Saturn, the planet of order, limits, boundaries, obstacles and responsibilities.The second (and last) Social Planet, it represents all the external forces, hardships and authority figures that shape the character and help bring discipline and maturity. It also represents the fears and blockages to overcome in order to find stability.
Ruler of Capricorn and Aquarius, it has its exaltation in Libra, fall in Aries, detriment in Cancer and Leo.
Its glyph represents Cronus’ scythe, and its meaning is Matter ruling over Soul.
The third entry of my Wandering Stars project posed an interesting challenge to me: finding a scythe to use as a prop. The scythe is an integral part of Cronus/Saturn’s iconography – it’s the tool he used to castrate and defeat Uranus – and it’s even represented in its glyph. Now, originally it was probably sickle, not a scythe, but centuries of conflation of Cronus and Chronos, which eventually resulted in the iconography of Father Time first and the Grim Reaper later, cemented the association of Saturn with the larger scythe, which I decided to use; besides, the smaller sickle is the glyph of Ceres, so I’m saving it for that photo.
Now that I decided the entire project would be backlit and not only the Inferior Planets, finding a scythe was pivotal, as adding anything digitally on a backlit photo is tricky and risks compromising the photorealism. Besides, it had to be a real one, as Halloween props and plastic things look aggressively fake and cheap.
So yeah, for once the difficulties in this photo were not self-imposed or an attempt at self-sabotaging, but a necessity – true to the planet I was going to represent. The good news was, I had chosen a friend in Sardinia as the model for Saturn, and Sardinia has plenty of rural communities that would make it more likely to find such an iconic agricultural tool.
In an ironic twist of fate – in that Saturn represents authority figures and father figures in particular – the answer to my conundrum came from my own father: I asked him if he or anyone in his hamlet had a scythe, and lo and behold, he found one at my cousin’s. This is interesting in that it’s the second or third time in fifteen years that he’s contributed in any meaningful way to my photography – the first being when he bought me my first compact camera at age fifteen, before I even started doing this, and the second when he drove me to the Seredda casa cantoniera and cut down some canes to give me a better view for the photo.
It took him a while to retrieve it, but when he did I contacted my friend Shinigo, scheduled the shoot and had the scythe brought to me – finding out it was basically antique with a beautifully rusty blade and a textured wooden handle that would look better than any modern tool on camera.
Styling-wise, Saturn is, along with Jupiter, one of the “adult” planets, which is why I wanted them to be wearing semi-formal attire with blazers or jackets. I wanted to differentiate the two, so when Shinigo told me he had a grey blazer to be worn with a black turtleneck I was enthusiastic, as that meant I could easily have Jupiter in a black jacket and white shirt to look distinct enough. A little detail I added last-minute was the black nail polish because let’s be real, Saturn is the corporate goth of the astrological Planets, it fit perfectly.
The shoot itself wasn’t difficult – my biggest concern was parading near the local police station with a huge blade on a stick to get on location – but luckily we didn’t get arrested, nor did anyone get killed, maimed or contracted tetanus from the rusty blade. We had to slightly change location compared to Venus or Mercury because the sun now starts descending further south and I’d have too much clutter in the background, but the new location gave us a nice support to the scythe, which Shinigo could wield more easily and less tensely. He nailed the pose pretty much since the first moment, and most of the takes were me moving around to get the best flare behind him.
In postproduction, I obviously opted for purple as the main colour because, once again, that’s Sailor Saturn’s theme colour. As the original background wasn’t completely blank this time, I decided to leave the tiniest hint of it in the lower corners to texturise a bit the photo. I also decided to leave the golden hue of the light to give more chromatic dynamism to the image. Since we’re now officially doing the halo thing because I can’t help myself, I positioned Saturn’s in a way that’s reminescent of the planet’s rings to give it a bit of astronomical connection too.
And here we are. I’m extremely satisfied with the final result and, much like Saturn’s astrological symbolism, all the roadblocks and challenges ended up shaping the photo for the best.
There are no immediate plans for other Wandering Stars at the moment because I don’t quite know what my life plans are in the short term, but I’ll surely be back in Trieste scouting for oak leaves for Jupiter in the spring. In the meantime, I’m glad this project is shaping up with its distinctive aesthetics. I’m really glad I’ve started working on it.
