posted May 20, 2005 02:54 AM
Facing your SaturnYou can't choose the ways in which you'll be tested. - Robert J. Sawyer
In astrological circles it is often said that you should be active in handling planetary energies. For instance Thorwald Dethlefsen (Sagittarius) in The Challenge of Fate claims, that in entering a Saturn phase the time is ripe for reducing any activities of an expansive outgoing nature. "Avoid parties and social gatherings, amusement and lavishness. Try during that time to wear predominantly black clothing and go for frequent walks in cemeteries." He further advises us to have a sparingly furnished room where to retire, painted either all white or all black, perhaps putting the thirteenth Tarot card (death) on the wall and a skull on the table.
This sounds something you might expect to hear from someone who have heard some juicy rumors about a bad Saturn but has never really lived with a truly difficult Saturn, or any kind of Saturn. When you have a true close encounter with a strong Saturn, it is often much healthier - both in bodily sense and for your mental balance - to listen to Elbert Benjamine (C C Zain) who says, that those who have a badly afflicted Saturn need harmonious Venus- and Sun-thoughts (and in their diets various mineral salts, vitamins and proteins). If you try to handle a difficult Saturn by wearing black clothes and walking on cemeteries, you may just get your own place there all too soon.
Sometimes it is true that energies can be handled on a mental or psychic level without any need to materialize them. For instance Veijo Meri, a well-known Finnish writer, once said that if you experience evil mentally, it will not materialize. Meri (Mars opposite Saturn) said that he does this to the utmost, he dramatizes even the smallest misfortunes as much as he possibly can.For Meri and other people with similar charts this may even work: Meri has his lucky stars - a grand trine in earth signs - and his Saturn has only one hard angle...
But I wouldn't suggest trying the same with a truly hard and strong Saturn without any lucky stars to ease the situation. Dramatizing your smallest misfortunes might soon overwhelm you and make you feel like you had been given a death sentence. Just darkness and difficulties everywhere. The more you dramatize your difficulties, the more difficulties you will meet. The less you dramatize your difficulties, the less you will have them. It's the same with all configurations: different people have to work them out in different or even in opposite ways. For instance, some may work out their aggressions by punching something, others doing the same would just feel bad. For some imagining evil things might be helpful, for others it would just bring more evil into their lives.
LIVING WITH SATURN
With a really powerful Saturn, it's usually not wise to resort to any unnecessary dramatics, playing with negative images or symbolic encounters isn't often what Saturn wants. Rather Saturn wants teach us how to encounter everything, even the so-called evil, in a very concrete way. Saturn externalizes things to make sure that we learn its lessons thoroughly and in practical life. Saturn teaches things through real life, not through imagination or mind games.
And you can't handle real evil by imagining negative things. Only imaginary evils can be handled that way. When you truly meet hardships and evil things, it is wiser to be persistent in concentrating your mind on something positive. According to a real Saturn expert, William James (The Sun, the Moon and four planets in Capricorn) positive images of the future are a powerful and magnetic force. They draw us on and energize us, give us courage, negative images pull the spirit downward towards despair and impotence.
Thus with a truly powerful Saturn handling energies on a mental or inner level doesn't prevent them from materializing, because for Saturn even the most delicate inner experiences and thoughts are just nonsense until those thoughts has been tested on the practical level. When you try to handle Saturn using imaginary means, all that happens is that one day Saturn will show you who really runs the show: Wearing black clothes and imagining horrors may make your imaginings come true = you meet worse horrors than you even imagined.
It may take a long time though, often so long that you will never see the connection between your imaginings and sufferings, you just wonder where did all these problems come, weren't all that already encountered on the mental level. In reality they probably weren't, most likely there was just an accumulation of energies and a postponing of things into the future. Neptune may work things out on an imaginary level and visualize whatever it wants without ever meeting its fantasies on the physical level. But with a difficult Saturn - or Saturn-Neptune - things are different.
Saturn doesn't only give you an ability to work hard and keep on struggling when others would already give up. Saturn also, especially with Neptune, gives a gift of materializing thoughts and ideas on the physical level. But that may also mean that it may no longer be wise to imagine things you would not want to meet in reality. Try imagining evil things, and that is what you will meet...
EVERYTHING IN MODERATION!
