1. The Polar Sun

Saturn’s mythical history includes two themes which not only contradict the planet’s visible appearance today, but seem to mock the canons of modern astronomy:

1. Saturn, not the solar orb, was the authentic “sun”-god of ancient
2. Throughout Saturn’s reign this sun-planet remained fixed at the north celestial

These two themes, affirmed by the straightforward testimony of ancient sources, compose a global memory: in the beginning Saturn did not move on its present remote orbit, but ruled as the central sun around which the other heavenly bodies visually revolved. Of this tradition early man has left us evidence far too numerous to cover fully in this volume. I offer below a summary of the principal sources.

Sun And Saturn

The myths and rites celebrate Saturn as the primeval sun.

Today, few mythologists looking back across several millennia to the beginnings of astral religion see anything more than worship of the rising and setting sun, the solar orb. This preoccupation with the solar orb is evident  in popular surveys: “The preeminence of the Sun, as the fountainhead of life and man’s well-being,” writes W. C. Olcott, “must have rendered it at a date almost contemporaneous with the birth of the race, the chief object of man’s worship . . . It was sunrise that inspired the first prayers uttered by man, calling him to acts of devotion, bidding him raise an altar and kindle sacrificial flames.

“Before the Sun’s all-glorious shrine the first men knelt and raised their voices in praise and supplication, fully confirmed in the belief that their prayers were heard and answered.”128

Not without reason do scholars identify the Greek Helios, Assyrian Shamash, or Egyptian Re with the solar orb. Can it be doubted that Helios, radiating light from his brow and mounted on a fiery chariot, is our sun? That helios became the Greek word for the solar orb is beyond dispute.

In Egypt countless hymns to the god Re extol him as the divine power opening the “day.”129  “The lords of all lands . .

. praise Re when he riseth at the beginning of each day.” Re is the “great Light who shinest in the heavens . . . Thou art glorious by reason of thy splendours . . .”130 Such imagery would seem to leave no question as to the god’s solar character.

Yet if the preceding analysis of the great father is correct, Re (or Atum) is not the solar orb but the planet Saturn. The Golden Age of Re was the age of An, Yama, or Kronos. One thus finds of interest an Egyptian ostrakon (first century B.C.) cited by Franz Boll: the ostrakon identifies the planet Saturn as the great god Re.131

Taken alone, this identification could only appear as a very late anomaly divorced from any solid tradition. But many scholars notice that among the Greeks and Latins there prevailed a mysterious confusion of the “sun” (Greek helios, Latin sol) with the outermost planet. Thus the expression “star of Helios” or “star of Sol” was applied to Saturn.132 Though the Greek Kronos was the Latin Saturn, Nonnus gives Kronos as the Arab name of the “sun.” Hyginus, in listing the planets, names first Jupiter, then the planet “of Sol, others say of Saturn.” 133 Why was the planet most distant from the sun called both “sun” and “Saturn”?

Concerning the confusion of the sun and Saturn among classical writers, a simple explanation was offered: the Greek name Helios so closely resembles the Greek transliteration of the Phoenician El that classical authors confused the two gods; since El is the Greek Kronos—and is so translated by Philo—Kronos/Saturn came to be confused with Helios, the sun. 134 Yet, as noted by Boll, the identification is more widespread than generally acknowledged and is much more than a misunderstanding of names.135 The “confusion” is also far older than Philo, who lived in the first century of the Christian era.  In the Epinomis of Plato (who lived in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.), there is an enumeration of the planets, which, as customarily translated, entails this unstartling statement: “There remain, then, three stars (planets), one of which is preeminent among them for slowness, and some call him after Kronos.”136 Yet the original reading is not Kronos but Helios137—which is to say that Plato (or his pupil Phillip of Opus, to whom some ascribe authorship of the Epinomis) gave the name Helios to Saturn. But copyists, who could not believe that Helios was anything other than the sun, “corrected” the reading to “Kronos.” Moreover, writes Boll, this practice of “correcting” the name Helios to Kronos was not uncommon among later copyists. 138 Originally, Boll concludes, Helios and Saturn were “one and the same god.”139

