Stoicism for Saturnians
Stoicism as a philosophy is characterized by the personal will to act righteously in accordance with nature’s law, the personal will to not be controlled by desire or fear. Conquering desire and fear with logic and reason is the highest virtue. The material world is seen as having no value in and of itself. In other words, the value of the external is determined by mental attributions. The object doesn’t have power over the subject unless the subject cooperates with a certain narrative. Painful emotional experiences are therefore the result of faulty reasoning. Consequently, anything that arises within the individual has to be his own responsibility. It’s the only hope of reaching a state of bliss.
Stoicism attempts to cope with the fact that the world is unpredictable and chaotic by establishing individual autonomy. It’s the individual that decides to suffer and it’s the individual that gives up suffering. It’s the individual that develops the art of living. Truth, which is the same as happiness, is the direct result of right thinking. Goodness is nature’s way and it’s what one should strive to live in accordance with. Straying from the righteous path would be to give in to misjudgment and act counter to nature. Nature, as referred to, implies the inevitable order of the material world. Nature unfolds, as it should – nothing more and nothing less. It’s not possible or advisable for the individual to oppose this law; the only option is to align the will with its workings.
Action is the manifestation of one’s character. Paying lip service is not in alignment with the stoic perspective. What has to be done is often glaringly obvious to people living in accordance with laws of nature. If there’s not enough food, one will starve. That is a law of nature. No amount of talking about bread would bring it about. One could attempt to grow food or decide not to – either way, the individual would have to face the consequences of his actions. In the case of attempting to grow crops one might get tired or fail, in the case of doing nothing, one would certainly starve to death. No outcome is better than the other, it’s seen and accepted without resistance. There’s no point in suffering over results, whatever they may be. The will is aligned with nature’s way and nature doesn’t judge.
The Stoic philosophy is very Saturnian because it rests on a deterministic worldview. Pain and restriction are part of the world. One thing leads to another, inevitably. Nothing happens separately from other components in existence. This is the “law” that stoics refer to, and since it’s a law, there’s no point in trying to get around it. One must cooperate with it and in that cooperation gain a sense of autonomy. Free will and autonomy can be accessed, by accepting things as they are, to surrender to the present and what it holds. It may seem trivial to choose something that has more or less already been chosen by a higher power, but it is the only sane way to live under set premises. A stoic that is truly virtuous would, as a result, be happy in sickness and limitation because it is not his place to contradict the course of nature. Yet, he would not avoid taking action in direction of improvement, if it was possible in the given situation.
The Saturnian perspective is in alignment with all of this. Saturn is the dead world that is nothing but a mechanical machine. The world never gives without taking and everyone is going to die in the end. What is only temporarily given is not really given at all, which makes the world meaningless. It’s essentially going nowhere. The only thing left to do is to cultivate an inner attitude that is not dependent on outer circumstances. For example, what point is there to clean the house if it’s only going to get dirty again? The cycle is pre-determined and will not bend to anyone’s will. There’s no gain to be had from cleaning or not cleaning because there’s no ultimate reward waiting at the end. The house is going to be gone in time and so is the person cleaning it. There’s no goal in time that could be permanently achieved. Yet, one must not think that affective value is inherent in this fact. It is what it is. It’s the individual who have the power to apply value.
Cleaning the house is not boring or fun in and of itself, it depends on the subjective attitude and interpretation. Stoicism when adopted as a personal philosophy could be very helpful to Saturnian individuals for this reason. In fact, most probably live with this attitude imbedded in them. People who have Saturn conjunct or aspecting many personal planets, not to mention a lot of Capricorn placements, are set on a path of developing inner strength – that is to live virtuously in accordance with natural laws. What is natural and what is constructed is of course debatable. Nevertheless, to rely on one’s own reasoning as the highest authority is what these people are meant to do.
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Stoicism springs from cynicism, and the two philosophies have many things in common. Cynicism is more “hard core” because it rejects human constructs and deems them unnatural. All the unnecessary frills of culture and social norms are not worth accommodating for, since they are not the ultimate authority. Cynicism is in essence an attempt to strip the self of all the bounds of society and radically come under the laws of the rural rather than the civilized. It’s not that poverty is favored over wealth, it’s that the power these states have over the individual is dependent on the personal investments in them. A true cynic cannot adhere to any relative authority; one has to live in a way that is in accordance with the true law. No doubt it is the attitude of a person who’ve been extremely disappointed in life – disillusioned and hurt by an “artificial authority” in the form of societal norms and systems. Superficial comforts would be seen as an imprisonment because to value triviality would be to deem nature wrong.
Even though poverty might seem strange to choose willingly in order to be free of the desire for pleasure, a person can live well with a little and doesn’t have to depend on constructs for fulfillment. Stoicism grants a bit of leeway as opposed to cynicism, deeming it appropriate to pursue the necessary – even the unnecessary in terms of status and possessions, as long as it doesn’t conflict with one’s own judgment. One can be part of a civilized society without being attached to it more than necessary. One doesn’t have to renounce every single comfort. Pleasure is after all not the problem in and of itself. It’s the blind desire for pleasure that imprisons a person. Social status can be sought, as long as one is not dependent on its actualization for happiness. While cynicism emphasizes slavery by rejecting it (making it real by creating distance to it), stoicism doesn’t confirm or denies its existence. Pleasure or pain, one can be happy regardless knowing that one is free from mental bounds.
People who have strong Saturn/Capricorn influence will have to battle with the themes of authority and happiness. Restriction and limitation whether it’s mental, emotional or physical will be experienced to varying degrees and has to be coped with. Especially the question of inner or outer authority has to be pondered. Is there an external authority or does it exist because one is upholding the construct in one’s mind? For example, if one has no money, is money the master over the individual or is it the individual that has given money the position of master? A stoic would conclude the latter to be accurate. A problem presents itself, but the person knows that it’s only a problem as long as one chooses it to be. The power is in the mind, in the capacity to apply reason. There’s no grievance that oneself doesn’t play a part in. Knowing this to be the truth, it’s possible to willingly live as a civilized member of society, controlling what one can control and leaving the rest to fate.
The dilemma that often presents itself in Saturn/Capricorn dominants is the contradiction of high ambition and lack of motivation. High ambition is present because of the perception of lack and the potential for a better life. Lack of motivation is present because work in itself is not satisfactory without some external pay off. On the one hand, one sees the possibility of success, on the other, the possibility for pathetic failure. Because of the strong investment in success (the power the phenomenon has in the mind of the person), there’s often a blockage to set things in motion. Fear of failure is so strong that one is better off not putting all of one’s energy into goals. Paradoxically this complex could be the very thing that prevents achievement. This is why stoicism is a very good personal philosophy to adopt for saturnians. It doesn’t negate ambition, but it allows the person to be free of fear of a specific outcome, not to mention free of the blind desire for success. It is a philosophy that promotes sanity and responsibility – but perhaps most importantly it puts the authoritative power back where it belongs, with the individual. If applied in real life, stoicism should cultivate a calm and rational character that is the embodiment of self-mastery while living harmoniously within social structures. There’s no need for rejection of external structures once the real authority has been recognized.
