by Gregg Prescott, M.S.
Owner, Webmaster, & Editor, In5D.com
The Saturn cult is ingrained into nearly every aspect of our life, yet the true significance of Saturn can be found within secret societies and in the deepest underpinnings of religion.
Did you ever wonder…
- Is it possible that the reality we experience has been hijacked by creator gods who keep us living in subservience, control, and conformity?
- Why do we look forward to the weekend (when we are weakened)?
- Why does the word Saturday mean “Saturn’s Day”?
- Why do we exchange rings when we marry?
- Why is there so much Saturn symbolism in religion and in the corporate world?
Saturn is named after the Roman God Saturnus. It’s not a coincidence that Saturn is called, “The Lord of the Rings”. If Lord = God, then is it possible that during a wedding ceremony, we are giving our energy to Saturn through the exchange of rings? Is it a coincidence that most people get married on a Saturday (Saturn’s Day)? It’s also more costly to marry on Saturday, so we also give away the energy of money to the Saturn cult.
“The plural term Elohim appears over 2500 times in the Old Testament but is falsely translated in most versions. This fact of plurality explains why in Genesis ‘Gods’ said, ‘Let us make man in our image.’
As stated, Elohim refers to both ‘gods’ and ‘goddesses,’ and its singular form, El, served as a prefix or suffix to names of gods, people and places, whence EmmanuEl, GabriEl, BethEl, etc. Even ‘Satan’ was one of the Elohim.” Acharya S., The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold
Semitic civilizations referred to the god Saturn as “El” who is the supreme deity and represented by a black cube.
“That is why today, when you get married, you get married before God. And the symbol of that God is the ring that is put on each other’s fingers. The ring of Saturn. In the marriage phrases, one also begins to see what that has to do with Saturn.” Jordan Maxwell, Matrix of Power: Secrets of World Control
In astrotheology, Saturn is Satan, the cult of EL, so who are we really giving our energy to?
“The ancient name of Saturn was, as mentioned, EL. It is the reason why those that were chosen by EL, were called Elites. In fact the words, Elect, Elder, Elevated, Elohim, Temple, Circle, Gospel, Apostle, Disciple, Evangelists, etc., all derive from the Cult of EL.
Angels are messengers of god. But god was EL, which is why we have the names of the Archangels bearing the ‘el,’ suffix Raphael, Michael, Uriel, Gabriel, etc,.” Michael Tsarion, Astro-Theology and Sidereal Mythology
Each day of the week has its own meaning and significance. For example, the most obvious day is Sunday, the day many people worship the sun/son of God.
But what about Saturday? Why is Saturday associated with Saturn worship?
The Romans named Saturday dies Saturni (“Saturn’s Day”) no later than the 2nd century for the planet Saturn, which controlled the first hour of that day, according to Vettius Valens. For Jews, Messianics and Seventh-day Adventists, the seventh day of the week, known as Shabbat (or Sabbath for SDA), stretches from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday and is the day of rest. Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches distinguish between Saturday (Sabbath) and the Lord’s Day (Sunday).
“With the deposing of his father, Saturn became the ruler of the Universe for untold ages and he reigned with his sister, Ops, who also became his wife. It was prophesied that one day Saturn would lose power when one of his children would depose him. To prevent this from happening, each time Ops delivered a child Saturn would immediately swallow it. When her sixth child, Jupiter (Zeus), was born, Ops had him spirited away to the island of Crete. She then wrapped a stone in his swaddling clothes. Her deception was complete when Saturn swallowed it, thinking it was the child. When Jupiter was grown, he secured the job of cup-bearer to his father. With the help of Gaia, his grandmother, Jupiter fed his father a potion that caused him to vomit up Jupiter’s five siblings, Vesta (Hestia), Ceres (Demeter), Juno (Hera), Pluto (Hades), and Neptune (Poseidon).” -Wikipedia, Saturn (mythology)
The half man, half goat Pagan god, Pan, has been associated with Saturn while Saturn rules Capricorn. Capricorn is represented by a goat/fish hybrid:
Can you think of another horned deity who is associated with Saturn?
“Pan was a composite creature, the upper part–with the exception of his horns–being human, and the lower part in the form of a goat. (…)The pipes of Pan signify the natural harmony of the spheres, and the god himself is a symbol of Saturn because this planet is enthroned in Capricorn, whose emblem is a goat.”
Esoteric studies and secret societies are in on this as well:
“The Fraternitas Saturni (FS), the Brotherhood of Saturn, has become known to English readers through fragmentary descriptions which emphasize the sensational, sex-magical aspects of this lodge’s work or else its darker, more Satanic, side.This is understandable in light of the fact that the FS is (or was) the most unabashedly Luciferian organization in the modern Western occult revival, and its practice of sexual occultism perhaps the most elaborately detailed of any such lodge. The FS represents a unique blend of astrological cosmology, neo-Gnostic daemonology, sexual occultism, and Freemasonic organizational principles. This grand synthesis was originally the vision of one man, the long-time Grand Master of the FS, Gregor A. Gregorius.”
Saturn is also known as Kronos, aka Father Time. Kronos, in Greek mythology, was the leader and the youngest of the first generation of Titans, the divine descendants of Uranus, the sky and Gaia, the earth. He overthrew his father and ruled during the mythological Golden Age, until he was overthrown by his own son Zeus and imprisoned in Tartarus.
As Father Time, Saturn keeps us locked into linear, sequential time. It seems we never have enough time to get everything done but this is only a myth in the physical existence because as divine souls, our lives are eternal.
On the back of a U.S. One dollar bill, you’ll find the phrase, ” ANNUIT COEPTIS – NOVO ORDO SECLORUM” which means “agreed to undertakings; a new order of the ages”. While many believe this means “New World Order,” it actually means a “New Order of the Ages”.
