The last planet we can see with the naked eye (although with fine eyesight in very clear skies Uranus can just barely be seen as well), Saturn represents limits: the limit of our vision, the limit of our body (the skin), and the limits of personal action (the law). Saturn is the structure and the form behind the way things are. It is the Lord of this World, the Lord of Karma and Time, the keeper of Records, and our teacher. It rules the skin, teeth, the organs of hearing, the bones and the knees. With our knees we are able to bend in humility to the way things are, a truth whether or not we respond to it.

Saturn symbolizes limitation, fear, time, structure, karma, consol-idation, delays, the father, old age, tests, discipline, collective law/reality, school, teachers, contraction, responsibility, obligation, ambition and Satan.  In the physical body it rules the skin, bones, teeth, knees and ears.

Saturn also represents what you have to do in order to succeed at being who you are. And it shows where you are being tested. Its house position in your chart indicates lessons necessary for fulfilling obligations and responsibilities so personal growth can occur. It is where you must build in self-discipline to work and work hard. Remember, “Saturn delays but does not deny.” It also depicts your experience of your father’s authority, discipline and example. Saturn, in fact, may be an accurate picture of your father, but just as often is not. It, and all the planets for that matter, only represents your response to, or experience of, things in the outside world, not the things in the outside world themselves.

Saturn’s symbol (above) is the crescent of the personality subjugated to and held down by the cross of matter. Only when we bow down to the law of the way things are and pass the tests of material existence can we truly be free to enter the realm of the spirit. It rules Capricorn, where if unafflicted, strength, persistence, and responsibility can be married to being a channel for power, rather than trying to be the power. It is exalted in Libra, the sign of marriage, union and cooperation. What on Earth tests us more and calls for more discipline? It is in its detriment in Cancer, where it hardens and inhibits feelings, nurturing and mothering. In its fall in Aries it blocks the flow of energy, and one can be too self-centered.

We are all Saturn’s children in that our mortal bodies are eventually devoured by father time and our psyches by our parents’ shadows - the latter to the extent to which we do not fight for the light with which we were born, for consciousness. Saturn, however, is not merely our devourer, but our liberator if, while we live, we also learn to bow our will to the way the world is, and more importantly, to who and what we are. The interplay of knowing versus building who we are takes a lifetime, all under the dominion of time.

Saturn symbolizes our crucifixion in a world of time and space: immortal spirit bound in a mortal, dying body. The end of Dylan Thomas’ Fern Hill beautifully expresses one human experience of Saturn: