Saturn through the houses of Relating Consciousness

It may be helpful to read this and the following two articles in conjunction with the Areas of Consciousness articles already up on the web site. We are also reproducing the general considerations that appeared with last month’s article.

General considerations:

In this series article we are focusing upon Saturn in the twelve houses but additional considerations in every case are:

• The sign in which Saturn is found.
• The houses that Saturn rules accidentally, remembering that Saturn is the orthodox ruler of Aquarius as well as Capricorn.
• Saturn will always represent the tenth house because it is its natural ruler. All Saturn situations therefore are aspects of the issue of coming into effective, practical selfhood and are reflective of experiences with the father (or mother if the mother was the most authoritative parent).

These links will supply detail about the nature of the inhibition e.g., if Saturn is found in House I and is the accidental ruler of  Houses VII & VIII, then this indicates that the fear of assertiveness that is a characteristic of Saturn in House I has its roots in relationship dynamics. The sign in which Saturn if found will indicate whether the difficulty is spiritual (fire), conceptual (air), emotional (water), or physical (earth).

In order to turn the situation around, in whatever house Saturn is found, there must be a willingness to acknowledge the problem and the restrictions arising from it. Saturn is turned around by conscious effort, not chance. Conscious attention and effort should turn this area of life into an area of accomplishment, a place of resource in the lifelong task of developing in the area of life denoted by the placement of the Sun. But we must always be vigilant to the possibility of backsliding into old patterns.

When Saturn is in the houses of Relating Consciousness, the challenge is finding balance in dealings with others. Although Saturnian situations will manifest in the personal relationships, the need is to find a balance in all situations where give, take and expectation are involved. In the houses of Relating Consciousness, a person is coming to understand himself through his dealings with other sentient beings, and this includes the animal kingdom. It should be understood that in the houses of Relating Consciousness, projection is at work and what is not admitted to consciousness will meet a person on the outside, delivered through the agency of 'other'. To a person with Saturn is this area of consciousness, the impressions that he gives out to others are of considerable importance and this adds complexity to the task of turning Saturn around because he may be caught up in the image that he wishes others to have of him and a long way from the truth of himself.

Saturn in the fifth house - In House V - a problem of self-valuation

Saturn in the fifth house inhibits creative expression and the cause of this inhibition is an inability to accept the responsibility involved in bringing something into being. In most cases, it is a sense of personal worthlessness that is behind the inability to accept responsibility. Many people with this placement of Saturn are working through inhibitions created in the collective psyche by self-abnegating forms of religion, and the sense of worthlessness may even be cultivated as evidence of spiritual awareness. An inverted spiritual pride may express itself through this placement of Saturn that is not always easy to detect. The profound unease about the ‘right to create’ can produce creative blocks, including infertility and attract sexual abuse as others misuse their creative right.

• A person who has turned a fifth-house Saturn around has rethought his place in the scheme of things and knows, to use the words of Reshad Feild, that ours are the only hands that God has. He has therefore a sense that it is his human duty to develop and express his creative energy responsibly.

Saturn in the sixth house - In House VI - a  problem of boundaries

Saturn in the sixth house responds to need indiscriminately because his self-worth depends upon being useful and being seen to be useful. As a result of this, a person may allow himself to be overloaded with duties in private life and obligations at work. Much of this activity may be physically strenuous work that may affect his health and, eventually, make him reluctant to go near situations in which more expectation will be laid upon him. Alternatively he may refuse to do anything that he considers purposeless. For these reason many people with a sixth-house Saturn give the appearance to others of being workshy. But if a person with this placement has no purposeful work to do he will fill his life with tasks that make him busy. Taking on a lot of pets, including needy animals is a favorite, and this can seriously reduce his room for manoeuvre. Illness is often the place to which a sixth-house person will retreat to escape the weight of the commitment laid upon him or the shame of not having found anything useful to do.

• A person who has turned a sixth-house Saturn around has learned how to structure his desire to be useful by using appropriate professional and vocational frames. He will also become more discriminating in what he takes on for others, having learned to question why he takes on commitments, to distinguish between a genuine desire to help and a self-serving need to be seen as useful, and to recognise the difference between quality and quantity.

Saturn in the seventh house - In House VI I - problem of accountability

A person with Saturn in the seventh house expects to be contained by others. Committed relationships are a place of security and many people with Saturn in the seventh house marry young. It is this placement, rather than Venus in the seventh that confers upon the marriage of longevity. This willingness to be accountable to others may seriously interfere with his scope to develop in his own right upon his own path, as a person with this placement of Saturn expects to put the integrity of his primary relationships before self-realization. The quality of a life can be seriously impaired by the perceived need to have his life structured by his accountability to others and his enthusiasm for compromise.  In the event of there being no relationship of importance in his life, he may be paralysed by this perceived aberration.

• A person who has turned around a seventh-house Saturn has learned how to think more discriminately about what he owes to himself and what he owes to others and has identified those areas of his life that in which he must be prepared to go it alone. Saturn and Libra, both of them agents for the Third Ray, govern the creative hierarchy known as the Triadal Lives which hold the balance between the manifest and non-manifest in our solar system. Saturn in the sign Libra or in the house of Libra in a natal chart signifies a lifetime in which conscious choices that balance and regulate the dealings with others will greatly assist soul-personality alignment, of which the self-other duality is the lower correspondence and spirit-soul the higher.

Saturn in the eighth house - In House VIII- a problem of control

A person with Saturn in the eighth house attracts interference from others in the way that he expresses himself emotionally. He can therefore experience some of the worst behavior that one person can inflict upon another, and by acquiescing to the accusation that he needs to be disciplined, he colludes in the abusive situations. As noted earlier, in all the houses of Relating Consciousness, what is not taken up consciously is imposed from the outside by the agency of others. A person with Saturn in the eighth house attracts people who punish him ‘for his own good’ because he will not take the responsibility for establishing his own emotional and sexual code. An eighth-house Saturn has the same need as a seventh-house Saturn for another to provide structure but whereas Saturn in the house Libra is motivated by a sense of  what relationship can achieve (which is a positive impulse), Saturn in the house of Scorpio responds to the fear of  what will happen if control is removed (which is negative). In consequence he tends to accept anything from partners rather than face abandonment.

• A person who has turned an eighth-house Saturn around has acknowledged that he meets the shadow in himself through what comes at him from the outside, whether that is cruelty from others, nightmares or other visitations from the astral plane, and he has assumed the responsibility of  purifying himself by disciplining himself to adhere to his own moral code.