Professor Saturn
Written for The Mountain Astrologer Magazine. Art by Kalyja Rain.
SATURN Rx SIDEREAL AQUARIUS: 6/05/2022 – 07/12/2022
My teacher once said: “Saturn wants you to experience the reactions of your actions right now, so you don’t have to endure them later.”
All planets are teachers. Each planet has skills to bid us. The house is the classroom – the area of life the planet presents its lesson. Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, and Moon designate knowledge imparted with ease. They are benefic because their agenda is
peaceful. Sun, Mars, Saturn, and the nodes are also faculty in life’s university, but they often take a fearsome form to instruct the challenging and uncomfortable lessons required to pass for the most authentic expression of the soul’s yearning.
The most formidable of the malefics is Saturn, or Śani in Sanskrit – the slow. Yes, Saturn is slow, but I prefer to call it “thorough”. Saturn is exhaustive. It’s transits are methodical examinations testing us on every level. Saturn leaves no moral unassessed, and many are afraid of it because its transit can bear delay and difficulty.
Saturn characterizes work. It teaches through hard work, discipline, and service to others. The sign and house in which your Saturn is placed indicates your ability to persevere in that area. On a spiritual level that means Saturn wants us to be perfected in honesty and humility.
How do we fully embody the wisdom of Saturn? The Vedic pantheon is fond of the great monkey Hanumān. He represents unshakable faith, devotion, and will power. In Vedic mythology there is a divinity that embodies the highest ideals of each planet.
Hanumān has perfected the curriculum of Saturn. Invoking him is to invoke the strength of forbearance and fortitude in the face of adversity.
“om haṁ rudrāya hanumate namaḥ”
Say this mantra 11 times every morning, noon, and night to connect to the wisdom of Saturn in its retrograde transit through sidereal Aquarius as it prepares to move back into Capricorn for a final cleanup of the past three years’ proceedings. Activate this mantra during a Saturn return, Saturn’s 8th house transit, Saturn’s transit of the ascendent or moon, or a Saturn ruled period in your chart.