Why Men Break at Thirty
Saturn and The Rite of Passage We Don't See Coming
(Painting: Chronos and his child by Giovanni Francesco Romanelli)
Puberty and The Midlife Crisis
These are two thresholds most of the modern world knows about, two thresholds most men stumble through - many fall flat on their face.
Puberty is a biological imperative and constitutes a step along the natural path of maturation.
As a biological occurrence it is complete, but psychologically it is a point that is dangerously deprived of attention and care.
It is the first crucial threshold in a boy’s life, one that gets missed in our modern culture.
No longer do the elders of the tribe take the boys out and guide them through the gateway of their own inner death.
No longer are our boys taught about the value of their masculinity (by example) and placed into a community of Men.
No longer do boys learn who they are to their community, what it means to be a Man, Brother, or Father.
We are left to drift, guided today by Media, Superstimulants, Pornography, and numbed child-men passing as adults.
Puberty constitutes one step for the body towards maturation.
This is a natural threshold.
The midlife crisis, on the other hand, is not.
The crisis of midlife is symptomatic of the clash of two potent forces:
The soul’s expansion into Elderhood (or its attempt thereto)
The social inertia of a life lived devoid of mythic awareness. A wave of force that takes many off the course of their truest souls becoming for something more “civilized” and “market friendly”.
We in the West crack wise about this crisis.
We stereotype it with stamps of sports cars, extramarital affairs, divorce, and bad cologne.
All the while remaining blind to the fact that the boy who was denied his initiation at his coming of age is the same one who reaches desperately for his youth as he passes the Zenith of his life and recognizes that his days are now the sunset of his life.
You see, boys are born, but Men are made.
The making of a Man begins at puberty.
Are we doomed to live in a world of child-men being that we lack this initiation?
What are we to do without the social resources to adequately steward our boys into their manhood?
No.
Because beyond Puberty and the “crisis” of Midlife there is one threshold that few pay much mind.
This being the Saturn Return.
The Return of The Archetypal Father: Saturn
Who is Saturn?
Saturn is The Principle of Maturation.
It is a planet, yes. It is also a cosmological and alchemical element present in and relevant to the human soul. It is mythic, it is an archetype of sorts, and brings with it a unique signature that can be traced through the arc of a Mans development. Also known as Cronus, Saturn is the God of the Golden Age and The Devouring Father.
Saturn is the archetype of reality, time, responsibility, and maturation.
His energy shows up as the patterns of consequence, structure, boundaries, commitment, and wisdom earned through experience. It shows us in no uncertain terms that reality has limits, our time is finite, choices have consequences, and that character is built through repetition.
The Natural Initiation
Every 29 years or so, this great lord of time and consequence passes over the exact spot in the sky that it was on the day you were born - this is known as The Saturn Return.
This alignment (particularly the first one) brings with it a great task:
To take up the reign of our life and transform ourselves from the mythic child into the sovereign of our own kingdom.
The questions Saturn brings are essential for a Man to come into his Kingship:
Can you govern yourself?
Are you taking full responsibility for your life?
Can you endure discomfort?
Are you truly worth the trust of others?
Will you build something worthy, something that lasts?
Saturn is the guard at the gate of initiation and will let none pass who cannot bear up earnestly under the full weight of the responsibility of their life.
Being that Saturn and its return bring with it a characteristically masculine energy of discipline, sacrifice, structure, and commitment, it constitutes an unavoidable gateway of initiation for those Men who were left unmet at the threshold of puberty. It is a universal and cosmic opportunity to rise into mature masculinity.
So, why do Men break at 30?
They break because they are carrying decades of lead in their soul.
The lead of the soul, the material we are tasked with transforming into gold, looks different for every man. Lead itself symbolizes the dense, the confusing, the unmatured, and the raw material of psychic transformation.
This can only be transformed through death, decay, and dissolution of the old. This process (nigredo) is what Saturn’s return awakens deep within. His presence is something like our own personal alchemist who, if we accept the role of humble and earnest student, can show us how to turn confusion into wisdom, ignorance into insight, and the grandiosity of our egos into the gifts of expanded consciousness.
This transformation requires a willing submission to the fiery crucible of challenge and change.
This is why Men break at 30 - because they are unprepared for the first great trial of their adult life. Most Men open the door to Saturn’s return facing the wrong direction; looking backwards with yearning at the care-free years of their boyhood.
The Saturnian pressure that shatters all that is unfit for adulthood is the same pressure that forges the quality of character in a man that can hold Sacred Structures: Boundaries, Order, Discipline, and Containment.
Initiation & The Archetypal Father
It demands to be named exactly what Men are initiated into when they pass this major threshold, either at puberty, or through their Saturn Return.
