Saturn in Capricorn Comprehensive Analysis
Below you will find a comprehensive analysis of the Saturn in Capricorn natal placement. Read this and re-read it if you have to. Upon a firm understanding of the study, you will have completed the final step of our Four Part Study to Mastering your Saturn Return! If this is the first page of the site you have landed on, then please visit the homepage if you would like a brush-up on the Saturn Return. This will take you to the 1st step of the 4 -step plan to mastering the Saturn Return. Step 2 provides you with an understanding of your 1st Saturn Return and 2nd Saturn Return.
Issues facing Saturn in Capricorn
If you were born with Saturn in Capricorn, the issues during your Saturn Return will be about making it in the world. This includes climbing the ladder of success, personal authority, status, responsibility, and protecting and providing for others. It also includes humbling yourself before God.
Saturn is the planet that teaches limits and responsibilities. In Capricorn, it’s placed in the sign that also wants to master limits and responsibilities. This is generally considered a strong pairing. The drama of the Saturn Return is likely to be less extreme than with other placements.
The Price to Pay to Make it in the World
Saturn in Capricorn is about making it in the world and what kind of price one must pay. The usual price is a sacrifice of tender emotions, a personal life, and sometimes the comfort and closeness of others. Natives may achieve all their personal ambitions. However, the cost may be a happy family life when too much time at work means too little time at home. This should not be misinterpreted as caring too little for others but rather comes from a desire to provide well for them. It is this strong desire for material well-being that makes the home-work balance so difficult. The Saturn Return often creates situations that bring the career into focus, sometimes at the expense of relationships. Usually, it’s a time to set the stage for later material success.
Saturn in Capricorn’s Search for a Father Figure
Everyone with Saturn in Capricorn is looking for a father figure they can look up to. This is probably because they lost one early in life (and sometimes the mother dies early, too). Barak Obama, Tony Robbins, and Bono all have Saturn in Capricorn. They are good examples of how this works to shape the native’s life. Freud, who seemed so obsessed with the role of the mother in shaping the psyche, said himself, “I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection,” a protection denied to these folks at a tender age, leaving them to fend for themselves — and often others, as well.
Ultimately, these people will seek a substitute, a father who cannot fail or abandon them. That is often the Heavenly Father. It could also be a guiding principle or set of rules that govern the universe, something which gives the feeling of order and security.
A Tendency to Blame Parents
Saturn in Capricorn has to do with issues about how hard life is, and often there is a stubbornness in taking responsibility for one’s life, as if the tendency to blame parents is never outgrown. When one knows the circumstances of these people’s childhoods, it’s hard to blame them for feeling they got a raw deal. These folks can be quite rebellious as a result. But if they take responsibility for all the circumstances of their existence, they can unleash Saturn’s great karmic rewards.
Personal power guru Tony Robbins is famous for stunts devised to push people through their fear. It’s not necessary to go to such extremes as walking on hot coals, though. In the end, the fear must be faced down not by denying it exists but by acknowledging it. In other words, you must feel the fear and proceed anyway. If the fear is denied, the heart becomes blocked and no real connections with others can ever exist. If the fear is not faced, the shame and guilt will eat away at the ego until weakness and bitterness create a nasty feedback loop that consumes the soul.
There is no shortcut to success
To deal with the harsh circumstances of life on one’s own requires maturity, investment for the future (postponement of gratification), walking step by step up the ladder of success, hard work, respecting people genuinely above you, and self-discipline. With Saturn in Capricorn, each of these qualities must be dealt with squarely. There is no short cut.
Simon Cowell: A Saturn in Capricorn Example of Success Manifest
A good example of how a Capricorn Saturn Return might play out is Simon Cowell, the former judge we loved to hate on American Idol. In an interview with BusinessWeek.com, Cowell told journalist Stacy Perlman of how he came to accept limitations and take responsibility for his own life:
Perlman: What role has failure played in you[r] career? For instance, your label Fanfare Records went under in 1989, and your reality show Cupid was canceled in 2003.
Cowell: When I was 30 the company that owned Fanfare went bust, and I effectively lost everything. I had to move in with my parents. In hindsight, it was the best thing that happened in my life because I learned the value of money: not to borrow money and not to live beyond my means. And I learned that getting there is more fun than being there. But one thing that I have always been able to do is to own up to mistakes and not blame others.
By accepting real limits and taking responsibility for his predicament, Cowell’s life turned around. He’s also known for his cold and judgmental attitude as a judge on the show, an attitude not uncommon for those with this placement.