The equation of sun and Saturn is very old, with roots in Sumero-Babylonian astronomy. Of the Babylonian star-worshippers the chronicler Diodorus writes: “To the one we call Saturn they give a special name, ‘Sun-Star.’”140  Among the Babylonians the “sun”-god par excellence    was Shamash, the “light of the gods,” whom scholars uniformly identify with

 

the solar orb. But M. Jastrow, in an article entitled “Sun and Saturn,” reports that in the Babylonian astronomical texts the identification of Shamash with Saturn is unequivocal: “the planet Saturn is Shamash,” they boldly declare.141

In support of this identity Jastrow notes numerous examples involving “the interchangeable application of the term ‘Samas’ to either the great orb of the day or the planet Saturn.142

The apparent equivalence of Saturn and the “sun” goes back to Sumerian times, as is evident in the dual aspect of the creator god Ninurta. Langdon deems Ninurta both the sun and Saturn: “ . . . the sun-god Ninurta . . . in the original Sumerian Epic of  Creation, defeated the dragon of chaos and founded cities . . . In Sumero-Babylonian religion he is the War-god and planet Saturn.”143

It is not difficult to see why Ninurta, or Ningirsu, though identified with the planet Saturn in the astronomical texts, came to be confused with the solar orb. “Ningirsu, coming from Eridu, rose in overwhelming splendour. In the land it became day.”144 Saturn, as Ningirsu, is “the god who changes darkness into light.”145 The priests of Lagash invoke him as “King, Storm, whose splendour is heroic.”146 This unexpected quality of the planet led Jensen to designate Saturn as a symbol of the “eastern sun” or “the sun on the horizon,” though he offered no explanation for the proposed connection.147

The sunlike aspect of Saturn prevails from the earliest astronomy through medieval mysticism and astrology. “Saturn with its rays sends forth transcendent powers which penetrate into every part of the world,” wrote an Arabic astrologer of the tenth century.148 When the alchemists, inheritors of ancient teachings, spoke of Saturn as “the best sun,”149 it is unlikely that they themselves knew what to do with the idea. But that the tradition was passed down from remote antiquity is both indisputable and crucial.

In claiming that the great father Saturn, presiding over the lost epoch, was the primeval “sun,” I do not propose that our sun was absent—rather, that it simply did not preoccupy the ancients. To avoid confusion on this point I must indicate here a conclusion for which I intend to cite additional evidence in a later section.

Day And Night

Those scholars who notice the identification of the ancient sun and the planet Saturn usually speak of Saturn as a mythical “night sun” or “second sun.”150 But in truth, Saturn was the sun-god pure and simple, for the body we call “sun” today was not a subject of the early rites.

The problem is to discern the original meaning of “day” and “night.” Many hymns to Shamash and Re—the celebrated suns of Mesopotamia and Egypt—describe these gods coming forth at the beginning of the ritual day, and the terminology often appears to signify the rising solar orb. One of the chapters of  Book of the Dead, for example, is “The Chapter of Coming Forth by Day.”151  Does this not refer to the solar orb rising in the east?

A quite different interpretation is possible. Considerable evidence suggests that, to the ancients, the day began with what modern man calls “night”—that is, with the setting of the solar orb. It is widely acknowledged that the Egyptian day once began at sunset.152 The same is true of the Babylonian and Western Semitic days.153 The Athenians computed the space of a day from sunset to sunset, and the habit appears to have prevailed among northern European peoples.154

This widespread custom poses a special problem for solar mythology. If, originally, the day began with the disappearance of the solar orb and the coming out of other heavenly bodies, who is the great god who shines at the beginning of this day? The explicit answer comes from the Sumerian texts identifying Saturn as god of the “dawn.” Saturn “came forth in overwhelming splendour. In the land it became day.”155 This does not (as Jensen proposed) equate Saturn with the “sun [solar orb] on the horizon.” It means that the coming forth of Saturn inaugurated the archaic day, which began at sunset. So long as the solar orb was visible, the fiery globe of Saturn remained subdued, unable to compete with the sheer light of the former body. But once the solar orb sank beneath the horizon, Saturn and its circle of secondary lights acquired a terrifying radiance.

Therefore, in archaic terms, Saturn was the great god of the “day,” not the “night sun” as scholars usually propose. But obviously, the eventual shifting of the “dawn of day” from the solar sunset to the solar sunrise could only create a widespread confusion of day and night and morning and evening. On this distinction among the Egyptians, Budge writes, “At a very early period, however, the difference between the Day-sky and the Night-sky was forgotten.”156 Under normal circumstances would one likely forget this distinction?

