The practice of mental alchemy requires knowledge pertaining to Saturn in astrology and your birth chart.
The first thing you need to know is that Saturn is a tough teacher and its lessons are well learned.
It’s a discordant – malefic – planet and its malignant emotions, thoughts and feelings are inclined to attract highly distressful events and conditions.
Saturn cuts the Sun’s energy field and transforms and transmits an astral frequency that is cold, self-centered and reflective.
It signifies self-preservation – the first law of Nature – and the motive of self-interest which is essential on any plane for without the desire to survive your soul would have succumbed to disintegrative forces.
Saturn is essential to physical life. It provides the elements necessary for the bony structures and framework of your body so it tends to the solid, practical and concrete.
It gives a pessimistic, heavy-duty, leaden view of life and governs the reflective, meditative and purely selfish sentiments, which are the source of comparison, causality, covetousness, acquisitiveness and secrecy. These thought-elements combine in your astral constitution into the group called the safety thought-elements.
This does not mean that you should cultivate the idea that ‘all might sink if I may swim’; but rather the larger viewpoint which recognizes the interdependence of all life, and the effect of your mental attitude upon your character.
From the alchemical standpoint, selfishness always defeats its own ends; and when you try to aggrandize yourself at the expense of others, or of society, the power of your soul dwindles and you attain less in spirituality.
But when you labor for the welfare of others and for the whole cosmic structure you make real gains. You add value to the real and permanent part of yourself – your character.
Saturn
Saturn is a businessman: careful, deliberate, subtle, cautious, prudent and practical. Its chief characteristic is the persistence with which it labors for its own selfish interest. It’s noted for diplomacy and system, although it dislikes to take the initiative, preferring to remain in the background and accomplish its ends through careful planning or cunning rather than by force.
Saturn stands firmly for justice and works hard to please and give good service but through fair or foul means, and by the use of cunning and schemes, it works to gain an advantage to further its own selfish plans, and is quite indifferent to the effect of its conduct upon the lives of others.
In method, Saturn depends upon foresight, system, economy, management and persistent labor. It attracts responsibilities, important positions and laborious work. It gives both the desire and the persistence to labor to accomplish tasks; although far too often this ability is allowed to become the source of crafty selfishness. And it seems that Saturn, more than any other planet, represents inexorable fate.
It’s estimated that Saturn causes at least one-half of all human suffering; however, without this lead in your constitution, you would be destitute of caution; would act without considering results; be governed entirely by impulse and momentary whims; and would be incapable of forming logical conclusions.
Saturn in your birth chart
Saturn in your birth chart represents the lead you have to work with.
As a mineral, lead is heavy, dull and morose and Saturn brings heavy responsibilities, dull and plodding labor, and a melancholy disposition.
The energy it transmits expresses as coldness which produces a nature that is slow and meditative, solitary and reserved, melancholy and repentant.
It gives rise to emotions, aspirations and ideals that are all subservient to material and self-centered ambitions.
By its nature lead is easily tarnished and Saturn can incite to petty and ignoble actions.
Saturn is exactly the reverse of fast, impulsive Mars. Its nature is slow and patient, cunning and stealthy.
Saturn’s house position or the house it rules by sign marks the department of life influenced by work, laborious effort, persistence, careful planning, heavy responsibility, restriction, struggle, delays, setbacks and loss.
It’s highly likely that Saturn in your chart has a discord score or is involved in a discordant aspect and this sets the scene for thoughts of worry, fear, envy, greed, selfishness and loss.
When discordant Saturn works in an imperceptible, subtle way to undermine your physical vitality. When energized by persistent attention it will undermine your health by producing chemical imbalance and causing deficiencies in your system.
Saturn and its thinking have a decided influence over the spleen, the adrenal glands and their manufacture of adrenalin.
Its influence, in general, is toward poverty and lack of proper elements in the food, lack of assimilative ability, and lack of ability to handle the fuel supply because of insufficient adrenalin.
This lack of adrenalin, which fights invasion, and the resulting negativeness, permits toxins to accumulate in the blood, and this in turn encourages various chronic and wasting diseases which persist because of insufficient vigor and energy to remove their cause.
A major portion of the diseases, sorrows, losses, obstacles, poverty and restrictions of life are due to the influence of Saturn. The two most dreaded diseases, cancer and tuberculosis are traceable to the influence of an afflicted Saturn and it’s also a constant in arthritis cases, fibrous tumors, atrophy and constipation.
Transmuting Saturn
There’s not much use in knowing that a planet rules certain things and influences your conduct in a certain way unless you also know how to direct its energies into some desired channel and away from those things which bring discord and undesirable conditions into your life.
You need to know how to handle Saturn.
Because of their dull and heavy nature Saturn’s thoughts and feelings are not hard to classify; but because selfishness is so entrenched in human nature, they are difficult to purify.
Purification requires careful reflection upon their use in building character, and regarding them in such a way that each will be seen as an opportunity to build something specific and valuable into your life.
Where there’s an excess of Saturn’s leaden experiences, it becomes necessary to engage in other experiences and cultivate such thoughts as will annul the discordant influence, and build in its place something constructive and harmonious.
In fluxing your ores, which are your thoughts and experiences, you follow the same process as the metallurgist: find a suitable flux and supply it in an equal amount.
Confidence and courage ruled by the Sun and love ruled by Venus are the fluxing additives that need to be administered in sufficient amount to properly balance an overabundance of lead in your life, or when it expresses in an impure state.
You should resolve to energetically cultivate your affections, compassion, refinement, love and sympathy.
Where love is absent, selfishness rushes in to fill the void; therefore, to annul the discords which Saturn brings, you need to cultivate emotions of sympathy and kindness, love and affection, and be determined to live for the good of all rather than for self.
To act unselfishly where internal relations are considered is to act in the direction of greatest self-interest. It builds up the internal qualities that persist when all earthly wealth has decomposed into the star dust from which it came.
You’re selfish through ignorance and narrow ideas that have you thinking that it’s possible to gain some real advantage at the expense of another. This is false and untrue and to attempt to do so invariably results in a loss far greater than any apparent gain.
At its best Saturn stands for a stable and well-organized mind and body. What it attracts, when expressing constructively, will be the result of careful planning and plodding perseverance, intellectual supremacy through ample reflection and careful thought, and worldly station gained through subtlety, craftiness and unusual foresight.
Antidote Saturn with Sun and Venus energy
The vibrations set in motion by a discordant birth chart or progressed aspect involving Saturn are negative and to correct the negativity and prevent the development of fear, selfishness, timidity and worry you should apply your power urges, ruled by the Sun and your social urges, ruled by Venus.
By holding thoughts of courage, determination and stamina and cultivating social contacts and holding light-hearted thoughts of fun and joy you can antidote Saturn’s gloom and chase away its despair and despondency.
It may require great fortitude to mix socially with people and sing and dance, or take a keen delight in art, when things are apparently falling apart and social slights and losses are in the offing, but that’s the best way to drive Saturn’s blues away.
It adds happy thought-elements to the safety compounds in a manner which readily transforms them into a constructive dynamic thought compound which will work to attract good fortune.
By understanding the role played by Saturn in your life and the thoughts and thinking associated with the events it attracts you can work to ensure that it is expressing in a constructive and beneficial manner and contributing in a positive way to your mental, emotional and spiritual progress.
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