Message #94139

[Bianca]

Guardian of the velvet rope

As the furthest-out visible planet in the solar system, Saturn represents the boundaries of the real. This correlation reveals a hoary old truism that is deeply embedded in the collective unconscious: If I can see it with my own eyes, it exists.

Saturn’s famous rings are like the velvet rope at a nightclub. The planet seems to say: Everything within this designated area is known, established and has a name; anything outside this area is of uncertain provenance and is probably not worth my time. As the guardian of the velvet rope of a nation-state, Saturn decides what’s in and what’s out in terms of cultural legitimacy. As the guardian of the velvet rope of a town, it decides which is the right side of the tracks and which is the wrong side. In the professional arena, Saturn decides which jobs count as bona fide careers and which are wacky pipe dreams that only teenagers or some bum like Jack Kerouac would pursue.

Saturn seems to believe that it, and it alone, knows what real life is.

The trouble is, when subjected to metaphysical examination, the questions raised by the concept “real life” start squiggling around like worms crawling out of a can. The more you think about it, the more the apparent reality of “reality” dissolves into pixels, as anyone who has seen The Matrix will tell you. Yet it remains true that of all the planets we work with in traditional astrology, Saturn, with its connotations of rock-solid, no-bulls**t reality is the one archetype we most strenuously resist challenging.

We complain endlessly about Saturn challenging us, but we resist challenging it.



Resisting relativism

In astrology, of course, the idea that reality is relative is axiomatic. A client who goes to an astrologer will probably already be hip to this idea; and will find himself nodding away in full agreement as he listens to his astrologer explain that his assumptions about romance are going to be different from his partner’s, and how his unconscious feelings impact his work day, and how his upbringing determines his definition of the perfect home, etc. But as soon as an issue comes up that the client sees as belonging wholly and utterly to the external world—Saturn’s world—suddenly the client may shift gears: he feels he has nothing whatsoever to do with “creating” this part. (This usually happens when the discussion comes around to money.)  He will say, “But wait a minute: now you’re talking about, you know, reality.”

In theory, the idea of a singular, constant, absolute reality was fatally skewered by Einstein, letting loose an onslaught of science fiction writers and string theorists and filmmakers (e.g. “What the Bleep Do We Know”) who continue to rock our Gibraltars with the news that, even from a scientific point of view, reality is relative. But the notion of a good old-fashioned reality, finite and impersonal, remains a stubborn shibboleth of collective thinking. We unconsciously defend the idea of “reality,” and its twin concept objectivity, as if our psychological survival depended on it.

This is an anachronistic use of Saturn, and it is time for serious astro-philes to update it.

Easier said than done. The insistence upon a universally agreed-upon reality is part and parcel of our language and our conventions. A friend may say, “I want a real relationship”. You may respond, “What do you mean by a ‘real relationship’?“ and she may answer, “You know, a real relationship.” (Tip-off number one that we’re up against a lazy Saturn: repetition rather than clarification.) You may ask, “But by “real”, what do you mean? A relationship that would lead to marriage? Living together? Progeny? One that would last five/fifteen/fifty years?” After shaking her head in frustration at all these guesses, she may reply in exasperation: “Oh, you know what I mean! I just want what everybody wants.”

And of course, this is the key. Saturn represents our concept of where everybody else is coming from.

This use of Saturn presumes the existence of a collective external point of view whose tenets are so über-obvious that they rarely get looked into. With this ploy we surround whatever opinion we are championing with a patina of eternal validity and neutrality (a friend of mine who doesn’t think much of astrology once reasoned, “if it were valid, it would be taught at Columbia”). We feel that appealing to an outside-world consensus gives our arguments an unarguable realness that would be lost if we were merely expressing our own unique opinions, desires and fears.