Saturn in the signs

What Saturn means

In a natal chart Saturn stands for limits, time and responsibility. Traditional astrologers called it the Greater Malefic, but the old texts also gave it farming, architecture and old age. Saturn is the planet of things that take years. Its sign shows the area where you feel tested early, where you suspect you are not quite enough, and where you eventually become the person others ask for advice. It also describes how you relate to authority, both the authorities above you and the one you grow into.

Saturn moves slowly. It stays about two and a half years in each sign and takes roughly 29 years to go once round the zodiac. That is why the first Saturn return, when it comes back to the place it held at your birth, arrives somewhere around 28 to 30 and so often coincides with a reckoning: a career chosen properly, a relationship committed to or ended, a sense of finally being an adult. The second return comes near 58 to 60.

Because of that slow pace, everyone born within a stretch of about two and a half years shares your Saturn sign, a cohort about the size of a school year group or two. The sign gives the shared flavour of the lesson; the house Saturn falls in and its aspects to your Sun, Moon and other planets make it personal. To find your Saturn sign you only need your birth date, and the free birth chart calculator will also show its house if you add the time and place.