From an esoteric astrology point of view, Saturn is a mentor, a teacher, and a tantric-style guru. As mentor, Saturn guides the native, establishing the rules of the maturing or spiritual road from early on in the native’s life. Saturn’s method will have a realness to it, matter of fact. Saturn’s ways are usually not easy on the emotional nature of the native because Saturn is not interested in that aspect of a person but, instead, in the maturing of the full human being. As such, Saturn will foster circumstances or conditions from earliest childhood that mentor and train the native while challenging emotional or personal predispositions.

Mentor-Saturn will focus on specific aspects of the native. These are represented by the planets or points in aspect to mentor-Saturn. Look at your chart for direct aspects with Saturn, then ponder the specific mentoring theme that this life is providing.

Teacher-Saturn has specific lessons to convey. In this incarnation, Saturn will come back to the same lessons over and over again. Saturn holds us in a lesson-plan until the we understand how pervasive this something is in our thoughts, reactions, personalizations, relations, and inner processes. Look to the sign and house of Saturn for the lesson(s).

Saturn also plays the role of a tantric-style guru. As such, Saturn exerts precision. On this level, imbedded ideas of reality and self are excised (if the native can receive this instruction). The Devil card of the Tarot comes to mind. The Devil is a caricature of the little self’s tendency to blame circumstances and others for that which one does to one self. The card shows the Devil lording over a man and woman chained to him. Yet, the chains that apparently bind them are so loose as to almost fall off of their own weight. Therefore, the card represents illusion and delusion. Saturn in this tantric-guru role points out the obvious, the man and woman in the card are fools. In other words, we are. The rationalizations that we create, state, and foolishly act from cannot cheat reality nor the flawlessness physics of cause-result. Saturn is unremittingly clear. It says “Look at your self. The bindings of rebirth, difficulty, and the chain of desire are upon you by your choice.” We think that reality can somehow be circumvented or marginalized, however, tantric-guru Saturn provides clarity that it cannot and gives direction as to how to address one’s self-delusions. In this regard, one would ponder Saturn’s role in the chart overall (aspects and the mode/cross of the sign of Saturn). The planets aspected by Saturn state exactly where our delusions of self are. Conversely, the houses that Saturn archetypally rules (10, 11, 7 in order of refinement) state where we might have the least clarity regarding our rationalizations and excuses or have come to riveting clarity and truth.

In a sense, these three faces of Saturn display the exoteric, esoteric, and hierarchical qualities of Saturn.

• Traditional (exoteric) Saturn rules Capricorn, the 10th house, and used to rule Aquarius and therefore the 11th house. This is mentor-Saturn offering the rules of the road to maturity (Capricorn/10th) and effective interaction with the world (Aquarius/11th).
• Esoteric Saturn rules Capricorn again. Now the emphasis is on the Soul intention of the Life (Capricorn). Soul is ultimately the authority of the life. It creates the events and circumstances in which the personal self finds itself, and through which the maturing self becomes a more integral instrument to the accomplishment of Soul’s long cycle of purpose. Planets in the 10th house, then, should be looked at for their Soul qualities and abilities that they represent, as well as the mature expression of them being suggested. Living them in this way, assists Saturn in its placement accomplish its overall tutelage. Otherwise, Saturn will keep the native in the ring-pass-not of the lesson plan of personal learning and maturing while disallowing the maturing expression of itself, the planets in the 10th house, or the Soul’s intention for the incarnation.
• Hierarchical Saturn rules Libra and the 7th house. Tantra is a complex subject but one component of it is pairs of complementarity. This is well represented by Libra and the circumstances related to the 7th house. Tantric-guru Saturn will use one’s ideas of self and other, reality and the delusion of choice, along with the various pairs that one holds as opposites or creates opposition through. These will be used to create frustration until the little self no longer perceives factors of life as oppositional. In the realization that self-made walls, wars, and separateness are actually the issue, the native is freed from limitation (Saturn) into wholeness (tantric Saturn). In Libra, the little self must set like the setting sun. Doing so, one becomes the horizon – a meeting of a perceived two that are, in fact, one whole. Planets in the 7th house, then, refer to a truly higher Way. The planets must be expressed as the powers that they are as well as the expression of wholeness that each signifies.