In Greek, Saturn is known as Chronos, meaning "time." To the philosophically and more eastern minded, time is cyclical, female, illusionary, and infinite. To most Western minds, time is conceived as being linear, masculine, defining, limiting, and incremental. This latter view of time is, of course, more prevalent in our culture, and gives to Saturn an authoritarian aura. Even in esoteric astrology, Saturn is known as the "Lord of Karma," requiring a person to have mastered a sense of practical responsibility in terms of how one utilizes one's time in one's daily life before being able to move onwards to the more transcendental time frame of the soul.
When Capricorn rises in the natal chart, time and the boundaries of mortality are major issues in the way an individual functions within the circumstances of the immediate environment. For one with the Sun in Capricorn, these factors manifest as a distinct sense structure (or limitation!) in terms of one's creative self-expression. In terms of the Moon in Capricorn, this orientation may be translated as "I only have this amount of time in which to fulfill my emotional needs and wants." In all three cases, there is a sense of limitation (and the resulting inner tension from this "chronological" pressure) about life in general an about the possibilities for success in one's own life in particular.
People with Capricorn rising and a strongly afflicted Saturn feel like a character in a 1930's horror classic when Bela Lugosi presses a button and the library walls begin to close in upon our hapless hero or heroine. Such Saturn-afflicted people have all they can do to keep from feeling like they are being squashed by life and they are often tense, fearful, and depressed as a result. On the other hand, a Capricorn-rising chart with a strong and positive Saturn reveals an individual with a firm mastery of time. This is an efficiency expert, one who knows what to do and when to do it, as well as how much to invest in terms of time and energy in any given project.
My first teacher of the Esoteric Path was such a wise Saturnian (Capricorn Sun, Moon in Scorpio with Libra rising). He taught me that the keys to success on the material plane are the mastery of "process, order, structure, and form." For a person with no earth in his horoscope like me, this was far from an easy task! Perhaps that is why he gave it to me. A poorly aspected and weak Saturn in a Capricorn-dominated chart signifies an individual who has not cultivated a mastery of these four dynamics, while when Saturn is acting from its more harmonious side, these four qualities are indeed an integrated part of the personality and time becomes our friend.
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