The Saturn Myth A Reinterpretation Of Rites And Symbols Illuminating Some Of The Dark Corners Of Primordial Society

254 Pages·1980·4.618 MB·English

by  David N. Talbott

THE SATURN MYTH

A Reinterpretation Of Rites And Symbols Illuminating Some Of The Dark Corners Of Primordial
Society

DavidN. Talbott
Intrigued by Velikovsky’s claim that Saturn was once the pre-eminent planetary god, David Talbott resolved to examine its mythical
character. “I wanted to know,” he wrote, “if ancient sources had a coherent story to tell about the planet . . . I had no inkling of the
spectacular tale hidden in the chronicles.”
In this startling re-interpretation of age-old symbolism Talbott argues that the “Great God” or “Universal Monarch” of the ancients
was not the sun, but Saturn, which once hung ominously close to the earth, and visually dominated the heavens.
Talbott’s close textual and symbolic analysis reveals the fundamental themes of Saturn imagery and proves that all of them—including
the “cosmic ship”, the “island at the top of the world”, the “eye of heaven” and “the revolving temple” were based on celestial
observations in the northern sky. In addition he shows how such diverse symbols as the Cross, “sun”-wheels, holy mountains,
crowns of royalty and sacred pillars grew out of ancient Saturn worship. Talbott contends that Saturn's appearance at the time,
radically different from today, inspired man's leap into civilization, since many aspects of early civilization can be seen as conscious
efforts to re-enact or commemorate Saturn’s organization of his “celestial” kingdom.
A fascinating look at ancient history and cosmology, The Saturn Myth is a provocative book that might well change the way you
think about man’s history and the history of the universe.
David N. Talbott is the founder and former publisher of Pensee, an out-growth of the Student Academic Forum which developed
the book, Velikovsky Reconsidered. He is also the co-author of The Ecstasy of Sati-Ra, a cosmological mystery. He now lives
with his family in Oregon.
Talbott, David N., The Saturn Myth
ISBN: 0-385-113376-5
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 76-51986
Copyright © 1980 by David N.Talbott.
All Rights Reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
First Edition.
Kindle version created by PapaLazzzaru, Aug 2013; updated March 2014.
CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION
MYTH AND CATASTROPHE
II. THE GREAT FATHER
THE “ONE GOD” OF ARCHAIC MONOTHEISM
THE UNIVERSAL MONARCH
THE AGE OF KRONOS
India
Iran
China
Northern Europe
THE RITES OF KINGSHIP
THE HEAVEN MAN
WHO WAS ADAM?
THE GREAT FATHER SATURN
THE SATURN MYTH RECONSTRUCTED
III. THE POLAR SUN
SUN AND SATURN
DAY AND NIGHT
SATURN AND THE POLE
THE UNMOVED MOVER
EGYPT
MESOPOTAMIA
INDIA
CHINA
THE AMERICAS
IV. SATURN’S COSMOS
THE ENCLOSED SUN
THE LOST ISLAND
The Egg
THE COSMOS AND THE DIVINE ASSEMBLY
THE CIRCLE OF THE GODS
THE GREAT MOTHER
WOMB AND THIGH
WOMB AND COSMOS
THE HERMAPHRODITE
V. THE HOLY LAND
THE MOTHER LAND
SATURN’S EARTH
THE EGYPTIAN PARADISE
THE WORLD WHEEL
THE ONE-WHEELED CHARIOT
THE CITY OF HEAVEN
THE ENCLOSURE AS PROTOTYPE
THE WORLD NAVEL
THE OCEAN
VI. THE ENCLOSED SUN-CROSS
THE FOUR RIVERS OF PARADISE
THE CROSSROADS
THE FOUR-EYED OR FOUR-FACED GOD
THE FOUNDATION STONE
THE FOUR PILLARS OF HEAVEN
SYMMETRICAL ELABORATIONS OF THE SUN-CROSS
VII. TEMPLE, CROWN, VASE, EYE, AND CIRCULAR SERPENT
THE TEMPLE
THE EGYPTIAN TEMPLE
TEMPLE AND WOMB
THE CROWN
THE VASE
THE EYE
THE CIRCULAR SERPENT
IN SUMMARY: A COHERENT DOCTRINE
VIII. THE COSMIC MOUNTAIN
EGYPT
MESOPOTAMIA
INDIA
JAPAN, CHINA, IRAN, SIBERIA
SIBERIA
GREECE AND ROME
WESTERN SEMITIC
THE AMERICAS
A COLLECTIVE MEMORY
THE MOUNT OF MASCULINE POWER
THE COSMIC MOUNTAIN PERSONIFIED
THE SINGLE LEG
THE SERPENT/DRAGON
THE STREAM OF LIFE
Boreas And The Hyperboreans
The North Wind Shu
The River Of Life
The Eden-Fountain
THE KING OF THE MOUNTAIN
IX. THE CRESCENT
THE CRESCENT AND SATURN
THE CRESCENT AND WOMB
CRESCENT AND MOTHERLAND
THE CRESCENT AND MOUNT
THE HEAVENLY TWINS
WHO WERE THE DIOSCURI?