Cold-hearted is Saturn in Capricorn at its Worst
At worst, those with Saturn in Capricorn can be so pragmatic that they are indifferent or incapable of facing feelings. This is to the point that they use their own emotional disabilities as a perverted excuse to hurt others. An extreme example is serial killer Charles Edmund Cullen. Cullen used his position as a nurse to kill patients. His excuse was ostensibly to save them the pain and suffering of cardiac arrest or undignified treatment by other hospital staff. In reality, it was to save Cullen the pain of having to watch them die. This was something he was forced to admit once caught.
Like many with this placement, Cullen lost his father at a young age (just a few months old). Then he lost his mother 17 years later. He had mental and emotional issues which plagued him throughout his young adult life. Yet he still managed to cobble together a long-term career as a nurse.
As Saturn danced on the edge of Capricorn, initiating his Saturn Return in 1988, Cullen made his first kill, administering a lethal overdose to a patient. After a divorce a few years later, Cullen claimed he wanted to quit nursing but that child support payments prevented him from doing so.
Again, note the emphasis on providing for others and the perverted use of Capricorn energy — (the need to provide) — to excuse cruelty.
But a great capacity for compassion is Saturn in Capricorn at Best
That doesn’t mean that everyone with Saturn in Capricorn develops a hard heart. Everyone’s darling, Princess Diana, known for her charitable demeanor, also had this placement. In 1991, Diana rode out her Saturn Return propping up the last legs of her marriage (the book that blew the relationship with Prince Charles apart appeared the next year) for the sake of her kids (how responsible) and signaled what would be a major theme of her post-marital life as she reached out with her ungloved hand to greet an AIDS patient on a visit to a Toronto hospice.
She spent the rest of her years — not many — looking for love and pursuing charity work on behalf of children and the disabled. The best side of Capricorn is rising to the occasion to lead and serve, despite one’s own emotional difficulties. Real maturity comes from being in touch with one’s emotions while also carrying one’s responsibilities. It’s not easy.
A Tendency for Stability in Saturn in Capricorn
Those with Saturn in Capricorn tend to be fairly stable people with the Saturn Returns bringing opportunities that set the person up for later career success or material rewards. Clint Eastwood was filming the incredibly successful show Rawhide during his first Saturn Return and making his masterpiece Unforgiven during the second. Barack Obama was making waves as he graduated from Harvard law. He garnered his first publishing contract and secured a position as a lecturer in Chicago at this time. This is also when he met his wife.
It’s not uncommon for relationships to fail during this time, usually because of lack of a real emotional connection, or perhaps as a sacrifice to career goals. Princess Diana is one example. Another is George Clooney. His ill-fated marriage to Talia Balsam spanned just about his entire Saturn Return (“I just don’t feel like I gave Talia a fair shot,” he later commented of the relationship), at the same time he was gaining popularity for his recurring role on Roseanne.
Advice for handling material failures and relationship troubles
If your Saturn Return brings material failures, accept the limitations and take responsibility for your destiny. Whatever adjustments you make will set up you up for later success. If it brings relationship troubles, do not harden your heart to love. There is a time and a place for everything.
You may be incredibly hard on yourself, demanding perfection and success at every turn in a way that both drives and limits you. The Saturn Return is a time to acknowledge the successes but also heal the failures. Acknowledge what you have achieved (usually under very trying circumstances) and forgive yourself for what you have not. Be the father to yourself you wished you had had: protective, encouraging, wise. There’s still time to achieve the status and success you seek, to nurture the relationships you want, but only when you get off your own back and play the role of supportive mentor to yourself.
Arthur Miller’s Example
In his play After the Fall, Arthur Miller’s character Quentin explains why he can’t sleep: “I dreamed I had a child, and even in the dream I saw it was my life, and it was an idiot, and I ran away. But it always crept into my lap again, clutched at my clothes. Until I thought, if I could kiss it, whatever in it was my own, perhaps I could sleep. And I bent to its broken face, and it was horrible…but I kissed it. I think one must finally take one’s life in one’s arms.”
Wherever you think you have failed, don’t judge yourself too harshly. You need a wise older man to put his arms around your shoulders and tell you everything will work out. Do this for yourself. You must believe in your ability to succeed. You must try again. You’ll be a little older and wiser this time, accepting your limitations and building on solid ground. This will bring you the security you seek and the chance to provide so well for the ones you love.
Advice once Saturn in Capricorn Attains Success
Once you succeed, recognize young people who have to struggle as you did. Be an empathetic and encouraging mentor to them. Give them the benefit of your experience, the grace of your protection, and the courage that comes from your belief in them. It’s the best possible use of this energy. It’s also the best way to heal the part of you that resents being left to do it all on your own.