Could Saturn be the crone?

A subscriber DM'd me an interesting question in regards to whether or not Saturn could be a feminine planet, perhaps representing the crone. I won't post her entire message because it contained some personal reflections, but I will share my answer below and leave it to you guys to mull over whether or not Saturn could be considered feminine. She made a good point that the nocturnal sect contains one masculine planet (Mars) and two feminine planets (Moon and Venus) and wondered whether or not, in keeping with the symmetry of ancient astrology, Saturn should perhaps be considered the feminine planet of the day sect, giving it one feminine and two masculine planets(Sun and Jupiter). It is interesting to also consider that the planet that is the opposite gender to the sect it is in is considered the malefic for its sect. In the post below is what I responded with some additional food for thought. Please feel free to leave your own ideas in the comments!

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In the era that preceded the Hellenic culture, there was a widespread matriarchal and lunar culture characterised by the emergence of the chthonic mystery schools centred around Demeter. Some have referred to this as the "Silver Age", coming under the aegis of the Moon.

The Hellenes brought with them a Uranian, Hyperborean, and Apollonian spirituality which was characterised by a patriarchal and solar nature and it is largely from them that we get astrology generally, however, their tradition became mixed with the Atlantean elements of the Egyptians and Babylonians and the telluric “mother” culture of the pre-Hellenic societies.

Saturn is an odd one because there were multiple Saturns and it is quite hard to tease them apart because the same name was used for different entities and how they were characterised depended a lot on the dominant strand of spirituality at the time. We have essentially overlapping cycles all coalescing here.

The Saturn worshipped at Saturnalia, for example, was not the god Kronos nor the Saturn of the Satya Yuga (Golden Age), but a "chthonic demon"- that is to say, an earth deity, who was often represented in the company of Ops, another earth goddess.

Kronos is related to Apollo, in particular through the symbolism of stones, horns, mountains, etc. From here we probably get the association with the Capricornian sea-goat, as well as the association with initiation in general and the rulership of Capricorn over the knees. Initiation is often represented as something feminine.

Although interestingly and somewhat paradoxically, Saturn is often related specifically to black cubes. Cubes representing matter, in the loosest sense, but black symbolically representing the non-manifested. And let us not neglect to mention the shared etymologyical roots of both "cube" and the goddess Cybele.

To add further confusion, those who were initiated into the Greater Mysteries in antiquity were often said to "contemplate the sun at midnight" and Saturn has sometimes been called the Black Sun or the Midnight Sun, a polar symbol, and has a clear relationship with the night and the feminine, yet still retains in some way the solar dignity of a Sun.

Of course, Saturn in astrology can be associated with the Mysteries, with liminal spaces, and with mystics. It is one of those planets that it is difficult to assign gender to, in my opinion.

I would be remiss not to also mention the association of the Kali Yuga with the inversion of order and the reversal of hierarchical dharmic relationships, which can be most properly termed Satanism in the plainest sense. Saturn is sometimes also associated with Satan, despite having once been a great god and a god associated very strongly with order and hierarchy. So now we see in Saturn something "sinister", malefic aspects that certainly do not pertain to a god of the Golden Age, but on the contrary to a fallen god of a completed period. The ancient gods were often relegated to the status of demons by Christianity.

However, these cyclic conditions of the temporal world do not affect or modify the essential nature of a god insofar as they symbolise principles of non-temporal and supra-human order. Thus, in spite of everything, I would argue that the benefic nature of Saturn still subsists side-by-side with its accidentally malefic aspects, even if its benefic nature goes completely unrecognised by people today.