Those with Saturn in Cancer feel responsible for nurturing and caring for family, friends, and loved ones. They willingly take responsibility and ask for nothing in return. However, their most significant insecurity is that no one will comfort or take care of them in their times of need.
Saturn in Cancer
Many astrologers believe Cancer is the most painful and difficult sign placement for Saturn. Saturn rules Cancer's opposite sign, Capricorn. You could say that Cancer is teaching Saturn to feel.
Cancer: The Mother Archetype
Cancer is the Cardinal water sign of the zodiac ruled by the emotional Moon. Cancer, the sensitive nurturer of the zodiac, needs to feel warmth and acceptance from others. An individual with Saturn in Cancer needs to feel it has a safe place, a home, and family where it's loved, accepted, and cared for, and will strive a lifetime for emotional connections.
Saturn: The Father Archetype
Saturn is an austere planet that's said to be the taskmaster and wise teacher of the zodiac. Saturn is about limitations, restrictions, responsibility, hard work, maturing, and learning from your mistakes and failures. Saturn in a chart is where you limit yourself due to insecurity and fear.
Saturn in Cancer Themes
For an individual with Saturn in Cancer, stability, and security mean friends, family, and close personal relationships. However, Saturn's lessons begin at a young age, and a Saturn in Cancer child's life is seldom comfy and cozy. Saturn in Cancer's life themes are neglect, abandonment, rejection, lack of nurturing, lack of comfort and understanding within the family, and often lack even in the face of plenty. Those with Saturn in Cancer often suffer from the feeling that they will never have their needs met. Throughout their lifetime, Saturn will teach these individuals, through trial and error, to become more trusting, loving, caring, giving, compassionate, and nurturing. They work hard to make sure their own family is successful and strive not to repeat their own childhood problems.
Saturn in Cancer Childhood
Saturn in Cancer appears early in a child's birth family. In some way these kids have had a difficult upbringing, and even as adults often feel they have the weight of the world on their shoulders.
- They often failed to form an emotional bond with one or both parents.
- Some are actually orphans.
- Often the father is absent, and the mother is spread so thin that she cannot nurture or provide the emotional support they need.
- They often feel as if they don't belong and are left on their own a lot.
- Perhaps mother is herself wounded... an addict, mental illness, or physical health problems.
- In some cases, the family was caring and nurturing, but financially destitute. The child had to go to work and contribute to the family while young.
- They might have even been the "poor little rich kid" whose parents provided materially but neglected their child's emotional needs. As an example: Wealthy parents shipping their child off to boarding school at a young age.
- They may have been well-loved but raised in a materially poor family.
- Due to these early bonding and family issues, Saturn in Cancer children can be fiercely loyal to their parents or walk away and have nothing to do with them.
Saturn in Cancer Greatest Concerns
Saturn in a birth chart reveals an individual's greatest insecurities and fears. Individuals with Saturn in Cancer can have one, two, or more of the concerns or characteristics listed below:
- Rejection
- Abandonment
- Humiliation
- Pessimistic
- Self-protective
- No one to comfort them in their time of need
- Failure
- Shame of family
- Being needy
Positive Influences of Saturn in Cancer
Saturn in Cancer will compel you to move forward, evolve, overcome obstacles, and work hard for personal security, home, and family. But Saturn problems are chronic and reoccurring. However, as the years go by, Saturn in Cancer teaches them:
- To connect emotionally with others
- Be loving and nurturing to the families they create
- To comfort and protect their friends and fellow man
- To become a safe shelter for others
- To provide parental guidance to others.
- To become a compassionate empath who feels both their own and other people's feelings.
Healing Saturn in Cancer
Repressing their emotions and feelings guarantees that those with Saturn in Cancer will not get the love they need. Sadly, due to their upbringing, they have difficulty trusting and getting close to people. Many with Saturn in Cancer have become stiff upper lipped and stoic. As adults, their mission is not to allow their inhibitions to rule over them and break out of their cold wall of seeming indifference. The greatest healing challenge for those born with Saturn in Cancer is to learn to openly and freely express their emotions and feelings. To heal, those with Saturn in Cancer must open their hearts to others and learn to cry a little every day.
Saturn in Cancer Dates
Saturn spends about two-and-a-half years in the same sign. But Saturn is not a personal planet. It's a social planet and speaks of what's going on in society when you were born and how that plays into and affects your personality. If Saturn is aligned with a personal planet, such as the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, or Mars, or angle of the horoscope, Saturn is far more relevant to the person's life.
- June 20, 1944, through August 2, 1946
- August 1, 1973, through January 7, 1974
- April 18, 1974, through September 16, 1975
- January 14, 1976, through June 5, 1976
- June 3, 2003, through July 16, 2005
- July 13, 2032, through August 26, 2034
- February 15, 2035, through May 11, 2035
Personalizing Saturn in Cancer
Understanding how Saturn in Cancer will manifest in an individual's life depends on its house position and aspects in the birth chart. You'll need a birth chart calculated for the location, date, and time you were born to find Saturn's house and aspects. You can get one at AstroSeek.com. However, if you're having Saturn problems, a professional astrologer can provide a complete interpretation of your Saturn in Cancer and how it could be affecting your life.
Celebrities With Saturn in Cancer
The lives of the Saturn in Cancer celebrities below reveal a few of the many ways Saturn in Cancer can manifest in life.
Donald Trump
An extreme example of Saturn in Cancer's "poor little rich boy" is Donald Trump. Peter Lovenheim, writing for Politico.com in 2018, says: "The biographical record is fairly strong on Trump's failure to develop a healthy emotional attachment to either of his parents." Additionally, he was sent away from his family to Military school when he was seven years old.
Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie's childhood was scarred by her father's abandonment of her and his refusal to pay child support and interact with her as a young adult. However, having a family was so important to her that she decided to create a family that fit her humanitarian values. Jolie is now the loving and caring mother of a family of kids from different cultures, with varying colors of skin and ethnic backgrounds.
Eric Clapton
Eric Clapton was a lost child. Clapton was born to a 16-year-old unwed mother, whom he was thought to be his older sister and raised by his grandparents. Just when Clapton's life seemed to be on an even keel, he lost his 4-year-old son when he fell from a hotel window. Clapton grieved inconsolably for months, and in his grief, he wrote "Tears in Heaven" for his son. The loss of his son had taught Clapton to cry.
Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton reveals the best of Saturn in Cancer. Dolly, one of 12 children, was raised in a one-room cabin in the Smoky Mountains. Though she grew up in lean circumstances, she had a mother who "poured her heart and soul into raising her children." Dolly was hard-working as many with Saturn in Cancer are and started performing professionally at age 10. She appeared on local television and radio shows in Knoxville. Dolly's love, loyalty, generosity, and emotional connection to her family, community, and the people of the world are well known.
Dealing With Saturn
Saturn can't be avoided. Saturn is what you struggle with and where you feel inadequate. It reveals where you are driven by a sort of obsession to learn, grow, and get "it" right through trial, error, and hard work. But if you're successful, Saturn in Cancer's greatest reward is to excel at giving emotional support to anyone who needs it.
