This newsletter is part of a series on the magical-creative properties of the planets, as well as how to begin embodying them yourself.
So much of astrological study nowadays is confined to book learning but my understanding of the planets improved dramatically when I began engaging them directly. By doing so, I could conjure feelings, deeply-impressed images and great meaning behind the words I used to describe them. I could begin noticing Mercury or Mars acting in my daily life, bringing more of what I needed into my life through activities, planets, colors.
This newsletter offers you a portal to have your own connection to Saturn. It’s one thing to say Saturn is about deep thought or death but it’s another to be in the midst of a solitary study session or harvesting the last produce from your garden and think “Saturn would like this too”.
If you want help connecting to your unique Saturn, and the rest of yourself through the stars, my books are currently open! My readings are meant to lift you up, to secure you against difficulty and remind you that there is always space, creativity, play. Book now to remember your place in the cosmos.
This writing is intentionally not technical and meant to be understood even by those who have not studied astrology but want to connect more deeply to their world and themselves. Remember: these planets all describe fundamental parts of us. Whether you try to or not, you embody Saturn everyday. By learning what functions and activities with which Saturn corresponds, you learn more about yourself and your life, with nothing added but attention.
By reaching this felt understanding of Saturn (and the other planets), I believe we are also able to be better magicians and artists— two categories whose differences are slowly shrinking in my eyes. Do we not need the same centeredness and momentum to create a piece of art as we do to create a spell or gaze into the future? Aren’t we vessels for something beyond our small self in both? This essay also delves into where in your creative-spiritual practice a dose of Saturn could serve you well.
Not Conducive to Life
Saturn, along with Mars, is what is called a “malefic” planet. Abu Ma’shar says Saturn is called the Great Malefic because “it is less conducive to life” than even Mars. All the way back to Ancient Mesopotamia, the birthplace of astrology, Saturn, despite their syncretization with agriculture and cultivation, was considered an ill omen. A malefic generally holds all the unpleasant, destructive, and subjectively difficult aspects of life on earth. I have heard them described as that which brings disruptive change as well as what bring things to an end— both phenomena we humans experience as painful. Even when something we have outgrown is gone, there is a mourning and grieving we must undergo. The life in what was previously alive is gone and we must reckon with the lack it brings to our life.
But malefic, remember, does not mean Saturn is evil or malicious. Its tools are just more sparse and unforgiving than what usually feels comfortable to us. One way to understand Saturn is through its temperament. Each planet has its own quality— hot or cold; wet or dry. Saturn is of the nature of extreme cold and dryness, like a barren tundra or a mine shaft buried deep into the earth. While wetness is what connects and brings life, dryness separates and deadens.
One important signification of Saturn, then, is death, along with illness and old age, those that often precipitate and remind us of the dead. Abu Ma’shar also calls Saturn “the scythe-bearer,” reminiscent of both the grim reaper and the harvester beheading his crops at reaping time. Cornelius Agrippa connects Saturn to what is “stinking, dark, subterranean, religious, and sad” and “places that are obscure and horrible” like “graveyards, tombs, homes deserted by men and old and ready to fall down”.1 All of these places either serve as a final resting place for those who have passed or remind us of endings with their desertion and neglect. We face Saturn at the somberness of a funeral or visiting an abandoned neighborhood.
But, just like Saturn, death is often misunderstood. Dr. Ali Olomi reminds us “[d]eath is not evil, but it is treated as evil by mortals”.2 Life’s value, I would say, is in no small part to its finiteness; death comes for us all and this truth need not be something to fight against. That’s doesn’t mean we take a sunny view on death or expect us to only respond with joy towards it— Saturn believes we have something vital to gain by sinking into the feeling of endings. Agrippa also connects this planet with “gestures…that are gloomy and sad, that are for mourning and for striking the head,” common actions associated with grief.3 I think part of the reason we in the Western world tend to avoid thinking about death is that we avoid feeling grief. We try to put an expiration date on mourning or feeling the pang of loss after something has ended. But the mere presence of Saturn in our lives tells us there are whole seasons of our lives that require a reckoning with grief and mortality.
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