The Sun Conjoins Saturn – The Oldest Duality in Astrology

Hey, everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/]. Today we're going to take a look at the sun conjoining Saturn in the sign of Pisces. This is the moment of reset for Saturn in its Synodic Cycle with the sun. This also means that Saturn is cazimi today. So we're going to be taking a look at that to start with. And then we're going to dive into the ancient philosophical dichotomy that was made between Saturn and the sun, which is one of the most foundational planetary dichotomies of the entire language of astrology.

Looking at it from this point of view, I think will help us working with today's conjunction between the Sun and Saturn, but also going forward, it will give us a much deeper understanding of the Synodic Cycle between the Sun and Saturn and of any and all of their aspects that we see in the sky, you know, month by month, year by year. So I hope that you will find this illuminating today. And on that note, let's get into it before we do, remember to like and subscribe. Share your comments. If you have any good stories to share, as always, use the hashtag grabbed. Tell us the name of the transit. Tell us your story or send it to us. Grab the Nightlight. Astrology.com, just don't share anything you don't want us using in a future storytelling. Episode. You can find transcripts of any of these daily talks on the website, which is Nightlight astrology.com

Only a few promos today to things I have to plug here. Let me turn over to the website. Excuse me. Go to the events page. Click on live talks, you'll see my next talk on essential dignities, what they are, how they work, why they're real. That's taking place April 3. If you can't attend live, as always, you get the recording afterward. A lot of people have confusion about the essential dignities. So if this is something you'd like to learn more about, learning how to use it, learning what your exalted planets mean in your chart, or your planets in exile or detriment? So anyway, then check out the speaker series. This month of March, we have our spring speaker series on the 15th, 16th and 23rd three amazing talks from three amazing astrologers. This is all free for you, so just click register now to get the link, and there is also a recording you'll get afterward if you cannot attend live.

Finally, go to book a reading. Check on the need based astrology readings. If you haven't seen this service yet, success of the Kickstarter is what we have to thank for this service, tiered readings at different prices from our course directors, our class tutors and some talented alumni, and this gives you some pricing options so that you can have access to an astrology reading based on what your budget is. So we try to make everything we do accessible. One of our core visions is that astrology be something that is financially accessible to study or access for people. So on that note, let us dive a little bit of a raw throat today. Let us turn our attention to the real time clock, where we will take a look at this meeting of the Sun and Saturn.

Now, last week, I did a video on Saturn dying. If you go back just in the last week or two of my most recently posted videos you're going to see a talk that I did on Saturn is about to die. That is a talk on the Synodic Cycle of Saturn that I highly recommend checking out for the sake of going deeper into the facial dynamics of today's conjunction. So for all of you who haven't seen that yet, be sure to go back and check that out. In the meantime, we can see that today, Wednesday, March 12, the Sun and Saturn are conjoining. This is happening just prior to the lunar eclipse that's coming through. We're going to spend the next two days talking about that lunar eclipse, but it is worth mentioning that the lunar eclipse will be opposing Saturn.

It will be opposing Saturn at the moment that Saturn is being reset or reconfigured. Anytime the sun conjoins a planet in their Synodic Cycle, it is as though the archetypal agenda, direction or purpose that the planet represents as one of the members of the planetary Pantheon that is helping guide and direct our lives, our spiritual evolution, is being reset so we have a new plan, a new vision, a new chapter that's starting with respect to the work that Saturn is doing in our lives. You can look at the whole sign house of Pisces for more insight on that, and that is what last week's video was also about. I take you back into the previous cycle as well, and kind of mentioned some of the important dates this next Synodic Cycle will also feature Saturn moving into Aries, something else that we brought up in that video, and something we'll be talking about more the closer that Saturn gets to Aries.

For now, this sun Saturn combination can be read today in terms of mundane manifestations, things that you may notice or see, themes and topics that appear internally in your inner life, as well as those that come outside in the form of events, people, places, things. And so what I want to do today is go into a little deeper philosophical exploration of the Sun and Saturn as a.