The Great Seal of the United States was first designed in 1782 and has been printed on the back of the U.S. one dollar bill since 1935. You’ll also find this phrase on the coat of arms of the Yale School of Management, Yale University’s business school.
The phrase ” NOVO ORDO SECLORUM” is taken from the fourth Eclogue of Virgil, which contains a passage (lines 5-8) that reads:
(Latin; English)
Ultima Cumaei venit iam carminis ætas; Now comes the final era of the Sibyl’s song; Magnus ab integro sæclorum nascitur ordo. The great order of the ages is born afresh. iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna, And now justice returns, honored rules return;
iam nova progenies cælo demittitur alto. now a new lineage is sent down from high heaven.
You’ll also find Saturnia Regna in Virgil’s Eclogue IV:
“Iam redit et virgo, redeunt Saturnia Regna” (Astraea returns, returns old Saturn’s reign).
On the back of a Unites States one dollar bill, you’ll also find the words, “In God We Trust”.
When people flip a coin, they will ask, “Heads or Tails?” If Pan is the God of Saturn, then could this be rephrased as “The head of a man or the tail of a goat”?
Which God(s) do we trust?
If you look at the etymology of the word Kabbalah, Kabba = cube and alah (allah) means God, so you get the Cube of God.
If:
- Saturn is the Cult of EL
- the Kabbala is the Cube of God
- Saturn is the Lord of the Rings
- there is a hexagonal cube on the north pole of Saturn
- Pan is the God of Saturn
- Saturn is Satan in astrotheology
… then who are we truly giving our energy to?
We unknowingly see and use symbols of Saturn in our every day lives:
… as well as the cube:
Even our educational systems are part of the Saturn Indoctrination. The following is an excerpt from The Atlantean Conspiracy
:
:First you pay out your “tuition” to get into “universe”ity where they strip you of your Intuition and give you an Indoctrination.
Then you receive a “MaStars” Masonic “degree,” while wearing a Masonic mortar board cap and Cult of Saturn black robes to become an Alumni/Illumini. Graduation means to increment or retard progress.
As Jordan Maxwell says, “the true meaning of Graduation is gradual indoctrination.”
Indeed.
Stick a bunch of 5 year olds in a room full of 5 year olds for a year, then a bunch of 6 year olds with 6 year olds and so on for 20 years, until you’re so indoctrinated they give you a doctorate.
“The syllables for “Master” are “Ma”for measure and “Ster”for Star; ‘measurer of the stars,’ namely an astrologer. Children are still given a star today for successful application to their studies. When we matriculate from a university, we are given a ‘Master’s Degree.’
This is purely sabean. Degrees are part of the cycle.
The truth about the Saturn cult has been hidden for millennia. Now is the time of the great awakening when this material is coming to light. We’ve all been tricked. Our educational systems will never teach us the true meaning of Saturn because our culture has been hijacked in order for us to unknowingly give our collective energy to Saturn.
Sending you all infinite LOVE and Light!
Gregg
The Saturn Theory Overview I
by David Talbott
01/25/1997
The Saturn theory arose from a "historical argument," in the sense that the argument relates to the human past, as implied by the details of human memory in ancient times and by human artifacts. In ways that will be obvious, however, the historical argument raises numerous questions of physical fact and physical theory, some of which will not be readily resolved, and several of which will stand as may well stand as serious obstacles in the minds of skeptically minded, feet-on-the-ground folks.
One obvious and immediate question is whether something as ambiguous as myth could actually qualify as "evidence"? The historical argument focuses on "points of agreement" in the memories of widespread races, suggesting levels of coherence often missed by historians and anthropologists, and raising the possibility that this coherence arises from a core of human experience that has been missed as well.
There is an overarching idea in this argument. We've not only misunderstood the past, we've failed to recognize the consistency of ancient memory in pointing to extraordinary events never considered by modern science. Remarkably, every motive of our early ancestors directs our attention to experiences impossible to comprehend in terms of any natural phenomena occurring today. This consistency will be seen even at the most fundamental levels of human memory, in the most deeply-rooted themes of the first civilizations:
1) The universal memory of a former age of the gods.
2) The universal memory of an ancestral Golden Age, inaugurating the age of the gods.
3) The universal memory of a celestial "king of the world" whose life inspired the ancestral leap into civilization.
4) Descriptions of the gods as luminaries of immense size and power, wielding weapons of thunder and stone.
5) The universal claim that the ancient world evolved by critical phases or cycles, punctuated by sweeping catastrophe.
6) Global traditions of gods and heroes ruling for a time, then departing amid terrifying spectacles and upheavals.
7) The frequently-stated transfiguration of the departed gods into distant "stars".
8) The identification of the ruling gods with planets in the first astronomies.
9) The relentless urge of star worshippers to draw pictures of celestial forms never seen in our sky.
10) Their desperate yearning to recover the semblance of a lost cosmic order.
11) Their collective efforts to replicate, in architecture, the towering forms claimed to have existed in primeval times.
12) Their festive recreations, through mystery plays and symbolic rites, of cosmic violence and disorder.
13) Their repetition, through ritual sacrifice, of the deaths or ordeals of the gods.
14) Their brutal and ritualistic wars of expansion, celebrated as a repetition of the cosmic devastation wrought in the wars of the gods.
Such motives as these constitute, in fact, the most readily verifiable underpinnings of ancient ritual, myth and symbol. How strange that in their incessant glance backwards, the builders of the first civilizations never remembered anything resembling the natural world in which we live!
What is needed in the face of unusual but widely repeated memories is brutal intellectual honesty. How did human consciousness, emerging from the womb of nature, converge on the same improbable ideas "contradicting" nature? For centuries we've lived under the illusion that our ancestors simply made up explanations of natural phenomena they didn't understand. But that's not the problem. What the myth-makers interpreted or explained through stories and symbols and ritual re-enactments is an unrecognizable world, a world of alien sights and sounds, of celestial forms, of cosmic spectacles and earth-shaking events that do not occur in our world. "That" is the problem.
