posted April 27, 2006 12:59 PM              

All aspects on the natal chart serve a purpose or have a place in shaping of the psyche as a whole, and although some aspects require more effort at integration and are generative of more inner disquiet, it is generally these very aspects which promote growth and the development of greater consciousness. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder and so is a "good" aspect; some individuals feel that the pinnacle of achievement in life is happinesss, comfort, and security while others welcome the inner friction which drives them on to greater challenges and greater growth. In the end it is the fact that two planets contact at all that is the important thing, since any contact provides an opportunity for greater integration. In the older view of the universe, which coloured medieval astrology and still colours the viewpoints of many people, God wars with the Devil for dominion on earth, and man is helplessly caught between the overwhelming pull of these two great external powers. In psychological parlance God and the Devil live within the individual and not in the world outside him, and rather than being eternal enemies they are more aptly described as the two faces of one psychic fact which we will call the ego. In astrological terms these two faces may be connected with the Sun and Saturn.

The nature of an aspect does not alter the intrinsic energy of the two planets involved. It simply indicates whether their contact is easily integrated into the whole of the psyche or whether some conscious effort at adjustment is required. It is the contact which is important. Every factor on a birth chart is in delicate balance with every other factor, and the key to the individuals understanding of himself appears to lie in his capacity to find an effective use for all his random bits and pieces so that they function as the whole unit necessary for the fulfillment of his purpose in life. Nothing is superfluous and nothing is "bad" or "unfortunate"; what is generally unfortunate is the individual's ignorance of the value of his total self and his consequent tendency to chop up the whole into bits and pieces, most of which he discards and thinks himself rid of because he does not approve of them.

This is generally true of a man's attitude towards the position of his Saturn for this often corresponds to memories and qualities of which he would rather not be reminded, these are, more often than not, projected onto others - so that life, rather than his own psyche, is the culprit when things do not go well for him. With most Saturnian aspects, especially the squares, Saturn is externalised, and something in the enviroment becomes the guilty party, the cause of the friction and inner disquiet associated with square aspects. The more strenuous the efforts are to get rid of him, the faster he comes back.

So Saturn remains Saturn regardless of whether he conjuncts, squares, trines, parallels, or even quintiles another planet. Because he is Saturn he is never easy to deal with because his function is that of promoting growth and it is only frustration and pain which at present are sufficient goads to get a human being moving. Each Saturnian aspect on the birth chart may be seen as a heavy cross to be borne, an "affliction" which dooms the individual to frustration and limitation and loss, and which must dutifully be endured because it cannot be changed. Or the Saturnian aspects may, alternately, be seen as opportunities, and each planet touched by Saturn may be considered to have offered the possibility of a deeper, richer, and more purposeful expression of its meaning. This kind of expression always requires re-evaluation, a closer look at values, and a careful weeding out of those things which are values imposed by others.

posted April 27, 2006 01:01 PM              

The Sun and Saturn may be seen as polar opposites in a psychological sense, together forming a unit which we call the individuality. In mythology these two functions of the ego and its shadow are often represented as the hero and his trusted companions, such as Theseus and Pirithous; they are also the hero and his long standing enemy, who is also himself, such as Parsifal and the Red Knight whose armour Parsifal later dons. The functions which the Sun and Saturn symbolise need to be intergrated within the conscious awareness of the individual if he is to make any real steps in growth. But the human intellect is not accustomed to seeing opposites as having the same meaning, and it is often difficult for the average person to understand that his darker side, symbolised by Saturn, is the pathway by which he may find the bright light of his full potential, symbolised by the Sun.

In Gnostic teachings Jesus and Satanael were the twin sons of God, each having an equally important role in the structure and unfoldment of the universe. They were symbols of the light and dark aspects of life and of the psyche but had not yet come to mean the priciples of human good and human evil in the petty sense in which we now understand these principles. The Sun is always symbolically pitted against Saturn on the birth chart, whether they are actually in aspect or not. It is for the individual to discover that they are two faces of himself; but to perceive them in this way requires standing at the centre and not wholly in the light of the conscious ego. This is another way at looking at the birth chart; it is simply a shift of viewpoint. The relationship of the Sun - by house, sign, and aspect - and Saturn, taken as opposites and complements, is often suggestive of the broad path of developement of the individual with the necessary crises or points of re-orientation which he is likely to meet as a part of his development.

