Saturn the Greater Malefic

I think one could obviate any need for any anthropomorphism in the study and practice of talismans if -

- One accepts the hermetic principle of "as above, so below". Does astrology work? Is there at least any astrological effects that can be verified scientifically? The Gauquelin studies seems to be a positive mark in the favour of astrology working.

- One accepts that there are supersensible laws that science cannot or will not investigate.

- One accepts that science has not cracked the code of consciousness.

- that one believes that magic is technical and requires no belief - but the proper working of an operation in order to get a specific result. Often times what is used to verify is repeated and similar effects from practitioners, or having an experience and then seeing it verified in later research - ensuring that one didn't induce that effect in oneself

- that one accepts that magic works on the subjective realms - meaning that the proper way to verify occult effects aren't strictly scientific in the modern sense of the word. And also that there is an objective constitution of that subjective realm, that can be accurately mapped by occult techniques and practices.

- One accepts that there is more to reality than our 3 dimensional experience and the infallibility of our sense impressions, and that all these dimensions are intertwined with one another in a way where they can effect each other. In Jung's treatment on synchronicity, he pulls on the works J. B. Rhine where the guesses of those who partook in the study of the right symbol showing up on a randomly generated sequence of cards was much more than statistically expected. It was shown that the more the test subject was interested and believed in the rightness of their result, the more they made the right call. It was also shown that no matter the disparity in time or space, that the results remained the same, in some cases showed even more positive results. This indicates that whatever process is occuring in the process of guessing/divining , it's not bounded by time nor space. A book that might provide a different perspective on what constitutes the universe and how it works is "A Holographic Universe" by Michael Talbot http://www.rybn.org/ANTI/ADMXI/docu...Michael_Talbot_-_The_Holographic_Universe.pdf

- One accepts that spiritual forces aren't "like us" in that they are constituted in a human-like way. Many practitioners report angels actually being more akin to platonic solids, for example. However, spiritual forces have to communicate to us in some fashion, and those who are less familiar with the true nature of a being will see that being through their imaginative faculties first and foremost - which often means the mainstream Christian view of baby faced winged cherubs with smooth skin and golden halos above their heads.

- One accepts that magic is primarily practiced and experienced. And that one is allowed to experiment with and verify the claims made by the various magical practitioners and texts, to see if they have any efficacy whatsoever. Not the scientific method, but certainly the scientific spirit.

- That astrological effects can be manipulated and that objects that are sympathetic to the nature of the planetary force can be augmented by the proper operations at the requisite time (working on a piece of lead on a Saturday in the hour of Saturn) in order to multiply the energy signature of the operated upon object

- One doesn't take the anthropomorphic language of the texts too literally. There is the pardes method of the kabbalists and the 4 ways of interpreting religious/spiritual texts by the perennialist school that indicates that there are at least 3 other ways of interpretation apart from the literal reading of a passage of a text.

- One doesn't see the talisman as an idol like a Zemi would be to the arawaks, but an artifact that facilitates that energetic pattern to manifest in one's life, the contemplation of which will result in a better understanding and facility with said energy, and thus more likely to result in positive outcomes after sufficient mastery has been gained. That's probably why beginners aren't recommended to work with Mars or Saturn because of their harsher effects at the outset, especially if it's a problematic energy to deal with for the operator.

- The talisman is viewed as a "captured transit" where instead of waiting for a transit of a certain planet to a point in your chart to begin working on that energy, that you have that energy in such a form as it can be worked with regardless of what's going on in the sky at that moment in time.

No recourse needs to be made to an anthropomorphic deity to partake in the process of creating talismans. As to its efficacy, one should experiment and find out for oneself. Endless theorising on the matter is useless.

https://www.astrologyweekly.com/forum/showthread.php?t=121603 - for off-topic not related to OP's post on his election and his discussion of Saturn. I will reply there.

miquar said:

Thanks Rhys. I'd be interested to know which books or internet sources are recommended reading for that part of the course, and even to see any material issued as part of the course. There's plenty of stuff about the 27 lunar mansions used in Vedic astrology, but not much about the 28 lunar mansions.