I add, because when we do this and we understand their relationship on a philosophical and archetypal level, we then have a key that allows us to work with and noticed, notice the manifestations well beyond the limits of any list that is made. You know, I love my lists. I have nothing against them. I love making lists of things to watch for. Today, we are going to think of these things to watch for in terms of the basic philosophical dichotomies that are a part of the sun, Saturn, dyad. These basic dichotomies, by the way, create some of the most basic philosophical tensions of the entire language of astrology. So the things we're about to explore, you could say, are truths that exist as basic statements or philosophical or almost like faith statements or doctrines or dogmas or teachings or beliefs that live really at the core of the entire system of astrology dating back 1000s of years. So on that note, let's explore them.

Number one, one way that the Sun and Saturn were talked about as opposites. And by the way, if you don't understand why they are basic opposites, it's really simple. In the Zodiac, we can see that the sun, the sun rules the sign of Leo, the polar opposite sign is the Saturn ruled sign of Aquarius. Now, there are reasons that the planets are placed in these signs that we can't get to today, but a fundamental, a fundamental element of the Zodiac is that the luminaries, the sun and the moon, are placed in signs opposite to Saturn. So there are some of these tensions that actually work for the moon and Saturn as well. But we're going to leave that out as well. The moon is in its rulership and cancer opposite Capricorn, another sign of Saturn. So the lights were placed against Saturn in the in the theme of Mundi, or in the basic scheme of rulerships.

The other thing is that the sun is considered exalted in the sign of Aries, and in that sign, Saturn is in its fall. If you take the sun and put it in Libra, it is in its fall where Saturn, in Libra is in its exaltation. So they are also opposed to each other across the exaltation, the exaltation scheme. So the Sun and Saturn form basic opposites in the philosophical organization of planetary rulerships in the zodiac. And there are deeper reasons for that that have to do with their placement in the solar year and the alternation of light and dark that takes place in the solar year, for example, very basically notice that when the light takes over. The sun is exalted when the darkness takes over. In Libra, in the solar year, as seen from the northern hemisphere, Saturn takes over when the sun is in the middle portion of summer, that there's Leo. When we're in the middle portion of winter, there's Saturn. So they have their their dyadic relationships is all are also configured in a way through the symbolism of the alternation of light and dark found in the solar year. That is the backbone of planetary rulership scheme itself.

Anyway, all of that is just to say that they are opposites, and they are foundational opposites for the entire language of astrology, because everything in astrology is related back to the alternation of light and dark, yin and yang, daytime, nighttime, primary and secondary, motion, masculine and feminine. It is a dyadic system that is very much like the symbol of the yin and yang. You have a little speck of light in the dark and dark in the light, and a circle containing the two.

And so there is a sacred unity and duality that is present throughout the entire metaphysical reasoning of ancient astrology and the Saturn Sun dichotomy is one of the most basic ways in which that sacred hole that has the duality within it is expressed now. Now that I've set that up, let's talk about number one on the list, which is illumination versus ignorance. There is an interesting way in which these two are like, think of all of these as sort of two sides of a coin like yin and yang. They interpenetrate one another, and they can turn into each other. So the sun generally related with the process by which the soul comes into contact with truth, beauty, understanding of its eternal nature and of the divinity of the cosmos itself. So the process of enlightenment, you could say, is depicted by the very image of the Sun illuminating Saturn is the dimmest, most distant planet, so dimly lit, so far away, is associated, by contrast, with a dimly lit consciousness ignorance. I have barely any understanding of myself as an eternal being. All I want to do is eat pet.

To get as much power as I can, as much pleasure as I can avoid, as much pain as I can, and I have no interest in anything of an eternal nature. So, you know, ignorance has been described this way by different religious and spiritual traditions for a very long time, and that's sort of Saturn's domain at its worst. Now, this is not all there is to Saturn, because I'm going to show you in a second that any of these can be flipped. Saturn will be everything that is only dimly lit, dimly aware and sort of ignorant.

