Saturn in Leo Comprehensive Analysis
Saturn in Leo Birth Date Ranges
Let’s go over the Satun in Leo Birth Date ranges. Those born roughly between August 2, 1946 and September 19, 1948 (“Baby Boomers”) and September 16, 1975 and November 18, 1977 have Saturn in Leo. The last Saturn return was July 2005 to September 2007.
Issues facing Saturn in Leo
If you were born with Saturn in Leo, the issues during your Saturn Return will be about being “chosen” or “special”, melodrama, the heroic myth, relationship to the Creator, children, creativity and love affairs.
When God created recess he made the Saturn in Leo kids stay in and write “I am the loving child of a Harsh Dictator God” 20 times on the blackboard. A happy childhood is one of our culture’s greatest myths. You, dear Saturn in Leo, are here to deal with the fallout of this. For some of you, it is likely that although you had a terrific upbringing, your parents never really allowed you to play.
Additionally, they never really allowed you to discover the process of discovery, as it were. “Play” is a highly critical function in a child’s ability to develop a creative approach to life. It is a powerful contributor to a child’s feelings of competence in the face of the new and undiscovered. Play is the mind experimenting with itself on what is possible.
Trying on Roles
We try on roles when we play doctor or babysitter. And, we learn strategy and concentration when we move the little soldiers around. Also, we learn physics when we push the swing. Or someone else pushes us in the swing. This way we learn by discovering for ourselves. If someone hands a child a set of rules they have to follow for everything in their life, such as a check off list of chores every day, that child never develops an organic relationship to life and the confidence that there are always answers for you to learn on your own.
This becomes increasingly important in a world that is changing so quickly that there are many unknowns from generation to generation. The check-off list robs a child of resilience later on when life presents them with something utterly new, which you can be sure it will.
Saturn in Leo presents the Child in You
Those with Saturn in Leo may never have had the chance to discover their own version of the rules of life and how delightful this can be. At Saturn return, the opportunity presents itself to become the child — not “again” but maybe for the first time. Giving second birth to oneself may mean experimenting with what has been given, breathing your own life into it. This may be an impossibly frightening proposition to those who have never been allowed to learn this way … but you can do it! Trust yourself. Start in small ways and enjoy!
The lesson is that no matter how good you become at following someone else’s rules, you will never have confidence in yourSELF. You may arrive back at the same place as they did, if they are good rules. But you will have developed confidence in yourself and your ability to cope with the unknown, to survive and thrive.
Three Themes Common to Saturn in Leo
A real life story will illustrate three more themes common to the lives of those with Saturn in Leo rules children. All Leos love their kids a lot … because they created them. But with Saturn in Leo it’s different. You must take special responsibility with birth control. Also, you must exercise careful choice of partners because the karma of engendering a child without responsibility is big with this placement.
Maritsa’s Saturn is in Leo. Maritsa is a very lovely woman who got off to a rocky start in life. A guy (guilty of armed robbery) dated-raped her in high school. Forced to have the child of a man she detested, Maritsa proved a responsible but emotionally indifferent single parent. She did not remarry for another 15 years. Maritsa cared for her son’s physical needs.
Irresponsible Engendering of a Child
However, she had little understanding for the developmental tasks of childhood. And, she deeply resented having to provide for and raise a boy by herself. She had him vacuuming and helping around the house at 5 years old. She was merciless when he got a low grade or failed to obey her instantly.
As the boy, Jerome, got older, he became more and more like his father. This embarrassed Maritsa who was working very hard and trying to make it into the middle class. She was embarrassed by the way Jerome chose to dress and the kids with whom he hung out. She blamed and berated Jerome without spending any time educating him in values. Nor did she encourage his sense of positive self. It was as if he was “too much trouble to be bothered with,” something she frequently said. He had no male role models because she remained too bitter about men to date.
Eventually Jerome got into trouble with gangs and drugs, taking her through a series of melodramatic episodes which she shared at her church group for extra attention and sympathy. She was considered “saint like” to “put up with” her own child. Members gathered around her in support when she asked them to join in prayer for “her son”.
Maritsa frequently sent Jerome to live with his father who was in and out of jail all the time. Eventually, Jerome got stoned and fell down a flight of stairs, receiving permanent brain damage.
You can see here three issues: irresponsible and/or unconscious engendering of a child, the myth of the “happy childhood”, and the use of melodrama as a substitute for genuine creativity and affirmation of life.
The Burden of Being Special
Another theme that runs through the lives of people with Saturn in Leo is the burden of being special or chosen. Some of you kids were born to save the world, to rekindle hope in mankind after the slaughter of World War II. Some of you were born to “save a marriage” or rekindle hope in a hopeless union. What an impossible burden. Is it any wonder you can be wed to melodrama?
Many of you were blessed and cursed at the same time. You feel special and talented, but you can’t ever seem to get to it. Many of you were your father’s favorite which is lovely except that, human nature being the way it is, this also meant you were inadvertently envied and hated by your mother, your father’s mother, your own siblings, or others who competed for his love.
