Saturn and Greatness

Om Sham Shanaishcharaya Namaha

May The Slow Mover Ever Take Mercy Upon Me As I Learn To Take Mercy On Every Being

It is said that a yogi can learn to control the other eight planets in the Jyotishical
Pantheon, but even a great yogi can only ever appease Shani Maharaj. Why is this? Because
Saturn is the Lord of Experience and of Matter Itself. Every bit of Matter is imbued with Divine
Consciousness, but this Consciousness is going to express through the medium of the matter in
which it is imbued. As the famous saying goes, You cant turn a sows ear into a silk purse.
This is true, unless Saturn blesses you to be able to do just that.
In order to expand Consciousness, we have to work with the Matter in which we find our
individual selves embedded. Without some helpful other Consciousness embedded in Matter,
however subtle or gross, our own Transformation is unlikely to take place, unless it took place
previously in the Space-Time Continuum, in which case it hinged on the same rule.
Like a row of monkeys climbing a ladder, it is incumbent on each one of us to boost the monkey
above us and drag the monkey below us to keep the succession going. Of course, you can also
simply say, there are no monkeys. This works well, especially if you can keep doing it while
being tortured to death in some lab somewhere.
The ways we do this and the level at which we participate will be determined by our
karma, and while the entire Jyotishical Pantheon represents our karmic package, its Governor is
Shani Maharaj. In whatever way we achieve Greatness, Saturn will be the wind, or lack thereof,
in our sails.
There is both spiritual greatness and material greatness. The portion of greatness
destined to be yours in either case, will be determined by Saturn. Why is this? Saturn is the
Child of the Sun, pure Divine Consciousness and Chaya or Shadow, the Limitations of the
Material World.
From an Absolute View, we are all great already, because we are a fragment of the One
Greatness. From a Relative View, beings are relatively great in different ways. Michael Jordan great basketball player, Warren Buffett - great money maker, Ammachi - great humanitarian,
Hitler (and my mother) - great dictator, my second grade teacher - great teacher. Greatness can
refer both to the worldly magnitude of accomplishment and/or to the Way in which a being
carries out its mission.
This is why, in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna remarks to Arjuna, that it is better to fail at
your own dharma though it be devoid of merit, than to succeed at a better dharma. In aligning
with your dharma and pursuing it in a single-pointed fashion, you are sure to become Great. Of
course, in the Age of Confusion, where mash-ups prevail, one has to discover ones dharma,
and it may be so highly unique that it is truly a one-of-a-kind dharma.
Once having discovered your dharma, and aligned yourself with your personal means
and methodology for carrying it out, you are still likely to face obstacles. Each participant in the
Mahabharata War still had to navigate the circumstances and situations as they played out for
him during the War. But if you truly understand your Dharma, you can meet each challenge with
a unified response, a response that accords with your Way of Being. That is what is meant by
Greatness. A Great Being is a being who has discovered their heart and always responds from
it, regardless of the risks and sacrifices entailed in such a response. Of course, our Experience
can put us in circumstances in which it is very difficult to find our Way.
For example, consider Judas Iscariot. Two versions of what happened between him and
Jesus exist. Both say he was Jesus favorite disciple. One says he sold Jesus out for thirty
shekels of silver. The more reliable version, as backed up by the Gospel of Judas, says that

because he was Jesus Truest Disciple, Jesus asked him to carry out the act of betrayal in order
that the destiny might be fulfilled. If this second version is true, imagine what a cross Judas was
on. He was asked by his Guru to essentially commit Guruhatya or Guru Murder, considered to
be the greatest of the mahapatakas (Great Sins) possible in Vedic Thought.
There is Judas, pilloried by circumstance with an impossible choice. He can either
commit Guru Droha (rebellion against the guru) which is nearly as bad as Guruhatya, or he can
commit Guruhatya but be still be in alignment with his guru. What to do? From this perspective,
Judas made the greatest sacrifice possible in order to stay in alignment with his Way as Jesus
disciple. But what a curse! Judas could not forgive himself and committed suicide a short time
later. It must have taken him lifetimes to work out the scar on his psyche. He probably damned
himself to Hell with his own guilt. Of course, if he had had a copy of the Bhagavad Gita with him,
he might have remembered that Krishna told Arjuna to, essentially, do the best he could and
leave the results to Krishna and to never identify with the actions he was performing, because
those had been previously arranged by God. But alas, performing action without identification is
very difficult. Judas should have said, there is no Judas, there is no Jesus, there is only Krishna.
Shivoham.
If one can perfect such a pursuit, then one does not need to worry about conduct. The
rest of us - we need to give some thought to our conduct while we are waiting to perfect our
disidentification with our actions. Otherwise, like Judas, our guilt and shame and desire could
drag us down down down into the Mud of this Creation. That is why we pray to Saturn to have
mercy and to make us merciful, so that our Experience does not kick our respective asses too
badly. Of course, this is all just a story to pass the Time.
Shani, Saturns most common appellation is composed of two syllables. Sha and Ni. Sha means
peace. Ni means leading or guiding. Shani Maharaja ultimately leads us or guides us to peace
through a calm acceptance of our circumstances and an embrace of the effort and patience
required to resolve them through presence, whether we simply see them or saw away at them.
On that note, let us look at the role of Saturn in the charts of beings thought to be conventionally
great.
Barbara Streisand Apr 24, 1942 Brooklyn, NY 5:08 am
From humble beginnings, Streisand has enjoyed a six+ decades long career in the music and
entertainment industries, despite lacking classically feminine looks. She is a Pisces rising, 15
degrees and 25 minutes. This means her rising nakshatra is Uttara Bhadrapada whose
planetary ruler is Saturn. Saturn himself sits with Jupiter, the ruler of Pisces in the third house of
skills and courage. The fact that the ruler of her rising nakshatra and her rising sign sit together
signifies a kind of deep unity in the being about what they want to pursue in life. Saturn is in the
nakshatra of Krittika. In Vedic times, Krittika was the first nakshatra of the zodiac. It occupies the
degree span from 2640 of Aries to 1000 of Taurus. Krittikas deity is Agni, God of Fire and
transporter of all sacrifices to the Gods. Because Agni transports sacrifices, Krittika dominated
people often feel a deep need to communicate in life, and to communicate in a way that breeds
an intermarriage between the mundane and the transcendent. Jupiter, the ruler of her rising
sign, sits in Mrigasirsa. Mrigasirsa describes the primordial story of Desire and its
consequences, which in this case, take the penultimate form of attempted child molestation.
Mrigasirsas symbol is a deer and its deity is Brahma, the Creator. It is a star depicting the
chase of desire and Mirgasirsa people can be wedded to a desire that they spend their entire
lives chasing down. Saturn is in a parivartana with 3rd lord Venus, also strengthening the 3rd
house and its meanings. Saturn, here also, rules the 11th of desire and sits with the 1st lord.
And Saturn is in its own sign in the navamsa. This is a powerful yoga for being granted ones