You could also compare the two in terms of a sunny disposition versus a depressive disposition, right? So one of the most basic things that astrology is used for for 1000s of years. And if there is any kind of religious or spiritual essence of the practice itself, it is that by means of studying the planetary symbols in our lives and reflecting upon them and living in and through and with them, we are illuminated from within. That it aids in a process of spiritual enlightenment, and that that process is fundamentally pitted against unconsciousness, or let's call it, ignorance. I don't want to be ignorant. I want to be illumined from within. I don't want to be selfish. I want to be, you know, care for myself, but be compassionate and concerned with the reality of other beings and things outside of myself, or things that are others, right? So the illumination versus ignorance conversation has been described along the lines of Sun and Saturn for a very long time. And so when the two planets come together, or they're Trine, or they're sextile, or they're any kind of aspect whatsoever, you can go through a process where something that has been dimly lit you're now aware of, or something that has represented in ignorance is illuminated. Or you can become aware of something where you just, you just couldn't see something now I can see it. It's clear.

Now these two things can also be flipped. So let's consider the opposite. There is a way in which we may act puffed up and proud like we are in possession of truth or knowledge or understanding, and we present ourselves like luminaries or we are in we think that we are in possession of some kind of God, like status or power. So think of the ego just the way we think about that conventionally. Don't think of the Sun as the ego. Think of it as potentially representing that shadow of thinking, I'm God, right? I'm everything.

Well, in that way, the shadow of the Sun is Saturn, right? And then, interestingly, the shadow of Saturn is the sun. So there's a way in which, let's say a Saturn transit occurs to the sun in your birth chart. One of the most common things that will happen psychologically is people with big, big egos. And I don't mean this disrespectful. It's just the truth. I've gone through it myself, and my ego got like, knocked down a peg. It's just what happens, and it's good to happen. It's good, it's good for us. And it does not always have to be like a punitive or mean thing, either. But Saturn will sort of check the ego, and it just sort of says you're not that big of a deal, or you are special, but not quite as as much as you think you are, or, like, tone it down, or kind of it's actually painful to live outside of a more modest and kind of basic understanding of who you are. Don't try to be so much

so that kind of dim, distant planet can check the bigness of the sun and sort of bring it into a more moderate, mature place, right? And so the two planets, when it comes to illumination and ignorance. It's not fair to say that Saturn is ignorance and the sun is illumination only because Saturn is also a planet that has been described for 1000s of years as a planet of wisdom and the sun sometimes as a planet of bravado, machismo, pride, arrogance. And so the two planets are part of an ongoing dyadic process of illumination, and the way in which illumination works is sometimes we feel very low, and then sometimes we get filled with confidence. Sometimes we're overly confident, and we have to be brought down a little bit. And that contraction, expansion dynamic that's kind of quintessential, put anything with Saturn, and you get, like a bit of a contraction. On one end,

what does it contract? It will contract solar qualities. So, insofar as it contracts solar qualities, it can bring ignorance. But insofar as it contracts solar qualities, it can bring you know,

a more humble, you know, person, less bravado, something like that. So illumination and ignorance to

the dyad between these two planets was fundamental to the entire philosophy of astrology. Their dyad represents something that all of astrology is doing and is about, which is also helpful when it comes to understanding.

Their transits number two, truth versus deception. So similarly, when the sun is big and bright and radiant, it represents clear understanding of that which is eternal and that which is eternal is true, beautiful and good. So that means that Saturn could be anything that is deceiving us, that is an illusion, or that represents something bad or immoral.

And so that dichotomy, whether it's sort of moral or epistemological, has to do, has to do with how we come to understand what is true, what is real or not. Now, people will commonly say that,

you know, Saturn is about what is real in some practical and merely limited way, like a literal, concrete, material way of understanding, and that Saturn is therefore not capable of imagination that is absolutely bogus.

So let's kind of think about this at a deeper level.

