Saturn as seen on Cassini Mission (Source:Wikipedia)

Saturn as seen on Cassini Mission (Source:Wikipedia)

Saturn, the Guardian of Time, the Dweller at the Threshold.  Saturn is the farthest planet in our solar system that is visible to the naked eye.  I’m sure you’ve seen it in the night sky – a yellow, steady disc.  The Threshold, as the ancients saw it, was the boundary between our world and what was beyond, between the material world and the imagined one.  Saturn has come to represent matter and time, the forms energy takes as it contracts and coalesces. 

Saturn used to be called a malefic, a planet that brought restriction, bondage, and limitation.  Astrologers of old predicted famine, pestilence, disaster, and the downfall of monarchs when a strong Saturn visit was imminent.  As our understanding has evolved, we have learned to see Saturn as part of a whole process, the process by which an idea contracts into physical form.  Once this spark of energy becomes matter, Saturn becomes the desire to preserve it against change and destruction.  It is here that Saturn takes the emotional forms of fear, self-discipline, ambition, control, and perseverance.  Saturn represents our impulses to conform and accept traditions, authority, rules, and regulations in order to purchase our security. 

Ultimately, Saturn represents our dharma, the path of duty where we encounter this physical world and its lessons that lead to purification and wisdom.  In this way, the threshold that Saturn guards becomes the gateway to enlightenment.

In a personal natal chart Saturn indicates

  • Commitment
  • Contraction
  • Responsibility
  • Ambition
  • Wisdom gained through experience
  • Effort
  • Self-preservation

How will we define Saturn as used in astrology for business?  Remember, there are three different options in the business use of astrology. 

  1. The first is reading a person’s standard natal chart from the point of view of business.  What does your chart say about you as a business person?  What are your strengths and weaknesses as applied to your professional life?
  2. The second is reading the chart of a business itself.  It is fairly easy to find the date of incorporation of publicly held businesses, and many small business owners can say the date they first opened their doors or made their first sale.
  3. The third option is to view the vocations that have been found to be good expressions of certain planetary energies.
A rough comparison of the sizes of Saturn and Earth. (Source:Wikipedia)

A rough comparison of the sizes of Saturn and Earth. (Source:Wikipedia)

Saturn in a Businessperson’s Chart

The energy of Saturn has a natural affinity with business.  An idea becomes a business through the gifts of Saturn:  self-discipline, perseverance, systems.  Limitation is an inherent characteristic of the business world, and businesspeople understand concepts such as scarcity of resources, hierarchy, and the need for budgets and controls.  

Saturn indicates the intensity of one’s ambition, the inner pressure one feels to become or accomplish something.  Saturn also indicates the Achilles heel in a businessperson, the mind-set in which doubt, fear or being overly conservative works against success.  When Saturn is strong in a businessperson’s chart, they run a tight shop with an authoritarian management style and excellent administrative abilities.

Saturn in the Chart of a Business

Like the other planets, when we look at Saturn in the chart of a business, we take the essential meanings of Saturn in a personal chart and combine them with the meanings of Saturn in a mundane chart.  A business is an entity in that it has a birth, a life cycle, and an end, and it has meaning and purpose like any other being.  It is like a child of a person’s imagination and desire.  But it’s also impersonal, in that it doesn’t carry its own conscious evolvement even though it passes through phases and cycles like everything else on earth.  In this way it is more like a mundane chart and the meanings from that branch of astrology apply.

In a business chart, Saturn describes systems and procedures, controls and policies.  It can also indicate outside rules and regulations such as tax and housing codes and the general level of difficulty the business will experience with outside authorities.  It rules audits and reporting, bureaucracy and bylaws.  It also shows the area where good hard work and persistence will pay off and where inner and outside limitations can spark real growth and accomplishment.

Vocations

Many thanks for the following vocational information to Noel Tyl.  As my first astrology teacher in the 1970s, his work continues to influence my thinking to this day.  He has recently published Vocations, the New Midheaven Extension Process, which outlines the various vocations that are connected with each of the planets. 

The limiting, contracting principle of Saturn can clearly be seen in the vocations associated with him, such as business administration, finance, farming, taxes, insurance, and construction.  Interestingly, Saturn’s rulership of time brings in antiques, clocks and watches, and careers involving the elderly.

Can you form the link between the vocational expression and the other descriptions?  The essential energy of Saturn takes slightly different but related forms in the different expressions.

In chart form, we have:

Planet or Luminary In personal chart In mundane chart In businessperson’s chart In business chart In vocational expression
Saturn Commitment 

Responsibility 

Ambition 

Wisdom gained through experience 

Effort 

Self-preservation

 

 Elderly people 

Life-threatening epidemics 

Land-owners, farmers 

Mines, coal and industries connected to metals and minerals 

State funerals, public sorrow

 Perseverance 

Self-discipline 

Ambition 

Self-undoing

Inner pressure 

Management style

 

 Systems & controls 

Outside regulators 

Audits 

Bureaucracy 

Limitations, failure

 Business administration 

Finance 

Farming 

Taxes 

Insurance 

Construction 

The elderly