Best wishes

Miquar

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Hi Miquar

Ok, I've only touched the surface of lunar mansions in the course, as I mentioned I'll be getting into it more deeply in the coming days, but for now here is some material that I found interesting that I could recommend:

For source material, the Picatrix is the most important grimoire of astrological magic. It was used by Renaissance mages like Cornelius Agrippa and Marsilio Ficino. So for Lunar Mansions, get the Picatrix (available on Amazon Kindle) and read: Book I Ch 4 on Mansions. Book IV Ch 9 on Mansions.

It's kind of heavy reading though...

If what you are looking for is an introduction to lunar mansions written in modern English, I would get Christopher Warnock's book, entitled: Mansions of the Moon: A Lunar Zodiac for Astrology and Magic. It covers all the lunar mansions and what they traditionally symbolize, and it also gives the zodiacal positions for each of them in both tropical and sidereal longitudes! Available on Kindle and it isn't expensive, and clearly written!

Kind regards

Rhys

waybread said:

In my experience, electional moments are very hard to find. A nasty transit can hang on for a long time, after which some of the beneficial planets have moved out of their previously favourable positions.

Traditionally Saturn rules all kinds of misfortunes but his lessons are patience, hard work, deferred gratification, and frugality. He's also the traditional ruler of agriculture.

My feeling about talismans is that it's better to place one's faith in God, however one defines divine consciousness. Of course, if one doesn't believe in God by whatever name or faith, then it's hard to imagine a cosmos populated by lesser disincarnate entitities such that talismans would have some efficacy. We're otherwise left with a spiritually vacant world-- explained by science.

Nice black hoodie, Rhys.

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Thanks, Waybread! I'll probably keep the avatar up at least until Halloween! ;-)

Omg, TELL me about it ("electional moments are very hard to find"). It drives me to distraction sometimes, and I have this annoying tendency to make dumb errors (like not noticing that Mercury is in Sagittarius and its a Mercury election, and similar!). Oh well, practice makes perfect.

Regarding Talismans, of course one can make a talisman to ask for stuff, but if that is all the magician wants to do, there are much easier ways to go about it, chaos magic comes to mind: one just needs to make a sigil symbolising one's desire, do an intense ritual, burn the sigil, and that's it! And I'll go on record as saying they are quite effective. So why go to all the trouble of making a Talisman if all one wants is to get one's butt laid or pay one's rent?

For me, the purpose of a talisman is to align ourselves with the energy of the planet in question, in this case Saturn, which as you rightly point out has many highly desirable qualities such as "patience, hard work, deferred gratification, and frugality" and let's not forget about memory, faithfulness, reliability, oh my, the list goes on and on! And WISDOM, let's not forget about THAT!

There is a fascinating book that desribes the renaissance world view by E.M.W. Tillyard entitled The Elizabethan World Picture (available on Kindle). In it, he describes how someone of (for example) William Lilly's generation would view the world. The key difference between the modern and the traditional world view is the existence of the spiritual. In the traditional world view, everything exists in a unified and perfect state in the One, then a perfect but individuated and multiplicitous state in the Divine World as the Platonic ideal forms. These ideal forms then manifest in the intermediate realm of the Celestial World, through the planets, fixed stars and other astrological factors. Anyway, it makes for interesting reading.

So my approach to making a planetary talisman is along the lines of aligning my energy with that of the planet and of course by doing it that way, we are aligning with the planet's respective angelic order, its archangel and the divine power behind it.

Of course, if one wants to simply pray to the god or goddess of one's choice, that is also very effective, but since I'm an astrologer, I find it helpful to put the planets in the mix!

So ,every day on my altar I have a different stone associated with the planet in question. Tomorrow (Tuesday) it will be a ruby and I will be wearing my red tee-shirt. Mars is associated with Geburah, the fifth Sphere on the Tree of life, so on the day and hour of Mars, I will be invoking the god aspect of Geburah, its archangel, its angelic order, its celestial presence (Madim/Mars) and placing the ruby on its magic 5x5 square, and while reading from the Orphic Hymns, I will charge it and carry it with me throughout the day to remind of its catabolistic (cutting) powers.

But I drift, oops... I'm going on a bit, aren't I ?!?!

Anyway, that's how I personally use talismans, for what it is worth. There is certainly no law that says one has to use them! I completely agree that direct prayer also works well, when done with intention and feeling. At least that has been my experience.

Kind regards

Rhys

Thanks Rhys. Yes I bought the kindle book a while ago. I was hoping to find something with more of a psychological emphasis, but there doesn't seem to be anything around.

Best wishes

Miquar

Thanks, Rhys.

