Saturn (mythology)

...Saturn is a complex figure because of his multiple and long history. He was the first god of the Capitol, known since the most ancient times as Saturnius Mons, and was seen as a god of generation, dissolution, plenty, wealth, agriculture, periodic renewal and liberation. In later developments he came to be also a god of time....

Saturn (mythology) deals with Saturn (Latin: Saturnus) is a god in ancient Roman religion, and a character in myth. Saturn is a complex figure because of his multiple associations and long history. He was the first god of the Capitol, known since the most ancient times as Saturnius Mons, and was seen as a god of generation, dissolution, plenty, wealth, agriculture, periodic renewal and liberation. In later developments he came to be also a god of time. His reign was depicted as a Golden Age of plenty and peace.

Quotes

Each planet takes a certain amount of time to travel thru all 12 signs and return to its original position in any given chart... - Marc Allen.

Saturn stands for the cause of destruction but then ultimate dissolution is also an aspect of the solar deity for its withdrawal of vital energy form the individual leads to dissolution or death. - Bepin Behari

...the post-Christian Gnostics, with a very trifling change, applied the same fable to the man Jesus, and asserted that the same " Good Divinity," Saturn (Ilda-Baoth), had, in the shape of the Dragon of Life, glided over the cradle of the infant Mary. In their eyes the Serpent was the Logos. - Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.

Temple of Saturn in Rome - Saturn is the god of sowing or seed. The Romans equated him with the Greek agricultural deity Cronus. The remains of Saturn’s temple at Rome, eight columns of the pronaos (porch), still dominate the west end of the Forum at the foot of the Clivus Capitolinus. The temple goes back to the earliest records of the republic (6th century bc). It was restored by Lucius Munatius Plancus in 42 BC and, after a fire, in the 4th century AD. It served as the treasury (aerarium Saturni) of the Roman state. - The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica.

It is said that the sure antidote of Saturn or Shanee's evil effect is the worship of Lord Hanuman. Scriptures say that when Saturn warned Lord Hanuman about his onset of the Seven and Half Years (w:Sade SatiSaade Saati) [period of bad times], the Monkey Lord accepted the challenge and allowed Saturn to have his play.... - Suresh Chandra

In Vishnu Purana, in the final dissolution Vishnu assumes the form of Rudra, the destructive persona of Shiva, and proceed to set the world ablaze. The seven main rays of the Sun which are mentioned in this myth are, according to Hindu Astronomy in this myth the most important among its thousands. These seven are all identified by name and supply heat and light to the moon, stars and the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The blaze is followed by a flood and then a period of quiescence and regeneration. - A. L. Dallapiccola.

Navagraha temples Nine Planets worship - ....which have been immemorially used for the same purpose by the Hindus; and that, in both Germany and India, their consecutive order was the day of the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn. - Vans Kennedy.

Cicero, in his treatise concerning the Nature of the Gods, having said that three Jupiters were enumerated by theologians, adds that the third was of Crete, the son of Saturn, and that his tomb is shown in that island. - Lactantius.

The ancients counted seven planets, thus arranged : the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. There were seven heavens and seven spheres of these planets; on all the monuments of Mithras are seven altars or pyres, consecrated to the seven planets, as were the seven lamps of the golden candelabrum in the Temple.- Albert Pike.

• The Saturn Cycle is an important part of astrological interpretation. It moves the interpretation into the realm of transits, which takes into account where the planets have travelled since the movement of the birth chart.
  Each planet takes a certain amount of time to travel thru all 12 signs and return to its original position in any given chart. The Moon takes only a month. The Sun takes a year. … Mercury and Venus stay close to the Sun, so their cycles through all signs are close to the Sun’s. Mars takes longer about two years...Jupiter takes about 12 years to complete a full cycle thru all 12 signs. Saturn takes 28-30 years to complete a full cycle. Because Saturn is a symbol of the wisdom which grows with age, its cycle is particularly important in reflecting our development. Every seven years, Saturn completes a a quarter of the cycle, and we move into a new stage of awareness.
  • Marc Allen in: Astrology for the New Age: An Intuitive Approach. New World Library, Dec 18, 2011, p. 64

• The astrologers and historians write that the ascendant as of Oxford is Capricornus, whose lord is Saturn, a religious planet, and patron of religious men.
  • John Aubrey in: John Aubrey and the realm of learning , Science History Publications, Sep 1, 1975, p. 122