From an evaluation of the global themes of ancient cultures, we have hypothesized a world order never envisioned by mainstream theory–a world in which "planets" moved on different courses, appearing huge in the sky. Heaven-spanning celestial forms dominated human imagination to the point of obsession at the time of civilization's birth.
Our contention will be that hundreds of ancient themes speak for a unified experience, an experience more specific in context and detail than any of us had ever imagined when we started our research. No universal theme stands alone or in isolation from any of the others. All are connected. All speak for the presence of a coherent memory beneath the surface of seemingly random detail.
In offering these summaries, I am not asking or expecting anyone to embrace the extraordinary theory of planetary history involved, only to consider highly interesting evidence. One of the values of this re-interpretation of evidence is that the model "works". It explains the subject matter. Hence, whatever you may think of the claimed events, merely discovering the active memory will throw remarkable new light on the ancient structures of human consciousness.
In the course of these summaries, questions and challenges will be welcome, and wherever possible I will try to incorporate these into the narrative as we go along.
Vine Deloria, one of the most enjoyable speakers I've ever had the pleasure of listening to, has provided a catalyst here. I'd like to respond in discrete steps, to avoid getting ahead of myself.
"As to myth interpretation–if we have some scenario that suggests unusual physical activities and then find in so-called myths FACTS that must connect to the storyline we are in good shape. I think basically that is what Talbott is doing. I only wish it was clearer."
Vine is certainly not the only one. But there's a dilemma here. Unlike many competing catastrophist models, the "Saturn theory" involves explicit pictures showing "exactly" what we are proposing the ancients saw. And the claimed celestial images relate specifically to the positions of "planets" in the sky, planets that are "named". Moreover, the proposed celestial forms behave in an incredibly precise way. Hence, this behavior can be tested against all domains of evidence globally.
A picture of one phase in the hypothesized planetary configuration is shown on the home page of the Kronia Communications website–The claimed celestial form is very specific, as I'm sure all will agree.
The problem of confusion comes at two levels, I believe. For openers, the evolution of the proposed configuration grows highly complex–even clouded–at certain junctures, particularly periods of instability. For that reason, I've selected as a starting point for a series of overviews in the journal AEON the image illustrated on the website. I am simply taking that picture as a slice of history to show that this precise image, and attendant parts, was recorded around the world. And each part had remarkably unified meanings attached to it. From this starting point I will work forward in an overview of chronology, then eventually work backwards to the earliest remembered events as well. (Information on the journal AEON is available at the website address above.)
Readers of this submission who are unaware of the proposed collinear planetary arrangement are referred to either the video documentary, Remembering the End of the World, or the first AEON overview article (IV:3).
But there is also an issue of methodology. How can we prove something we are claiming was remembered and celebrated above all else around the world? In the methodology I am suggesting, nothing counts as ground floor evidence except "points of agreement" between widely disbursed cultures. To follow this methodology religiously is to have–well, a religious experience. Suddenly, it becomes crystal clear that ancient races really "did" remember things which, under the spell of the now-uneventful solar system, we have forgotten.
In terms as simple as I can muster, I'd like to work through some of these "points of agreement." I listed several fundamental and universal principles in my first submission, but it occurs to me that, in working from the general to the specific, I did not start at the "most" elementary level. For example, Vine asked the question, How many mythical themes are there? Well, it all depends. At one level–the most fundamental level of all–there is only one story, told with a thousand symbols.
Here is rough paraphrase of "THE ONE STORY TOLD AROUND THE WORLD."
Once the world was quite a different place. In the beginning, we were ruled by the central luminary of the sky, the motionless sun, presiding over an age of natural abundance and cosmic harmony. Creator-king, father of kings, founder of the kingship rites. And this earliest remembered time was the "exemplary" epoch, the Golden Age, the standard for all later generations.
But the ancient order was disrupted and the entire cosmos fell into confusion, when the Universal Monarch tumbled from his appointed station. Then the hordes of chaos were set loose and all of creation slipped into a cosmic night, the gods themselves battling furiously in the heavens.
And yet, from this descent into chaos, a new world emerged, now re-configured, but with the Universal Monarch himself, rejuvenated and transformed, assuming his rightful place in the heavens.
Is it really possible that this "one story"–a story so pristine and elementary–was remembered around the world? Is it really possible that all of the recurring storylines of world mythology are only a part of this singular story? Yes, I will swear by this. In fact I am eager for a challenge to this sweeping and seemingly outrageous statement. (A challenge will often help me to clarify such statements, in a context of interest to the one issuing the challenge.)
But remember: I DID NOT SAY THAT I GAVE YOU THE WHOLE STORY. For example, I did not mention the mother goddess, and I did not mention the ancestral warrior-hero. Both are inseparably linked to this one story. But we're going for simplicity here.
Now let's go back to the most pervasive motivations of early civilizations, a topic I noted in my earlier submission. Is it possible to reduce the cited motives of ancient cultures to more elementary principles, without falling into the reductionist fallacy? I think it is, indeed, possible. There is a singular principle, for example, that is beyond dispute: the builders of the first civilizations were incessantly looking backwards. In the first expressions of civilization, human imagination was dominated entirely by "things remembered".
Moreover, two contradictory impulses will be discerned in this alignment to the past, and neither will make any sense in terms of conventional assumptions about human history. One impulse is nostalgia, a yearning for something remembered above all else, but lost. The second impulse is terror: the pervasive, ever-present fear that something terrible that happened in the past will happen again. No civilization in the ancient world failed to express these contrasting motives, reflected in monument-building, commemorative rites, hymns and prayers to the gods, kingship rites, ritual sacrifice, and holy war.