I fear my mentioning "God, or however one defines divine consciousness"-- really set some people off. Rather than digress into whatever Petosiris was attemping with his linked thread, I need to stress (as per conspiracy theorist) that I wasn't trying to anthropomorphize divine consciousness-- certainly not in a conventional religious sense.

I don't find petitionary prayer to be helpful, because right away it posits a separation between divinity and humanity. The divine is all around us. We sometimes push it away and have trouble letting it in, however.

However, I also don't see the point in positioning science and spirituality as polar opposites.

The point I was trying to make, really, is that a focus on objects can make us think that the power resides in the objects themselves. Rather, the power resides in us, and the universal creative principle (aka divine consciousness.) I'm not much in touch with it on a day-to-day basis, but if I calm down and relax a bit, there it is.

It just seems to me that this universal matrix of divinity is more powerful, and therefore more to be let in, than a focus on magic or objects. I might be mistaken, but that's my view.

Where I think objects work to some degree is if we understand them as extensions of ourselves. Then the objects become more like tools or even protheses.

The other problem with magic is that the practioner assumes that intervening in the natural flow of events is a better idea than letting the natural flow of events happen and partaking of some wisdom, adaptability, and flexibility as they happen. By analogy, is it better to pull open the wings of a butterfly as it struggles out of its chrysalis, or is it better to leave the butterfly alone? Does the magician possess sufficient wisdom to improve on the natural flow of events? Or is he simply trying to feel more powerful?

I mentioned that I studied runes (and also Northern lore) in the past, but not at the level of prediction or magic. In "reddening" the runes or working incantations into a weapon or tool, the practitioner basically incorporates those objects into his own sense of identity. So the power comes from the self, not from the objects themselves. This is why, I believe, ancient people buried their dead with personal grave goods, which they believed would have no special power beyond the individual who imbued them with his sense of self.

Your daily practices, in their way, sound like a kind of choice-centered astrology. (Want to strengthen your Mars? Wear more red.) Also in Vedic astrology, the astrologer will often recommend that the client wear a particular kind of gemstone, practice a particular yoga position, and so on, to offset a problem. I think the foundational belief is fundamentally fatalistic, yet it does admit to some mitigation.

Rhys, re: Saturn. I don't know if this helps your practice or not, but my attitudes about Saturn opened up one night when I had a brief dream. It was night, and I seemed to be alone in an old stone castle or tower. I opened a door to a tower room that had a huge window. The view was filled with the planet Saturn: enormous, yellow, with its rings. It seemed to emanate a sense of utter evil, and I thought of that expression, the Great Malefic. I was terrified and wanted to run. But there was an old man (who looked a bit like Charles Darwin, if you can picture his face as an old man) seated at a wooden desk or table. The old man watched me, and I felt that this was a test of my lessons: courage in the face of fear. I stood my ground. The dream ended.

miquar said:

Thanks Rhys. Yes I bought the kindle book a while ago. I was hoping to find something with more of a psychological emphasis, but there doesn't seem to be anything around.

Best wishes

Miquar

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I'll be delving more deeply into the lunar mansions shortly and if I'll be sure to share my findings with you viz things psychological!

Best - Rhys

waybread said:

However, I also don't see the point in positioning science and spirituality as polar opposites.

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Neither do I! I think science and spirituality fit together like a hand and a glove. For me, when I read something like, say, Ernst Mayr's book What Evolution Is, which is a book written by a biologist largely responsible for shaping the modern synthesis of genetic and evolutionary theory and presents a spirited defence of Darwin - for me at least - it is like reading a kabbalistic tract on the formula of creation!

On the Tree of Life we have Hod/Mercury on one side and Netzach/Venus on the other, the rational mind on one side with the irrational/intuitive mind on the other, that is to say one extreme being the materialist who only accepts what can been explained in the manifested world, and on the other side the person for whom the gods and goddesses are real, for whom they are more real than real.

What's wanted, obviously, is a balance between the two extremes!

I don't see any contradiction at all between the material and the spiritual. For me it kind of works the same way Newtonian physics still works and is used on many important levels, but when we start getting into more than three dimensions, one has to jump to quantum physics.

One thing that came to mind as I'm thinking about this thread is that for a long time, the magic and astrological communities have had a wall dividing them. There were and are many reasons for that, but this wall did not exist traditionally, so I'm glad the barriers are starting to break down, however slowly. And for that reason I think this dialog is highly constructive.