If there is confusion, it is because radically different celestial orders separate the present age from the former. The primeval sun was the solitary god of the deep, the one god of archaic monotheism, the planet Saturn. Only in a later age did Saturn come to be confused with the solar orb.

There is, in fact, a decisive difference between the primeval god and the body we call the sun today: unlike the rising and setting solar orb, the original sun-god never moved.

 

Saturn And The Pole

In ancient ritual Saturn appears as the stationary sun or central fire at the north celestial pole.

When Saturn ruled the world, his home was the summit of the world axis: with this point all major traditions of the great father agree. Even today, in our celebration of Christmas, we live under the influence of the polar Saturn. For as Manly P. Hall observes, “Saturn, the old man who lives at the north pole, and brings with him to the children often a sprig of evergreen (the Christmas tree), is familiar to the little folks under the name Santa Claus.”157

Santa Claus, descending yearly from his polar home to distribute gifts around the world, is a muffled echo of the Universal Monarch, the primordial Osiris, Yama, or Kronos spreading miraculous good fortune. His polar abode, which might appear as an esoteric aspect of the story, is in fact an ancient and central ingredient. Saturn, the “best sun” and king of the world, ruled from the polar zenith. But while popular tradition located Santa Claus at the geographical pole, the earlier traditions place his prototype, the Universal Monarch, at the celestial pole, the pivot of the revolving heavens.

The home of the great father is the cosmic centre—the “heart,” “midst,” or “navel” of heaven. As the earth rotates on its axis the northern stars wheel around a fixed point. While most stars rise and set like the sun and moon, the circumpolar stars—those which describe uninterrupted circles about a common centre—never fall below the horizon. The invisible axis of the earth’s rotation leads directly to that central point—the celestial pole—around which the heavens visually turn. All of the ancient world looked upon the polar centre as the “middle place,” “resting place,” or “steadfast region” occupied by the Universal Monarch.

One of the first writers to recognize the pole as the special domain of the great god was W. F. Warren, who wrote in Paradise Found (published in 1885): “The religions of all ancient nations . . . associate the abode of the supreme God with the North Pole, the centre of heaven; or with the celestial space immediately surrounding it. [Yet] no writer on comparative theology has ever brought out the facts which establish this assertion.”

In the following years a number of scholars, each focusing on different bodies of evidence, reached the same conclusion. The controversial and erratic Gerald Massey, in two large works (The Natural Genesis and Ancient  Egypt), claimed that the religion and mythology of a polar god was first formulated by the priest-astronomers of ancient Egypt and spread from Egypt to the rest of the world. In a general survey of ancient language, symbolism, and mythology, John O’Neill (The Night of the Gods) insisted that mankind’s oldest religion centered on a god of the celestial pole.

Zelia Nuttall, in Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations, undertook an extensive review of ancient Mexican astronomy, concluding that the highest god was polar. From Mexico she shifted to other civilizations, finding the same unexpected role of a polar god.

Reinforcing the surprising conclusions of the above researchers was the subsequent work of others, among  them Uno Holberg (Der Baum des Lebens), who documented the preeminence of the polar god in the ritual of Altaic and neighbouring peoples, suggesting ancient origins in Hindu and Mesopotamian cosmologies;158 Leopold de Saussure (Les Origines de l’Astronomie Chinoise), who showed that primitive Chinese religion and astronomy honour the celestial pole as the home of the supreme god; Rene Guenon (Le Roi du Monde and Le Symbolisme de la Croix), who sought to outline a universal doctrine centering on the polar gods and principles of ancient man.

That these and other researchers, each starting down a different path, arrived at much the same conclusion concerning a supreme polar god of antiquity should have been sufficient to provoke a reappraisal of long- standing assumptions. Is it possible that, as these writers claimed, the ancient star-worshippers paid greater heed to a god of the pole than to the solar orb? Rather than respond to the question, solar mythologists diplomatically ignored it, thereby assigning the above investigators to an undeserved obscurity.