The process of truth is also something that comes through the relationship between these two planets philosophically, when you think about coming into a clear, noble, bright understanding about something it. There's nothing better. There's nothing better than feeling like I've understood something, not everything. Probably most of us would never say that, but like I've understood something, whether it's in a craft or a trade or a skill you're trying to develop, or if it's something spiritual or a truth about virtue or moral clarity, there's just nothing like it. It's like, Oh, wow. I've been illuminated. On the other hand,

what usually happens in such moments is that we become aware of how little we knew, or what we thought we knew that was only a dim, a dimly lit awareness of something Fuller, brighter, truer, realer. Okay, so you see how that process of, again, ignorance or lack of clarity or lack of truth will be put on Saturn, and then the illumination, the truth, the understanding, the the the clarity of the sage will be given to the sun. This is why, for example, Saturn was said to rejoice in the 12th house the sun in the ninth, the ninth, very clear. The 12th, very illusory at times. But there is also something, and Saturn was said to be the ruler of feigned appearances. So Saturn can have this very deceptive, illusory quality. It's not surprising that when Neptune was discovered, by the way, a modern planet that now carries many of the traditional significations of Saturn that it was discovered in a conjunction with Saturn.

More on that another time. But the point is that we can also think that we're in an illuminated state, and we're clear and idealistic and sort of, maybe even sort of manically super charismatic and excited or zealous about something very sunlike, and yet the secret shadow is that we are, we have been sold, you know, we've been sold on an illusion, and that what we're actually we're not seeing is how little we know, or, you know, what, only partial truth that we have, and that's Saturn. And so Saturn will come along in anything that we think we're in possession of that is true and real, Saturn will often highlight or illuminate as an illusion that's not real. So it'll be a negation that leads to a sense of what is real, but it does so by canceling out a false sense of confidence around something that we thought was real, and so Saturn is not

often given enough credit or respect when it comes to leading us to truth and eliminating the false bravado of like an illusion that sometimes the sun carries, but they both carry The same thing, because Saturn can also be an only dimly lit, ignorant understanding of truth, and then the sun will come along and illuminate. But the point is that as a dyad, they are a part of this process of ignorance versus illumination, deception versus truth. Someone could be very confidently selling you something and appear like the sun, but actually they're selling you on, you know, only partial truth, or they're exaggerating, and so on and so forth. And the hidden thing is the the dimly lit Saturn. There is a way in which, as you know, our ancient philosophers and people like Socrates taught us, and we still know this today, and it's been said by Lao Tzu and many other mystics, which is that the wise person is the one who progressively is understanding how little they know. And so that understanding that I am a dimly lit vessel or container of absolute or eternal truth, very sad.

Nine very mature to have that awareness that I know very little. I really don't understand anything. I don't always know what's good for me. I don't always know what's best. Strangely, that dim, small, distant sense of remote understanding Saturnian is mature and is fundamentally connected to illumination, sun. So you see how the two keep cycling with each other. This is why they are a fundamental dyad that is at the heart of the entire philosophical project of astrology.

Number three is justice versus grace. There is a way within the bounds of Saturn that Saturn is said to be the Lord of Karma. This is not true first and foremost, because all planets are reflective of karma. Anything reflecting something in the material world is reflecting karma, because the material world is karma. And that's a misunderstanding that a lot of people have karma in the ancient sense, as is the understanding of say, fate, chance, fortune and choice are like an interconnected matrix. So people always falsely assume that fate and free will are somehow at odds with each other. They are another dichotomy that is as basic as Saturn in the sun, for example, the sun as a self lit fully effulgent creative agent is like emblematic of free will, of choice and of freedom and of co creative agency like that. We have a sun within us that shines light and that grows things and that can bring things into being. That's the that's the freedom Saturn as a juxtaposing symbol says, Yeah, but that freedom exists within boundaries. It's sort of like saying you have a significant amount of free will on a chessboard, but it's not entirely free, because your choices take place within a matrix of something like rules. So that sun Saturn dichotomy is also at play in the fate Free Will dichotomy. We're not going to go into that, but I'm making a connection so that I can talk so that I can talk about karma here, and justice versus grace. So

