Saturn: the Lord of the Rings
A Comprehensive Symbolic Analysis
Time and the Heavens
Draw a septagram, a seven-pointed star.
Assign the seven classical planets to its points, going counterclockwise — the direction of a zodiac wheel. Use the ancient geocentric ordering: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. If you follow the lines, you will find the planets are connected in the same order as the days of the week.
This is because we have inherited these correspondences from Babylonian astrology, and although at a glance they seem arbitrary, they are not.
Ancient astrologers ordered planets according to the speeds with which they moved through the heavens, inferring a direct correlation with distance. It is an erroneous but intuitive assumption surely rooted in the universal experience of the parallax effect.
The orbits were conceived as nested spheres revolving around the Earth. The order of these spheres is known today as the Chaldean Order.
Though it is not widely known outside of occult circles, the Babylonians developed a system in which every hour was “ruled” by a planet. If Saturn rules the first hour, Jupiter rules the second, Mars the third, etc. cycling through the Chaldean order.
Each day was said to be ruled by the ruler of its first hour.
The 24 hours of the day do not divide evenly by 7. There is a remainder of 3. Thus, the first hour of today is always ruled by the planet 3 places from the ruler of yesterday. If today is Saturday, then tomorrow will be (Jupiter… Mars…) Sunday.
(Of course, after a 7 day period, these 3 hour remainders sum to 21 which divides evenly, restarting the cycle.)
One draws a septagram by following the same pattern. Each line connects to a point three neighbors away.
I use these correspondences to mnemonically encode the days of creation.
(Note: this is just a mnemonic device.)Sun: Light (Conscious)
Moon: Division of the Waters (Unconscious)
Mars: Land, “Seed-Bearing Plants” (Territory and Virility)
Mercury: Stars and Planets “for Signs” (Messages)
Jupiter: Birds and Fish, 1st “be fruitful and multiply” (Angels, Intuition, Abundance)
Venus: Humanity and Eden, 2nd “be fruitful and multiply” (Beauty and Fertility)
Saturn: Rest
Scriptural references to astronomy and astrology are sparse and thoroughly veiled. This conspicuous silence can be taken to suggest an indifference to celestial events. The astrological interpretation of Biblical motifs are hotly and often rightly opposed by the conservatively-minded.
The four heads of the cherubim are not reducible to the fixed zodiac signs as we know them today. It is probable that cherubic symbolism predates them.
For instance: though they may exist, I have been unable to find any ancient sources which claim that Scorpio can be represented as an eagle instead of a Scorpion, this appears to be a later innovation.
The chariot of Ezekiel as a whole, however, and the significance of the numbers 12 and 7, are more difficult to wrest from their apparent astral connotations.
In the final analysis though, anyone who denies any astrological influence upon the Bible is oblivious to history. No ancient person would or could sever timekeeping from heavenly cycles. Even in our present era of calendrical standardization, synchronous time-zones and atomic clocks, we ourselves cannot sunder time from the stars; we are simply dividing solar cycles (days and years) ever more exactly.
The most likely explanation in my view is that Biblical authors refer to the signs and planets because it was impossible not to, but they remain oblique to prevent lapses into the astrolatry of neighboring peoples. One need only look at modern astrology to understand their reticence.
If we examine the names given to the planets in Hebrew, we see plainly that Israelite culture generally regarded them with an exceptional restraint.
Saturn: Shabbatai - “Of the Sabbath”
Jupiter: Tsedeq - “Righteousness”
Mars: Ma’adim - “The Red One”
Sun: Hammah - “The Hot One”
Venus: Nogah - “The Bright One”
Mercury: Kokhav - “The Star/Planet”
Moon: Yareakh - “Moon” (cognate of the word for month)
In the rest of the Mediterranean world, the planets receive exalted theonyms. Jewish culture is an outlier, giving names so generic they seem almost dismissive.
Nevertheless, the most damning evidence against the anti-astrological line of thought is the use of a seven-day week in which Saturn is related to the seventh day. This is a very strong indicator that the Jewish week descends from or shares a common ancestor with the Babylonian system of planetary-hours.
Timekeeping is astrological and received from the esoteric traditions of antiquity. We have also inherited our sixty-second minute and sixty-minute hour from the Sumerians and their sexagesimal (or base 60) counting system.