How is this to be explained? One possibility has been consistently overlooked by the specialists: the possibility that celestial events of an unimaginable scale cast their shadow over all of civilization.
But why do nostalgia and terror exist side by side in such a paradoxical relationship? A comparative approach will show that this is no accident, that a unified memory lies behind both of the expressions–the memory of an ancient "paradisiacal" condition, the mythical "Golden Age," giving way to overwhelming catastrophe, universal darkness, cosmic tumult, and wars of the gods.
Look at the deepest yearning of civilization's builders, and you will see the yearning for paradise, a desperate longing to recover the lost Golden Age. For the Egyptians this was the revered Golden Age of Ra, and for the ancient Sumerians it was the Golden Age of An–a theme reverberating around the world.
But now look at the deepest fears of the same peoples, and you will see the Doomsday anxiety, the terror of the great catastrophe. This is not an isolated memory, but a memory inseparably linked to the theme of the ancestral paradise. The remembered events were not just catastrophic; they were the events that brought the Golden Age to an end, when the sky was overrun by chaos.
Two seemingly incompatible motives trace to a common experience, and both bring us back to the ONE STORY TOLD AROUND THE WORLD. Hence, the implication cannot be avoided. Something extraordinary was remembered by the first sky-watchers, something profound and yet unexplained.
In the course of these submissions, I'll attempt to respond to various comments by others, while trying to keep a sense of direction.
In response to my previous notes, noted author Vine Deloria wrote:
"OK - then all we need is to establish the various sequences of interaction with earth and try to get some dates down - even approximations - and some idea of the disruption of our strata here plus whatever was "dumped" from the other planets and we have something to work with.
"We can now ...ask the question - how did human society and/or civilizations get off the ground..., etc."
Chronology. Physical Evidence. Dynamics. All of these issues intertwine. Moreover, various individuals exploring catastrophist ideas will work from different perspectives, and will hold different ideas as to what constitutes the most solid ground for a starting point.
The solid ground, in my own thinking, is the substratum of human memory. It is this substratum that raises the deepest historical questions and sends us scurrying about to find answers, even if the answers upset various specialists, asking them to reconsider the most fundamental assumptions of their discipline. My own conclusion came as a great surprise: the substratum of human memory is incredibly dependable. But others would consider that to be a losing proposition out of the gate. So there's an immediate problem of communication here.
[A definition just to avoid misunderstanding: By the "substratum of human memory" I don't mean Jungian collective memory, though Jungian psychology may indeed come into the equation in the bigger picture. For now, I mean the common mythical, symbolic and ritual themes of widely separate cultures. Another way of putting it might be, "Points of agreement concerning remembered events."]
In this inquiry, I think there are certain things we can all agree on. Truth is unifying, because it eliminates contradictions. When you are looking for the truth of a matter, any significant and incontrovertible fact is good news, because it can save you from heading in the wrong direction. It's particularly good news if it compels you to change your mind, because in doing so it has liberated you from a burden that could only grow. When it comes to the more fundamental errors, a whole life time could be spent on a dead-end course.
Physical data and physical theory will be involved–and implicated–at every step. Whatever happened is not impossible. What is impossible didn't happen. There will be no unified theory in the sense we are all looking for, until what was remembered can be comprehended. Not just comprehended as a set of anciently-supported images, but comprehended in terms of what is possible, and in terms of the physical signature of the events involved.
But before I wander off, let's return to THE ONE STORY TOLD AROUND THE WORLD. Since we are claiming this to be one memory reflected in the myth-making adventure as a whole, I had better republish the story. (Already my second printing. It's not long, you will recall):
Once the world was quite a different place. In the beginning, we were ruled by the central luminary of the sky, the motionless sun, presiding over an age of natural abundance and cosmic harmony. "Creator"-king, father of kings, founder of the kingship rites. And this earliest remembered time was the "exemplary" epoch, the Golden Age, the standard for all later generations.
But the ancient order was disrupted and the entire cosmos fell into confusion, when the Universal Monarch tumbled from his appointed station. Then the hordes of chaos were set loose and all of creation slipped into a cosmic night, the gods themselves battling furiously in the heavens.
And yet, from this descent into chaos, a new world emerged, now re-configured, but with the Universal Monarch himself, rejuvenated and transformed, assuming his rightful place in the heavens.
THE END
What an outrageous claim to make–to suggest that there are no domains of ancient myth that can be isolated from this singular story! But I am not just arguing by proclamation here. I am contending that the truth can be demonstrated by following certain rules. Call these the RULES FOR RE-ENVISIONING HUMAN HISTORY. Our first rule is: we will always work from the general motif to the specific. A second is: only broadly recurring themes count as evidence, particularly in the early stages of the reconstruction. And there is a third rule: Earlier-recorded versions of the recurring themes must be permitted to explain later variants.
Okay, just one more rule: we must allow ancient drawings to illuminate the myths and rites, while permitting the myths and rites to illuminate the drawings. This last rule is crucial because, around the world, ancient skygazers drew remarkably similar pictures of things that do not exist in our sky. And the things depicted are the "subjects" of the myths and rites, though this vital truth has not been generally recognized, either by catastrophists or by mainstream scholars.
Now let's take the ONE STORY a step further, in response to Vine's question: how many archetypal figures of myth are there? There are SEVEN, I say with smug assurance.
Well there "are" just seven! But it all depends how you count these folks.
For openers, we know there is at least one archetypal figure, because he is the god whose ancient name was "ONE", the primeval, all-encompassing "Unity". This figure is, of course, the Universal Monarch, the subject of our ONE STORY (So our ONE STORY might be subtitled the "The Story of ONE'"). Examples would include: Egyptian Atum and Ra, Sumerian An and Utu, Akkadian Anu and Shamash, Hindu Varuna and Brahma, Greek Ouranos and Kronos, Aztec Ometeotl and Quetzalcoatl, to name a few.
