Saturn in Aquarius

Saturn's day house in Lilly 1659 and in the note to Ashmand's 1822 Ptolemy, Aquarius is also the sign where Lilly says the planet most rejoices. Ptolemy assigned it along with Capricorn for its cold and wintry nature. Lilly, however, calls Aquarius hot and moist, directly opposed to Saturn, so his own table sits awkwardly against the reason Ptolemy gave.

Later writers contested the sign itself. Adams 1928 says Uranus rules it unchallenged, Heindel 1919 makes Uranus and Saturn co-rulers, and Alan Leo's How to Judge a Nativity (before 1917) allows Uranus the true rulership only in rare cases. Heindel 1918 says Saturn brings out the better side of Aquarius, along with a retiring nature.

Lilly allots the first six degrees as terms of Saturn. Modern popular astrology tends to describe duty toward groups and independent, rule-building thinking here, and those words are modern. Everyone born in the same two or three years shares this placement, so it says little about one person taken alone.