They are initiated into the World of Men, into Manhood, into a Fraternity, a realm which grants both privilege and responsibility. It is only once a man has gained entrance to this world that the seat of his Kingship becomes accessible.
One of the responsibilities that is granted by this passage has traditionally been the role of initiating the next generation of boys; the role of The Elder.
The First Elder Male a boy meets is, typically, his Father.
His father is the man who will shape his understanding of Men, Masculinity, and himself as Man.
Men break at 30 because The Elder Male of their life is, in most cases, uninitiated.
His Father shares with him the lack of guidance, support, and mythic wisdom necessary to shape a boy into a Man. His Father is one whose masculinity, like so many men today, was forged blindly through mentorless battles with fate.
This Man is not entirely equipped for the needs of his son.
This is tragic, no doubt, yet it is not a dead end.
We are made to mature, We are made to become Men.
This process can be slowed, but not stopped.
Manhood & Maturation are non-optional.
Saturn’s Return is not optional.
Saturn as Cronus, The Devouring Father
(Painting: The Mutilation of Uranus by Saturn by Giorgio Vasari)
The relevant mythical features regarding Cronus as Father go something like this:
Cronus was one of the children of Uranus (Heaven) and Gaia (Earth).
Uranus hated his children and worked to force them back into the womb of the Earth so that they would be bound there. This is devastating to Gaia and causes her great suffering.
She fashions a sickle and asks her children to do something about the tyranny of their father. Cronus volunteers.
When his father descends to lie with Gaia once more, Cronus ambushes him and cuts off his genitals. (They fell into the sea creating a white foam from which the goddess Aphrodite {Venus} was born). This act of rebellion deposes Uranus as King and Cronus assumes the throne.
After his ascent to the throne, Cronus is made aware of a prophecy: One of his children will overthrow him as king.
Cronus has 6 children, each of which he swallows whole after they are born. His children remain alive inside him. He does so because he fears losing power, he fears being replaced. He refuses to relinquish the throne he took from his father via his fateful castration.
The son who overthrew his father becomes the father that fears his sons.
The myth continues, but we will leave it here for our purposes.
At this point in our journey together I want to introduce two of the eight secrets men carry within as articulated by James Hollis in his book “Under Saturn’s Shadow”:
“ 7) Every man carries a deep longing for his father and for his tribal Fathers.
8) If men are to heal, they must activate within what they did not receive from without.”
As Within, So Without & The Gift of Saturn’s Return
We now have a sense of Why Men break at 30:
Most miss a crucial initiation at puberty and thus remain boys longer than is healthy
Most men were raised by uninitiated & immature fathers
Most men are unaware and unprepared for the pressure that arrives with the return of Saturn
In one very real sense, Saturn’s return constitutes a confrontation with every way a man has remained a boy, with all the baggage he carries from his father, and a call into his fullest expression of matured masculinity.
Cronus was both the God of Plenty and Order, as well as a Fearful Tyrant.
Saturn’s return brings light to the Gold & the Shadow laying dormant within Man.
There is good news amidst this harsh reality of the lack of initiatory elders, broken wisdom lineages, and boy-men as fathers.
The Mythic Map - that which contains insight into the quality of the trials that await a man upon Saturn’s return - is written in the details of his birth.
Furthermore, both the totality of the raw materials & the opportunities necessary for maturation are provided within the Psyche of Man and by life itself.
We carry our Gold and our Shadows, we carry the capacity within to meet struggle, strife and darkness, we carry the Saturnian gifts within us.
They are dormant only until Saturn comes knocking. With that knock, we come face to face with Father, Elder, Judge, our boy, and our fears. With that knock comes the chance to embody our potential.
We have spoken of Saturn & its archetypal qualities, of its demands, and pressures - but all of this exists inside Man as much as it does in the skies and stories that have led us to this understanding.
It behooves us to recognize that the yearning of Man for his tribal Fathers, for the refuge of his boyhood, for something greater than was bequeathed by a society deprived of mythic literacy, is the call of the Soul to become; to be all it was born to be.
Most men break at 30 because they do not realize that they are the living alchemy.
They are the warrior, the magician, the lover, and the king in waiting.
They instead turn away from their tyrannical tendencies, their shadows, and their clinging to the refuge of boyhood. They grip tightly to the past for the sake of security, governed by fear, never raising their eyes to the horizon of their own potential.
Men break because they mistake their trial for punishment, their initiation as condemnation.
It is not.
It is a call to heal, to awaken, and to bring life to the Inner Father,
The Inner King.
Men break at 30 because we have to break.
Only when the old is broken and dissolved do we have the raw materials needed to build ourselves into the Man the world needs us to be.
The Man we were born to be.
If you or a man you know is standing at this threshold & needs support, check out the link below
www.beyondthehero.ca/grow
I am here to support
Oak M.
This was such a great read. Fully agree with each point as well.