Lord Saturn (Shani-deva) and his effects
Om Ganapataye namah, Om Sarasvatyai namah, Om Durga Shivaya namah, Om Hanumate namah, Om Shanaish-charaaya namah.
I offer my most humble and prostrated obeisances at the lotus feet of the great terrifier and son of Suryadeva. I humbly beg for his blessings to compile this article to make people aware what a great personality he really is.
In all systems of astrology Saturn has played a role disproportionate to the fact that he is only one of nine planets. In India as in the west, Saturn (Shani in Sanskrit) has long been the bringer of doom. Naturally it is in ones best interest of every individual to prevent his own doom.
So instead of conjecturing over who Saturn is and why he is so consequential, please simply let Saturn work on you, for Saturn (regardless of which religious denomination you belong to) will affect you whether you know him or not. Know, that Saturn is the most important person and player in astrology. Saturn has been recognized as the most important of the Nine Grahas (Planets) in other cultures as well as in India. The Chaldeans used Saturn for divination more than any other planet. Babylonian and Assyrian astrologers, for whom Saturn was Ninib, the god of the south, also called him Shamash, the “Sun-star” anointing him the ‘sun’ (most prominent planet) of the night. Since Saturn is by no means the sky’s brightest planet, his ‘solar’ prominence lies more in his symbolic significance. Western alchemists called him the Black Sun. The Greeks knew Saturn as Kronos (“he who gives the measures” = the originator of time), Chronos (“time”), and Cronos (the crow god), the crow being much used in divination, and being symbolic of long life in both Italy and Greece.
Suryadeva was married to Samjna (she was the daughter of Vishvakarma - the architect of the universe). Samjna lived with her husband for many years, during which time she gave birth to the first three of her children: Vaivasvata Manu, Lord Yamaraja (the lord of death) and Yami. When Suryadeva’s intense heat became unbearable for her she created a substitute wife, in her exact form, by awakening her own shadow (Chaya). She then proceeded to her father’s house where she told him that she couldn’t bear the heat of her husband. Her father requested her to go back to her husband, but she didn’t instead she decided to go the Earth and changed her form into a mare and began performing severe penance, subsisting on dry grass alone, so that she might come to withstand her husband’s effulgence. In the meanwhile Chaya, who was Samjna shadow brought to life, bore with Suryadeva three children Savarni (the next Manu after Vaivasvata Manu), Tapati (who became a river in India) and Saturn.
The Shani Mahatmya declares, “Saturn, who rules both longevity and prosperity, can make a king a pauper and vice versa. When Saturn is happy he causes good fortune to sweep through your life, and when angry he destroys everything. He controls everyone’s destiny. No one can escape from Saturn’s grasp, no matter where he might be in the world. No planet except Saturn can give you both long life and also plenty of things to consume during that life. Saturn has that ability to change your destiny and is the force of fate, the force that makes you experience your karmas whether you want to or not. In Sanskrit it is said svabhavo vijayati iti shauryam – the true heroism is to conquer your own nature. Until you have completely conquered your innate nature, Saturn can still affect you. Saturn will search out the weakness in your personality and will expose them to full view, making you experience your limitations by making your ego self-identify with those limitations. As long as you are unable to control your own nature, you are at Saturn’s mercy. If you can completely conquer what comes naturally to you Saturn can have no effect on you. But it’s not so easy to control your nature, and as long as it not perfectly controlled you will always be subjected to Saturn and his effects.”
SATURN OFTEN REPRESENTS THE WORST THAT YOUR KARMAS HAVE IN STORE FOR YOU.
The most important thing Saturn teaches you endurance and humility.
From the time that we are born until the time we die we have planets affecting us in a positive or negative way and when one is affected by Saturn one can expect the following symptoms: Pain (especially of the bones, muscles, ligaments and joints), timidity, anxiety, fear, bad dreams, poverty, instability, shame, delays, humiliation, inhibitions, loneliness, isolation, depression, mental or physical rigidity, disappointments, resignations, melancholy, lack of trust, suspicion, doubt and above all lots and lots of obstacles.
“The ultimate Tantric viewpoint in Indian astrology is to please Saturn, because of all the planets Saturn is the greatest.” It is possible, through rigorous penance, to control the darshan of all eight of the other planets, but Saturn can only be propitiated, not controlled. While everyone, deva, asura or human, who has tried to control Saturn has come to grief, anyone who can propitiate Saturn will pass safely through life with very few hindrances in his/her path.