• Mercury is related to self-knowledge and Jupiter with philosophy, righteousness, and religious aspirations which are very different aspects of the Sun. Venus is the embodiment of happiness, an aspect of the Supreme. Saturn|Saturn stands for the cause of destruction but then ultimate dissolution is also an aspect of the solar deity for its withdrawal of vital energy form the individual leads to dissolution or death.
  • Bepin Behari in:The Timing of Events, Motilal Banarsidass Publ., 1 January 2002, P.xxiii

• I came into the World under the sign of Saturn -- the star of the slowest revolution, the planet of detours and delays.
  • Walter Benjamin in: Susan Sontag Under the Sign of Saturn: Essays, Macmillan, 1 October 2013, p. 111

• Their ancestors had maintained, before the Christian era, that the Great Serpent — Jupiter, the Dragon of Life, the Father and "Good Divinity," had glided into the couch of Seniele, and now, the post-Christian Gnostics, with a very trifling change, applied the same fable to the man Jesus, and asserted that the same " Good Divinity," Saturn (Ilda-Baoth), had, in the shape of the Dragon of Life, glided over the cradle of the infant Mary. In their eyes the Serpent was the Logos.
  • Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1891) in:Isis Unveiled: Theology, J.W. Bouton, 1891, p. 505

• Saturn is the god of sowing or seed. The Romans equated him with the Greek agricultural deity Cronus. The remains of Saturn’s temple at Rome, eight columns of the pronaos (porch), still dominate the west end of the Forum at the foot of the Clivus Capitolinus. The temple goes back to the earliest records of the republic (6th century bc). It was restored by Lucius Munatius Plancus in 42 BC and, after a fire, in the 4th century AD. It served as the treasury (aerarium Saturni) of the Roman state.
  • The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica in: Saturn, Encyclopædia Britannica, 18 March 2014

• Burden not the back of Aries, Leo, or Taurus, with thy faults, nor make Saturn, Mars, or Venus, guilty of thy Follies.
  • Thomas Browne in: Religio medici, urn burial, and Christian morals, Moreton, 1894, p. 192

• Saturn is designated by the symbol ♄…. Saturn’s name comes from the Roman god of agriculture, who is equated with the Greek deity Cronus, one of the Titans and the father of Zeus (the Roman god Jupiter). As the farthest of the planets known to ancient observers, Saturn also was noted to be the slowest-moving...
  • Bonnie Buratti in: Saturn, Encyclopedia Britannica, December 2014

• It is said that the sure antidote of Saturn or Shanee's evil effect is the worship of Lord Hanuman. Scriptures say that when Saturn warned Lord Hanuman about his onset of the Seven and Half Years (w:Sade SatiSaade Saati) [period of bad times], the Monkey Lord accepted the challenge and allowed Saturn to have his play. When the planet dwelled on his head, the Monkey Lord ‘headed’ heavy rocks so viciously that the planet was almost crushed. Similar agony he faced when he tried to dwell on the Monkey Lord’ body and legs. Then the planet had to bow before the Lord, saying that whosoever worshipped Lord Hanuman shall be beyond the evil effect of the planet.
  • Suresh Chandra in: Encyclopaedia of Hindu Gods and Goddesses, Sarup & Sons, 1996, p. 302

• Saturn Return would be caused by the planet Saturn returning to its original birth position in the sky, thus energetically influencing the individual’s multi-energy dimensional system.
  • Barbara Hand Clow in: Liquid Light of Sex: Kundalini, Astrology, and the Key Life Transitions, Inner Traditions / Bear & Co, Sep 1, 2001, p. 8

• If you wish to invoke Venus, you do not succeed if there are traces of Saturn mixed up with it.
  • Aleister Crowley in: Magick: Liber Aba, Weiser Books, Jan 1, 1998, p. 211

• In Vishnu Purana, in the final dissolution Vishnu assumes the form of Rudra, the destructive persona of Shiva, and proceed to set the world ablaze. The seven main rays of the Sun which are mentioned in this myth are, according to Hindu Astronomy in this myth the most important among its thousands. These seven are all identified by name and supply heat and light to the moon, stars and the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The blaze is followed by a flood and then a period of quiescence and regeneration.
  • A. L. Dallapiccola in: Hindu Myths, University of Texas Press, 2003, p. 52

• Saturn seems to have impressed the seal of melancholy on me from the beginning.
  • Marsilio Ficino in: Juliana Schiesari The Gendering of Melancholia: Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Symbolics of Loss in Renaissance Literature, Cornell University Press, 1992, p. 114

• As thus he spahe, the Son of Saturn gave
  The nod with his dark brows.
  The ambrosial curls
  Upon the Sovereign One’s immortal head
  Were shaken, and with them the mighty
  Mountain shaken, and with them the might
  Mount
  Olympus trembled.
  • Homer in: James Manning Sherwood Hours at Home, Volume 11, Charles Scribner & Company, 1870, p. 490