Thanks again for your thoughtful comments, Waybread. I'll reflect upon them properly this evening and doubtless have more to say tomorrow.

Oh, and thanks for sharing that wonderful dream about Saturn! I'll DEFINITELY have more to say about that! (good things)

My best - Rhys

Oh, there's always been some rancour between certain magicians and astrology. The magician's will being paramount of course.

Magician: I am going to invoke Saturn to do my bidding!

Astrologer (checks ephemeris, Saturn is retrograde, combust in Aries). Let me know how that works out.

Oddity said:

Oh, there's always been some rancour between certain magicians and astrology. The magician's will being paramount of course.

Magician: I am going to invoke Saturn to do my bidding!

Astrologer (checks ephemeris, Saturn is retrograde, combust in Aries). Let me know how that works out.

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Oh, yes - ''It is impossible to overcome with prayers and sacrifices what has been established from the beginning or to gain for oneself something different, something more to one’s liking. What has been given will come about even if we do not pray; what is not fated will not happen, even if we do pray. Just as actors on the stage change their masks according to the poets’ words and act the characters as they should - sometimes kings, sometimes bandits, sometimes rustics, city people, gods - in the same way we too must act the parts assigned us by Fate and adapt ourselves to the chances of the moment, even if we do not like them. Even if someone refuses,
''Having become base, he will suffer this anyway''''... - Valens, V. Anthologia. Translated by Mark Riley. Retrieved from https://www.csus.edu/indiv/r/rileymt/Vettius Valens entire.pdf

Does anyone beside me have a retrograde Saturn in their natal chart? I have mine in Virgo conjunct Jupiter and Mars interfere with the Aquarius sun/moon conjunction. And how does it affect our lives to have a malefic in retrograde?

Saturn goes retrograde fairly often: it's not so unusual. When the sun opposes Saturn, Saturn is always retrograde. I have Saturn retrograde in Virgo, as well, and somehow my life turned out OK.

I think the main Hellenistic astrologers were fatalists, due to a partnership between astrology and the Stoic philosophy. Stoicism provided a rational for astrology.

This doesn't mean that magic was absent in ancient astrology. Erica Reiner, a foremost translator/editor of Babylonian astrological texts, gives an interesting example in Astral Magic in Babylonia. Astrology was used to time the most auspicious moment to conduct other forms of divination like haruspicy. H. D. Betz, The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, gives examples of how prayers to planetary gods and use of an astrologers board could be used in Egyptian magical practice. (Some of which was incredibly creepy.)

petosiris said:

Oh, yes - ''It is impossible to overcome with prayers and sacrifices what has been established from the beginning or to gain for oneself something different, something more to one’s liking. What has been given will come about even if we do not pray; what is not fated will not happen, even if we do pray. Just as actors on the stage change their masks according to the poets’ words and act the characters as they should - sometimes kings, sometimes bandits, sometimes rustics, city people, gods - in the same way we too must act the parts assigned us by Fate and adapt ourselves to the chances of the moment, even if we do not like them. Even if someone refuses,
''Having become base, he will suffer this anyway''''... - Valens, V. Anthologia. Translated by Mark Riley. Retrieved from https://www.csus.edu/indiv/r/rileymt/Vettius Valens entire.pdf

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I love this quote, and all too true. I took a workshop last summer with Austin Coppock, a competent astrologer who is also a magician who was telling us about how he sometimes did planetary elections, but something would somehow come up - quite naturally - and he wouldn't be able to do the election. It was as if there were a kind of "executive override" at work, nixing the election precisely for the reason stated above. Magic never goes against nature, is the lesson here.

I'm going to return to the topic subject tomorrow, but before I do I wanted to post once more on the importance of our world view when considering traditional astrology, as this will segue into what I would like to say about Saturn.

It is probably reasonable to assume that most of us have a modern world view, I certainly do.

What do I mean by "a modern world view"?

Essentially, the modern world view rejects the reality of anything other than matter and energy and that matter is equivalent to energy and vice versa. Consciousness, thought and emotion are seen as unimportant side effects of matter. This is a generalization, of course, but you get the idea.

In the traditional world view, however, the spiritual does exist as the order that underlies matter and as spiritual beings, including angels, gods and our own souls. This was the world view of Lilly, Ramesey, Bonati, oh the list goes on and on, all the way back to the Hellenistic astrologers.