THE BLACK AND WHITE TWINS
The Two Assemblies
The Two Lands
The Two Crowns
The Two Eyes
The Two Serpents
The Two Thrones
The Two Vases (=Two Eyes)
The Two Lakes or Rivers
The Two Cords
SYMBOLISM OF THE CRESCENT
THE CRESCENT HORN
THE HORNED MOUNTAIN
IX. THE CRESCENT-SHIP (PART 2)
The World-Ship
The Island-Ship
The City-Ship
The Temple-Ship
The Wheel-Ship
The Egg-Ship
The Eye-Ship
The Vase-Ship
The Shield-Ship
The Throne-Ship
The Serpent (Dragon)-Ship
THE CRESCENT-ARMS
THE KA-ARMS
THE CRESCENT-WINGS
INTERCONNECTED SYMBOLS
The Plant Of Life
Sword
The Altar
ABOVE AND BELOW, LEFT AND RIGHT
SATURN’S DAY
CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ENDNOTES
I. Introduction
T
he planet Saturn today is recognizable only to those who know where to look for it. But a few thousand years ago Saturn
dominated the earth as a sun, presiding over a universal Golden Age.
Modern man considers it self-evident that our familiar heavens differ hardly at all from the heavens encountered by the earliest star
worshippers. He assumes that the most distinctive bodies venerated in primitive times were the sun and moon, followed by the five
visible planets and various constellations—all appearing as they do today, but for such ever-so-slight changes as the precession of the
equinoxes.
This long-standing belief not only confines present discussion of ancient myth and religion; it is the fixed doctrine of modern astronomy
and geology: every prevailing theory of the solar system and of earth’s past rests upon an underlying doctrine of cosmic uniformity—the
belief that the clocklike regularity of heavenly motions can be projected backward indefinitely.
But the evidence assembled in the following pages indicates that within human memory extraordinary changes in the planetary system
occurred: in the earliest age recalled by man the planet Saturn was the most spectacular light in the heavens and its impact on the ancient
world overwhelming. In fact Saturn was the one “great god” invoked by all mankind. The first religious symbols were symbols of Saturn,
and so pervasive was the planet god’s influence that the ancients knew him as the creator, the king of the world, and Adam, the first
man.
Since the only meaningful defense of this claim is the entire body of evidence presented here, I shall not presume upon the reader’s
credulity, but only ask that he follow the narrative to its end.
Myth And Catastrophe
I
f our generation disdains the possibility of fact in the language of myth it is because we are aware of discrepancy between myth and
the modern world view, and we ascribe it to the blindness or superstition of the ancients. There is hardly an ancient tale which fails to
speak of world-destroying upheavals and shifting cosmic orders. Indeed, we are so accustomed to the catastrophic character of the
stories that we hardly give it a second thought. When the myths tell of suns which have come and gone, or of planetary gods whose
wars threatened to destroy mankind, we are likely to take them as amusing and absurdly exaggerated accounts of local floods,
earthquakes, and eclipses—or write them off altogether as expressions of unconstrained fancy. How many scholars, seeking to unravel
the astronomical legends and symbols of antiquity, have questioned whether the heavenly bodies have always coursed on the same paths
they follow today? In the past three hundred years barely a handful of writers have claimed any connection between myth and actual
celestial catastrophe—:
William Whiston published in 1696 A New Theory of the Earth, arguing that the biblical Deluge resulted from a cometary cataclysm.