Before it was possible to keep time with precise mechanical motion, an hour was considered to be one twelfth of the time from sunrise to sunset, often measured via sundial. These are “seasonal hours” because their duration varies by season.
The use of 24 equal hours for the entire day was a later development and this is why our clocks still divide the day into 12 hour halves — 12, of course, for the number of zodiacal months and lunations per year.
The first known heliocentric model of the solar system was devised by Aristarchus of Samos. He correctly ordered the planets around the sun in the third century before Christ and seventeen centuries before Copernicus.
Examining the rulerships of the zodiac signs, one finds this symmetrical patterning which strangely and arbitrarily deviates from the Chaldean Order in such a manner that it also ends up correctly encoding the heliocentric ordering:
Saturn
The planet traditionally associated with time is Saturn.
Saturn’s was the penultimate celestial sphere, separating the Earth and other planets from the constellations, thus dividing the temporal and eternal worlds.
Saturn has acquired a reputation in contemporary astrology and conspiracy culture as a cold, authoritarian planet of “limitation and discipline.”
This is true in important ways and reflective of our present conception of time: quantified, inflexible, oppressive and exacting. The ‘taskmaster’ aspect of Saturn is real and particularly intensified in our world. The tyrannical father of the black cube is our exoteric image.
These characteristics are prominent enough that they summarize our relationship to the archetype with reasonable precision. ‘Time’ for the times. But time is of course above the times, and much more complex.
Saturnalia is the clearest anomaly.
The contemporary emphasis on the despotic image of Cronos, devouring his son for fear of usurpation suggests a hard, dictatorial character. But the annual Roman festival in honor of the god betrays a very different understanding.
Saturnalia was a time of wild partying around the time of the winter solstice during which normal social hierarchies and restrictions were disregarded or inverted. It was a carnivalesque period given to overeating, drunkenness and public gambling where, for a time, masters would eat with or even serve their slaves.
A particularly famous Saturnalia tradition is the appointment of the Saturnalicius princeps or ‘ruler of the Saturnalia.’ This temporary mock king was selected by lot from amongst slaves, criminals or peasants and permitted to command others to perform absurd, arbitrary and entertaining tasks. At the end, he was often sacrificed.
The sacrificial aspect was probably typical in more primitive forms of the festival and less common in cities and later periods. We know that Nero Caesar was the king of the Saturnalia at some point in his youth, and he evidently lived on to become the Great Beast of Revelation. This is of course, no coincidence.
Even after Christmas displaced Saturnalia, similar traditions emerged such as the appointment of a ‘Lord of Misrule’ in England and a ‘Prince des Sots’ in France. Whether a line of direct descent exists is, from a symbolic standpoint, irrelevant.
To anyone more familiar with the contemporary image of Saturn, this association with debauchery, humor and the carnivalesque seems counterintuitive, but for the Romans, Saturn was in part, the god of liberation. His reign during the quasi-Edenic golden age was far more salient to them than the later cannibalization of his progeny.
Saturnalia was supposed to temporarily restore the conditions of that primordial time when, according to Hesiod:
[Men] lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: miserable age rested not on them; but with legs and arms never failing they made merry with feasting beyond the reach of all devils. When they died, it was as though they were overcome with sleep, and they had all good things; for the fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint. They dwelt in ease and peace.
With no need for labor, there was no slavery. Thus, common to both Saturnalia and Kronia, the Greek equivalent, was freedom from work and the temporary abolition of compelled servitude.
This understanding is entirely consonant with the Jewish Sabbath, which is Saturday. It is widely known that on that day, it was forbidden for the Jews to work. The same pattern extended to agriculture, debt and slavery. Shmita (meaning ‘release’) was the seventh year in Israel when agrarian work was suspended and debts were forgiven. Likewise, Hebrew slaves were allowed to be kept for six years of service, but on the seventh, they were to be freed.
It is very strange then (though not necessarily incorrect) that Saturn has acquired the associations that are prevalent today: oppression, order, austerity.
What is the meaning of this apparent contradiction?
Time: Then and Now
Times have changed, and more importantly, time has changed.
The relative lucidity of our historical records, the advent of electric light, temperature-control and standardized timekeeping has dramatically altered how we perceive, conceptualize and relate to time.