Our claim is that all others stories, all other archetypal figures, when investigated at the core, lead back to the ONE STORY, intersecting with this story in the most remarkable and explicit ways.
Here are the other figures:
Queen of Heaven
Wherever you find the Universal Monarch you will find close at hand the ancient mother goddess–the goddess whom the Sumerians called Inanna, the Queen of Heaven, and the Babylonians Ishtar, and the Egyptians Isis, Hathor, and Sekhmet, each with numerous counterparts in their own and in other lands, and virtually all of them viewed symbolically as daughter or spouse of the creator-king, and the mother of another, equally prominent figure–
Warrior Hero
This is the great national hero, originally the Demiurge, the servant of the creator-king, but passing into later myth as the laboring warrior, messenger or servant of a great chief or regional ruler. He is the Hercules archetype, a figure combining knowledge and brutish strength, quick wit and episodic foolishness. He defeats the chaos monsters in primordial times, and he re-configures the world. With a personality clearly dominating the later mythical chronicles, the warrior-hero is the prototype of the famous tricksters and buffoons of later myth and folklore, flowering into thousands of tribal variations. Egyptian Shu, Horus and Sept, Akkadian Nergal, Hindu Indra, Norse Thor, Greek Ares and Hercules, Aztec Huitzilopochtli. Also, in North America: Coyote and Raven. But countless others as well, because the warrior-hero is far and away the most active figure in the myths.
Primeval Seven
These satellite figures are presented in a variety of contexts, as wise men, patriarchs, seers, children, dwarves, stones of fate, stars, orbs, heads of the chaos monster. They are the first reason for the sanctity of the number seven in ancient symbolism.
Chaos Monster
Here we meet the darker, more menacing powers, possessing an often-hidden link to aspects of the mother goddess or warrior-hero type. Of these darker creatures none is more prominent than the cosmic serpent or dragon, a monster that descends on the world to preside over the twilight of the gods, and whose ultimate defeat signals the birth of a new age or, symbolically, a new year. Babylonian Tiamat. Egyptian dragon of Apep. Greek Typhon. But within every culture, endless variations will be found: hundreds of monsters repeating the primeval catastrophe, each providing a different nuance, a different accent, a different way of remembering the cosmic agent of Doomsday.
Chaos Hordes
These are the companions of the monster figures. They are the swarming powers of disorder and calamity, the fiends of darkness–flaming, devouring demons which so many magical rites were contrived to ward off. From the Norse Valkyries to the Greek Erinyes, from the Babylonian Pazuzu-demons to the Egyptian "Fiends of Set." Every culture remembered the onslaught of these chaos demons, moving across the heavens as a sky-darkening cloud and ushering in the cosmic night. In their earliest expressions, they do not just announce the primeval catastrophe, they "are" the catastrophe.
Rejuvenated Creator King
And lastly, there is the compelling personality of the dying god-king, often a resurrected or transformed figure, whose springing back to life is reflected in the dramas of the New Year, symbolically the passing from one age to another. Though his identity is inseparably tied to the Universal Monarch, he nevertheless emerges in distinction from that god as his "son"–the younger version, or "rejuvenated" form of his own father. Examples would include: Egyptian Osiris, Akkadian Marduk; Persian Ahura Mazda; Norse Balder; Hebrew Yahweh; Phoenician Bel, Greek Zeus.
So there are just seven archetypal personalities of myth, if you count them in this way. We are not separating the chaos monster into it's male and female aspects, so we count only one monster. We "are" separating the Universal Monarch into his elder and younger versions, however.
We arrive, therefore, at our first critical juncture. An acid test. Can a mere seven categories actually encompass all of world mythology? While there are numerous complexities and ambiguities to slow us down periodically, the vast majority of well-documented regional figures of myth can be readily identified in terms of these archetypes. And the implications are quite astounding if you set this principle beside the different theories offered to explain myth in the past. NOT A SINGLE THEORY PROPOSED BEFORE VELIKOVSKY OPENED THE DOOR WILL ACCOUNT FOR THE ARCHETYPES, THE BEDROCK OF MYTH.
But the implications become all the more astounding when you begin to see that each of the archetypal figures is linked in no uncertain terms to the ONE STORY. (I'll give some key examples in the next few submissions.) A "universal structure" to ancient memory is present. The six additional biographies re-tell the "story of ONE", but each with a slight turn of the prism, putting the focus on a particular aspect of the story and providing more colorful action and detail. What an amazing principle, if true.
Of all the skills that the independent researcher might bring to this inquiry, none will prove more crucial than that of pattern recognition. There is structure to myth. Structure that has never been sufficiently acknowledged. Structure implies coherence, an integrity between the parts. Clearly human imagination must have gone wild to have produced the incredible vistas of the ancient mythscape. But structure is there too, and structure means that human imagination was not operating in a vacuum. What could have unleashed human imagination in this way, while yet inspiring a universal myth? Nothing less than the most awesome and traumatic experiences in human history, I would say.
How can the disparate threads of memory, expressed in seemingly contradictory symbols, through stories that are often barely intelligible, and in archaic words of uncertain meaning, ever provide a dependable guide for reconstructing cosmic events?
The first essential is to expose the "substratum" of memory, and this can only be accomplished by limiting what counts as evidence. Only broadly-repeated themes are to be included in the early phases of the inquiry, and only the clearest facts, or undisputed principles qualify as building blocks in the reconstruction.