It is very difficult for moderns like us to truly get into the mindset of the traditional astrologer. It is difficult to imagine a world without Freud and Jung, Karl Marx and Nitzsche, and the like.

So the kind of magic I'm interested in - in the context of astrology - is traditional magic, magic practiced the way the traditional astrologers practiced it. I find that getting up at dawn on most days on the planetary day and planetary hour and meditating on the planet and petitioning it for understanding puts me in alignment with the energies of the planet in question, and already it is gradually altering my perception and understanding of the planets. One way of looking at it would be to say that I'm making friends with them! Always a good thing.

I haven't been at it that long (planetary magic), but already this has been a fruitful experience and has deepened my understanding of astrology, and possibly is aiding me in seeing things the way the traditional astrologers did, so I think I'll keep at it, at least for now.

Am I advocating that we all should be doing this? Certainly not! And happily, my beliefs do not require that others accept them. So while I might continue bringing planetary magic up from time to time, it's nothing to get excited about, it's been done before! ;-)

One thing I will say though before departing for today, through doing this kind of work my understanding of both the greater and lesser malifics has gradually evolved. I'll share specifically on that tomorrow and in doing so, be back on topic!

Kind regards

Rhys

CapAquaPis said:

Does anyone beside me have a retrograde Saturn in their natal chart? I have mine in Virgo conjunct Jupiter and Mars interfere with the Aquarius sun/moon conjunction. And how does it affect our lives to have a malefic in retrograde?

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Depends on where it is in the chart and many other factors.

This might belong in the "read my chart section"? Could one of the moderators respond to this?

Good work, Rhys.

I'm a gardener. Not a great one, but a gardener. I've read up on planting by moon signs (as well as doing other activities by moon phases,) and just a bit on Steiner and biodynamics. Mostly I just found this very difficult to schedule, but it occurred to me that the primary value of gardening by moon signs and phases is how it pushes us into organizing our activities around a very important feature of the heavens. It's an additional way to live closer to the cosmos.

(For the trads here, planting, harvesting, &c by moon signs and phases are indeed traditional.)

It seems like you're doing this on a more advanced level, with the planets.

I will suggest that it's counter-productive to posit a soulless, sterile modernity contra an emotionally and spiritually rich tradition. Most of us live neither entirely in one or the other. Also, there are some interesting things coming out of neuroscience and quantum physics as applied to real-life questions about human consciousness and the nature of reality.


One point made by post-modernists is that binaries are suspect: they tend to be invented rather than merely observed or discovered. Then one half of the binary tends to get privileged over the other half. Equally, a lot of categories are suspect, for the same reason. They don't exist in nature but humans invent them as an overlay on Nature to help make sense of our world.

Happily my education has been sadly neglected in matters of Freud, Jung, Marx,and Nietsche.

Before l retired I rubbed shoulders with a lot of scientists and engineers, and was married to a scientist for 20 years. It is surprising how many of them are people of faith.

waybread said:

I will suggest that it's counter-productive to posit a soulless, sterile modernity contra an emotionally and spiritually rich tradition. Most of us live neither entirely in one or the other. Also, there are some interesting things coming out of neuroscience and quantum physics as applied to real-life questions about human consciousness and the nature of reality.

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Absolutely! In quantum physics I'm told they are discovering that on a sub-atomic level (smaller than quarks) they are finding that "something" is coming out of nothing! Well, that's no surprise to a kabbalist, those people have been saying that for centuries!

Interesting what you said about your scientist and engineer friends. That has been my experience also.

Ok, getting back to the subject of our lovely greater malefic, I've been thinking about why it is Saturn and Mars give us so much trouble.

One thing I'm sure that all of us traditional people can agree upon is that where we find cold and dry Saturn in a night chart, we are likely to find the native is going to experience difficulties in that arena of life. And where we find extremely hot and dry Mars in a day chart, why, those natives are likely to find difficulties in whatever topic that house is describing as well.

I have tested this out in my own chart and that of many others and have found it to be true.

Using Saturn as an example, I'm not saying that the night chart Saturn person will experience difficulties 24/7, not by any means. But when Saturn is activated by one time lord system or another, it certainly would be likely to be troublesome.

Before moving on from there, I just wanted to check to make sure: Are we all on the same page with regard to this?

Kind regards

Rhys