This from a blog post I wrote today and felt like sharing here:
Many (if not most) people within the magickal culture tend to be absolutely terrified of the idea of working with Saturnal forces and avoid this as much as humanly possible. This attitude is reinforced by the grimoire put out by Dr. Stephen Skinner "The Veritable Key of Solomon," wherein the author of the original work states that one should in no circumstances work with Saturn or do any magickal works on Saturday, unless they be related to cursing or destruction, or perhaps work with the evilest spirits.
What if I were to tell you that that's all a bunch of nonsense and completely baseless? Your initial reaction is probably to call me an idiot and accuse me of being a Saturn worshiper.
In truth, work with Saturn is some of the most liberating work that can be done by the individual magician. Saturn as the planet of boundaries, time, and death, is the most important planet for a magician to work with. Manifestation is only accomplished by way of placing boundaries on the spiritual Form that is eventually brought down into Matter, essentially solidifying the Form into something that is possible to interact with, long before it is shot through the birth canal of the Moon/Yesod. Boundaries form the critical limiting factor of all magickal work, seeing that our mental boundaries can prevent magickal operations from manifesting in the way we may truly desire them to, as well as physical and social boundaries preventing us from accomplishing our goals.
I have personal experience with initial fear of Saturn, as well as coming to the polar opposite over the past year.
When I was doing my first series of planetary initiations, following Frater Rufus Opus' Seven Spheres, my life was completely overturned. It sucked enough, as an ambitious young man from a disadvantaged background, just under 20. My life was barely getting started; I'd had (and lost) my first decent job, was going out with my first girlfriend, and was fit and regularly active. When I had gotten to the end of my initiations, just before Saturn since I was putting it off, my girlfriend had broken up with me, and I was rendered near crippled through some odd back pain that stretched through my whole right leg, completely preventing me from doing any form of strenuous physical activity. At last I conjured the archangel of Saturn, Kaftziel, and beheld his visage in my small crushed quartz crystal ball I used at that time, in the form of a black robed angel holding his scythe with wings of bone. If you think this has an immediately happy ending, what really happened was that nothing improved except for becoming an online worker of magick, doing readings and workings for one highly persistent client.
A year and a half or so later, I developed a relationship with my wife after singing a chapter of Song of Songs every Friday night over a chalice of wine. That's a whole other story of love magick that I think is relevant to discuss another time. After we got together, my back and leg had healed and we went deep into Judaism, a lifelong interest of ours, though neither of us come from Jewish backgrounds. In the interim, I performed an altered version of the Abramelin rite to attain Knowledge of Conversation of my Holy Guardian Angel. The boundaries and restrictions we had been taught though had become oppressive in many ways over the years. I was unable to find teachers in Torah Law or Kabbalah, so I asked my my HGA to help me find a rabbi who would teach me. Soon after this, I did a series of workings with the Planetary Spheres, ending in Saturn and requesting that the boundaries preventing me from success and happiness be removed from me. In a month's time I found a rabbi who helped me understand the methods and system of Jewish law, and that the religious law is not nearly as fossilized and torturous as I was originally led to believe. Though this process of removing boundaries went far further than originally believed.
In due time, my mind was opened to the point that I came to and realized Gnosticism is the proper way. My wife and I had in-depth conversations over many sleepless nights and fully accepted upon ourselves the Christian Gnostic approach to religion and life; returning to the way of pursuing Gnosis and personal experience of the Divine rather than being enslaved to the Old Law and man-made systems of legislation. I realized, at some point into this process, this was due to my working with Saturn all those months ago and making my request that the barriers to my/our success and happiness be removed.
Today, I spoke with the archangel of Saturn in another cycle of working with the archangels of the planets. I thanked him for opening my eyes to see the truth of Christianity rather than staying where I was. He answered me that he didn't bring me to this, but rather I had; through his removing my boundaries and blinds that kept me from acknowledging what should have been clear truth, I returned to Gnosis. In regards to this, the angel taught me a great secret related to Saturnal work that I feel should be known to more magickal practitioners.
Saturn is NOT our enemy! Though in astrology, he is known as the Greater Malefic, when dealing with Saturn as a spiritual force, he is the great liberator. When dealing with boundaries and limits, which we all have to deal with in our lives, Saturn is the one who deals with all that stuff. In order to break through the things preventing us from success, we have to turn to Saturn and request the spirit to either teach us how to open the boundaries and stretch the walls, or else ask Kaftziel himself to do this for us. Whether we are stuck professionally or magickally, Saturn is the way out as the Lord of Boundaries. So long as we approach with due humility, we shall be able to get the assistance we require to be loosed of all our dead-weight, and to knock down the doors that keep us from success.