When the Sun and Saturn actually form an aspect, this process of integration is accelerated and rendered more urgent at the same time that it becomes more difficult. The psyche as a whole seems bent on achieving a kind of completeness and self-determination which is not so imperative when there is no Sun-Saturn contact. Sun-Saturn contacts seem to be the mark of the individual who has the opportunity to shape an integrated and finely edged tool to work as a servant of the perfected will.

The Sun-Saturn individual often deals with life by pitting himself against it, because he usually finds at a fairly early age that those things which are of value to him must be worked for. No matter how extroverted or apparently carefree a personality the individual posseses, there is usually a quality of controlled and disciplined energy about Sun-Saturn contacts; there is a careful deliberation and a concern for self-protection which suggests that these people feel they must guard themselves against life so that life does not deal them a blow which will flatten them. The Sun-Saturn person is often more acutely aware of responsibility than other people, perhaps more so than is healthy for his self-expression. But it is often the case with him that he has never really had the chance to be a child, and so he has never learned that naive trust in life's bounty which permits the relaxation of effort.

The echoes of this intense self-determination may also be seen in the placement of the Sun in Saturn's sign, or Saturn in the Sun's sign, or Saturn in the fifth house, or Saturn in the tenth house. These are all subtly different in interpretation, but there is about all these positions the quality of self-determination. The individual must make something of his life and find his identity by the efforts of his own hands and brain. That which is accepted from others inevitably disappoints him.

The Sun-saturn individual is frequently very successful although he rarely achieves this success on his own before Saturn has completed his return by transit around the houses of the birth chart and the necessary practical experience has been aquired. But Sun-Saturn people are also often extreme failures, and the aspect is common in the charts of alcoholics - particularly the opposition. When the contact is a close one, the individual usually is either intensely ambitious or professes to have no ambitions. This latter expression is typical of Saturn and is often a means by which the person tries to save himself of admitting his ambitions and failing to see them realised. He may surmount great enviromental obstacles to achieve his goals, or he may succumb to these obstacles and may even unconsciously amplify them to justify his failure.

posted April 27, 2006 01:02 PM              

This association of Sun-Saturn contacts with a failure in the father-child relationship has important implications in the sphere of personal relationships. It is a particularly significant contact for women because a woman's relationship with men and with the masculine half of her own psyche is affected by the disappointment and failure of her relationship with her father. She may develop hostility toward men, openly and consciously expressed; or she may carry this hostlity inwardly and unconsciously, finding that she can express only the instinctual, feeling side of her nature and must live her masculine decisiveness and will, out through a partner who becomes the father she did not properly have. The psychological patterns are often very subtle with these contacts, but they usually suggest a point of friction which needs to be examined and understood and which compels the person's inward to the world of the unconscious and of inner values. Handled with insight and care, Sun-Saturn contacts on the chart of a woman are suggestive of an opportunity to explore the realm of conscious initiative and creative endeavour, permitting a wholeness which is usually not found developed in a woman's psyche.

For a man with Sun-Saturn contact, there is often the need to prove himself to himself and to his father, for he often feels the failure of the relationship as an indication of personal inadequacy. This is one of the spurs to ambition which is such a characteristic feature of these contacts. The nature of the real struggle is often exsternalised, and the man must prove himself successful in a sometimes compulsive fashion; but it is not really material success that he seeks. It is a sense of importance and self-worth, an acceptance of his own masculinity - not in a sexual way, but in a more general way - which will permit him to rely on his own inner centre. The usual symbols of importance and identity which the majority of men accept with clear conscience do not suffice for the Sun-Saturn individual; he must develop his own definition of worth and must experience his capacity to control, direct, and be master his life. It is ironic that the extremes of inherited money and position and, poverty and lack of opportunity can both be expressed by Sun-Saturn contacts. But in both cases the values and the identity must be earned by the individual himself if they are to be real to him.