When I speak of the "historical argument" for the Saturn theory, I am referring to all sources of evidence suggesting "things remembered". Before the Egyptians, Sumerians, Hindus, or Greeks ever raised a temple or founded a city, they would consciously and deliberately look backwards to a remembered event. The foundation ceremonies would "reenact" a memorable occasion in the lives of the gods–the construction of a vast dwelling in primeval times, a celestial "kingdom" brought forth by the Universal Monarch, a temple "floating on the clouds." Similarly, when the warrior-kings of Egypt and Assyria and numerous other lands launched their campaigns against neighboring peoples, they summoned memories of cosmic catastrophe, when the gods themselves battled in the heavens. Symbolically, foreign armies meant "the fiends of darkness," and were to be dealt with accordingly. The warrior-kings saw themselves defeating neighboring forces in the same way that, in primeval times, the great gods devastated and controlled the Chaos Hordes, when these dark powers overwhelmed the cosmic order.
It is a remarkable fact that the builders of civilization declared, with one voice, that the first cities and first kingdoms organized in the ancient world, the first pictographs drawn on rock or on temple walls, the vast complexes of sacred festivals and rites, had their prototypes in dramatic events occurring in the age of the gods. Ancient art and architecture, hymns and prayers, the origins of writing, the rise of kingship, nationalistic wars of expansion, ritual sacrifice, the first athletic competition, the roots of drama, tragedy, and comedy–and all other forms of collective activity associated with the flowering of civilization–were commemorative in nature, re-enacting, re-living, and honoring above all else the archetypal events, when the gods themselves ruled the world. Such an idea may seem incomprehensible to us, but there is no escaping the festive and commemorative aspects of emerging civilizations, all pointing "backwards" to remembered events. How has it happened that nothing–and I do mean "nothing"–in the world familiar to us today can illuminate these pervasive (often highly obsessive) memories?
The field of evidence we must draw upon includes every feature distinguishing these civilizations from the prior, more pastoral epoch of human history. That is a huge library of evidence!
Moreover, there is a taproot feeding the explosive, upward movement of the first civilizations. That taproot is the ONE STORY TOLD AROUND THE WORLD. Each recurring cultural theme, in truth, is linked in the most explicit ways to this global memory. But don't forget that the memory is at once pristinely simple and highly complex, depending on which level you are looking at. To the figure of the Universal Monarch, the subject of the ONE STORY, I added six additional archetypal figures of myth, brashly asserting that these personalities all intersect with the ONE STORY in highly specific ways, and claiming that the myth-making epoch has not presented us with any other elementary types. If true, this will mean that the pervasive motives of the first civilizations, cited above, must bear a direct relationship to the "remembered activities" of the seven archetypal figures. Hence, this is a testable hypothesis. If it is incorrect, it can and will be easily disproved under the ground rules we have proposed.
This leaves two other issues relating to the foundations of a theory. What are the relationships of these root personalities to "planets"? And what is their relationship to the illustration presented on our website as a starting point for this discussion? So let's go back to the beginning.
The Universal Monarch, the true subject of the ONE STORY, is the planet Saturn. In the illustration, this is the large sphere visually dominating the sky.
The Mother Goddess is the planet Venus, the luminous central orb from which the radiating streams of material course outward.
The Warrior-Hero is the planet Mars, the small red orb seen inside the sphere of Venus.
The Primeval Seven, though not shown in the oversimplified illustration, should be considered as seven smaller orbs revolving in the vicinity of Saturn.
The Chaos Monster denotes the interacting forms of Mars and Venus in the evolving configuration, as gas and dust (or other material) stretched between Mars and Earth, between Mars and Venus, and (apparently) between Venus and Saturn, giving shape to particular aspects of the monster in different phases of the evolving configuration.
The Chaos Hordes, in the phase illustrated, will be the material visually radiating out from Venus. I have tentatively assumed that the material was actually stretching "upward" toward Saturn.
This latter identification may seem curious since, in the illustrated phase, the material is not chaotic. Whatever this stuff is, it "stretches between planets" in different ways, moving through stable and unstable aspects in relation to the phased metamorphosis of the configuration. During unstable phases the Chaos Hordes constitute both the retinue and the "form" of the Chaos Monster.
The Rejuvenated Creator-King is the planet Jupiter, not visible in the illustrated phase because it was hidden behind Saturn, but becoming visible with the disruption of the collinear system.
It needs to be emphasized that the planetary identifications suggested here did not fall off the wall. They are the result of a patient reconstruction of ancient astronomical traditions over many years. Portions of the material have already been published either in The Saturn Myth, or in AEON articles.
But what is the most efficient way to clarify and to test the hypothesis as a whole? The only way to prove a theory is to demonstrate its explanatory power. And what I believe we can demonstrate through rigorous testing is that the Saturn theory does indeed account for, or predict the recurring themes of myth, ritual, and symbol, down to many hundreds of extraordinary details. This testing procedure will show that myth was anything but random make believe, as so often assumed. There was a "myth-making" epoch, involving a natural environment and intense human experiences unlike anything known in our own time.
We can achieve this testing by simply granting the hypothesized condition, then asking if that condition leaves any aspect of a particular theme unexplained. Then we can go to the next theme, then another, until we have explored every general theme of myth (if our endurance holds up that long). This kind of testing can be very explicit and will remove subjective interpretation and selective use of evidence altogether, because only acknowledged or indisputable, broadly recurring themes count as evidence, and once the question is asked, the answers will tend to be self-evident, so that the critic, or the one asking the question, can be just as assured as we are that the answer "works".
Let me explain what I mean by this. While the theory suggests events never imagined by modern science, no one would dispute that "if" Saturn hung immense in the sky, the identity of Saturn as the archaic "sun" god is explained. "If" that now-distant planet did indeed occupy the summit of the world axis, there can be no surprise in finding that diverse traditions actually placed the ancient Saturn at this astronomically absurd location. And no one would dispute that "if" Venus formerly appeared as a radiant "star" in the center of Saturn, the worldwide "sun" pictographs depicting precisely this relationship are explained.
