DEEP SATURN / URANUS MYTHOS… babies on the menu?
2022 is the second year of the Saturn in Aquarius/ Uranus in Taurus square. This will mean, unfortunately, more of the same from 2021... with some very nice Jupiter in Pisces moments mixed in to a lot of configurations even worse than what we saw in 2021. Buckle up.
To understand the story of 2021/ 2022, one must dive into the complex relationship between Uranus and Saturn in the original mythology. We need some deep background to truly comprehend what’s going on.
Since Saturn is a visible planet that astrologers from all traditions have been observing for milennia, we have plenty of data on Saturn’s core signatures and relationships to the other planets. However the body we now know as Uranus is a later discovery that is not visible to the naked eye, we have comparatively little experience with it’s movements. Therefore we need to look to mythology to give us some important clues as to what archetypal Uranus really means and what we can expect, and the ancient roots of a Saturn/ Uranus square.
The naming of the heavenly bodies is in itself a controversial topic, but we can still glean much from what we have been given, which is actually the story of the dynastic succession of Sky Gods in the Greek pantheon descending from farthest out (excepting Neptune and Pluto, which are both unique cases) Uranus to Saturn/ Cronus to Zeus/ Jupiter to Mars/ Ares as the Great Grandson of Uranus.
This is the story of the development and maturation of masculine consciousness: it is linear, dynastic and successional, it is transcendent in contrast to the immanent and immutable nature of the unchanging yet cyclical feminine.
Uranus, Ouranos or Ouranus, is an original, primordial, primeval, elemental ancient Greek sky god who emerged as the God of the Sky and Light (this includes the Sun- astrologers should note this implication that Uranus represented the entire, undifferentiated day sect) along with his wife Gaea, Goddess of the Firmament and the Dark (representing the primordial and undifferentiated night sect), respectively. Their offspring were many, and populated and differentiated the strata of the sky and the surface of the earth in order to support life. Once the forms of light and dark were in place and structured, Uranus and Gaea gave birth to the 3 Giants, a physically enormous, powerful and destructive race who each had 50 heads and 100 hands, and also to the Titans, the race of 12 siblings to which Cronus/ Saturn belongs.
While many contemporary astrologers correctly note that the celestial Uranus’ actual, observed astrological significations are a good match to the mythic Titan Prometheus -authenticity, eccentricity, individuation, alienation, innovation, technology, brilliance, uniqueness, sudden and radical change, progress- it remains that this planet carries the name Uranus, and there is crucial information to be found in examination of the mythology surrounding Uranus in relation to Cronus/Saturn. And, on a deeper level, all of the Promethean keywords are archetypally and psychologically specifically masculine, of or relating to the Father, and Uranus was the original archetypal Sky Father, representing the day sect as a whole.
Looking at Prometheus in a larger context, the Promethean story was the nuanced and updated retelling of Uranus’ story: the Prometheus story was an assertion of Uranian characteristics, specifically the emergence of the individuated masculine psychology in the face of paternalistic and controlling gods. Prometheus was simply acting in a newer but typologically similar context: if anything, I hope to prove that the truly primordial archetype of mythological Uranus is the better model for the what we see in the skies.
Saturn/Cronus, the Titan, is considered by traditional and Hellenistic astrologers to be “of the day sect”,; he emerges in a Sky God lineage along with the Sun and Jupiter, meaning Saturn’s motion and aspects are of consequence to daytime topics: the visible world, politics, religion, planning, organization, resources, projection; all of the aspects I listed for Uranus would logically fall into this category as well.
However, Saturn is a very specific archetype who plays a very unique role: Saturn is associated with decrease, contraction, rules, tradition, wisdom, gate keeping, death, disease, decay, time, cold, dry, limitation, repetition, perseverance, old age, among other generally negative and limiting significations. These are uniquely contrary to the Uranian aspects and more specifically negative, feminine qualities (versus positive feminine qualities, of which there are many) for a Sky God.
Additionally, Saturn is often depicted as eating or sacrificing children. This is clearly an extremely negative feminine consciousness-oriented depiction: psychologically, the masculine principle is removed from childhood by maturation, so where there are depictions of children, the feminine principle is being invoked. A picture of dysfunction in the masculine/ feminine dynamic is starting to emerge.
Consulting the Orphic Hymns we find Saturn named as “Husband of Rhea, and Prometheus’ wife”. This is a direct reference to a relationship between Prometheus and Saturn. What could this mean?
Since Saturn is generally identified as the son of Uranus and husband to Rhea, a male character, this remarkable outing of Saturn as possibly bisexual may or may not be literal. But the Orphic Hymn clearly names a marriage. We can say that Saturn is at least energetically feminine, or playing a polarized dark role in relation to the light of Prometheus. Prometheus is a prototypical masculine character, his most important and well known feat is that he brought fire to mankind in defiance of the Gods, a Luciferian role: viewed psychologically, this is act could be considered to be the development of the left brain, the individuated masculine consciousness that happens developmentally to all humans to one extent or another upon maturation. It was Zeus, who was to succeed Saturn as Father of the Gods, who condemned Prometheus to eternal torture. Looking at the keywords associated with Saturn, it is quite clear that Saturn is, in fact, a feminizing and limiting influence in relationship to the expansive, individuated, masculine archetypes that are represented by Prometheus, the Sun and Jupiter/ Zeus, and the other “sky king” astrotheological entities. Yet he is still part of this Sect.
Furthermore, those who are familiar with Saturn in astrology will know that the glyph symbol for Saturn is a stylized scythe, or a sickle. This is often considered to be due to an association with agriculture, and this may have been true among non-astrologically literate people or those hoping to appease Saturn to get the God to leave their crops alone, but one does not invoke a God of death and decrease to encourage crop growth and bountiful harvests: either it is an assumption by later historians based on overly simplistic interpretations of semiotics, or he may have come to be associated with agriculture by people who did not understand the complexity of his story. There is reason to believe that the Roman emperors and religious establishment interfered with and tainted earlier pagan cosmology for political purposes, so I will mostly limit my examination of the mythology to Greek sources.