The natural ouroboric rhythms of Heaven and Earth do not direct our activities as they once did. We have shut them out and insulated ourselves in a Gnostic kenoma of machinic linear time — hence: ‘mechanical’ causation.
The ancient understanding of time concerns neither chronologies nor schedules, but rather, the vicissitudes of primal forces. Things turning into their opposites: day to night, summer to winter, wealth to poverty.
(Degeneration is more strongly credited to Saturn than ascendance, the latter is solar and/or Jovian. But cycles as such are Saturnian.)
What we may call ‘archaic time’ — time as the wheel of fortune, Samsara and eternal return — has faded so far into the background of our awareness, that it is now relegated almost exclusively to its native dominion: the dream world.
Notions of archaic time are more intact in the East where cosmic cycles receive far more explicit emphasis. The Dharmic world for instance has preserved it doctrinally through ‘karma’ with which Saturn is still associated in Vedic astrology.
Saturn is, properly: the planet of circularity and antagonism. But it is particularly linked to the entropic, latter periods of cycles: night, winter, old age, the harvest. These periods are when fruits and sins alike accumulate. They are when deeds are weighed and judgment comes.
The overstated connection to order is more indirect. Order and discipline are a reaction to time’s influence. Saturn punishes indolence and neglect, but this is best understood as epiphenomenal: a consequence of the relationships between human actions and cosmic reactions and our misaligned, dissonant relationship with reality.
These laws governing action and reaction do impose certain limits on our behavior. But conceptualizing Saturn in terms of these secondary effects gives us a hazy picture of some kind of arbitrary oppressor which fails to account for this planet’s high-esteem in the ancient world.
I believe the popular conception of Saturn is incomplete, but I do not reject it outright, because this transformation from god of liberation to repressive tyrant is entirely consistent with the archetype’s true and deeper meaning: enantiodromia.
Saturn is the shadow — not as ‘villain’ but as opponent. This is why it was the cosmic id to the Greeks, Romans and Jews but is a cosmic superego to the modern world. It always assumes the mantle of antagonist.
The Black Cube and the Black Goo
There is a little known hypothesis that chronic lead exposure was a significant factor in the decline of the Roman Empire.
Lead is the alchemical metal of Saturn. This is why lead-poisoning is called ‘saturnism.’ It is “Pb” on the periodic table because of its Latin name: “plumbum” acquired for its extensive use in Roman plumbing. The Romans used leaden pipes to transport both drinking water and wastewater.
The Roman elites enjoyed wine sweetened with a grape syrup boiled in lead vessels. A byproduct called ‘sugar of wine’ would form during its production and contaminate the syrup. This compound — lead (II) acetate — enhanced its sweetness.
Ancient uses of the metal are dominantly id-adjacent. Contemporary uses are quite different, particularly the most well-known ones.
We see here, a reflection of this enantiodromic shift: fluidity and the carnivalesque to grim militarism and high technology.
This, of course, simplifies things. One may point to ancient sling bullets and modern crystalware for instance. But in the broad strokes and the popular imagination, the teleology of lead has evolved in accordance with the archetype.
These two faces of Saturn correspond intuitively to the Lucifer-Yaldabaoth dyad. Saturn is neither id nor superego, but the contrarian shadow who plays “devil’s advocate,” slipping into whichever role is opposite to that of the ego.
Just like a shadow, Saturn always opposes the sun.
There are over 50 appearances of the number 7 in the book of Revelation. This number is often said to symbolize completeness, but it is better to say: completion, which more clearly connotes finality.
The 7 days and the 7 hills are the same 7.
Revelation’s immediate audience would have instantly perceived its sabbatical implications. For this reason, we see the Saturnian dyad — the leviathan and the behemoth — in the form of the whore (cosmetics, ornamentation, coinage, sweetened wine) and the beast (nuclear technology, ballistics, batteries).
The same dyad manifests as well in two contemporary symbolic motifs hitherto shrouded in mystery: the black cube, having demiurgic (superego) associations, and the black goo, connected to cthonic dragons (the id).
These two are the solid and fluid aspects of the same principle.
The division of the unified identity into id and superego is itself a pathologized state. In its most extreme manifestations, such as addiction, this severance approaches a state resembling dissociative identity disorder.
