Saturn

"Saturn offers opportunity as a path of discipleship in truth and in deed not just theoreticlly" -Alice Bailey.

"Beneath the many cultural differences which provide the superficial detail of these stories, there lies a bare simplicity of plot and character, for these are portrayals of man's inner psychic experiences, the bare bones of his subjective life. There is always the same hero, the same beautiful princess, the same stupid giant, the same treasure buried underground. The Beast is always the dark face of the Handsome Prince". -L. Greene

"Before Christianity, evil was not quite so evil" -C. Jung

"Saturn symbolizes a psychic process as wel as a quality or kind of experience. He is not merely a representative of pain, restriction and discipline; he is also a symbol of the psychic process, natural to all human beings, by whic an individual may utilise the experiences of pain, restriction and discipline as a means for greater consciousness and fulfilment. Psychology has demonstrated that there is within the individual psyche a motive or impulsion toward wholeness or completeness. The state of wholeness is symbolised by what is called the archetype of the Self. This symbol does not suggest perfection, where only the "good" aspects of human nature are incorporated, but instead implies completeness, where every human quality has its place and is contained in a harmonious way within the whole...

...Saturn is connected with the educational value of pain and with the difference between external values -those which we acquire from others- and internal values -those which we have worked to discover within ourselves. Saturn's role as the Beast is a necessary aspect of his meaning, for as the fairytale tells us, it is only when the Beast is loved for his own sake that he can be freed from the spell and can become the Prince...

...Even his virtues are rather dreary -self control, tact, thrift, caution- and his vices are particularly unpleasant because they operate through the emotion we call fear. He has none of the glamour associated with the outer planets and none of the humanness of the personal planets. In popular conception he is devoid of any sense of humour. He is usually considered to be the bringer of limitation, frustration, hard work, and self-denial, and even his bright side is usually associated with wisdom and self-discipline of the man who keeps his nose to the grindstone and does not commit the atrocity of laughing at life...

...denotes thos areas in life in which the individual is likely to feel thwarded in his self-expression, where he is most likely to be frustrated or meet with difficulties..

...human beings do not earn free will except through self-discovery, and they do not attempt self-discovery until things become so painful that they have no other choice...

...it is not enjoyment of pain which Saturn fosters, but rather the exhilaration of psychological freedom. This is not often recognised because not many people have experience it...

...repeated delays, dissappointments, and fears usually coincide with a strong Saturnian influence; however, there is not much response to the question of what these experiences mean and how they can be used as opportunities, other than the usual advice of patience and self-control...

...Perhaps what is really asked of us by Saturn, and by our psyches, is that WE TRY ASKING WHY...

...One has only to observe and individual undergoing a process of self-development to see that the outer circumstances of his life always follow in an immediate fashion the inner psychic changes which he undergoes...

...If the individual makes no effort to expand his consciousness so that he can understand the nature of this total unfoldment and can begin to cooperate with it, then it will seem that he is the pawn of fate and has no control over his life. He can only earn his freedom by learning about himself so that he can understand what value a particular experience has for the development of his whole self. And nothing stimulates a man into this kind of exploration faster than frustration, which is the gift of Saturn...

...Most people see their creations return to them as physical reality through indirect channels which appear to be someone else's fault; or through happy circumstances which we attribute to the cleverness of the conscious intellect; or through sickness or accident which can be blamed on chance, bad luck, bacteria, or a poor diet. All these channels are the means through which Saturnian experience comes, along with his favourite channel, loneliness. Usually these experiences are far more difficult than they need to be, and often very little is learned of the meaning or inner value of the experience. Only caution or practical wisdom is learned. There is nothing we hate so much as accepting responsibility of our actions and our fate, although man wants so desperately to believe that he is free. And when responsibility is taken, it is usually coloured black and called sin, which is an equally useless attitude.

Merely wanting a problem to change, and understanding the superficial reasons for its existence, will not make the problem go away, particularly if it is not really a problem at all but an attempt on the part of the inner psyche to establish balance or a more inclusive viewpoint. The unconscious side of a human being always strives for wholeness and integration and will work through whatever channels the conscious man makes available. It is only when his conscious ideas of what is right or suitable come into direct conflict with the underlaying path that he is unconsciously following that real pain begins, and this is usually the gnawing inner pain of a sense of futility and purposelessness. There are many men pitted against themselves, where regardless of what they believe they want in life, they continue at the last moment to do something to destroy the dream before it blossoms. Often this destructiveness is connected with guild and fear and this is one side of Saturn's expression. Equally often, behind the guilt and fear, there lies another purpose which is perhaps wiser and more meaningful a path than the one which the conscious mand has chosen...

...The nature of this conflict between conscious and unconscious, dark and light, is neither good nor evil; it is necessary for growth because out of it comes eventual integration and greater consciousness. The duality which a man finds in himself below the threshold of consciousness is usually very disturbing for we are likely to forget that anything standing in the light casts a dark shadow. God and Satan, whether they have objective existence or not, most definitely exist as impulses within the human psyche, but they are not what they at first appear to be...

...Modern psychology, which is paralleling more and more the path of the alchemists, also seeks to make a friend of Saturn although here he is called by other names. But if one is persistent, it is possible to extract the gold, and in the end one may find, if the effort is made, that Saturn has a sense o f humour after all -when we have become subtle enough to understand his irony". -Liz Greene/Saturn, a new look at an old devil.