The person with the strong Sun-Saturn contact often experiences a kind of guilt if he is too happy or if he relaxes too much. There is sometimes a deep inner feeling of the need for self-denial; and this is occasionaly exaggerated so that the individual brings ruin down on his own head through poor judgment, through functional illness, or through an act of martyrdom of one kind or another just at the point where his dreams threaten to become fulfilled. Sometimes this self-imposed psychological hair shirt is concurrent with a childhood permeated with strict religious training, for the Sun-Saturn tendency toward an unsympathetic enviroment is sometimes expressed as an unsympathetic deity of the kind that Job encountered. Sun-Saturn people often find themselves attracted to the more Saturnian religious symbols for man has indeed interpreted God in his own image; and the Sun-Saturn person's God has a Sun-Saturn quality. This expression of Sun-Saturn contacts is an interesting one, but is fundamentally the same in its inner meaning as the more typical expression, where the material enviroment or the father is the villain of the piece. Whether it is a man's conception of deity, or his father, of his capacity for success, or his role as a man, the presence of Sun-Saturn contact suggests that he will get no outside help in his path toward discovery of his own identity.

There are many ways in which Sun-Saturn aspects may be expressed, for the Sun is a very personal symbol of a mode of self-expression, and each individual has a different mode. But the contact is in reality a simple and basic one because of the complementary nature of these two planets. Any combination of complementary bodies, such as Sun-Saturn, Venus-Mars, Sun-Moon, suggests an almost archetypal simplicity where the integration of the two functions becomes a psychic necessity for the individual. This is true of Sun-Saturn contacts in the sphere of the conscious identity.

*end*
* * * * * * * * * *
text by Liz Greene .. from " A New Look at an Old Devil" ..
* * * * * * * * * *
Saturn to Venus aspects L'z.G
* http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/008961.html *

posted April 27, 2006 11:23 PM            

….. the [Sun-Saturn] contact is in reality a simple and basic one because of the complementary nature of these two planets.
I don’t find it very “simple” or “basic” in my own chart! Exalted Saturn is exactly 3 degrees ahead of my Sun, and Neptune is exactly 3 degrees behind my Sun – the fulcrum for this dandy seesaw. I cannot seem to extricate any of the 3 from the others…..
One reads about the “solemn and serious self-expression” of Sun conj Saturn natives, but that is sooooo far removed from my reality….. Leo Asc rescues Libra Sun from the clutches of somber Saturn!! (Saturn exactly sextile Asc). The trine with Jupiter probably eases the interactions of the conglomeration too.

This association of Sun-Saturn contacts with a failure in the father-child relationship has important implications in the sphere of personal relationships.
I don’t really feel like there was “failure” in my relationship with my dad – he was a Saggie, with Merc in Scorp and Saturn in Libra same as I, so we “got” each other (political disagreements aside ) and he was a fantastic role model…..

…..memories and qualities of which he would rather not be reminded, these are, more often than not, projected onto others - so that life, rather than his own psyche, is the culprit when things do not go well for him….
Now this resonates: but not for me, for my brother who has Saturn in Scorpio square Pluto in Leo. You would be hard-pressed to find a more paranoid, skeptical, suspicious character. Everything that has ever happened to him has always been someone else’s fault. The world is out to get him…..

Each Saturnian aspect on the birth chart may be seen as a heavy cross to be borne, an "affliction" which dooms the individual to frustration and limitation and loss, and which must dutifully be endured because it cannot be changed.
Or the Saturnian aspects may, alternately, be seen as opportunities, and each planet touched by Saturn may be considered to have offered the possibility of a deeper, richer, and more purposeful expression of its meaning.
My choice is the latter viewpoint – I don’t see Saturn as an Evil or an Affliction or Restriction, more like the handrails of a rope bridge across a chasm, the solid and steady support for the times I lose my balance…..

The person with the strong Sun-Saturn contact often experiences a kind of guilt if he is too happy or if he relaxes too much.
OK, this one does hit home Sometimes it feels like I shouldn’t be so blasted optimistic or joyful or cheerful when there is so much pain and hate and fear on SchoolRoom Earth. And “relaxing” does make me feel guilty, even though I know I have to have a balance between “work” and “play”…..

posted April 28, 2006 01:48 PM            

I have Sun trine Saturn (Sag Sun/ Saturn in Taurus - so it's by degree). My Saturn is also retrograde and in the 8th house.

