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“SATURN
WATCH”
San Diego Astrological Society, Vice
President's Column
I
am a veritable Saturn Petri dish.
My second Saturn return is less than
three months away. My progressed Moon
just passed over my natal Saturn.
This means that I often have a Hunter’s
Moon, which occurs when the natal
Saturn and Moon are close enough that
the progressed Moon and transiting
Saturn sometimes lock step through
the zodiac, often making the person
feel stalked by some fate or destiny.
And often they are. The recent Pluto/Saturn
opposition by transit formed an exact
T-square to my natal Venus which squares
both my natal Saturn and Uranus, constituting
the train wreck in my eighth house.
So I thought I might write a little
about Saturn. They’re changing
shifts here at the sanitarium and
they’ve loosened the restraints,
so no one will notice if I work on
the computer a little.
I
didn’t become an astrologer until
after my first Saturn return, so I
couldn’t then name the powerful
forces that picked me up from Chicago,
dragged me slowly across country,
and dumped me way out in Southern
California. When I learned astrology,
that was the first time period I examined
to see what in God’s name happened!
Here it is. At that time, by outer
appearances, things were good, but
I was restless and had no sense of
a future. Transiting Saturn then hit
my Saturn. The following Monday, I
walked into work without much of a
thought in my head. Half an hour later
my boss, whom I liked, said something
so insignificant but so stupid. It
was one of those little/big moments.
With an incredible sense of freedom
I have rarely felt equaled since,
I wrote out my two week notice and
handed it in. I shocked everyone,
but no one more than I.
I
wound up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast
(long story) and got a job. Saturn
moved slowly, stationing on my Saturn,
then retrograding. I still had no
vision of a future except to know
that it didn’t include Mississippi.
During that period I met many Californians
working on the same project I was.
They worked on me and I finally became
convinced that California was the
place to go next. This was a decision
I never would have made still in the
Midwest. My opinion of California
and its natives had been that anyone
I knew who had gone there, I was really
glad they had gone. Now I was about
to become one of them. In May, eight
months after its first touchdown into
my life, Saturn in its forward motion
again hit my natal Saturn. Once more
I turned in my resignation and this
time headed for that gold in the west.
It
wasn’t all that easy. Nothing
ever is. I have been in California
nearly 29 years. My life has been
financially rewarding and personally
fulfilling. I faced myself and others
in some of the darkest corners of
hell one can imagine and some most
can’t imagine. I continue to
develop a personal “ministry,”
for lack of a better term (although
its root, “minister,” is
very Saturnian), which is actually
a means of personal service that flows
across all boundaries of my life.
And I have wanted to leave California
every year that I’ve been here.
That’s all Saturn.
Saturn
represents so many aspects of our
lives, chiefly those that have to
do with structure, boundaries and
limits. But I’m the most interested
in the creative aspect of Saturn that
resides in those structures, the living
archetype of authority, which we perceive
as locus of control. It is within
us, how we act on others, it is outside
of us acting upon us, and most importantly,
the dynamic tension between the two.
So it is no surprise that one of the
symbols of Saturn is the equal arm
cross.
A
more ancient depiction is the Qabalistic
association of Saturn with the letter
Tav, the last letter of the Hebrew
alphabet. Tav means “cross”
or “mark” and its ancient
symbol was that of the equal arm cross.
This is the same cross contained within
a circle which is the glyph for the
planet Earth. The cross is part of
the glyph of every planet in our solar
system except for the two Lights.
(For Mars consider the ancient depiction
of a cross instead of an arrow), This
further indicates the shadow aspects
of not just Saturn, but the necessity
of developing “eyes to see,”
to see through the dark veils of manifestation
of each planetary archetypal particularization,
to the radiant core within. To trace
the full journey of Saturn is to trace
embodiment to its original source,
radiance.
Therefore,
to look at Saturn alone is not to
look far enough. We can learn a lot
by considering its involvement with
every planet, but I’m just picking
the Moon for purposes of this discussion.
Saturn is form and location of authority.
The Moon is the flow that vitalizes
and sustains the form, and the ebb
that evenutally withdraws vitality
from it, reducing it to dust. Saturn
is time and measurement, and the moon
is the immediate connection with all
times and locations.
Saturn
rules Capricorn and the Moon rules
its opposite sign, Cancer. The sea
and the sea wall. Which one ultimately
overcomes the other in spite of all
resistance, only to have the cycle
repeat again and again? And these
two signs form a critical cardinal
axis of the chart, with one end being
the deepest roots at the darkest point,
from which springs the highest expression
in the greatest point of light at
the other end. Saturn’s cycle
is roughly 29 years, the Moon’s
29 days. Transiting Saturn spends
two and a half years in one sign,
the same as the progressed Moon. In
many Tarot decks, the cross of Saturn/Tav
is on the breast of the High Priestess,
the Hebrew letter Gimel associated
with the Moon. The cross of Tav is
also associated with the ancient goddess
Hecate, the lone survivor of the Titans,
who was goddess (among her many other
attributes) of commerce and crossroads,
so associated because that was where
individuals and groups were forced
to work together, sometimes easily,
sometimes in conflict. One’s
authority rubbing up against another’s
authority. Saturn.
Part
of Saturn’s journey is to learn
that authority carries responsibility,
which I have come to view as the human
spiritual necessity recognizing and
adhering to both a higher law and
our obligations to others, which are
often in apparent conflict with each
other. Some would recognize this as
the two laws Jesus said were all we
had to concentrate on: Love the Father,
love each other. But then Jesus was
a Qabalist and it is no accident that
he was so associated with the symbology
of the cross. To work creatively,
not rigidly, within this dynamic tension
produces growth, newness and wholeness,
but it is always out of the ruins
of old structures, most notably, the
structure of rigid personality seeking
only to serve and protect itself.
So
now I approach the second big tick
of Saturn’s clock in my life.
There are so many things about which
I am totally clueless, and clueless
about my cluelessness. But that’s
OK, because more and more, when things
hit the fan, I have growing equity
in eventually remembering to look
no further than inside my own consciousness
for the source of that which was thrown
and is now blowing wildly about.
C.
G. Jung defined freedom as “doing
gladly what I must.” That’s
the goal of Saturn. Hopefully, that’s
in my Petri dish, too.
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