I want to reopen the question, but to approach it from a different perspective. Most of the aforementioned writers possessed a common—if unspoken—faith in the ceaseless regularity of the solar system, seeking to explain the polar god in strictly familiar terms: the centre of our revolving heavens is the celestial pole; the  great god of the centre and summit must have been the star closest to this cosmic pivot.

But as observed in the previous pages, the great father was not a mere “star”; he was the planet Saturn, recalled as the preeminent light of the heavens. Moreover, the Saturn myth states that the planet-god resided at the celestial pole!159

In the myth and astronomy of many lands Saturn’s connection with the pole is direct and unequivocal. Chinese astronomers designated the celestial pole as “the Pivot,” identifying the “Genie of the Pivot” as the planet Saturn.160 Saturn was believed to have his seat at the pole, reports G. Schlegel.161 This strange and unexplained image of Saturn caught the attention of de Saussure (one of the foremost experts on Chinese astronomy), who added an additional startling fact: the Iranian Kevan, the planet Saturn, also occupies the polar centre.162

 

But the theme is older than Chinese or Iranian tradition, for it finds its first expression in the Sumero- Babylonian An (Anu), the highest god, acknowledged as the planet Saturn. Each evening, at Erech, the priests looked to the celestial pole, beginning their prayer with the words, “O star of Anu, prince of the heavens.”163

Saturn ruled from the summit of the world axis.164 I must note, however, that I am not the first to observe this general principle. A recent volume by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, entitled Hamlet’s Mill,  offers the revolutionary conclusion that according to an ancient doctrine Saturn occupied the celestial pole.

But the authors, maintaining an unqualified attachment to the uniformitarian premise, exclude in advance any extraordinary changes in the solar system. Instead they speak of Saturn’s polar station as a “figure of speech” or astral allegory whose meaning remains to be penetrated.

“What,” they ask, “has Saturn, the far-out planet, to do with the Pole? . . . It is not in the line of modern astronomy to establish any link connecting the planets with Polaris, or with any star, indeed, out of reach of the members of the zodiacal system. Yet such figures of speech were an essential part of the technical idiom of archaic astrology, and those experts in ancient cultures who could not understand such idioms have remained helpless in the face of the theory.”165

If one could find, in the present order of the heavens, a possible inspiration for the widespread tradition of Saturn’s polar station, then the historians and mythologists, operating on uniformitarian principles, would have something concrete to work with. But the primordial age, as defined by universal accounts, stands in radical contrast to our own era. One can no more explain Saturn’s ancient connection with the pole by reference to the present arrangements of the planets than one can explain, within the uniformitarian framework, Saturn’s image as the Universal Monarch, the Heaven Man, or the primeval sun. Yet the fact remains that throughout the ancient world these images of Saturn constituted a pervasive memory which many centuries of cultural evolution could not obliterate.

The Unmoved Mover

In the sixth century B.C. Xenophanes of Colophon offered this definition of the true god: “There is one God, greatest among gods and men, neither in shape nor in thought like unto mortals . . . He abides ever in the same place motionless, and  it befits him not to wander hither and thither.”166

A remarkable parallel occurs in the Hindu Upanishads: There is only one Being who exists,

Unmoved yet moving swifter than the mind; Who far outstrips the senses, though as gods They strive to reach him, who, himself at rest, Transcends the fleetest flight of other beings. Who, like the air, supports all vital action.

He moves, yet moves not.167

To the supreme power in heaven Aristotle gave the name “Unmoved Mover,” a term which expressed succinctly the paradoxical character of the god One: though turning the heavens, he himself remained motionless. According to the general tradition, the god stood at the stationary cosmic centre, imparting movement to the celestial bodies which revolved about him.

A fact which conventional interpretation cannot explain is that the very terms which ancient astronomers apply to the celestial pole are applied also to Saturn. Consider the image of the pole:

I am constant as the northern star, Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality. There is no fellow in the firmament.

