SATURN HERBAL ASTROLOGY

Most people are aware of Saturns quality because it doesn’t leave you scratching your head wondering whether its influencing you or not. Saturns touch is always experienced physically.

When Saturn enters, it shakes up your life, restructuring your reality as you know it; whether it be through a car accident, a life-threatening illness, losing your job, losing your home, loss of a loved one or something that will change you forever.

Saturn is related to death, liberation and restructuring. Its life lessons are harsh, but they are meant to be some of the most profound lessons for us. Old astrologers refer to it as the “Great Malefic” because it’s destruction is often the most challenging part of our lives, however these difficult experiences are meant to restructure our lives in a way that is in accordance with our souls evolution.

Saturn represents our boundaries, limits, and expansiveness. Generally everyone will experience three Saturn returns in their life, this is when it comes back to where it was in your chart at your birth. It happens approximately every 29 years and represents development of new levels of maturity, self discipline, and self respect.

With Saturn, something has to die - whether it be a belief system, pattern, or something bigger than that. It corresponds with muladhara chakra, or the root chakra, the energy centre that governs our stability. Saturn is the ability to see life itself as a school. It’s important to understand where your Saturn return in your chart is, so you can handle its difficult lessons with a greater awareness that they are happening for you and not to you.

SATURN’S CHARACTERISTICS

Saturn types have a solid, sturdy, physical frame. They tend to be ‘big boned’ with distinct sharp structures, the face can be firm and serious with high cheek bones. In most ways Saturn types can be seen as Vata - tall, slender and often cold, dry and tense. The joints can be cracky and stiff due to the dryness. Saturn governs structural components of the body: bones, teeth, tendons, ligaments, cartilage and minerals.

Its psychological function is to keep us open to the concept of learning as its lessons are required for our growth. Saturn is the fundamental teacher of the soul and our choice of whether to accept its harsh lessons will determine how we evolve, not only as a human, but as an eternal being. It makes us confront our inner demons, face ancestral patterning, and peer into the unconscious darkness within us.

When Saturn is in balance we can turn challenges into achievements, fear into power, disease into medicine, suffering into joy, and darkness into light. When Saturn is out of balance we see lack of responsibility, no boundaries, fear of change, and victimhood. The trick to allowing Saturns energy to flow with ease in your life is utter acceptance. We let go of what should be and fully accept what is.

Herbs of Saturn

Saturn rules hardness and structure, so its plants are tall, dense, strong and fibrous. Saturnian plants assist the mind in developing discipline, so we can create a strong foundation to help us grow. One of its most prominent characteristics is to help is integrate difficult life lessons that can feel quite intense. As they unwind the karmic patterns of our past, Saturns lessons help us evolve spiritually and let go of ancestral patterns, past life trauma or childhood trauma.

Saturn medicine works on bones, joints, cartilage, pain, and emotional upset.

• Herbs for pain: Arnica, Crampbark, Hemp, Mullein, Comfrey, Poppy, Valerian, Kratom, St. Johns Wort, Shepherd's purse

• Herbs for calming intense emotions: Poppy, Valerian, St. Johns Wort, Milk Oats

• Herbs for bones: Nettle, Irish moss, Horsetail, Milky oats

• Herbs for skin: Nettle, Calendula, Horsetail, He Shou Wu

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