The book produced a storm of scientific objections and had no lasting impact outside Christian orthodoxy.
In 1882 and 1883 two books by Ignatius Donnelly appeared: Atlantis, the Antediluvian World, and Ragnarok: the Age of Fire and
Gravel. Relying on global myths, Donnelly claimed that a massive continent called Atlantis once harboured a primordial civilization, but
the entire land sank beneath the sea when a comet rained destruction on the earth. Both of Donnelly’s books became best sellers and
are still available today. Yet conventional theories of earth and the solar system remain unaffected by these works.
Around the turn of the century Isaac Vail argued in a series of brief papers that myths of cosmic upheaval relate to the collapse of ice
bands surrounding our planet.[1] Three quarters of a century after his death, his work is familiar only to the esoteric few.
In 1913 Hans Hoerbiger published his Glacial-Kosmogonie, contending that the great catastrophes described in ancient myth occurred
when the Earth captured another planet which became our moon.[2] The relatively small interest in Hoerbiger’s thesis vanished within a
couple of decades.
This was the extent of noteworthy research into myth and catastrophe when Immanuel Velikovsky, in early 1940, first wondered
whether a cosmic disturbance may have accompanied the Hebrew Exodus. According to the biblical account, massive plagues
occurred, Sinai erupted, and the pillar of cloud and fire moved in the sky. His quest for a solution led Velikovsky through a systematic
survey of world mythology and eventually to the conclusion that ancient myths constitute a collective memory of celestial disorder. The
great gods, Velikovsky observed, appear explicitly as planets. In the titanic wars vividly depicted by ancient chroniclers the planets
moved on erratic courses, appearing to wage battles in the sky, exchanging electrical discharges, and more than once menacing the
earth.
Velikovsky set forth his claims of celestial catastrophe in his book Worlds in Collision (published in 1950), proposing that first Venus
and then Mars, in the period 1500-686 B.C., so disturbed the Earth’s axis as to produce world-wide destruction. The book became an
immediate best seller and the focus of one of the great scientific controversies of this century.[3]
I mention Velikovsky not only because his work obviously relates to the thesis of this book, but because, as a matter of record,
Velikovsky first directed my attention toward Saturn. In a manuscript still awaiting publication Velikovsky proposed that the now-distant
planet was once the dominant heavenly body, and he identified Saturn’s epoch with the legendary Golden Age. While I have not seen
Velikovsky’s unpublished manuscript on Saturn, a brief outline of his idea inspired the present inquiry: was Saturn once the preeminent
light in the heavens?
Yet I possessed at the outset no conception of the broad thesis presented here—which fell into place with surprising rapidity, once I set
out to reconstruct the Saturn myth. While expecting to find, at best, only faint echoes of Saturn (or no hint at all), I found instead that the
ancients, looking back to “the beginnings,” were obsessed with the planet-god and strove in a thousand ways to relive Saturn’s epoch.
The most common symbols of antiquity, which our age universally regards as solar emblems ( , etc.) were
originally unrelated to our sun. They were literal pictures of Saturn, whom the entire ancient world invoked as “the sun.” In the
original age to which the myths refer, Saturn was no remote speck faintly discerned by terrestrial observers; the planet loomed as an
awesome and terrifying light. And if we are to believe the wide-spread accounts of Saturn’s age, the planet-god’s home was the
unmoving celestial pole, the apparent pivot of the heavens, far removed from the visible path of Saturn today.
At first glance, however, the Saturn myth seems to present an entanglement of bizarre images. The earliest, most venerated religious
texts depict the great god sailing in a celestial ship, consorting with winged goddesses, fashioning revolving islands, cities and temples, or
abiding upon the shoulders of a cosmic giant. It is impossible to pursue Saturn’s ancient image without encountering the paradise of
Eden, the lost Atlantis, the fountain of youth, the one-wheeled “chariot of the gods,” the all-seeing Eye of heaven, or the serpent-dragon
of the deep. Though celebrated as living, visible powers, none of Saturn’s personifications or mythical habitats conforms to anything in
our familiar world. Yet once one seeks out the concrete nature of these images, it becomes clear that each referred to the same
celestial form. The subject is a Saturnian configuration of startling simplicity—whose appearance, transformation, and eventual
disappearance became the focus of all ancient rites.