I did not have a weak father that was a kind / loving push-over. He was and is very strong, former military and retired law enforcement. He taught me that duty is important as is ones work ethic. He taught me not to depend on others for my happiness, wealth or love - that I had to look within to find such things.

Now, he wasn't around all the time because of his work hours, BUT he was home ever weekend and taught my brother and I to play sports, how to garden and took on us many trips from Missions in California to camping.

I don't have a hate towards men, in fact I get along famously with men more than women. In my latter years I am developing stronger relationships with women, but it took awhile as I felt I had nothing in common with the shopping, gossiping and drama LOL.... Not that I was ever a total tom-boy, I am definitely a girly-girl as my two Leo female co-workers call me.

I have had mostly successful relationships with men and when we broke up (which was usually because we outgrew the relationship) we still remained friends. There have only been two exceptions one had the notorious Saturn / Venus conjunction making up part of his T-square.

posted April 28, 2006 07:48 PM            

You're right, it doesn't seem as harsh when you read it a few times. In my own life, the Saturn transits have been harsh. I have Pluto on the Ascendant and T.Pluto conjuncting my Sun (it just finished conjuncting my Venus) The Pluto vibrations feel more familiar to me, but when I dealt with my Saturn return, then Saturn opposing my Sun and then Saturn in Cancer completing my T-square WHAM!!! That was one power period of 6 years, let me tell you!!!

Thanks again for the compliment on my dad. He's a great guy and was actually a paratrooper in Vietnam.

Ironically, the man I'm marrying in June was also a paratrooper (now he flies UAV's) and was in the 82nd and 173rd airborne. I wonder if my attraction to strong men or men with strong military / law enforcement background is due to that Sun trine Saturn aspect?

posted October 20, 2006 02:52 PM              

Pid re: I wonder if my attraction to strong men or men with strong military / law enforcement background is due to that Sun trine Saturn aspect?
.. sorry about that .. never did get around to a reply .. to be honest i don't know the answer to that .. but .. it seems to make sense ... and btw congrats on your wedding with mr bear leo .. 'n hope you be enjoying europe .. although i hear being on a u.s. european base is similar to being in the states .. just from what i've picked up thru the media .. .. .. be well .. HD ..

posted October 20, 2006 03:05 PM            

my stepfather was former air force(was in for 20 yrs and was retired when he met my mom)and he was very strict,stern,and disciplinarian. He was 42 yrs older than me. He was 25 yrs older than my mother. He helped my mom raise me from 3 yrs old to 18 yrs old. I haven't seen him since my mother finally got rid of him right before my high school graduation. He was just too much of control freak and selfish for my mother.

posted October 20, 2006 04:59 PM              

Im pretty strict and serious too...thats the way our father was when he raised us. I have to think about not being so serious (and hard on myself) sometimes in order to allow myself to relax and just go with things.

edit...
Actually I think my brother was more spoiled than I was when we were younger...because he was the only son for sooo long. At one point there were 4 girls and only 1 of my brother...until the last one came along to make it 2 boys. I would be more responsible as the eldest child, and just being a girl put me inthe position of looking after my younger sisters...while my brother got to go out and play. I still seemed to get out, but after a fight with say my grandmother or whoever was the adult in the house.

posted October 01, 2014 05:07 AM            

The description is more fitting for Saturn opposite Sun. I totally object that every Saturn aspect is a "cross to bear," which is a poor way of recognizing Saturn's power above all other planets. Liz Greene REPULSIVELY lumps all aspects between Sun and Saturn to be same. That is SO WRONG!!!!!

Yup. Saturn can shut things down like no other, simply because he's objective consequence. People who cannot face the harsh realities of life will forever have more crosses to bear, which is NOT Saturn's doing, it is Saturn showing the native they must work very hard to consciously solve their dilemma. If the native does not wish to work on their errors and cannot improve upon themselves, they will just suffer. That's the way reality works. That's how Saturn works, since day 1 and will always be that way. You (as the Sun) can either get with reality (Saturn) and work together or you can fight it. Keep fighting it and it''ll be the death of you.