Meditating on Saturn seems appropriate for the moment. Right now Saturn is Cazimi in Aquarius. For those unfamiliar, this means it is in the exact same degree and minute as the Sun.
There are two main schools of consideration on Cazimi, the more popular is that it is when a planet is within the 16′ minutes of the center of the Sun. This gives the planet an intense focus and capacity. (some say a degree, but with this, I thoroughly disagree)
The other one is even stricter and says that a planet has to be actually in front of the Sun, so the planet is focusing on the Sun’s rays. Of course, this creates a situation that Cazimi is very rare, and only Venus, the Moon (during an eclipse), and Mercury can be Cazimi.
For today with Saturn we will go with the looser definition. I like to think that when a planet is Cazimi, one can actually palpably feel the moment if you are still, go within, and meditate. I certainly can right now, and even if it is my mind making that experience up, well, to some large degree our reality is made of what our mind projects into the world of its experience anyways.
Saturn though represents a unique duality of Truth and Falsehood. I remember debating a famous astrologer on these subject years back, he was pointing out that all the ancient texts give Saturn to Liars and thus it represents deceit and falsehood. This was not my experience as a practicing astrologer. I found that when people were having Saturn transits, returns, or activations in their chart, they always had a truth of their life or experience revealed to them. For a long time, I contemplated this exchange, as he was right, Saturn is a signifier of liars in texts like Vettius Valens anthologies.
The key to understanding this dichotomy came when studying the Corpus Hermeticum. Astrology was considered an initatory knowledge and in rights of the Mithral tradition, the hermetic tradition, and perhaps many mystery schools from the past we only have fragments of understanding of now, there is an understanding that as the soul incarnates it takes on sheaths of “karmic tendencies of impurity” that deprive it of the Good of being. The first planet listed is Saturn and guess what it rules.
Deceit
Thus if you were writing about the qualities of a planet in human experience and you were an initiate of a mystery school that was rooted in the Corpus Hermeticum you would say that Saturn is a marker of deceit in the birth chart. The mystery schools though were not a one-way deal, you are incarnated and you are stuck with what you have so to speak. They were, (and are) a guide toward freeing the soul from bondage to the material. The way to receive this freedom of the purity of the soul is to reverse the order of the planetary influences by practicing the virtue of each planet. What is the virtue that opposes deceit?
Truth
It became clear to me upon this contemplation that Saturn is the planet of truth. Saturn transits do show you as a soul bound in matter a truth of your existence. They encourage you to act upon that truth, and the pain and suffering you may have through a Saturn transit (and lo how many of us do fear the transits of Saturn who study casually or intently the Art of Astrology) is as much as we resist seeing the truth of our experience and being as a human on earth.
The greatest truth, is that we are an embodied Mindstream (a Buddhist simile for the soul) that is a Soul (a NeoPlatonic simile for mindstream). Saturn is at the edge of what we can materially know and see. The deception it imparts as we metaphorically incarnate is that we are what we can know and see. The truth it reveals as we transcend the stellar influences of incarnation is that we are what can not be known or seen.
If you want to explore what Saturn means for you and your chart, feel free to book a reading at any time with this link. But, the truth is, here I have already given you everything.