So declared Shakespeare’s Caesar. Many centuries before Shakespeare, Hipparchus spoke of “a certain star remaining ever at the same place. And this star is the pivot of the Cosmos.” Among the Chinese, the pole star is the “star of the Pivot,” 168 to the Polynesians it is the “Immovable One.”169 The Pawnee call it “the star that stands still”; this star, they say, “is different from other stars, because it never moves.”170  To the Hindus, the star is Dhruva, “firm.”171

Consider now the image of the planet Saturn. In China, as noted above, Saturn rules “the Pivot.” The Sumero- Babylonian Ninurta—Saturn—is the god of the “steady star” and of “repose.”172 Enki, also the planet Saturn, is “the motionless lord.”173 Mithraic teaching portrays the planet as the cosmic man Aion, the “resting” god.174 In Sanchuniathon’s description of the Phoenician El (Saturn) the god “flew while at rest and rested in flight.” To this description, O’Neill responds: “Just the symbolism of the Polar Power whirling the heavens round, but ever reposing himself at the motionless centre.”175

 

Saturn’s stationary character is the trait most overlooked by conventional mythologists. The reason is that the mythologists expect the image of the primeval light god to fit the rising and setting solar orb, while in fact ancient ritual and myth portray the god as a central sun at the polar zenith.

To the modern mind nothing could be less “scientific” than a polar sun. Yet the unmoving sun is the ancient tradition, as noted by E. A. S. Butterworth: “[The primeval sun] is not the natural sun of heaven, for it neither rises nor sets, but is, as it seems,  ever at the zenith above the navel of the world. There are signs of an ambiguity between the pole star and the sun.”176

If Butterworth is correct we have a convergence of three vital truths: Saturn was the primeval sun; Saturn occupied the celestial pole; the primeval sun occupied the pole. Each of these points contradicts modern understanding, yet each finds verification in the independent research of specialists,  none of whom seem to have been aware of the work of the others. (That is, de Santillana and von Dechend, while documenting  Saturn’s connection with the pole, seem unaware of the planet’s identity as sun; Jastrow and Boll, though perceiving the equation of Saturn and sun, ignore Saturn’s polar station; Butterworth, though recognizing the polar sun, fails to notice that he is dealing with the planet Saturn.)

On the tradition of the polar god or polar sun numerous traditions concur.

Egypt

If there is an orthodoxy among Egyptologists, it is the belief that the Egyptian great god has his inspiration in the rising and setting sun. Atum, Re, Osiris, Horus, Khepera, and virtually all the great gods of the Egyptians are explained as symbols of the solar orb—either the sun of day, or the sun “during its night journey.”

Because the Egyptian concept of the “sun” involves many complexities which might distract from the present general inquiry, I shall reserve many details for treatment in later sections. I cite below, however, a few of the evidences indicating the polar station of the Egyptian supreme god.

1.   Of the Egyptian great father there is no better representative than the mighty Atum, whom Egyptologists usually regard as a sun-god shining at night. He is the acknowledged alter ego of the primeval sun Re, founder of the lost Golden Age.

The Coffin Texts say:

The Great God lives,

fixed in the middle of the sky upon his support.177

The reference is to Atum, whom the eminent Egyptologist R. T. Rundle Clark calls “the arbiter of destiny perched on the top of the world pole.”178

The creation legend states that when Atum came forth alone in the beginning, he stood motionless in the cosmic sea.179 His epithet was “the Firm Heart of the Sky.”180 To the Egyptians, states Enel, “Atum was the chief or centre of the movement of the universe” at the celestial pole, for the Egyptians knew the pole as the “midst” or “heart” of heaven—“the single, immovable point around which the movement of the stars occurred.”181

Clark tells us that “the celestial pole is ‘that place’ or ‘the great city.’ The various designations show how deeply it impressed the Egyptian imagination. If god is the governor of the universe and it revolves around an axis, then god must preside over the axis.”182

Clark is so certain of the great god’s polar station that he writes, “No other people was so deeply affected by the eternal circuit of the stars around a point in the northern sky. Here must be the node of the universe, the centre of regulation.” 183 (As we will see, Clark underestimates the influence of the polar centre in other lands.)

Atum was the “Unmoved Mover” described in Egyptian texts many centuries before Aristotle offered the phrase as a definition of the supreme power. The Egyptian hieroglyph  for Atum is a primitive sledge  , signifying “to move.” To the god of the cosmic revolutions, the Book of the Dead proclaims “Hail to thee, Tmu [Atum] Lord of Heaven, who givest motion to all things.”184 But while moving the heavens Atum remained em hetep, “at rest” or “in one spot.”

