This page is about all Saturn-Mars aspects, like Saturn Conjunct Mars, Saturn Opposite Mars, Saturn Trine Mars, Saturn Square Mars, Saturn Sextile Mars, Saturn Inconjunct Mars. Hard aspects like conjunctions, squares, and oppositions tend to be more difficult than soft aspects like trines or sextiles. The closer the orb, the more intense the aspect.
We have a page about Saturn. 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.
About Saturn-Mars
Lessons
- going inward to explore and integrate the masculine principle within oneself
- developing a deeper understanding of power and control
- developing inner strength and resilience
- learning to assert the personal will in a balanced way that is neither forceful or timid
Challenges
- a childhood experience of being dominated by the father
- potentially experiencing physical abuse or cruelty
- a sense of inadequacy around one’s power or masculinity
- lack of confidence
- intense inner frustration
- feelings of weakness or powerlessness potentially leading to violence or manipulation out of fear
- using sex as a way to assert dominance rather than pleasure or connection
- sexual inhibition due to fear
- a sense of not having control over one’s life
- coldness
- selfishness
- recklessness
- accidents
- conflict with authority
- or alternatively
- extreme passivity and lack of assertion which may build up into frustration and anger or self-destructiveness
Mastery
- integrating masculinity and power without dominance or needing to prove oneself
- the ability to harness and direct energy with precision
- determination and stamina
- self-assurance grounded in self-knowledge
- the ability to balance the desire for action and the need for caution
About the Saturn Growth Journey
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.
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.
