Saturn restricts for the purpose of forcing evolution. Tyler has Saturn in 5th house. Whenever and wherever he seeks out gratification (5th house), it will not fulfill him unless it serves to further evolution. This would be thought of by many as a difficult placement, for the cultural attitude toward gratification is that it is often superficial, and often goes against the furtherance of the growth of consciousness.
So Tyler seeks serious fun – deep fun – profound fun. The word “fun” itself carries a superficial flavor. It would be better to say that Tyler seeks an enjoyment of life that drinks life in deeply and completely, to its very roots.
The Omega symbol for Tyler’s Saturn is “an artist creating fragile works out of paper.” And so we see here a kind of play that, even though serious and profound (Saturn), is not focused on that which is lasting, or serving the marketplace, but which is created out of simple and easy-to-work-with materials. Who care’s if it’s ephemeral? They are meant to bring profundity to their time and place. These works of art may be fixed in time by a camera, but they themselves are soft, vulnerable. It seems to me to be about teaching (Saturn) people to play with what is at hand, and to do so in a truly creative way that leads inward.
My Saturn is in 12th house. You always feel that wherever your Saturn is is a place you are compelled back to, can’t forget, are held to, that you must stay there to learn something. Saturn haunts you until you deal with it. The 12th house is the deep inner self. I am doomed to never be able to really shut it out. Of course, no one can ultimately shut out their deep self, even though they try to because they fear it. But with me its always talking loudly. No thickness of soundproof walls, no amount of other distractions can shut it up.
And Saturn energy is slow – it makes us be patient and wait for it. Tyler, for instance, can’t really just go out and have fun – well, yes, he can, and does. But the REAL fun he’s looking for is something more profound, something always calling to him. A profound play that makes him wait for it to happen, that compels him to be patient as he gradually over times learns how to engage it.
My Mercury/Uranus conjunction in Gemini does not interface well, in a sense, with my Saturn in 12th, because my mind’s racing around in the speedy sign of Gemini, empowered by the untrammeled freedom of Uranus, is not conducive to the patience and slowness of those Saturnian messages coming from my deep self. In the past I have – been badly frustrated by messages I don’t understand, but I’m sure Saturn has encoded them, making them difficult to understand, to help insure that it would take me time to figure them out, so that in the process I would eventually get them DEEPLY.
Tyler has his Saturn conjunct Moon. “Must” is an apt keyword for Saturn. Saturn conjunct Moon says, “you MUST allow yourself to feel, you MUST be vulnerable. No matter how much it hurts, you MUST stay open.”
I have Saturn conjunct Pluto – a difficult combination to read, for Pluto intensifies everything it touches and can signify battles. And so it often feels to me that my Saturn, empowered by the fierce intensity of Pluto, is battling my limits – for the purpose of inevitably breaking them down. What makes Saturn/Pluto difficult to read is that it is not easy to tell how it will play out. The 12th house is the house of self-undoing, and it is my Pluto which is the closest planet to the cusp, and therefore the dominant one in the house. I sometimes feel an intense compulsion to undo myself, the irony being that this is often exactly what leads to liberation. In other words, I do something that seems to be totally against my best interests, which in the end proves to be something that helps me immensely.
Sandra has Saturn in her first house. She feels restricted by her identity. No matter what a Saturn in first house person identifies with, they’ll always feel limited by it. Saturn in the first would rather throw off all identity and be a free spirit, but Saturn says, “no, you can’t do that now in this life – you must define and give form to yourself.” Saturn in first house learns much from restriction. Of course, we all learn much from restriction, but Saturn in 1st is focused on learning two things: 1) that the person himself is the one who set up their personal limitations to begin with, and did so for a spiritual purpose, and 2) that those limitations can be modified, changed, or expanded, but it will require work and growth to do so.
We might say that the first house is the most problematic one in the whole chart, for once identity can be let go of, all suffering ceases and one enters a realm of total bliss. But identity is afraid to die, afraid to give itself up. Saturn in first house says, “one way or the other, you have to die. You may do it slowly or quickly, but if you hold on too desperately to identity, you will only turn its screws tighter and tighter until it inevitably collapses on itself. However it happens, you WILL let go.
And so on this beautiful autumn day the first of the Saturn Chronicles come’s to an end. Blessings to all, and to you too, Saturn.
John