2. Moreover, and contrary to nearly universal opinion, the great god Re has little in common with the solar orb. Unlike our ever-moving sun, Re stands at the stationary “midst” or “heart” of heaven.185 He is the motionless sun “who resteth on his high ”186

His home is the polar zenith:

 

. . . May your face be in the north of the sky, may Re summon you from the zenith of the sky.187

My father ascends to the sky among the gods who are in the sky; he stands in the Great Polar Region and learns the speech of the sun folk. Re . . . sets his hand on you at the zenith of the sky.188

Concerning the enigmatic symbolism of the Egyptian sun-god, Kristensen tells us that “the place where the light sets is also called the place where it rises.”189 In reference to the solar orb the statement appears meaningless. But the notion that Re rises and sets in one spot is inseparable from the vision of Re as the lord of hetep, “rest.” In fact the god does not literally “rise” or “set” at all. With the phases of day and night his light “comes forth” and “recedes”; the god “comes out” and “goes in.” When we say today that the moon “comes out” at night we do not mean that it rises in the east; we mean simply that the moon grows bright. Precisely the same meaning attaches to the Egyptian words which so often receive the translation “rise” (uben, pert, un).190

Thus, rather than a moving sun, Re is the central pivot round which the lesser gods revolve. “They [the companions of Re] go round about behind him,”191 states one text. The deceased king aspires to attain the great god’s position so that “these gods shall revolve round about him.”192

 

2. The resting Osiris.
3. The god-king Osiris, an obvious counterpart of the primeval sun Re, is the god of the tet, “firmness” or “stability.” “He is always a passive figure,” notes Budge. “As a cosmic god he appears as a motionless director or observer of the actions of his servants who fulfil his will.”193 In this he is the prototype of the terrestrial king, who takes up symbolic residence at the cosmic

Thus is Osiris the stationary heart of heaven: “Beautiful is the god of the motionless heart,” proclaims the Book of the Dead.194 The hymns extol Osiris as the lord of hetep, “rest,” or as “the resting heart.” One Egyptologist after another seeks to understand the imagery in terms of a night sun “resting” in an imagined underworld. But numerous Egyptian sources show that the place of rest is the motionless centre and summit. Osiris is “exalted upon his resting place,”195 or “in the heights.”196

The hieroglyphs portray a column of steps leading to the polar zenith; it is here that the hymns locate Osiris: “Hail, O Osiris, thou hast received thy sceptre and the place whereon thou art to rest, and the steps are under thee.” 197 The deceased beseeches the great god: “ . . . May I be established upon my resting place like the Lord of Life.”198

It is also futile to interpret Osiris’ “rest” or “motionless heart” as mere symbols of death. The state of rest, one must remember, belongs to the living or resurrected Osiris, for the texts apply the term hetep, “rest,” to Osiris em ankh, “as a living being.”199 It should be clear to all who consider the language of the hymns that the unmoving heart means the unmoving god, for the heart is the god (as when the texts describe the heart “upon its seat”).200 Osiris, the motionless heart, is the central, stationary sun: “O still heart, Thou shinest for Thyself, O still heart.”201

4.    The stationary sun, the sun at the polar zenith, also occurs under many other names in Egyptian religion, including:

• Horus, the “firm and stable” god who “takes his place at the zenith of the ”202
• Ptah, “in the great resting ”
• Iemhetep, whose name means “the one who comes forth while standing in one ”203
• Sepa, whose name means “stable.”204

 

• Men, whose name means “fixed,” “abiding,” “stable,” “firm.”205
• Tenen, connected with the root enen, meaning “motionless,” “rest,” “inactivity.”206

-   Kheprer, the Turning One, who spins around while occupying the same stationary position.207

Thus, in the hieroglyphs, all of the Egyptian great gods appear as firmly seated figures. This immovable posture       

which corresponds to divine imagery in many other lands is no accident. The seated or resting god is the Unmoved Mover.