I now have little doubt that, if Velikovsky had pursued the Saturn question to the end, he would have perceived a vastly greater
influence of the planet than he originally recognized. He would have discovered also that the full story of Saturn adds a new perspective
to much of the mythological material gathered in Worlds in Collision. (In this connection I must stress that I alone am responsible for
the themes and conclusions presented in this book. Realizing that Velikovsky has had to defend his own heresy for better than a quarter
of a century, I have no desire to burden him with the heresy of others.)
Nothing came as a greater surprise to me than the sheer quantity of material bearing directly on the Saturn tradition. The scope of the
subject matter made it necessary to separate the material into two volumes: the first dealing with the original Saturnian apparition, the
second with Saturn’s catastrophic fate. This initial volume then, focuses on the primordial age of cosmic harmony and the unified image
of Saturn as king of the world.
II. The GreatFather

A
nyone attempting to trace the Saturn legend must reckon with the primordial god-figure whom ancient races celebrate as “the great
father,” and who is said to have first organized the heavens and founded the antediluvian kingdom of peace and plenty, the “Golden
Age.” While few of us today could locate Saturn in the starry sphere, the earliest astral religions insist that the planet-god was once the
all-powerful ruler of heaven. But paradoxically, they also declare that he resided on earth as a great king. He was the father both of
gods and men.
This dual character of the great father has been the subject of a centuries-long, but unresolved debate. Was he a living ancestor
subsequently exaggerated into a cosmic divinity? Or was he originally a celestial god whom later myths reduced to human proportions?
For an explanation of the great father researchers look to such varied powers as the solar orb, an esteemed tribal chief, or an abstract
“vegetation cycle.” Almost uniformly ignored is the connection of the primordial man-god with the actual planet Saturn—even though it
is precisely the latter that can tell us why the great father appears in both human and celestial form.
The overwhelming preoccupation of ancient ritual is with an ancient “great god”:
1. The myths say that the god emerged alone from the cosmic sea as the preeminent power in the heavens. Out of watery chaos he
produced a new order. The ancients worshipped him as the creator and the supreme lord of the Cosmos.
2. This solitary god, according to the legend, founded a kingdom of unparalleled splendour. He was the divine ancestor of all earthly
rulers, his kingdom the prototype of the just and prosperous realm. Throughout his reign an unending spring prevailed, the land
produced freely, and men knew neither labour nor war.
3. In the god-king’s towering form the ancients perceived the Heaven Man, a primordial giant whose body was the newly organized
Cosmos. The legends often present the figure as the first man or “primordial man,” whose history personified the struggle of good and
evil.
4. Whether emphasizing the great father’s character as creator, first king, or Heaven Man, widespread traditions proclaim him to be the
planet Saturn.
In investigating the traits of the archaic god we must give greatest weight to the oldest astral religions—those which are closest to the
original experience. The best material, coming from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, provides a remarkably coherent picture of the god
and enables one to see the development and the distortions of the idea among later peoples. What is most surprising, however, is the
enduring power of the root themes.
The “One God” Of Archaic Monotheism
I
n the beginning the ancients knew one supreme god only, a divinity invoked as the creator and the father of all the gods.
According to a long-established school of thought, man’s consciousness of a supreme being emerged slowly from a primitive fascination
with petty spirits and demons. Adherents to this opinion tell us that human reason gradually modified capricious spirits of “vegetation,”
“spring,” “the ancestors,” or “sexual power” into the great gods of global religion.
Of such an evolutionary process, however, one finds little evidence. The great edifices erected by Herbert Spencer, E.B. Tylor, and
James G. Frazer[4] appear to rest exclusively on the assumption that one can learn the origins of theism by studying existing primitive
cultures. The idea is that the civilized races of old must have first passed through “primitive” phases. Before the Hebrews, Greeks, or
Hindus developed their elevated ideas of a supreme god, they must have possessed beliefs and customs similar to those of modern-day
tribes of Africa, Australia, or Polynesia. Only by slow development, say these theorists, could a race rise above the ludicrous magic,
totems, and fetishes of the savage.
It is interesting that the advocates of the various evolutionary theories, in their fascination with present-day primitive cultures, almost
never concern themselves with the oldest religious texts and symbols which have come down to us. The sacred hymns and eulogies of