Saturn symbolizes a psychic process as well as a quality or kind of experience…by which an individual may utilize the experiences of pain, restriction and discipline as a means for greater consciousness and fulfillment…Saturn is connected with the educational value of pain and with the difference between external values-those we acquire from others-and internal values-those we have worked to discover within ourselves. Saturn’s role as the Beast is a necessary aspect of this 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.

In traditional astrology Saturn is known as a malefic planet. 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 is usually considered to be the bringer of limitation, frustration, hard work, and self-denial…by his sign and house position Saturn denotes those areas of life in which the individual is likely to feel thwarted in his self expression, where he is most likely to be frustrated or meet with difficulties. In many instances Saturn seems to correspond with painful circumstances which appear not to be connected with any weakness or flaw on the part of the person himself but which merely “happen”, thereby earning the planet the title “Lord of Karma”. This rather depressive evaluation remains attached to Saturn despite a most ancient and persistent of teachings which tells us that he is the Dweller at the Threshold, the keeper of the keys to the gate, and that it is through him alone that we may achieve eventual freedom through self-understanding.

…It is only when (a man’s) conscious ideas of what is right or suitable come into direct conflict with the underlying 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 that want in life, they continue to the last moment to do something to destroy the dream before it blossoms. Often this destructiveness is connected with guilt 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 man has chosen. Usually all that is seen is the destructiveness. It has often been termed evil and given personification as an external energy or person known as Satan-who is of course very close to Saturn, complete with the hoofs and horns of Capricorn the Goat. 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.

There is no fast and easy method of making a friend of Saturn. In many ways the ancient art of alchemy was dedicated to this end; for the base material of alchemy, in which lay the possibility of gold, was called Saturn, and this base material, as well as having a concrete existance, was also considered to be the alchemist himself. Modern psychology, which is paralleling more and more the path of the alchemists, also seeks to make a friend of Saturn ..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 of humour after all-when we have become subtle enough to understand his irony.