insofar as our choices and our creative capacity exist within a realm that is working according to equations of cause and effect, we feel that the world is very saturnine, because Saturn as the gatekeeper of the realm of the gods and the numinous realm of the mind of God that laid beyond Saturn was the boundary marker between this world and something eternal. And so within this world of materiality, there are laws that govern the interactions of choices and beings and that organize and orchestrate everything according to intelligible, intelligible, reasonable, reasonable like laws and limits and rules and structures, and insofar as we experience life as something like a well ordered machine. You know that experience of life is very Saturnian,

however,

and then by contrast, the sun is that feeling we get that I make choices and my agency and creative capacity are in some ways, not governed or bound by anything. And there's a reality to that, that we are sort of, we're sort of spirit souls that are free and not conditioned and can't nothing in the realm of karma can, like impress itself to stay on the spirit, soul. And so we're these free, eternal beings that are within a a system that has rules and structures and is has a kind of a kind of operating system going on hope that makes sense. So, insofar as we experience the freedom, very sun in so far as we experience the rules and limitations, very saturnine. However, one of the things that's really important is that when it comes to how we understand the process of spiritual evolution to be taking place, many of us will think that it is taking place according to rules and laws, and we will not have an understanding that there is a creative process at work that is not governed or limited at all by rules or laws or the calculus or algebra or the the, what is it? The, you know, the,

what am I thinking of? The like the algorithms. There we go, like the algorithms of karma, that life is moved along and that results are also being orchestrated according to creative principles that are not bound by hard, objective rules and laws, is the sun, whereas the reality that.

You know basic rules and laws, like, if you throw a baseball at a window, it will break the window, or if you smoke cigarettes long enough, you're probably going to get lung cancer. There are kind of rules of cause and effect, and then there are ways in which reality operates that can bypass those things and pays no attention to them whatsoever. Is also this very interesting dichotomy that was at work across the sun, Saturn, access for ancient astrology, so much so that these tensions I'm talking about now formed some of the basic philosophical discourse around whether or not Christianity and astrology were compatible, because Christianity placed a very high emphasis on that creative, redemptive power of the sun, so to speak, or God or Christ, Christ consciousness, however you want to put it, to sort of go beyond the laws of karma reflected by the planets. That's a whole interesting, like historical, you know,

tangent that we could go on that's super I think it's very interesting to study. But the point is that Saturn and the sun entail each other as well. For example, it is, you know, there's a great quote from Jesus. Let me see if I can find it. I should have brought it up to start with.

Yeah,

so it says, this is a great quote that essentially encapsulates the sun's Saturn dichotomy. It comes from Galatians. So it's from the New Testament. It might be Paul writing for through the law, I died to the law so that I might live for God. Another one is for when I tried to keep the law, it condemned me. So I died to the law, I stopped trying to meet all its requirements so that I might live for God. For through the law, I died to the law that I might live unto God. For through the law. I died to the law and its demands on me, because salvation is provided through the death and resurrection of Christ, so that I'm from now on, live to God now again. Throw out any literal you know, you don't have to be a Christian. You don't have to believe in You don't have to be like buy into the Christian faith on an archetypal level. This has been conveyed and communicated in many spiritual traditions. You will see, for example, frequently throughout the I Ching and the Tao Te Ching, that the same idea is referenced, which is that there is a way in which there's, like a karmic law operating, very Saturn, Saturnian, and that's why we say Saturn is the Lord of Karma. But we don't really understand what that means, because it's it's more philosophical than literal.

But it does mean that

there's a way in which that kind of cosmic algorithm and laws are at work, and then there's a creative process that has is not bound by that at all, that exists and lives within that system of laws simultaneously. And it is also very much why mystics and all traditions have said things like, I pray for the things I desire, but I always leave an open space for something that knows more than I do, or is creative in a way that I can't comprehend, to guide and direct me, because I don't always know if I know what's good for me.