Similarly, no one would deny that "if" light from the solar orb placed a crescent on Saturn, the enigmatic crescent wrapped around the ancient Saturnian "sun" god is explained. And how could anyone claim that, "if" a collinear planetary system once towered above ancient stargazers, the mystery of the Great Conjunction of the Golden Age would remain unsolved?
Through a comprehensive testing process of this sort, I believe it can be made clear that the Saturn theory does, in fact, achieve what could not be achieved by a fundamentally incorrect hypothesis. Successful predictions in one or another case will never validate such an usual theory. But the ability to predict "all" of the dominating forms of the myth-making age–and all of the indisputable, concretely-defined relationships "between" these forms–could not be an accident.
Irrespective of the different viewpoints and theories held by participants in this group, I trust we can agree on this as a fair statement out of the gate.
I can remember a light going on in 1972. That was when I realized that one of the most familiar themes of myth–the "creation"–has been entirely misunderstood by modern scholars. The misunderstanding did not originate in our time, however; it began long, long ago and can be explained by a pervasive phenomenon we have already noted–the tendency of every ancient culture to localize the archetypal events of myth.
Because the global mythscape is strewn with a hundred thousand contradictory details, it is virtually impossible, in one's first confrontations with myth, to recognize the integrity of the substratum, or how it was that the madhouse of contradictory details arose. As I will try to make clear, contradictions arose through regional symbolic representation, localization, and elaboration of a universal experience. The original events themselves were complex enough, but each and every instance of localization introduced a "contradiction". It located an event somewhere other than its true location, introduced a regional symbol which on its own could not possibly represent the full texture of the thing symbolized, and invited local explanations which could only aggravate the disparity between the symbol and the archetypal form standing behind the symbol. Symbolic representation and localization progressively stripped the archetypes of various interconnected meanings and directed the celebrants attention to the wrong place, the wrong time, and the wrong ideas.
When we encounter a creation myth we assume that the original intent of the story was to explain how our world, the land and sky, mountains and seas, creatures of air and water, of desert, forest, and plain, came to be. And in the course of transmission, that is precisely what the creation myth came to signify for those telling the story. The surprise is the discovery that the first forms of the story do not relate to things seen in our natural world today. They concern, exclusively, the tumultuous events by which the Universal Monarch, the creator-king, brought forth the ancient land of the gods. This universally-remembered habitation–the place par excellence–does not occupy any region "down here." It is the mysterious "lost" land, the radiant, primeval island, city, or province of beginnings–the mystic dwelling which, across the ages, explorers and voyagers around the world sought to locate, but which will never be found on earth.
A rupture occurred. The island of Atlantis sank into the sea. The Bridge of the Gods came crashing down. The cosmic mountain of Meru, whose summit "was" the dwelling of the gods, collapsed in flames. The world tree Yggdrasil, whose branches held aloft the luminous dwelling, toppled into the abyss. Or Midgard, the city of the gods, succumbed to a rain of fire and gravel.
So in a sense, the first step in a reconstruction of the creation myth must be a step backwards. We have to free ourselves from the inertia of modern interpretations, to ask without prejudice, What was the nature of the habitation created by the Universal Monarch? And how did this dwelling come into existence? In finding the answer to this question we will be brought right back to our starting point–"THE ONE STORY TOLD AROUND THE WORLD."
The creation myth is recounted from more than one vantage point. Creation means the Universal Monarch's organization of a divine habitation out of primeval chaos. What is created is the god's own dwelling. Which is to say that the "universe" originally ruled by the creator is not the expanse of earth and sky we would imagine today, but a very specific place with a very specific form. Around the world, artists drew pictures of the created realm, and attached human memories to the pictures. Both the memories and the pictured forms are, when traced to their roots, astonishingly similar, giving us a very good reason to take the underlying ideas in the most literal and concrete sense: the events of creation mean things seen and heard.
But creation also means the Universal Monarch's acquisition of a luminous "form", his external "limbs" or "body"–a distinct contrast to his previous "formless" state. Out of formlessness , the creator god acquired his visible attributes, and this activity is synonymous with the activity by which he "became" the Universal Monarch, the ruler of "all creation."
There are several points I will want to make about the nature of the "creative" activity, but I am trying to proceed by degrees, from the most fundamental and general observations to the more specific. Reduced to "irreducible" categories, the chapters in the biography of the Universal Monarch, are:
1) Original formlessness (of god and world),
2) first creation,
3) upheaval, world destruction,
4) regeneration, second creation, or rejuvenation of the Universal Monarch), and
5) final rupture.
Now please understand that I did not formulate this summary just to antagonize the feet-on-the-ground folks who may be reading this. THERE ARE NO OTHER SUBJECTS OF WORLD MYTHOLOGY! Honest. It is just that appearances can be highly deceiving. If you simply open a popular dictionary of myth you will immediately encounter what will appear to be hundreds of contradictions to the statement. What does Hercules have to do with this story? How does the "love goddess" Aphrodite fit into this elementary structure? Where is the famous Medusa, of the deadly countenance?
The only way to answer these questions is to start with an outline. I previously listed seven "archetypal figures" of myth, including the overarching figure of the UNIVERSAL MONARCH. My contention will be that each of these figures has a most explicit role in the story, a role that can be tested through intensive cross-cultural comparison. And when these roles are fully illuminated, we will, in fact, possess a unified theory of the myth-making epoch as a whole.
From beginning to end, the story recounts the critical junctures in the biography of the UNIVERSAL MONARCH, who is remembered as the original Unity, the great sphere of "heaven" when heaven was close to the earth, the formless world (celestial sphere) existing prior to the first activity of creation.