Likewise, as a society decomposes at the end of a natural life cycle, it becomes unable to cohere organically, and retains its structure artificially: using law and technology.
This is deeply related to the idea of distraction. “Bread and circuses” — grain and circles.
Distraction derives from the Latin distraho meaning “to drag apart” or “tear into pieces.” Therefore, it is connected to dismemberment and forgetting — the opposite of re-membering.
In the same manner, in the last stages of dissolution, the locus of identity itself is externalized — for instance, it may become a smartphone or an office. The self is democratized, socially and technologically constructed by external processes and strange intelligences.
The Beast and the Whore
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.- William Butler Yeats (The Second Coming)
The Saturnalia represents the end. Surprisingly direct scriptural parallels are found in the period preceding the captivity: rampant immorality (drunkenness and debauchery), the worship of idols such as Moloch (Saturn) and a succession of incompetent tyrants (Rulers of the Saturnalia).
We see here that although tyranny is an aspect of this pattern, it does not occur in a vacuum. Authoritarian tightening is often a reaction to social loosening.
Such loosening can be understood as an ‘alien invasion’ as it arises from excessive receptivity to external or ‘foreign’ influence. The worship of strange or ‘outer’ gods, (including the Enochic watchers before the flood) aligns with this.
Saturnian circularity is related to the horizon, the circular boundary of the world — the periphery where the dragons and monsters dwell.
This dissolute receptivity is perennially likened to drunkenness and harlotry.
The harlot is a dual symbol, and Babylon the Great receives some of the attention due to Rahab of Jericho and Tamar, an ancestor of Jesus Christ. Nonetheless, this ‘vicious cycle’ of rebellion and repression is why the Great Whore and the Beast of Revelation are paradoxically united.
Saturn was, in Roman mythology, an immigrant to Italy, having been expelled from Greece by Jupiter. He was thus, an alien. For most of the year, the effigy of Saturn in his temple was bound with woolen fetters representing chains put on him by Jupiter. During the Saturnalia, these ‘chains’ were removed.
Through this ritual of release, the Romans’ repressed impulses are symbolically identified with the enslaved population. Both are identified with Saturn. This also aligns with the image of Saturn as both the stranger or foreigner and the shadow.
(It is worth noting here also that the word “repression” can refer to both authoritarian regimes and the restraining of impulses.)
This ritual unchaining closely parallels the release of the dragon in Revelation 20, especially given the connection between Saturn and serpents; ancient symbols of time.
The word ‘catharsis’ refers to a discharge of emotional tension, generally resulting from repression. A very extreme illustration of catharsis is depicted in Fight Club. The characters’ release of pent-up aggression through ritualized underground violence is a textbook example of cathartic activity. The Purge film series (inspired by a Star Trek episode aptly named The Return of the Archons) also depicts a kind of extreme Saturnalia using carnivalesque and masquerade imagery — note that the historical Masquerade Ball took place during the carnival season.
Scapegoat rituals, extensively studied by Rene Girard, appear to have served an almost identical function, providing catharsis for a community, and so it is unsurprising that Saturn is associated with goats.
We receive the word catharsis from the ancient Greek root kathar meaning ‘pure.’ It meant ‘cleansing’ or ‘purging.’ It could refer to pruning a plant, separating wheat from chaff, clearing land or evacuating the bowels (circling back to leaden plumbing).
All of these are linked typologically to the deluge of Genesis which is symbolically a kind of washing — this is why it is later seen as a antetype of baptism.
Cathartic activity is akin to “taking out the trash.” A removal of excess and waste. Here again, we find an extremely significant symbolic thread: the word Gehenna.
This is one of the words in the New Testament which is translated as ‘Hell’ (the other being Hades). Gehenna was a physical place, which would have been familiar to the first disciples of Christ. It was the Valley of Hinnom just outside Jerusalem. This was the place where the ancient Israelites, like the Canaanites before them, sacrificed their children to Moloch. In the time of Christ, the valley was filled with the waste of Jerusalem and burnt.
In its original context, Hell would have been understood as a cosmic dump.
