Saturn

"As the sun is the heart of the life and an origin of all the spirits in the body of this world, likewise is Saturn a beginning of all corporeity and tangibility. Thus he does not derive his beginning and descent from the sun, but his origin is the earnest, acrid, and severe anxiety of the whole body of this world." - JACOB BOEHME (1575-1624)

"Saturn is the planet of death. Here he bestows a black robe."

— Dyas Chymica Tripartita, Das ist: Sechs Herrliche Teutsche Philosophische Tractätlein, c. 1625 by Johann Grasse

"These stars stand for lead, because lead of all metals is the heaviest, the softest. That is why the philosopher Socrates said that it represents death and destruction of all things."

— Solothurn, Zentralbibliothek, Cod. S I 185, c. 1593

Saturn in Alchemy

“After comes black Saturn Let Jupiter from his manor Issant, rejects the empire To which the Moon aspires As well done lady Venus Who is the brass, I say no more Except that Mars ascended on her Will be iron the mortal age After which will appear The Sun when he is reborn”. - (THE GREAT OLYMPUS, philosophical poem)

"Of his own nature Saturn speaks thus: The other six have cast me out as their examiner. They have thrust me forth from them and from a spiritual place. They have also added a corruptible body as a place of abode, so that I may be what they neither are nor desire to become. My six brothers are spiritual, and thence it ensues that so often as I am put in the fire they penetrate my body and, together with me, perish in the fire, Sol and Luna excepted. These are purified and ennobled in my water. My spirit is a water softening the rigid and congelated bodies of my brothers. Yet my body is inclined to the earth. Whatever is received into me becomes conformed thereto, and by means of us is converted into one body. It would be of little use to the world if it should learn, or at least believe, what lies hid in me, and what I am able to effect. It would be more profitable it should ascertain what I am able to do with myself. Deserting all the methods of the Alchemists, it would then use only that which is in me and can be done by me. The stone of cold is in me. This is a water by means of which I make the spirits of the six metals congeal into the essence of the seventh, and this is to promote Sol with Luna. Two kinds of Antimony are found: one the common black by which Sol is purified when liquefied therein. This has the closest affinity with Saturn. The other kind is the white, which is also called Magnesia and Bismuth. It has great affinity with Jupiter, and when mixed with the other Antimony it augments Luna." — Coelum philosophorum by Paracelsus

"Saturn is the first of the planets far exceeding all his brethren in essence, order and dignity. He is accounted the primary son of Nature, the root of metals known to few. Hence saith the Clangor, the colouring spirit is the philosopher's Mercury with its Red or White Sulphur being naturally mixed with it in the mine and bowels of the Earth, also indifferently prepared, the judgement of the artificer being left until the perfect consummation, as it is in the metaphor of Bellinus concerning the Sun, that which is the spirit is called Saturn, in plain words tincturing and dividing all metallic bodies especially gold with a true and radical dissolution, as is manifest by his words in the Rosary "Know, saith he, that my father the Sun hath given me power above all power and hath clothed me with a garment of glory, and all the world seeks me and runs after me, for I am that excellent one who exalts and debases all things, and none of my servants except one can overcome me, to whom is given that which is contrary to me, and he destroys me, though not my nature, and that is Saturn who separates all my members. Afterwards I turn to my Mother who congregates all my divided and separated members". Trevisan affirms the same thing, that no other argent vive can be extracted out of any other body, except out of the Red Servant, which is called by Bellinus, the contrary Servant. But it is called a Servant (to wit) the Servant of Nature, because it serves in the generation of Metals in her Minerals, and because it serves in Chemistry to generate that heavenly and also specified stone. It is called Red, because in this last preparation he goes into red dust. But it is termed to be contrary to the Sun, because he doth radically dissolve him and bring him into his first matter. But lest thou should err, my Son, these things are not to be understood of Saturn belonging to metals or mineral Mercury, but concerning the metalline Sun and Moon which are contained in our lead, (to wit) in potential and not visible. Pythagoras says that every secret is in lead. That I may at length conclude in one word this golden chapter, I do plainly with a constant protestation affirm the more sound Philosophers to have nominated it the Star of the Sun, the Ens of the Moon (Sun and Mercury). Know further, that although the subject of health and riches be the same, and that we will handle them both in these commentaries, yet professedly as to the sons of learning and men of understanding it may appear in this place, we will especially treat of the matter of Medicine, for it is our chief intention. But as yet you see Saturn in the ascendant, and all the planets accompanying him, but having the Sun and Moon under his feet, by which is signified that Saturn himself only doth contain in himself those two tinctures, sought by so many and found or known to few. But that a little solar star appears in the Moon, and a little lunar star in the Sun, doth not want a Mystery, for the Sun and Moon came forth of the one and same root, as may in a short space be occularly demonstrated by an ingenious Artificer, by the little white drops which afterwards become red is signified abundance of Tincture, lying hid especially in the body of Saturn. By the mountain out of which a flourishing tree doth appear, is very fitly signified that Saturn is not gotten elsewhere than in hilly places." — The Crowning of Nature, Author: Anonimous

"Saturn is the ruler of matter and the cause of all processes of crystallisation. As such, he is the power of obstruction, deterioration, and decline. It is also Saturn’s task to reveal everything the human being has created. That is why he is sometimes depicted as the man with the sickle and the hour-glass, as the hierophant of death. For he brings all the values of dialectical and satanic man, all the results of selfishness and the rampant lover life into the light of day, at a psychological moment. Saturn is Father Time, Chronos, who orders: ‘Thus far and no further.’ But Saturn is also the one who initiates. Those who walk the path of life-renewal to live again in harmony with the great, universal law of life, will meet Saturn as the one who reveals everything that has become new: the imperishable values secured within the soul. Saturn, the envoy of death in transient nature, then becomes the herald of the resurrected, immortal man." — The Egyptian Arch Gnosis 3 by Jan van Rijckenborgh