For thousands of years, human beings have looked to the skies to understand the world around them and the deeper forces that contribute to its workings. The origins and development of Western astrology can be traced to methods and writings from ancient Mesopotamia, Greece, and Egypt. In modern times, more people than ever are fascinated with the movement of planets through each zodiac sign. One of these, Saturn, is a colossal celestial body believed to exert a sizable influence on human lives.
Fast Facts About Saturn
As the second-largest planet in our solar system, Saturn is a magnificent gas giant surrounded by a network of rings made up of ice and dust particles. NASA reveals that its diameter is around nine times larger than Earth’s and it sits about 886 million miles away from our sun. Saturn takes approximately 29.5 years to complete a full orbit, making it one of the slowest-moving planets in our region of space.
It’s also the most distant planet that can be seen without the aid of a telescope, which is why humans can sometimes view it in the night skies. To our eyes, it appears as a bright yellow-white point of light that’s larger than most stars. Multiple cultures across the ancient world recorded their observations of the planet, which the Greeks called Phainon after a son of the Titan Astraeus and the dawn goddess Eos.
However, its modern name results from the ancient Romans associating it with their god of crops and the harvest. Equating their deity with the Greek Titan Cronos, they venerated him with multiple temples and regarded him as a ruler of wealth, time, renewal, and liberation. The Encyclopedia Britannica explains that his major annual festival, Saturnalia, was a time during which gifts were given, moral and social codes were relaxed, slaves enjoyed freedom, and people were granted vacations from work.
Saturn’s Behavior in Astrology
Thanks to Saturn’s lengthy orbit period plus the god’s traits in ancient mythology, astrologers ascribe a unique set of meanings within a horoscope or a person’s birth chart. Represented in Western astrology by the god’s characteristic sickle, the planet completes its nearly 30-year trip around the sun only three times in most people’s lifespans.
Thus, the term “Saturn return” refers to the time during which the planet arrives back to the same position it occupied at an individual’s birth. The effects of this return are said to first manifest near a person’s 30th birthday, only to be revisited in some form during his or her late 50s and once again in his or her late 80s. Moreover, Saturn takes around 2.5 years to travel through each zodiac sign. The writers at Astrology.com also mention that the planet spends a third of each year in retrograde, or appearing to move backward in its traditional celestial path.
What do Saturn’s movements and impacts actually mean? The Cut’s Claire Comstock-Gay describes it as a planet signaling structure, duty, limits, and morality. She adds that some see it as exerting a conservative force or perhaps representing a status quo. Nevertheless, she suggests that these are only a few ways to view Saturn’s influence, emphasizing that it can represent the need for rest or to set critical boundaries in one’s life.
A Celestial Titan With Long-Ranging Effects
Saturn himself was often regarded as a large looming patriarchal figure who set rules, boundaries, and limits. That’s appropriate, given the size of his namesake planet as well as its slow travel on its orbit around the sun. For many, this celestial body holds keys to wisdom, patience, restraint, and reassessing important life priorities. Whatever you believe about astrology, there’s no doubt that it has left its effects on both human belief systems as well as popular culture.