Apollonian fathers
Chances are most of you had Apollonian fathers, that is men as handsome, dazzling, or charismatic as the Sun God Apollo. Your father probably had his own gifts stifled or perhaps he crushed them himself in order to provide for a family. It is also likely he married a woman he adored, at least “once upon a time,” but who did not return the favor as the years passed by. This may have caused him to favor you or it may have been the result of his favoring you. You may be deeply unconscious about this favoritism and its ramifications.
Some people with Saturn in Leo feel very “destined” or “fated” and are disappointed that God seems to have failed them in some way. None other than Adolf Hitler, Saturn in Leo child, declared after winning the special elections in 1933, “Who says I am not born under the special protection of God?”
Supreme Importance to Build Relationship with Creator
With no other group is it more important to constantly grow or evolve your relationship with the Creator. That’s true even if you are sticking your nose up as you read this. The poignant tale of Frankenstein is one for you to contemplate deeply in this regard. The original tale by Mary Bysse Shelley is mythic in proportion, a tale of a modern Prometheus about creators and creatures.
Many people with Saturn in Leo identify with Frankenstein. They felt they were beautiful, special, loved and didn’t realize until the villagers came that there was apparently something terribly wrong. It is hard not to hate both the villagers and one’s creator for this. They have felt the “monster’s” wound, as he was heard to explain in apologia, “From that moment I declared everlasting war against the species, and, more than all, against him who had formed me and sent me forth to this insupportable misery.”
The argument, you see, is not only with those who don’t recognize your special talents but with Him Who Created You, Him who gave you the desire for greatness and denied you access to it. Recovering this sense of specialness is your life path.
Born with gifts that you must see
Another prevalent theme in the lives of people born with Saturn in Leo is the idea that you have been bestowed with gifts that you MUST use. In other words, the gift comes with strings attached. It’s somewhat like the little girl in The Red Shoes. Once she put on the shoes, she could not stop dancing.
With Saturn in Leo talent can become obsession. Singing, writing and dancing could be joyous — probably should be joyous — but instead there is this terrible pressure to “make it” or “do it”. You must recover the joy of the process of creating and liberate yourself from expectations about the end of the process. God the Creator is, if nothing else, free of self-consciousness.
God is Very Important
The idea, concept, or image of God is very important to those with Saturn in Leo, and although this concept may sound strange, considered symbolically, this is one of the most pressing necessities for those with Saturn in Leo: to keep evolving their concept of deity until they get to something they can honestly worship!
Examples of God being like a parent
Most people have a God that is very much like their personal father (possibly their mother). Here are three real-life examples to illustrate the point.
Example #1
Carlos was an airline pilot from Mexico who was so hard on himself it was ridiculous. He locked himself in a hotel room for hours on end, praying on his hands and knees to ‘God’ to forgive him and let him have love and happiness. Carlos was so handsome he also starred in movies. He was intelligent enough to be an airline pilot. He was also a devout, rigid, and monotheistic Catholic. Why was Carlos’ “God” so harsh, so unforgiving? It didn’t seem like Carlos was the kind of person who could have done something that wrong.
Carlos’ father was very poor in a small town deep in Mexico. Carlos wanted to help. At a very early age, he talked his way into some stuff to sell. Carlos ran home, so proud of the money he earned. His father felt humiliation and told Carlos never to do such a thing again. He took the money away and as a punishment, took his cigarette lighter and burned Carlos’ ankles until the flesh was seared and raw.
To this day, Carlos can’t stand the smell of meat on the grill. Do you understand now why Carlos prays the way he does and wants to kill himself? Carlos conceives of a heavenly father who shadows the image of his earthly one.
Example #2
Shirley has had a life of extremes. She was a golden girl when young — beautiful, vivacious, successful, intelligent enough to be a physicist, well-coordinated enough to be a brain surgeon. Shirley married a driven, hostile man because she said if she played around she knew he would kill her. She was battered in her marriage and had a child who died tragically. Shirley is a very moral person, someone who has never willingly done harm to anyone. She is considerate of others and holds herself to very high personal standards of conduct, ridiculously high. She takes several sedatives and Phen daily and drinks, too.
Shirley is an intellectual agnostic but she loves to hold other people to moral standards. It’s a specialty of hers. She is angry that the God she doesn’t believe in has taken her child. Shirley was raised by two very intelligent, well-educated, materially powerful alcoholics in a chaotic environment that she often describes as crazy. Why would she think there was any God she could address in a rational manner? How could she trust any higher power?
Example #3
Patrick is a very happy and peaceful person. He is successful, lives well, looks good and is happily married. Patrick doesn’t put many demands on himself. He is compassionate and forgiving of himself and others. He has tons of friends and loves his low paying job as a hospice counselor in Phoenix. Patrick is a questor and lover of the truth. He has few personal problems, spends much time cheering others up and is intuitively guided in his everyday life by what he calls “Spirit”. He says he has always been this way.