Most humans grumble over their sufferings, or whine about how everyone had it better than he, or had it in for him. Instead of blaming other people, he should blame himself. One of the least useful of human attitudes towards the universe is the “blaming phenomenon”, in which everything except one’s own self is held responsible for one’s woes. Saturn is often the most blamed. I think at times “Poor Saturn. He is crying because everyone blames him; but what can he do? It is part of his portfolio to make people experience Reality” and few are the people who long to become devotees of Saturn. The effect of Shani in a Vedic Chart produces a great deal of fear and anxiety in life. Saturn's influence makes us give up easily, making it easy to succumb to the pressure that Saturn often exerts on us. The effect of Saturn in a chart hurts us by taking things away, by causing delays, and even by destroying things in our life, by causing poverty, confinement, injury, debility, shame, humiliating circumstances, and illness. Saturn major periods are not necessarily damaging throughout, and Saturn transits can cause rises in status as well as problems. The most feared transit of Saturn is called "Sade Sati" or the seven and one half years of Saturn, which can destroy and reconfigure ones lives most dramatically. Our destiny is the sum of our past actions, and the Nine Planets see to it that we reap, without fail, what we sow, for they are the executive officers of the Law Of Karma, which is the Action and Reaction. Each planet acts on us according to their own unique job description.
In the eighth chapter of the Shani Mahatmya (the Greatness of Saturn) the following true story occurred. (This story should be read every Saturday to appease Lord Saturn (Shani) who is the most important planet of all. “ King Vikramaditya, to forestall further wrangling, motioned for quite at this point and said, “ Now tell me about the seventh planet”. The tall, dark, thin seventh pundit, whose dress and manner betokened his traditionalist conservative nature, was the very portrait of disciplined authoritativeness. He spoke with his eyes slightly downcast, a shadow of harshness in his voice. His words reverberated across the palace’s marble like the caw of a distant crow skips along the surface of a glacier. “O King!” he began. “Saturn is the supreme terrifier among the planets. All beings fear him, for he rules bereavements and misfortunes. If pleased he will give you a kingdom, but if irate he will snatch everything away from you in a moment. His grace makes you happy, while his wrath so thoroughly ruins you that your name is completely forgotten in the human world. Saturn determines longevity and death, for he is Lord of Time. The ambition of kings is great, but their lives are fleeting. All the kings who have ever ruled the earth with their might have been reduced by Time to tales that others tell. Even King Indra and the devas panic when Saturn is nearby, for over the ages many thousands of Indras have been overtaken by the power of Time.”
“Lord Saturn is tall, black, long-limbed, and emaciated, with reddish-brown eyes, large teeth and nails, prominent veins, a sunken stomach, a long beard, matted locks, and profuse coarse, stiff body hair. He is lame and his limbs are rigid; his constitution is Vata. Intensely harsh, he is cruel in authority, and his gaze, which is directed downward, is utterly terrifying. He is a Shudra; some even call him outcaste. By trade he is an oil-presser who worships Kala (Bhairava – another name of Lord Shiva) (the great black terrifier). His metal is iron, and his gem is blue sapphire.” “ Lord of the sinews and the nerves, of the West, of Saturday, and of the constellations of Capricorn and Aquarius, he is also known as the Slow, Son of the Shadow, the Angular, the Black, the Endless, the End-causer, the All-Devouring, the Steady, the Controller, the Famished and the Emanciated”
“Saturn is the son of the Sun (Suryadeva) and his wife’s shadow Chaya. As soon as Saturn was born, his gaze fell on his father and caused vitiligo; his gaze next fell on the Sun’s charioteer; who fell and broke his thigh; and when that gaze lit upon the seven horses of the sun’s chariot they all went stone blind. The Sun tried a number of remedies to remove these infirmities but nothing worked. It was only when Saturn’s gaze left them that the Sun’s skin cleared, his charioteer’s femur healed, and the horses regained their sight.” “Although Saturn became a planet after performing penance in Benares and propitiating Lord Shiva, he did not even spare his benefactor. When Lord Shiva’s son Lord Ganesha was born, his mother Parvati wanted to show the boy to Shani deva. Saturn politely advised her not to do so, but when she insisted, he gazed at the child with only one eye. Instantly Lord Ganesha’s head was reduced to ashes. To prevent Parvati in her anger from destroying the world, Lord Vishnu flew north on His eagle Garuda and, finding a bull elephant exhausted from intercourse with this mate, cut off his head, returned with it, and joined it successfully to Lord Ganesha’s body. “If you hope to prevent Saturn from mangling your life, as he has mangled so many lives, make regular offerings of black sesame seeds, sesame oil, and sugar on Saturdays to an iron image of that planet; also make Saturday donations of sesame and iron to the needy. I make my sincere obeisance to that Lord Saturn whose colour is that of pure collyruim, who is the son of the Sun and the Shadow, and who is the brother of Lord Yama, the deva of righteousness and death.” Thus ends the 8th chapter on Lord Saturn from the Shani Mahatmya.