Saturn is the farthest of the seven visible planets. These constellate the conscious identity of the solar system, and of a human, its miniature analog. Cold yellow Saturn, like a dim afterimage of Sun, delineates the frontier of reality as we know it. It embodies the junction between individual identity and its unconscious sources. Thus it defines a point of maximum tension between known ego and its instinctual wellsprings.

Saturn's ringed perimeter, like a defensive wall, encloses a planet only one third the mass of its inner neighbor, rainbow banded Jupiter. Beyond Saturn orbit two smaller globes, only one sixth its size: tipped over Uranus, a window into the unconscious, and invisible Neptune, a symbol of the dream world. Saturn marks the last stand of organization, the fading edge of life and consciousness.

However, things can also be seen the other way around. Moving in from interstellar space, past a timeless realm of numinous ideals (Neptune) and archetypal ideas (Uranus), Saturn's ring acts as a lens, focusing imagination (Neptune) and intuition (Uranus) into conscious thought. It opens a gate channeling formless/abstract energies into tangible manifestation in time and space.

Saturn articulates the central organizing principles of form: laws of matter and energy, structures of life and psyche. It outlines a skeleton of basic processes underlying phenomenal events. Jupiter then fleshes them out with an expansive sense of meaning. Think of the Constitution: a general conceptual framework informs libraries of law, a few paragraphs of procedure guide volumes of specific statutes.

At Saturn the outer planets' fertile potential precipitate into defined patterns. Uranian inspiration, Neptunian dreams, Plutonian passion all freeze out into cold hard facts. Here too the inner planets' personal drives run up against the Reality Principle. All created things must move within their inherent limits and those of the system at large.

Saturn locates where a personal soul (Jupiter) distilled out of psychological factors (inner planets) reaches its zenith and thus its limit. It designates a moment of truth where imaginative creativity and immanent existence merge into a final statement of identity, fully revealed in the clear light of eternity. Thus Saturn is the place of Judgment.

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