvested, the actions we have sown in the field of our lives.
We should remember here that Saturn is not some external force or influence upon our life. Saturn is part the solar system as the macrocosm but it is also part of our inner world as the microcosm, as the ancient axiom says, “As above, so below; as below, so above”.
It is said in yoga philosophy that our actions are linked to the law of karma. The Sanskrit word Karma can be translated as ‘action’, and in the law of karma there is an equal consequence for every action that we make. This is stated in the humorous aphorism – Lord of Karma never forgets an address.