How To Defeat Chronos: The Devourer of Children
Saturn eclipsing the Sun
In education and childhood psychology, we know certain ages tend to bring upheaval: developmental leaps, crises of identity, sudden losses of innocence. Divorce. Abuse. Estrangement.
But for some, the rupture is even deeper. Among these well-known trials, one stands alone in its finality: the death of a parent.
There is a theory that I have been quietly developing for a number of years — that children are more likely to lose a parent at specific, pivotal ages — not randomly, but rhythmically. That these losses follow a pattern: one tied to time itself.
A pattern that aligns, eerily and precisely, with the slow, relentless turning of Saturn.
Only recently—while moving through the final year of my Saturn Return—have I gained access to the data needed to test what I’ve long-intuited: and it turns out that when we chart the data age by age a surprising pattern emerges.
Many children lose a parent at exact ages… and it’s not just statistical — it’s mythological.
The Myth of Saturn
In Roman mythology, Saturn (Chronos) is the father who devours his own children — a brutal image, but one that encodes profound truths. Saturn ruled the Golden Age, a time of order, agriculture, and peace, until a prophecy warned that one of his own offspring would overthrow him. In fear, he swallowed each child whole — not out of malice, but out of desperation to maintain control over the cycle of time.
This devouring symbolizes Saturn’s domain: he is time incarnate, and with time comes loss, structure, consequence, and karma. Yet the divine key lies in the one child he could not consume — Jupiter (Zeus), who escaped, grew, and fulfilled the prophecy. Jupiter, the archetype of expansion, truth, and higher learning, overthrew Saturn and took his place as ruler of Olympus. This is not a myth of destruction, but of evolution: where Saturn limits, Jupiter liberates. One is contraction, the other expansion — together, they form the breath of divine growth.
Disturbingly, this myth also echos in the real world.
Recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) 2021 tracks the cumulative percentage of individuals who had lost at least one parent by each age. What emerged wasn’t just a steady rise — it was a pattern. Spikes. Jumps. Critical thresholds.
And those spikes correspond, almost eerily, to the ages that Saturn strikes its hardest angles in astrology.
A Note on Saturn’s Timing
In astrology, Saturn governs time, loss, structure, and maturity. Its major transits — especially squares, oppositions, and the Saturn return — often mark moments of hardship, responsibility, or transformation.
While exact timing depends on the individual’s birth chart, general age windows apply across large populations:
6–7 → First Square
13–14 → Opposition
19–21 → Second Square
28–30 → Return
As we age, these timings grow more varied. But during childhood and early adulthood, these thresholds are surprisingly consistent. So we compared these windows to the actual data on parental loss.
Do Saturn Transits Align with Parental Loss? The Numbers Say Yes
Astrologers have long claimed that Saturn’s major angles — its squares, opposition, and return — bring structure-shaking life events. But can that really be seen in something as tangible and tragic as the loss of a parent?
The U.S. Census Bureau SIPP 2021 data on parental loss gives us a rare, detailed, age-by-age look at when people experience the death of a parent. By analyzing the annual increase in cumulative parental death percentage — how much the percentage jumps from one year to the next — we can measure whether Saturn's strike points (age 6–7, 13–14, 19-21, and 28–30) correlate with significantly above-average loss.
Method: Baseline vs. Saturn Ages
We looked at all ages from 0–30. For each age, we calculated how much the cumulative percentage of parental loss increased from the previous year.
Then, we compared two groups:
Saturn-Angled Ages: 6, 7, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21, 28, 29, 30
Non-Saturn Ages: All other years from 0 to 30
Let’s break down the results:
Across the board, most annual jumps in cumulative parental loss hover around +0.1% to +0.2% per year — that's our baseline. But at very specific ages that align with Saturn’s key angular strikes — around ages 6–7, 13–14, 19-21, and 28–30 — the percentage noticeably increases, rising well above that average.
At age 6, the jump is +0.3%, and at 7, it jumps again by +0.4% — aligning with Saturn’s first square. At 13 and 14, during the Saturn opposition, we again see a sharper-than-usual rise: +0.4% and +0.5% respectively. By 19, the rise doubles at Saturn’s second square; with the end of this angle, age 21 showing the first rise over one percent at a +1.1% rise. But the biggest spikes appear at ages 28–30, the heart of the Saturn Return: +1.0%, +2.8%, and then a massive +9.2% leap at 30 when the Return completes — nearly ten times the baseline.
All top annual increase jumps fall within the ages that align with the hard angles in Saturn’s cycle.
Results stay consistent below the twenties.
Saturn's hard angle Transits:
1st Square: ~6–7
Opposition: ~13–14
2nd Square: ~19–21
Return: ~28–30
These aren’t isolated incidents — they reflect consistent and measurable increases that correlate directly with Saturn’s angular phases, which astrologers have long associated with periods of reckoning, endings, and structural shifts.
Bryant Lady 05/31/1971 — 07/13/2009, Age 38 | Above: Only exact ages of Saturn’s 29.5 year cycle used in the data set above (7, 14, 21, 30).
Patterns Stay consistent even During Global upheavals
In another context, during the height of the AIDS epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa, UNICEF reported that the vast majority of AIDS orphans (75%) lost their parents between ages 5–14 — again, right on the marks of Saturn’s 1st and 2nd angles.
During the height of the COVID-19 epidemic in 2021 and 2022, Better Care Network and The Lancet reported eerily similar results worldwide. Even amid sociopolitical and health crises, Saturn’s symbolism seems to find a way to sync with life’s most defining ruptures.
How to defeat the devourer of children
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Statue of Jupiter (150 AD) Artist Unknown
Data suggests that Saturn’s archetype is not only mythologically consistent—but measurable in real-world bereavement trends. These patterns aren't just poetic—they are statistically not random. Across both the U.S. Census—and Global and African epidemic data, Saturn’s angular years coincide with the sharpest upticks in parental death.
The death of a parent is a deeply formative event — one that reshapes identity, security, and perception of the world. Yet when we understand the archetype of Jupiter, we can also defeat the Father of Time as he did.
To defeat the devourer of children, we must think like Jupiter — not as warriors, but as guides of the next generation. Jupiter didn’t just survive Saturn; he prepared for him. He studied, watched, waited, and grew into a force powerful enough to liberate what had been lost. Likewise, we as parents, caretakers, and mentors can help our children face Saturn’s tests — the inevitable losses, ruptures, and reckonings — not with fear, but with inner foundation.
The data is no longer just myth or metaphor. It shows us that Saturn’s angular years are statistically significant moments of loss, often beyond our control. But what is within our power is to instill in our children the tools of Jupiter: the ability to ask deeper questions, to navigate grief with meaning, to trust in growth after collapse. These are not just comforts — they are keys of survival. And with them, when Saturn arrives — as he always does — our children may feel pain, but they will not be devoured.
Some of us teach because we’re present. Others teach in case we’re not.
For those who’ve walked through it, parental death is more than a statistic. It becomes a before and after — a quiet reshaping of identity. And as researchers begin to study it more precisely, we can now see patterns in when it tends to happen.
Bound to cycles
older than history,
written in both
Data and Myth.
As I release these research findings this Father’s Day, I dedicate this post to my own father, Bryant Lady, my greatest teacher. His death at my Saturn opposition, when I was just fourteen, cracked my world open — but it also seeded everything I would come to study, create, and seek to understand. Now, in the final year of my Saturn return, I write this as both an offering and a legacy — not just of grief, but of the wisdom he left behind.
If you only had until your child turned seven — or fourteen — or twenty-one — what would you teach them? What would you pass down? What would be the most essential?
Pass the Torch