Saturnian Venus: tied by love

You are in charge of your destiny. It is true that there are placements that are harder to manage than others, but the way you express the energy and how you find compromise within yourself is what ultimately dictates your fate. There are stubborn, impulsive, childish Aries out there, just as there are pioneering, determined and ground-breaking ones.

The astral culprit

Venus is the planet of value. It represents what you find pleasing, beautiful and attractive, but most importantly, it symbolizes your own value. Venus wants to connect and relate, but for her own sake, as she submits to none. She enjoys pleasure, love and joy beyond moral, ethic or maternal limitations. When we like something or someone, we are in the deepest sense, identifying something within us that we don’t recognize as ours, and through obtaining or conquering that which we love, we incorporate it in our lives, but the purpose is to integrate it as our own. What we value help us define ourselves and increases our own worth.

Saturn rules time, karma and wisdom. Essentially, it represents fear. It is from fear that that we derive our need for boundaries and limitations, our sense of responsibility and duty, our desire for control, caution and denial. It’s where our inner disciplinarian lives, defending and protecting us from all that lies outside of the realms of the self. He takes his job seriously and asks us to take responsibility for our actions, learn life’s lessons the hard way, and only through time and conscious effort. He will give you no more and no less than what you deserve. Saturn asks you to learn from raw experience, and only after you’ve faced the necessary challenges and learned to filter the messages from within, you can integrate its energy. Only then you are able to embrace that power and receive its rewards. Saturn’s placement will make you wise, strong, and the rightful ruler of your own life.

There is an implied notion that anything Saturn touches hardens, as if turning into stone, especially in places where we’d rather find gold.

“Am I doomed?” is something I see often regarding bad placements. There aren’t inherently bad placements out there, there are bad ways of expressing, manifesting, and dealing with them. None of this is your fault until you’ve made your behaviors conscious, then it is on you to take responsibility. Free will can only be attained through self-discovery. We must embrace difficult placements and come out the other end empowered.

Conditional love

Saturn-Venus contacts are known for being difficult. They hint to a lack of self-worth. People with this placement are somehow afraid to love themselves for who they are, even if they don’t always consciously recognize it. Saturn sets boundaries and demands they make efforts towards their own value, because if they don’t do something to earn it, they don’t deserve to be loved. Not by yourself, not by others.

With the conjunction, they assume it’s part of them and that's just how it’s supposed to be, yet they perpetually carry it with them, dragging it along. When it's a square, the inner conflict is apparent, it pokes and prods, demanding resolution, somehow, some way. If it’s an opposition and Saturn sits across, they feel the tension but it doesn’t necessarily ask to be solved; they might even externalize it, believing it’s everyone else who’s trying to control and undermine them, it’s the rest of the world that doesn’t love them and that’s why they feel unworthy. If it’s a trine, it just makes the person find easier, more natural expressions for it, but it doesn’t change its essence; they may feel incredibly valuable by expressing Saturnian qualities, but it stems from the same, broken root of self-acceptance.

Outwardly, this makes a person who strives to be regarded as loyal, responsible, committed, and serious. They are attracted to this kind of person as well. Their inner disciplinarian gets no rest, they are highly conscious of all kinds of limitations, because that’s the inner price they pay, sometimes even happily so. They appreciate time, caution, and are painfully aware of the consequences of their actions (or lack thereof). They don’t slack, nor stray from anything they firmly believe to be “right”. Either jadedly or proudly, they understand that the true value of anything in life, lies in the effort that brought it into existence.

They can be attracted to several kinds of Saturnian figures: in a literal sense it could be older, more mature people, or in a metaphorical sense simply wiser individuals. They could be fond of mental ties and appreciate traditional commitments, or perhaps they hold an interest for the more physical ropes of bondage. In its most unfortunate manifestation, the attachment can be to limits themselves, not letting anyone else in. Furthermore, they could be involved with people who embody those limits, by living far, already commited, or otherwise unavailable.

Harnessing the energy

The sardonic challenge is becoming aware of the fact that they are deserving of pleasure, love and joy, and always were. They don’t need to slog nor trudge through life for it. This notion is awkward and hard: the easiest task of simply being can feel insurmountable. That’s precisely the harsh lesson that needs to be learned. If there’s anyone who's qualified for this job, that is the Saturnian. Once they understand it is their duty to appreciate themselves regardless of their actions, they can begin their quest towards acceptance and real fulfillment. After they've gone through the self-imposed wringer of deprecation, they will see that their only responsibility was loving themselves for what they were. That is where the real Saturnian wisdom lies; realizing that the only boundaries they ever had to set was that of their own judgement.