The is the first of two posts on this topic.
I am in the process of gathering data for a class I am developing on essential dignities. I was looking back through the book Carmen Astrologicum by Dorotheus, which is one of the earliest texts we have from the Hellenistic era that give information on how astrology was actually practiced during the period of the Hellenistic synthesis.
Early in the text I came across this rather striking statement (page 8 in the Astrology Classics edition, near the bottom of the page):
“…the feminine planets are Saturn, Venus and the Moon, the masculine ones are the Sun, Jupiter, and Mars.”
Saturn is usually thought of as a masculine planet, and here we have this statement in a very early text where (s)he is listed as feminine. Hmm…
I had seen that statement before and noted it in the margin. This time I decided to pursue the metaphor of Saturn as feminine a bit further, and see what sort of light it sheds on traditional astrology.
What I came up with is very interesting and striking, and I want to share my findings here.
In this first post I am particularly interested in how Saturn being classed as feminine shows up in different arrangements of the traditional seven planets.
In the usual astrology classification there is a distinct imbalance in the dividing up of planets as masculine and feminine, with masculine being very much the dominant. That gender imbalance is in striking contradiction to the many instances of balance and symmetry that are the hallmark of traditional astrology.
Notice that, with Saturn as feminine, we now have a perfect symmetrical balance between masculine and feminine planets. Each of the genders has one of the Lights, one Benefic, and one Malefic.
In this arrangement, and in all the others that follow, we have the elusive, many-dimensioned Mercury switching genders according to its placement in the chart. Mercury as hermaphrodite, as bisexual and switching gender.
Compare this division by gender to how the planets are divided by Sect – one of the primary categories of traditional astrology. Each sect gets one light, one benefic and one malefic.
Notice that the malefics switch places, with “feminine” Saturn being among the other masculine day planets, and the masculine Mars here being among the feminine night planets.
Mars, being hot, actually has more kinship with the day, and Saturn being cold has more natural kinship with the night. The usual reason given for switching the two, is to put the malefics where their action would be moderated – cold Saturn in the warmer day, and hot Mars in the cooler night. If you think of day as being more masculine, and night as being more feminine, you then have each of the malefics in the Sect that has more affinity with the opposite gender, in order to balance and moderate their extreme effect.
So, viewing Saturn as feminine, we have another interesting symmetry in how the planets are divided into sect.
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There is another very striking arrangement here – notice that you can line each of the gender planets up so that they represent three phases of a woman or man’s life – youth, maturity, and old age. These also very nicely and strikingly parallel the three modes of the zodiac signs, cardinal, fixed and mutable.
If you are familiar with Goddess worship, you will notice we have the three faces of the Goddess here, Maiden, Mother and Crone, which also parallel three faces of the moon, waxing, full, and waning. It is very interesting that the three masculine planets easily line up in a similar arrangement.
In each of these arrangements we have examined you have that same mark of beautiful overlapping symmetry that is such a distinctive hallmark of much of traditional astrology.
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In this first post I examined Saturn as feminine in different arrangements with the other planets. In next week’s post I want to spend some time meditating on the meaning of Saturn herself as being feminine, and where we can find some parallels for that in Western Tradition. Stay tuned for the next post where we consider Saturn as Crone.
(Please note that this is a speculative meditation, looking at the implications of a single text from an early source. I welcome feedback from you, Dear Reader, on any other places you may be aware of where this classification of Saturn as feminine shows up, or where it sheds further meaning on existing texts or traditions.)
This makes sense to me. I am looking forward to the next Saturn post.L
I thought the Moon was in a cardinal sign?
Traditional astrology doesn’t equate the planets, the signs and the houses in the same way that modern astrology does. In modern astrology you often see it said that the Moon equals Cancer, and both equal the Fourth house. In traditional astrology Moon and Cancer are two different things. It is true that the Moon rules Cancer, but that is not the same as saying that Moon equals Cancer or that Moon is in Cancer.
The Moon rules Cancer, but the Moon is not cardinal.
The Moon is exalted in Taurus, which is a fixed sign, but I don’t think that relates to the analogy I set out in my posts. I don’t think that sequence of Venus-Moon-Saturn has any connection with the signs those planets rule.
I love the balance you show, yet as a Capricorn, this shakes up old perceptions of Saturn. Yes I can see her as Crone. Yet I wonder what happens with the mythologies of Greek/Roman gods/goddesses?
I am not proposing that we drop two thousand years of tradition that treats Saturn as masculine. This is based on a single text in a single document. However, I do think this supplies an interesting alternative perspective, that sheds a bit different light on the planet.
I have Capricorn rising, so Saturn is Lord (or rather, Lady) of my chart. Considering Saturn as Crone is quite meaningful to me, especially since I am moving into my Saturn years – I turn 64 in around a month.
So yes, you are right, it does shake things up a bit.
I love this interpretation. Like all systems, their history is rooted in their culture. A system written by men is sure to reflect masculine values. Why do we persist in using worn out old systems based on the fact that ‘it’s always been this way’. If that were the case women would still not be allowed to vote, and slavery would still be enforced. Both are appalling to even think about. It’s time we take a new consciousness to astrology and reinterpret with all of humanity included in the heavens. Thank you for opening up the heavens to include a balance of genders, 50/50. Well done.
