Like many other things in life, Astrology is paradoxical. Saturn’s energy for example can be very good or very bad. It reminds me of the saying by Napoleon:
Ambition is the passion of a great character.
One endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts.
All depends on the principles that guide them.
Saturn can be the spirit that animates a child trafficker, a slaver of the innocent. This is the ultimate act of evil and limitation. Or Saturn can be someone like Napoleon who enforced just laws.
Saturn can be greed and lust for power or Saturn can be divine judgement.
Napoleon, Hortense and I all have our Saturn in a place of Cancer, or the Moon. My Saturn in Cancer is the focal point of all the tension (and there’s buckets of it) in my chart. What does this mean?
The obvious most basic answer is something about limitations, feelings and home. Cancer is about family and origins. Saturn and Cancer are not all that simpatico. In my case, this combination might indicate the abuse pattern which I have been coping with throughout my entire life. Abuse and family are big themes with me. That would be a very poorly aspected Saturn in Cancer which is exactly what I have. Astrologically, I have been dealt a hard and a lucky hand. The art is in playing my hand the best I can. There is no way that chart is going to be an easy life - if Astrology is real.
Hortense’s Saturn is in Capricorn in the 4th house associated with Cancer. Like me, Hortense’s chart is very lucky and very, very tense. This was certainly true in her life. She was the target of extreme jealousy and the entire foundation of her life crumbled from beneath her and she lost everyone she truly loved except her one son Louis, who went on to become Napoleon III.
Let’s look at Saturn in the 4th house of Cancer.
For brevity, I’m just posting one paragraph of the above but the whole piece is worth reading and it is here.
Hortense’s father was monstrously executed, essentially for being a true French patriot. I have a feeling this was a major motivation in Napoleon’s taking Alexandre de Beauharnais’s place as head of this family.
Napoleon could be a stern, restrictive person and he regulated Hortense’s life in a way that she found oppressive. Hortense had to emotionally caretake her mother Josephine who was probably was more immature than she was. Hortense sacrificed herself in marriage to Louis Bonaparte because her mother was desperate to keep her hooks in Napoleon. All of these circumstances say Saturn in the 4th house to me.
Hortense’s Saturn is opposite her Uranus in Cancer (Moon). This further emphasizes the Saturn Moon discomfort with weird genius Uranus thrown in. With that we can see the brilliant energy of Napoleon and Hortense - both geniuses in their complimentary ways. Both of them could be terrifying to others, particularly those of the prevailing power system of their time, the Allied Powers and their secretive friends (Saturn).
The Astrology Series so far is available here.