People are praying that prayer, not because they're trying to be falsely humble, but because they recognize that there are creative forces that go beyond understanding, that go beyond laws and rules, or that go beyond

what we can see or comprehend. Right? So the the one of the most fundamental things about the Sun and Saturn is that they represent something like law and a kind of creativity that's at work in the universe that goes beyond law. And it's not about one versus the other. It's about the two coexisting. Always

fascinating.

Number four, ideal versus real, life versus death. So in a way, the sun is emblematic of the archetypal realm itself, of everything that is ideal, eternal, perfect in the mind of God, the archetypes themselves.

Saturn is about the limits of this mortal world, this transient, impermanent world that's always in flux, and its capacity to hold or approximate ideals is limited because of impermanence, death, change

because of that, inconstancy and fluctuation, this world can only be a kind of moving approximation. This is why I've always say, I always mention this quote, Plato said, Time is the moving image of eternity. The moving image of eternity is a kind of mirroring or approximation. So Saturn represents the limitations of the mortal material world to embody a perfect, static, unchanging ideal world. But in so far as we go too if we go too far with that, we get into trouble. And this is highlighted by the fact that in many ancient.

Traditions, the gods are always interested in, fascinated in in love with humanity and mortality, just as much as human beings are fascinated by eternality. It is, in other words, it is a way of saying that the mortal, sometimes religious and spiritual traditions, will make the world of impermanence and change and materiality and the presence of death alone to be a kind of curse that has to be lifted or worked out of and that is a pitting of the Sun against Saturn, once again, eternal versus mortal.

But insofar as the some mystical traditions said, look,

there's something very beautiful and bittersweet about being mortal. Nothing in the heavenly realms tastes the same as it does in the mortal realms because there's death included in the taste of everything in the mortal world, in the material world, and that is a sweetness that the eternal realm cannot approximate, just as much as the mortal realm will always long for the sweetness of a world without death. So in that way, the Sun and Saturn are once again a duality, connected the bitterness, the sweetness, the death, the life, the cycles and interconnectedness of the two create a sacred tension that is meant to be lived into by the soul. And the more we polarize those two things, the more we end up, usually, getting caught in a cycle of repression, mostly repression of our physical, mortal nature. So sun, Saturn again,

oneness versus duality. By the way, when I was going through my most ascetic phase, and also realizing how limited it was and how much repression was going on when I was in my monastic mode with the bhakti yoga tradition, I was going through a Saturn Sun opposition. Anyway, that was really fat, fascinating way to discover and study this. Finally, the entire thing really breaks down to oneness and duality. The sun is emblematic of the eternal, and in a sense, is the fundamental symbol of all that is one or divine, perfect, eternal. And Saturn is the ruler of oppositions, which says that anything one is also two, anything. One is also many, anything, one is also other. And that is not just to be meant to unders be understood as a curse. There are times in life where duality is something to be overcome for the sake of unity, but sometimes we also need to dance between the two. It is impossible to achieve intimacy without an otherness that cannot be, in some ways, permanently replaced with Union. It's as though saying this is in this is one of the things I loved so much about bhakti, is that Krishna and Radha are an eternal dyad that are their separation is fundamental to their union, you can't separate separation from unity.

It's an interesting paradox, and that paradox is also summed up in the basic philosophical idea, chin to beta, beta tattva, which means eternal, simultaneous oneness and duality. So the Sun and Saturn represent that. Now you've learned something about the philosophical basis of these two planets, which again, is really at the heart of the entire project of ancient astrology itself. What I recommend doing with that is looking at how any of these

dichotomies are at work in your life right now. These are points of meditation that may provide you with some deeper insight. Are you being challenged to look at truth versus deception, illumination versus ignorance, Justice versus grace, or laws versus creativity, agency versus limitations, ideal versus real, life versus death, oneness versus duality. Where do you feel or sense these tensions? Right now. All right. I hope that you learned something new and interesting, even if this was a little denser philosophically, I like to try to provide these from time to time so that you can learn more about astrology, metaphysical roots. On that note, I hope you're having a great day, and we'll see you again tomorrow for Eclipse coverage. All right. Bye.