The Saturn symbol

A cross above a curve

Look at the glyph from the top. The cross is on top, and below it a curved stroke falls from the foot of the upright, like a scythe blade or the tail of a lowercase h. The older books describe it as the cross of matter lifted above the curve of the soul, which turns the usual picture on its head. The reading most often repeated is simpler: this is the sickle of Saturn, the old Roman god of the harvest, whose tool turned into the symbol of Father Time.

Another line of explanation, found in modern reference works, says the glyph began as a Greek monogram for the name of the god's Greek counterpart, Kronos, and was redrawn over the centuries into its present form. As with the other planetary glyphs the sources disagree on which story is older, and both can be partly right.

What the glyph is meant to say about the planet

• The cross: matter, form and the fixed point at which an idea becomes real.
• The curve: the blade that cuts, measures and ends, which is how the tradition ties Saturn to time and to endings.
• Together: boundaries that give shape, and the cost of keeping within them.
• In the older ranking, Saturn was the Greater Malefic, the most restrictive planet, a label modern astrologers handle more carefully, since the limits it describes are also the structure that makes things last.

The planet behind the glyph

The cycle the symbol points to

1. 1. Around age 29 to 30

   Saturn returns to the sign and degree it held at your birth, the first Saturn return, read as a threshold into adult responsibility.

2. 2. Around age 58 to 60

   The second return, read as a reassessment of what has been built.

3. 3. Around age 87 to 90

   A third return, rarely reached in the older books and described as a closing of the long cycle.

Typing it and telling it from Jupiter

Unicode's name for it is SATURN, U+2644 (♄︎), and in HTML ♄ produces it. To tell it from Jupiter at a glance, look at the cross: in Saturn's glyph it sits at the top and the curve hangs below it, in Jupiter's the curve rises at the top and the crossbar is low. The Saturn return calculator on the site takes your birth details and returns your own dates.

Why the classical list stops at Saturn

For most of history Saturn was the outermost planet anyone could see without a telescope, so it marked the edge of the known sky. Beyond it lay the fixed stars. The seven classical bodies, the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, supply the seven days of the week and the seven metals of the old scheme, and Saturn closes both lists. The three planets found later were given modern rulerships and no metals.

It is also why Saturn reads as a boundary in a chart: the last planet of the old system is the one that sets the edge of what is permitted.