Saturn in our natal chart represents a place where we can feel limited, painfully inadequate, fearful, or experience delays. But there is a purpose behind Saturn’s seemingly negative effect on our life: Saturn wants us to grow up, take responsibility, and develop our inner authority. If we are willing to face ourselves and do the work to overcome our fears, we develop the strength and power we wanted all along.
We have a page about Saturn if you want to learn more. I also highly recommend Liz Greene’s book Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil, which is the basis for a lot of my thoughts on Saturn.
Saturn in Cancer in the Natal Chart
Core Conflict
Vulnerabilities
- an early childhood of emotional deprivation or lack of support or protection (especially from the father)
- craving emotional security but not trusting emotional intimacy
- being either over-attached or detached from family
- emotional instability
- feeling unloved or unwanted
- low self-worth
- difficulty in forming intimate connections
Defenses
- trying to satisfy an emotional need for security with property (home or land)
- overemphasis on material security and the home
- emotional detachment
- avoidance of closeness or deep emotional relationships
- coldness or aloofness towards family
The Work
- confront and understand painful childhood experiences
- create self-intimacy by acknowledging inner feelings and fears
- develop inner emotional security and self-acceptance independent of the external world
Transformation
- emotional resilience
- unshakable inner security and inner strength
- emotional independence
- integration of masculine and feminine energies
- serenity
The Saturn Growth Journey
The Saturn journey involves a coupling of need and fear. There can be shyness, stiff awkwardness, and/or emotional coldness and a sense of inadequacy in an area where we badly want to feel confident and capable. And we just don’t. Where others experience ease, we struggle. Where others find things obvious, we have to painstakingly puzzle things out. Where others dance, we stumble. That’s just the way Saturn feels.
If we can’t face our pain, we can end up projecting our unowned negative qualities onto others, or trying to satisfy emotional needs with physical ones and replacing inner work with outer achievement. We look outside ourselves for what we need to develop within ourselves.
Eventually, we realize there is no shortcut. The only way to our goal is to just do the work, by ourselves, for as long as it takes.