The pictograph for this original undifferentiated state is the universal "sun"-sign, a circle with a smaller dot or circle in the center, one of the most common symbols in the ancient world. But what does the small circle in the center denote? It means the central eye, heart and soul of the Universal Monarch. It denotes the conjunction of male and female powers in one "seed" prior to differentiation–i.e., the unformed, unborn, primeval state of the QUEEN OF HEAVEN and the WARRIOR-HERO. What appears as a "single" small dot or circle, in the acts of creation, will emerge as "two" distinct and highly active powers.
To see this image more concretely, we have to "magnify" the hieroglyphic dot-in-circle. In fact, numerous larger, more detailed renderings by ancient artists, achieve this magnification for us. They show that what appears in the smaller glyphs as a dot or tiny circle is, or becomes, "two" concentric circles, as will be seen in the famous wheel of the Babylonian Shamash, but appears in countless renderings in other cultures as well. (And by no stretch of the imagination could any conventional interpretation as a "Sun"-sign account for this unique and extraordinary form.) In the reconstruction we are offering the outer circle of the two means the QUEEN OF HEAVEN, while the enclosed or inner circle means the WARRIOR HERO, the two powers here standing in conjunction, with the unborn hero dwelling as the child in the womb of the goddess, the pupil of the eye, the innermost, masculine heart of the enclosing feminine heart.
The best source for discerning the earliest meanings of the symbolism, I believe, is the ancient Egyptian creation legend. The "seed" of Atum-Ra, his solitary eye or heart-soul, was spit out by the god, to become two independent powers. These powers are, 1) the goddess Tefnut, the first form of the QUEEN OF HEAVEN; and the god Shu, the first form of the WARRIOR-HERO. Hence, the texts remember Tefnut as the Eye of the sun god, and the god Shu as the "pupil" of the Eye.
By this first act of creation, the solitary Atum, the "All," became three powers: the motionless sun god Ra ("Atum-Ra"), plus the two active powers of creation, Shu and Tefnut, by whose activity the distinct first forms of creation came into being. Moreover these first forms can be identified in the most concrete of terms. The masculine power Shu brought forth the world pillar or world mountain, a column explicitly identified with the god himself. And the feminine power Tefnut brought forth a band or enclosure, the sacred dwelling, the created "land of the gods." (In truth, of course, it was the evolving forms themselves that produced the male and female identities of the two powers–the generative column and the enclosing womb at the summit.) When we strip away all of the other nuances and complicating events, that is the elementary creation story at work throughout all of ancient Egypt.
How, then, does the CHAOS MONSTER come into this story? For simplicity, I will cite here only the feminine form of the monster: the flaming Uraeus serpent. Though the full history of the serpent is complex, the identity is beyond dispute. It is the "goddess" herself, the Eye of Ra, sent out in connection with a cosmic catastrophe, a disruption of order, a "rebellion" in the heavens. Egyptian texts of all periods describe the Eye-goddess becoming a fiery serpent, a "Great Flame" moving in the sky to attack the enemies of the sun god, or a raging lioness with a smoking (cometary!) "mane."
But if a "rebellion" occurred in the heavens, who are the rebels? They are, in fact, the CHAOS HORDES, who are born in the tumultuous "outflow" from Atum-Ra, or his Eye, in connection with the birth of Shu and Tefnut. Originally they appear as streams of "radiance" or "glory" adorning the face of Ra, but in their rebellion they become a cloud of darkness threatening the light and life of Ra. (It is in the fundamental character of the CHAOS HORDES such as the Norse Valkyries or Greek Erinnyes that they first appear as figures of beauty and grandeur, only to take on a terrifying and world-threatening role in the catastrophe.) Enigmatically, these powers are simultaneously remembered as demon-like armies overwhelming the cosmic order, and as the "retinue" of the raging goddess, whose role is simultaneously that of "scattering" and of "gathering up" the luminous, cloud-like material.
But this is where, for the sake of brevity, we must short-circuit some of the most interesting aspects of the story, to state as simply as possible the underlying relationship of the rebelling powers to the "creation." THE REBELLING POWERS THEMSELVES WERE THE RAW MATERIAL BY WHICH THE SUN GOD FASHIONED HIS DWELLING IN THE SKY.
Remember that the typical account has creation evolving by phases, punctuated by wholesale catastrophe. So we are not talking about a single event here, but a principle running through the phases of creation, destruction, and renewal, in which the QUEEN OF HEAVEN and the WARRIOR-HERO play the active roles–in distinct contrast to the more passive role of the UNIVERSAL MONARCH. Goddess and hero are the agents by which the god-king configures his celestial habitation, and acquires his own evolving "forms". The raw material–called the radiant "limbs" of Atum-Ra–is the very material which, in episodes of catastrophe, swarms across the heavens as a sky-darkening cloud.
What, then, are the concrete forms taken by the CHAOS HORDES in their role as the raw material of creation? They take the respective forms of the goddess and hero we have just cited: 1) in specific relation to the activity and identity of the hero, the chaos powers come to constitute the cosmic column; and, 2) in specific relation to the activity and identity of the goddess, the chaos powers take the form of an enclosure, the organized land of the gods, the cosmic temple or city, the great wheel of the gods.
In the full course of the story both the cosmic column and enclosure move through the phases of creation, destruction and renewal. The subject is an evolving configuration, not a static form, though certain periods of stability are noteworthy and these stable aspects can be analyzed in remarkable detail.
Hence, our purpose here is to establish just enough of an outline to enable us to state clearly the "predictions" of the model with respect to the universal themes of myth. Perhaps the best way to achieve this outline will be to take each of the archetypal figures and state their general contributions to the ONE STORY in a bit more detail, including figures outside of Egypt. This I will take as my immediate task.
A footnote: for the sake of simplicity I've skipped the role of the PRIMEVAL SEVEN. In the Egyptian system, these are the seven "Watchers," seven "souls" of the divine habitation, the seven scorpion-companions of the goddess Isis, the seven "heads" of the serpent Nau-shesma, and a good deal more.
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