• Deep in the shady sadness of a vale
  Far sunken from tie healthy breath of morn.
  Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
  Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone, Still as the silence round about his lair;
  Forest on forest hung about his head ..star, Sat gray-hair’d Saturn, quiet as a stone,
  Still as the silence round about his lair;
  Forest on forest hung above his head
  Like cloud on cloud.
  • John Keats in: Thomas Campbell, et al., The New Monthly Magazine, Part 2, E. W. Allen, 1820

• But it is a very remarkable circumstance, that an acquaintance with the seven days of the week, so familiar from remote antiquity to the people who originally spoke Sanskrit language, though unknown to the Greeks and Romans, should have been preserved among the Germans. It is true, indeed, that among them the days received their names from their principal deities, and not merely from the planets, which, in Hindu mythology, are considered only as celestial beings of an inferior description. There seems, also, to be no doubt that Germans selected the names of the same planets to designate the days of the week, which have been immemorially used for the same purpose by the Hindus; and that, in both Germany and India, their consecutive order was the day of the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn.
  • Vans Kennedy in: Researches Into the Nature and Affinity of Ancient and Hindu Mythology by Vans Kennedy, Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1831, p. 396-97

• ...from Earth's Centre through the Seventh Gate rose, and on the Throne of Saturnsate;
  And many a Knot unravel'd by the Road;
  But not the Master-knot of Human fate.
  • Omar Khayyám in: Edward FitzGerald, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: A Critical Edition, University of Virginia Press, 1997, p. 152

• These are not fables. You will touch with your hands, you will see with your own eyes, the Azoth, the Mercury of Philosophers, which alone will suffice to obtain for you our Stone. … Darkness will appear on the face of the Abyss; Night, Saturn and the Antimony of the Sages will appear; blackness, and the raven's head of the alchemists, and all the colors of the world, will appear at the hour of conjunction; the rainbow also, and the peacock's tail. Finally, after the matter has passed from ashen-colored to white and yellow, you will see the Philosopher's Stone, our King and Dominator Supreme, issue forth from his glassy sepulcher to mount his bed or his throne in his glorified body... [[w:Diaphanous|diaphanous as crystal; compact and most weighty, as easily fusible by fire as resin, as flowing as wax and more so than quicksilver... the color of saffron when powdered, but red as rubies when in an integral mass.
  • Heinrich Khunrath in Amphitheatr Heinrich Khunrath in: A History of Alchemy, Walker, 1963, p. 89

• Cicero, in his treatise concerning the Nature of the Gods, having said that three Jupiters were enumerated by theologians, adds that the third was of Crete, the son of Saturn, and that his tomb is shown in that island.
  • Lactantius in: Reverend Alexander Roberts The Ante-Nicene Fathers: The Writings of the Fathers Down to A. D. 325, Volume VII Fathers of the Third and Fourth Century - Lactantius, Venantius, Ast, Cosimo, Inc., May 1, 2007, p. 23

• The tragic element in poetry is like Saturn in alchemy, — the Malevolent, the Destroyer of Nature; but without it no true Aurum Potabile, or Elixir of Life, can be made.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in: Prose works, Davos Press, 1909, p. 357

• The Sun is the ancient symbol of the life-giving and generative power of the Deity. To the ancients, light was the cause of life; and God was the source from which all light flowed; the essence of Light, the Invisible Fire, developed as Flame manifested as light and splendor. The Sun was his manifestation and visible image; and the Sabæans worshipping the Light — God, seemed to worship the Sun, in whom they saw the manifestation of the Deity. The [[Moon] was the symbol of the passive capacity of nature to produce, the female, of which the life-giving power and [energy] was the male. It was the symbol of Isis, Astarte, and Artemis, or Diana. The "Master of Life" was the Supreme Deity, above both, and manifested through both; Zeus, the Son of Saturn, become King of the Gods; Horus, son of Osiris and Isis, become the Master of Life; Dionusos or Bacchus, like Mithras, become the author of Light and Life and Truth.
  • Albert Pike, in "Apprentice} in: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, L.H. Jenkins, 1871, p. 13

• The ancients counted seven planets, thus arranged : the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. There were seven heavens and seven spheres of these planets; on all the monuments of Mithras are seven altars or pyres, consecrated to the seven planets, as were the seven lamps of the golden candelabrum in the Temple.
  • Albert Pike in “Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry”, p. 10

See also

• Saturn