desires and it is a powerful dhana yoga as well. Why singing? We need look no further than her
second house and its configurations. But it is Saturn who gives her the tenacity and staying
power to become Barbara Streisand.
Steven Spielberg Dec 18, 1946 18:16 Cincinnati, OH
Visionary director Steven Spielberg is a Gemini. As one would expect of a guy who makes
movies, he has a beautifully loaded 5th house, replete with benefics Moon, Jupiter and own sign
Venus - thus his artistry. He also has Sun and Mars in the 7th house in Mula, a nakshatra that
fundamentally represents both karmic bondages and outcaste people. His two planets of fire,
the element that accords with the perceptual sense of vision, are together in this nakshatra.
Most of his movies have been about Mula-ish themes. Aliens, outcaste people, karmic atrocities,
etc. A bit surprisingly, the lord of his chart does not involve with either of these sets of planets.
Instead, it sits in the 6th house with Ketu. Such a placement can often invite themes of poverty
and conflict, but these play out in his movies, rather than directly in his personal life for the most
part. Mercury occupies Anuradha, and Saturn who is the planetary ruler of Anuradha occupies
Pushyami, in the 2nd house, another nakshatra of which he is the planetary ruler. Pushyami is
the classic nakshatra of teachers and instructors. Saturn sits there, retrograde, in the 2nd house
of communication, where Spielberg often gives voice to the unvoiced and to unvoiced cultural
themes. He ran his Saturn dasha from age 25-44, during which years his career took shape
and solidified.
Michael Jordan Feb 17, 1963 10:20 Brooklyn, NY
Jordan is an Aries rising with Rx Mars in the 4th house with Rahu. Saturn sits in his own sign of
Capricorn opposite Mars with Mercury and Rahu, creating both a Shasha Yoga and powerful
raja and dhana yogas with Mars. Saturn sits in the nakshatra of Shravana, which is the furthest
north of all the nakshatras. It is ruled over by Vishnu and its emblem is Vishnus three footsteps.
Vishnu, at one point, prays to be the most famous of the Gods, and his prayer is granted. Thus
Shravana, which is usually depicted as mainly a high learning nakshatra, also has themes of
both fame and striding to it. And Michael Jordan was famous for his striding, and of course, lent
his name to his famously striding shoes, in typical Vishnu fashion.
Umberto Eco Jan 5, 1932 18:30 Alessandria, Italy
Famed scholar, author and philosopher Umberto Eco, who had an illustrious career as an
academician and an enormous library, and wrote both weighty tomes and childrens books, is a
Cancer rising with Saturn in its own sign in the 7th house. Saturn occupies Uttara Ashadha, a
nakshatra having to do with Ganesha, lord of understanding material reality, with great
determination and with penetrating insight. Saturn is vargottama, rendering it even more
powerful. Saturn sits opposite exalted 9th lord Jupiter, who forms a Hamsa Yoga in the
ascendant. And Saturn sits with 4th and 11th lord Venus, who occupies Shravana, here
displaying its more classical presentation as a nakshatra of profound learning. Here Saturn
again gives the gritty stick-to-it-tiveness necessary to spend a life in the riches of the mind. Of
course, as his nature, Saturn also imparts a limitation. It might be very hard for Umberto Eco to
surrender even the Maya of Knowledge to go to the Absolute.