The story of Saturn/Cronus supplanting Uranus as the Father of the Gods was not the story of a primordial and antiquated Light/ Heat God dying of old age or heroic death in an apocalyptic battle. It is the story of the masculine consciousness through its stages as it comes into relationship and conflict with the feminine consciousness and how the interplay of these forces can result in psychological arrest and stultification.
As previously mentioned, Uranus fathered a set of 3 Giants, called the Hecatoncheires. These beings were said to be extremely destructive, causing earthquakes and wreaking all sorts of havoc upon the earth. What we can conclude from the description of their “multi headed and handed” nature and their indiscriminate destruction is that they were the extreme incarnation of the feminine group mind- they could not or would not individuate and differentiate themselves and lacked or refused to develop the higher, mature, godlike masculine rational capacity. They also seem to be a prototypical human-like being, and mythology and ancient history are loaded with similar beings whom the gods bring into creation, yet find that their creations have some extraordinary flaw or are too close to godlike power that leads them to threaten creation itself. The gods, in turn, must take action to protect what they perceive to be a threat to the balance, or sometimes act selfishly, to maintain their total control and domination and continued exploitation. Uranus in this capacity therefore cast the Giants into Tartarus, a layer of the underworld. The Hecatoncheires may have been 3 single beings with many heads and hands, but they also may have been groups or even races who acted in the manner of herds, or hives, like starlings in quorum formation.
Gaea loved and wanted to protect her children, who behaved with the characteristics of herd animals or lower beings. Despite the damage they caused to Gaea herself, she could not bear to see them cast away. She plotted with her children, the Titans, to get revenge: Cronus/ Saturn was brought into a conspiracy with the other Titans, his siblings, to depose his father Uranus.
The sickle, Cronus/ Saturn’s symbol, was the implement he used to castrate Uranus, his father. It is the tool of emasculation, not agriculture, although it is said that the blood that fell from Uranus’ wound seeded the human race as it fell to earth. Cronus/ Saturn is the emasculating force: he is the masculine agent of the feminine, representing the forces in life that darken, dull, depress, shrink, and control. Cronus/ Saturn’s “marriage” to Prometheus seems, perhaps, to be a dark one.
At this point, Cronus/ Saturn begins to look suspiciously like Oedipus.
Saturn/ Cronus is the child who falls under the spell of the mother who uses him as a tool. She may do this out of agony, she may believe herself to be justified or genuinely believe she needs to do this, but the price is steep, and the implications for his psyche are stark. He is effectively in love with or hypnotized by his own mother and becomes her proxy, her ward, her tool. His own development is therefore arrested, his maturation stultified: what he has done to his father he has effectively done to himself, or rather this was done to him psychologically by the out-of-balance, emotionally distraught Mother who is brought into primordial conflict with the Father over the fate of her children.
These events have destroyed Cronus/ Saturn’s relationship with his Father, and clearly put him in conflict with his own masculinity; it has also destroyed his relationship with children, and it has destroyed his own childhood. He eats babies and sacrifices them because his childhood was eaten, it was destroyed and tainted and perverted. The aging Cronus/ Saturn was said to fear his own children usurping his throne, so Rhea, seeing his derangement, sent Zeus away into hiding and swaddled a stone in a blanket to fool Cronus. This is consistent with the damage done to his psyche: he associated with killing babies because of his damaged childhood: he has lost or never developed the mystical hypnogogic mentality of the child and lacks the mindset of parenting.
In astrology, the both the Moon, representing mothering, nurturing, children and childhood, and Venus to a lesser extent have very fraught and negative relationships with Saturn since the female who encounters the male who is damaged in this way is likely in for trouble.
This is also a recognition or coding of the extraordinary power that the masculine energy has, and a cautionary tale regarding the danger of attempts to corral it and abuse it, because this can create monsters. All of the negative and more feminine significances of Cronus/ Saturn that have pervaded astrology are those of the male whose psychological development has been arrested. He has sublimated his own interests to those of a Mother who lost sight of her own responsibility to the male child. Cronus/ Saturn is male but he is perpetually working against the masculine principle, at odds with himself: when taken to the extreme, cognitive dissonance reigns.
This has Hermetic and alchemical implications as well, and this is encoded in Saturn’s corollary substances. Saturn is represented by the metal lead, which is extremely heavy, stops radiation and is extremely toxic. The alchemical task of turning lead into gold was, at least in part, the act of acknowledging and healing the psychological damage that is suffered by the Saturn/Cronus archetype and transforming and releasing the stultified masculine principle, lead, into it’s full solar radiance, gold, to achieve a mature, wise, individuated, sustaining, self controlled and measured psyche.
The archetype of Cronus/ Saturn also speaks specifically to an aeon, an epoch of human history buried deep in prehistory but still present in the human psyche in which there was a malignant matriarchy that appears to have done this type of damage to men wholesale. The dynastic progression of the archetypes encodes deep truths about human history and psychological development. Also, we can see Ares/ Mars as child, Jupiter/ Zeus as Father, Saturn/ Cronus as Grandfather and Uranus as ancestral Father or All Father. This explains why Ares/ Mars is included in the Night Sect: this is the masculine figure who is caught in perpetual childlike emotional rage, lacking tempered, and sustainable energy and mature means of expression.
Why, you may ask, are both of the “malefic” planets masculine?
In subsequent posts I will get more in depth on the many things that are missing or occulted in astrological archetypes and how we might use hermetic ideas to parse this out.