Compare Jupiter and Saturn. The former is more what you would call active and warmer, or masculine. Saturn is cold, like the moon and venus, therefore passive. So it may be understandable why it was referred to, somewhat randomly? as a feminine planet. Still, it does take you by surprise.
I have seen this (Saturn as feminine) somewhere else also. Perhaps in Christian Astrology (don’t quote me). But from a metaphysical point of view, this makes total sense.
Very interesting analysis. Thanks!
Intuitively it makes perfect sense. Just a couple spontaneously remembered facts from the common mythology that support this intuition:
– In Russian folklore tradition it is a crone who comes to a dying person with Saturnian scythe, or sometimes sickle.
– Saturn was unmanned by his son Zues. Whether he was a man before that, or rather a hermaphrodite; after unmanning he certainly would exhibit more of the feminine aspects than masculine.
There are many others that come to the mind, but I will leave it at it here. :)
You have to use your third eye and not always believe the official story on correspondences and such within the Hermetic arts in this day and age: Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma: “Masonry, like all the Religions, all the Mysteries, Hermeticism and Alchemy, conceals its secrets from all except the Adepts and Sages, or the Elect, and uses false explanations and misinterpretations of its symbols to mislead those who deserve only to be misled; to conceal the Truth, which it calls Light, from them, and to draw them away from it. Truth is not for those who are unworthy or unable to receive it, or would pervert it. So God Himself incapacitates many men, by color-blindness, to distinguish colors, and leads the masses away from the highest Truth, giving them the power to attain only so much of it as it is profitable to them to know. Every age has had a religion suited to its capacity.”
Well done – yin and yang do look at the power and strength of malefics or (benefics) respectively, being at their strongest yang( or yin) strength when in the opposite sect
What an interesting discovery here. I was drawn to this after this big change in my life and this very intense spiritual enlightenment process that I have experienced. I’ve been receiving signs from numerology, clairvoyance and Claireaudience. It has left me quite shaken, quite honestly. I see the idea that in the beginning it was dark and God said let there be light which to me would be in the dark being the feminine if the sun was the source of light. But Saturn is clearly a brown dwarf and was once a star just as the sun is. That gas is burned out and now the rings, Well those represent the halo, or halogen/halide. We can’t be the only exception being the only solar system that was only born with one star. Although due to our self importance, it would be easy to assume that everything revolves around us lol. The synchronicity I’m experiencing currently is a bit much. I dropped out of high school and was hell-bent on not being taught throughout my life. I’ve always wanted to explore on my own. This is a huge year for me, I am currently 45. I was born July 11 at 11:07 AM. On the 45th parallel, 122 W. If only it stopped there. I’m trying to make sense of everything but what I have been experiencing has me feeling that something very very big is coming very rapidly. At this point, I’m just looking for a collaboration and ideas of what this can all mean. Happy for any feedback. I will add that Mimas it said to be a moon of Saturn, but in Greek mythology was the son of Gaia. So Luna and Mima are probably the earth‘s children? I don’t know what the backside of our moon looks like, but there’s a striking resemblance and perhaps there’s a giant crater on the backside of our moon? Maybe they collided. Mimas looks like a death star. Don’t get me started on my wild theories about Neptune and Uranus. But something tells me those were, let’s just say accidentally, by man.
This article came up in a Google search for associating Queen Hekate with Saturn. I read in a little booklet entitled “Hekate, The Unconquerable Queen of the Witches” that I purchased from The Vodu Store (dot com), that one of her correspondences is the planet Saturn. That intuitively made sense to me and I wanted to she if anything from the astrological world warrants that association. On a personal level, Saturn is also Lady of my Birth Chart; however, she is in an out of sign conjunction with the Moon on the malefic bounds between Cancer and Leo with Saturn being in Cancer (on the 7th House). I have named this segment of my chart “The Death Mother” and indeed there is deep duplicity to this energetic signature / archetype (both life and death). As a goddess worshipper, I readily accept Saturn as the feminine malefic. As reading my own Chart, Saturn is the Death Mother and represents Queen Hekate, who is the ruler of my Birth Chart. Seeing Saturn in this manner has helped me develop a better relationship with the planet, my childhood was a nightmare…I was raised by my grandmother, who went by the name of Dean and who had the Medusa death stare that can turn me to stone from my memory to this very day…on a deep psychological level in order to manifest the “higher” side of this signature. I can come across as serious and emotionless by the fact that Saturn is a natural malefic and cruel planet undignified in the Moon’s house but with this perspective that it improves my Lady’s dignity aligning her more with the Goddess and her role in dealing with the Life/Death/Life as described in part 2 of this blog post. Appreciate this study. I see this was originally posted in 2016 and I have more reading to do on Charlie’s insight regarding Saturn.
It also makes more sense that Saturn is a feminine force when you look at the Kabalah Tree of life, additionally, look at the astrological glyph of Saturn. It is a pregnant belly.