With Saturn only moderation works in the long run, don't go into extremes even in concentrating on the positive. If you show a lack of moderation, in anything, you may just aggravate Saturn to teach you a lesson in moderation and to show you who's who and what's what... With Saturn problems cannot be handled purely on an imaginary level, neither can they be avoided by being a light-hearted model example of ultra positivism. Saturn would just offer you some harder lessons later on.
Positive thinking can get you far in many things, but in Saturnians things and in Saturnian life usually not without some serious work. Trying to turn your back on negative things may work for a while, at least if your Saturn hasn't any hard angles. But even then usually only for a while. William James said that the method of turning your attention away from the evil and living only under the good, is a method that proves impossible as soon as melancholy arrives. And it will prove impossible, even wikthout melancholy, just under severe environmental pressures...
With Saturn you should also never use any artificial means or exaggerations. According to C.E.O. Carter "attempts to "drive" Saturn are usually a waste of time and energy; if Saturn can be in any sense overcome, it is by patience and industrious persistence. In fact, all what happens when you try to "drive"Saturn is, that Saturnian energies accumulate and become more powerful. If Neptune is strong as well, it may mean that all those accumulated gloomy energies in your psychic surroundings will gather around you. In time you'll have to face all those accumulated Saturn (and Neptune) energies together. And that might be more than you could handle.
WORK WITH THE POSITIVE
If you want to live in harmony with a strong and difficult Saturn, you need too things: first of all you have to learn self-discipline, whether it fits with your personality otherwise or not. And you have to discipline your mind, but not too much. What you need is a reasonably good attempt, not a compulsive desire to be in control and to succeed. In the Saturnian world good work is always rewarded somehow, but yet that is not important, a sincere attempt is all that matters for Saturn.
Above all you have to become aware of your problems, to admit all your own failures and weaknesses, not to others, but to yourself. In other words you have to face your shadow. If you have not yet done this, concentrating on Saturnian symbols, may even be a good thing if done in moderation. But if you have already encountered your shadow, or perhaps have been living too close to your shadow, to your unconscious, you shouldn't concentrate on Saturnian things. And especially if you have been living too close to the collective unconscious wearing black clothes and focusing on death and gloomy things, might mean that you would even meet collective shadow. And that is something most of us would want to avoid.
A strong Saturn takes care of the Saturnian elements in your life, there is no need for you to attract more Saturn into your life by wearing black or by using any other tricks. You may think that you are just choosing the level for Saturn to work at, but Saturn is not easily fooled. It will teach its lessons the way it sees fit, it will not be manipulated. Instead of inviting more Saturnian elements with black clothes or cemetery walks, focus your attention on things that give you positive energy you can use in learning your lessons, thus concentrate on Venus, the Sun, or even Neptune depending on your birth-chart.
Sometimes focusing on the sign opposite your Saturn sign is also very helpful, even events often seem to lead us there. For instance, Saturn in depth-oriented Scorpio may be teaching you to be practical in a Taurean earthy way. It is like in many healing methods - you heal either with something similar or with something opposite. Although there are some exceptions, very often problems caused by a weak Saturn are solved with an extra dose of Saturn (perhaps even using Dethlefsen's methods), but problems caused by an overly strong and difficult Saturn should be handled in the opposite way, by concentrating on something positive. And of course, hard work wouldn't hurt in either case.
You could also say that Dethlefsen's tricks might work with those who have for long been avoiding their Saturn - and their shadow. But using same tricks when you have already been living with a hard Saturn, perhaps focusing too much on your shadow, you run the risk of meeting a similar fate with Robert Burton (Saturn conjunct MC), who composed his book (The Anatomy of Melancholy) in order to relieve his own melancholy but instead became so melancholic that nothing could no longer make him laugh. And it was rumored that even some of his readers met a similar fate.
Thus, what is good for someone with an easy Saturn, may destroy one with a strong and bad Saturn. You can jump over lower walls, but may not want to do the same with a ten-meter high stone wall. A wise man knows that fighting may sometimes just add more fighting into life, and inviting Saturnian elements into your life when you have more than enough already, might just overwhelm you with new and self-created problems and negativity. http://koti.mbnet.fi/neptunia/index.htm
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"The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle." Anais Nin
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posted May 20, 2005 02:54 AM
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