It seems that ancient Saturnian rituals such as the sabbath, the shmita, the Saturnalia and the carnival were attempts to integrate the shadow and the patterns of the end into the civilized order in a controlled and conscious way. They are a “pressure release valve” (note: plumbing again) that releases restrained impulses, preventing these unconscious energies from building up and then destructively exploding at unpredictable times.
The Jester as the Symbol of Time
At noon Elijah began to taunt [the prophets of Baal]. “Shout louder!” he said. “Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.”
1 Kings 18:27
The Jester seems to be superior to the despot as a Saturnian image. They both work, but the former provides a much more complete picture than the latter.
The Jester is a foil to the king (sun/ego). His role is to mock the king. To expose his weaknesses, imperfections and sins. The jester in this way is often the servant of a Platonic king or “king of kings.” The dark side of the jester, of course, is that he can also subvert the established order just for its own sake.
The jester therefore unites the prophet and the revolutionary into one ambivalent and indefinite entity.
We have seen that the tyrant is symbolically a Lord of Misrule. A parody of a proper king. The tyrant is thus under the jester both typologically and in reality. When a kingdom becomes a tyranny, the jester — not the king — becomes the de facto emissary of the heavenly kingdom. We see this most visibly in the story of Christ, who enters into the kingdom of Satan as the true king, disguised as lowly renegade.
Of course, Christ is not reducible to Saturn, but he reveals the highest expression of its positive qualities.
The Demiurgos
Lastly, we will examine the connection between Saturn and the demiurge.
The meaning of the word demiurgos is “craftsman” or “artificer.” The Gnostics typically identified the demiurge — the chief archon — as the planet Saturn.
This is certainly because of the liminal role given to the Platonic demiurge who stands between the world of forms (the constellations) and the world of manifestation.
The word Artifex which I have used throughout my work to refer to the “collective shadow” of our historical epoch is a Latin synonym of the word demiurge. The primary purpose of this term is simply to make the semiotics of “demiurgos” more obvious:
Artifex, Artifice, Artificial Intelligence.
Replace all my uses of “Artifex” with “demiurge” and the meaning is the same.
We have seen that Saturn is associated with cycles and with slaves. It is quite natural then that it should come to be associated with machines. In a car for instance, mechanical motion is harvested or harnessed (lit. bound or yoked) using engine cycles. The engines run on refined oil (black goo) and power lead-acid batteries (black cube).
The first clock was the solar system. A mechanical clock is a little solar system. And machine is a bunch of interlocking clocks.
Even computers run on processing cycles.
Conclusion
I hope that I have managed to throw some light upon a deeply misunderstood archetype — and one which we must understand, for we are living through the most Saturnian period in all of recorded history. It is paramount therefore that we understand the cyclic process of dissolution and refounding and are aware of the ways it can be hijacked in a “controlled-demolition” scenario.
It is true that Saturn is the “planet of limits” and associated with discipline and authority, but this is a gross oversimplification which ignores the far more profound reality of what a limit actually is. A limit is an event horizon; a veil which we cannot see beyond. So too, the book of Revelation points to some approaching singularity where “our equations break down” and tell us no more.
Saturn is not evil, nor is it good. It hides a greater good than we can comprehend within the impenetrable darkness of dissolution and death.
The symbolism of serpents and goats link it strongly to sin, but the bronze serpent prefigures the cross and the ultimate scapegoat is Christ. It is likewise connected to artifice and technology through the demiurge which means ‘craftsman’ but thence, Christ again: the ultimate craftsman.
The transmutation of lead into gold occurs at the end of every week when Saturday becomes Sunday — when the last becomes the first. The fullest expression of this is the weekend of the resurrection.
I’d like to get your take on Saturn/moloch-worshipping cults, assuming Saturn himself is not actually the devil, what is going on here? What are they actually worshipping?
I really like this analysis and don’t even disagree with any of it, and yet I feel unsatisfied with something about the issue, and I’m not quite sure yet what it is.
The point about jesters being 'above' a tyrant king really hit home for me. I've long had a fear of clowns and jesters, and one of my most challenging psychedelic trips involved jester archetypes. I was mocked and bullied by my peers as a child, and I think that's the root of it. As part of my shadow work, I've been trying to understand them, unpack what I find so distressing about them, and this went a long way toward helping me understand their positive (and very necessary) qualities.
Thank you.