Saturn - The path to the essential

Saturn represents a principle of separation, limit and conservation.

It can be said that it seeks to maintain order within defined limits.

The last visible planet in the solar system is the guardian of the known against the unknown that lies beyond its borders. It maintains what has proven itself, the fruit of experience that comes from slow progressions, necessary for the structuring and consolidation of forms.

The Saturn glyph is composed of a cross located above a crescent ending in a hook. The crescent is connected to the cross by its vertical, which suggests that the opening is controlled and limited in order to align with an essential dimension of existence.

The superior position of the cross represents the primacy of reality linked to incarnation compared to the fluctuating desires and fantasies of the Moon. Saturn calls us to face reality as it is by accepting the successive phases of maturation leading to the adult state.

Saturn is often the unloved one, the one who sets the limits and knows how to say “no” to our inclinations towards ease. Facing refusal can plunge us into the depressive position, a concept developed by psychoanalyst Melanie Klein. This stage is necessary for the development of the child who thus integrates the limits imposed by his environment and gradually renounces his feeling of omnipotence. This notion can be applied to the whole of existence and to the different stages of maturation that run through our life.

The phases of maturation involve successive separations, hence the feeling of isolation that is often associated with Saturn. But the challenge of Saturn is precisely to accept the necessary separations while remaining connected, without withdrawal into oneself that leads to the interruption of the development process. The child who faces a refusal to satisfy his desires is led to understand that the parent who says “no” to him continues to love him, that the parent who shows him affection and the one who sets limits are in reality the same.

But the limits that were necessary at a stage of development become barriers to the growth of an autonomous personality and more generally of a freer and more open society. Saturn becomes the conservative, the Superego, which maintains the limits that have led to the current balance and feels threatened by any questioning of this hard-won order.

Saturn/Chronos in mythology feels threatened by the announcement of the birth of a child (Jupiter/Zeus) who will come to dethrone him and he prefers to eat his children rather than see his power overthrown.

Saturn is the ruler of Capricorn, which aims for the stability of an existing order, where the elements of the whole have a place and a defined function that guarantees overall harmony. But society can thus become an immense hierarchical machine where each part plays its role according to the rules which are established, but where personal and subjective expression is blocked. The complementarity represented by the opposition of the sign of Cancer symbolizes the necessary balance between maintaining societal structures based on common rules, conventions and principles and taking into account each person in all their humanity and subjectivity.

The tension between these two tendencies is representative today of the polarization between on one side the forces that advocate the maintenance of traditional structures, frameworks and the roles that they imply and on the other side those that support the liberation of the differentiated expressions of individuals, considering as factors of oppression all the categorizations imposed by the existing order.

In the age of social media, where immediacy, flashiness and horizontality prevail, Saturnian values ​​often have little place. This tendency is even found today in spiritual groups. In Elias' group to which I belonged for many years, control, protection, concentration and even the past were concepts with a negative meaning. Control had to be replaced by letting go, protection by openness, concentration by meditation, maturation by quantum leap and the past was generally considered as what locks us up and from which we must free ourselves.

I now feel the need to balance the two facets of existence that can be described as the complementarity between Jupiter and Saturn. Rudhyar wrote: "Saturn is the symbol of all systolic movements; Jupiter, of all diastolic movements. The first contracts, the second expands. The circulation of life is regulated by the interaction of these two universal and omnipresent Powers. "

To achieve this balance, it seems important to me to rehabilitate positive Saturnian values. And it is not only a question of valuing self-discipline, long term or reflection, but also of grasping their profound meaning. Saturn calls us to responsibility, which implies recognizing that what happens within us and outside of us is a reflection of what we seek to actualize, which is basically the alignment with the intention of our soul.

Saturn's role is to bring us to a deep understanding of what we are experiencing. The closer we get to the meaning of what is happening in our life, the more we can take responsibility for it by accepting what is.

Our incarnation is accompanied by an unresolved part of the past, the one that we have decided to face in this life. This unresolved past is the part of chaos that Saturn invites us to recognize in order to bring order to it. It corresponds to lead, the raw material of the alchemists for whom the work consisted of transforming it into gold.

The axis between the Imum Coeli and the Midheaven corresponds to the Cancer-Capricorn axis, and therefore to the Moon and Saturn. The Moon and Saturn represent the principle of form linked to incarnation. Rudhyar wrote: “Saturn forces the Spirit down into polarity, into form and gender. ". The FC-MC axis, also called the destiny axis, indicates our personal and collective place in the universe.

C.G. Jung said that what does not come to consciousness comes back to us as destiny. He thus pointed out the part of chaos that manifests itself in our life, as a call to become more aware of ourselves. The Moon and Saturn represent this chaos and suggest that the work we are called to do to transform chaos into harmony is the potential place of our essential contribution to the world. This is what the Midheaven indicates by recalling the Saturnian qualities of determination, persistence but also of awareness and connection to our essential being necessary for our elevation to the summit of ourselves, based on our personal center at the Imum-du-ciel.

Chaos implies insecurity and therefore, where Saturn is in the sky map, insecurity is present. We can thus understand the multiple defense and compensation mechanisms that our Saturnian part uses to reassure itself. Liz Greene spoke about the masks of Saturn which correspond to our unconscious strategies to maintain what seems acceptable to us, even if they lead us to live through a false self. But this false self is necessary when it is the only strategy that the person has been able to develop to adapt to the world.

A few months before leaving Elias, I told him that he gave us an image of himself that was out of step with what he really was. He replied that he thought he would not be credible if he showed himself as he was. Through this confession, he revealed the great insecurity that inhabited him. It seems that our Saturnian part, which leads us to create reassuring external forms, is conscious, deep down, of the illusion that they represent. True security can only come from within, through connection to our essential identity. The Saturnian clings to what he has built and what he has acquired. However, he knows deep down that he will never achieve the security and serenity he seeks in this way.

In December 2021, I went with my companion to Florence, which is the flagship city of the Renaissance. In my natal chart, transiting Saturn was conjunct the natal MC and opposite natal Uranus. Transiting Uranus was square natal Uranus. Uranus was thus indicating that the existing structures represented by Elias' group had to change radically in order to allow me to achieve a new form of contribution to the world with Saturn at the MC. The group dissolved a few months later and the work of deconstructing what had been built over the years then began.

Pierre Mevel