Patrick’s father was as jovial as Santa Claus, a very successful man who did not love his wife. Nevertheless, he showered his kids with love and money, forgave them their small indiscretions and filled their lives with encouragement, appreciation, hugs and smiles of delight. Is it any wonder Peter feels at one with the universe and the world at large? And, is it any wonder he feels his needs will be met and that there is always enough to go around? Is it any wonder he “toils not” but lives as the lilies of the field?
Our early childhood home and relationship with our father does much to shape the kind of deity we worship or fear. In a sense, we have created this deity in the image of our father, though we do not know this. It is one of our most important tasks in adulthood to outgrow this god and to, in a sense, create a better one.
Creativity is the Life Force
Creativity is the life force associated with the Sun, ruler of Leo. Through sheer will power, Leo manifests dreams, but the line between fiction and reality is a major issue for people born with Saturn in Leo. Yes, we are poor players that strut and fret our hour upon the stage, but who’s the director? What’s the difference between drama and melodrama? And what if we create from a destructive place?
Famous Person with Saturn in Leo — Stephen King
One of the best-selling authors of all time and definitely the world’s greatest horror story writer, Stephen King, born with Saturn in Leo, wrote The Shining at his first Saturn Return. King’s father deserted the family when he was two years old. King’s mother did the best she could to raise Stephen and his brother, but King felt she would abandon him one day as his father had. He was plagued by nightmares and discovered the best way to deal with his fears was by writing. King submitted his first story for publication when he was 13.
The Gift of Leo Energy? Resiliency
At the end of his book On Writing, King talks of taking an afternoon stroll along the side of a country road in June of 1999. An out-of-control van hits him. The author woke up feeling like a character in one of his novels: “I’m lying in the ditch and there’s blood all over my face and my right leg hurts. I look down and see something I don’t like: my lap now appears to be on sideways, as if my whole lower body had been wrenched half a turn to the right.”
The following comment was made on a King website after the accident:
It has not escaped the collective attention of King faithful that the author’s grisly weekend mishap sounds eerily familiar. As in Christine, Cujo and Misery familiar. An out-of-control vehicle (like in Christine?) struck King. A motorist claimed distraction by a dog (as in Cujo?). Moreover, the impact of the crash threw King off the road–making him, temporarily at least, a stranded, hobbled writer (like Paul Sheldon in Misery).
Five weeks after the accident, which would require King to have no less than five surgeries, the author went back to work as a writer. “Writing did not save my life,” he wrote, “but it is doing what it has always done: it makes my life a brighter and more pleasant place.” Finding the resources within to rescue joy from pain, to create from destruction, is the gift of Leo energy.
A Journey to Recapture the World’s Magic
The journey of one with Saturn in Leo is to continually recapture the magic in the world. Other placements of Saturn deal with the grosser realities, the firmer hand, the all-seeing eye. Leo is the sign that believes and believes and believes, until finally it sees what it wants to see. You are here to lift others out of the doldrums, to give them the gift of restoration, re-freshment, re-creation.
The association of the words recreation and re-creation are so often lost in today’s world, but their connection is critical to understanding Leo energy. There is no problem or issue in life that is not better for leaving it a few minutes and returning with a brand new outlook.
Importance of Father
With Saturn in Leo, father is everything, and you must redeem your father. This is a tremendous task of the will, a solar journey to the outer edges of the universe, a heroic venture of mythic proportions. What does this really mean … to redeem something?
The Grail Quest probably sets this forth most elaborately. It has been the subject of endless exploration by people in many fields, including the poet T. S. Eliot, born with Saturn in Leo, in his famous poem The Wasteland.
It is a legend which is central to European development. In the story, the Old King is languishing and impotent, and so his kingdom suffers. You are the Old King and your kingdom is your life. The young knight Parsifal must obtain the Holy Grail by asking the right question.
Your Must Resurrect God
You are also the young knight Parsifal. This is your quest more than any others’. Read about the Grail Quest, and read about it as Joseph Campbell suggests, in the present tense and using the word “I”. Every person with Saturn in Leo must in some sense or other go on this quest. When God is dead, you must resurrect him. You must do this through seeking, through asking the right questions, through rekindling your natural ability to adore and worship, sometimes beginning with yourself.
It is in the very nature of things to destroy and create new worlds. Every culture has a creation myth and in most of them, the Creator makes a world that is imperfect, which he destroys — and then he creates another one. I am convinced that this is what our lives are meant to be like. We forget how powerful we are. Most of us are afraid to destroy anything. Those who are not are powerful gods in their own worlds.
The question to ask yourself in your Saturn Return
Every creator must also be a destroyer. This is the secret of creation. This is the special power of Leo, the Creative Force. One of the questions to ask during your Saturn Return is, “What in my life needs to be destroyed so I can create a better one for myself?”
“The urge to destroy is also a creative urge,” said Picasso. Learn to be a fearless destroyer and an intrepid creator. Look on your creation and see that it is good. If later you look on it and see that it is not good, destroy it and create another. This is how the shaman keeps the angel of death nearby. This is the secret of your power: to always keep in front of you the notion of death, the reality of death, for only death can pay for life.