 

3.  Kheprer, the Turning One.

 

4. The firmly seated (resting)

5.     That the Egyptians conceived the cosmic centre as the source of celestial motions is clear from the terminology of the centre. The “heart” of heaven is ab ), a word which has the concrete meaning of

“centre” or “midst.” But as noted by Renouf,   ab (                                ) also conveys “the sense of lively motion.”208  In  the latter usage, the determinative appears to depict a human figure turning around while standing on one foot, i.e., in one place, at rest. Denoted by the word ab is the resting but ever-turning heart of heaven. Similarly, while the term men means “fixed” or “abiding,” in reference to the god of the stable centre and summit, mennen means “to go round.”209

To the great god, as the steadfast centre or foundation stone of the Cosmos, the Egyptians gave the name Benben (see discussion of “The Foundation Stone”). But ben alone “is a verb of motion, and particularly of ‘going around’“ This dual, seemingly paradoxical relationship of motion and rest occurs throughout the Egyptian texts and becomes intelligible only when one recognizes the central sun, the Unmoved Mover, as the source of the imagery.

 

“I am the Heir, the primary power of motion and of rest,”

reads the Book of the Dead. Though the words have a modern sound, Renouf assures us that they express the literal sense of the hieroglyph text. It is in the root character of every polar god to “move” while at “rest.”210

6. Inseparable from the Egyptian motion of “rest” is the concept of “silence.” The motionless centre of the heavens is the Still Place or Region of Silence. (Our English word still accurately conveys the close relationship between the concepts unmoving and )

[The great god is] King of the Tuat . . . Noble Body whose rest is complete in the Region of Silence.211

King N is he who rests in the Silent Region.212

But those experts who connect the solar orb with the great god have nothing to say concerning such language. The god who stands at rest in the Silent Region is Re, the sun-god par excellence; yet the entire concept contradicts the image of our wandering sun.

7. What often prevents generalists from perceiving the stationary character of the primeval sun is the translator’s unfortunate habit of substituting vague and intangible terms for literal meanings. Budge follows a common practice when he renders a hymn to Re in these words: “Homage to thee, O thou who art in peace.” 213 From such terminology one could hardly be expected to formulate a clear concept of the god. But the phrase “in peace” actually conceals a vital meaning, for the Egyptian original is em hetep. Literally, the hymn celebrates the god who shines “at rest” or “while standing in one place.” (In seeking to interpret Egyptian sources I have found that specific, literal, and concrete meanings of the original texts are uniformly preferable to the more general and abstract language so often chosen by translators. Of this truth, the reader will find many examples in the following )

Mesopotamia

Like the central sun of Egypt, the primeval light god of Sumero-Babylonian religion “comes forth” (shines) and “goes in” (declines, diminishes) at the “centre” or “midst” of heaven (Kirib sami; Kabal sami), which is also the zenith (ilatu). “In the centre he made the zenith,” states one text.214 Residing at the centre and summit, the great god is the “firm” or “steadfast” light.215

The oldest representative of this stationary sun is the polar god An (Anu).216 An fills the sky with his radiant— even terrifying—light: “the terror of the splendour of Anu in the midst of heaven.” 217 Thus does Robert Brown, Jr., term the polar god a nocturnal sun, the “Lord of the Night.”218

All principal forms of An appear as stationary gods. Enki is “the motionless lord” and the god of “stability.”219 A broken Sumerian hymn, in reference to Ninurash (a form of Ninurta) reads:

Whom the “god of the steady star” upon a foundation.

To . . . cause to repose in years of plenty.220

Failing to perceive the concrete meaning of such terms, solar mythologists like to think of a place of “repose” as a hidden “underworld” beneath the earth, a dark region visited by the sun after it has set. But the place of repose is no underworld. It is:

The lofty residence . . .

The lofty place . . .

The place of lofty repose . . .221

Ninurta, in his “place of lofty repose,” is the precise equivalent of the Egyptian Re, who “resteth on his high place.” That both  gods are identified with the planet Saturn further confirms the striking parallel. What, then, of the great god Shamash, whom one expert after another identifies with the solar orb alone? The prevailing consensus cannot hide the fact that Shamash, like Ninurta and Anu, is addressed as the planet Saturn (“Shamash is Saturn,” say the astronomical texts). Thus Shamash sends forth his light from the immovable centre or “midst” of heaven:

Like the midst of heaven may he shine!222

O Shamash . . . suspended from the midst of heaven.223

O Sun-god, in the midst of heaven . . .224

I have cried to thee, O Sun-god, in the

midst of the glittering heaven.225

 

Let there be no misunderstanding as to the literal and concrete meaning of the “midst.” It is, states Robert Brown, the stationary centre, “that central point where Polaris sat enthroned.226 Accordingly, in the symbolism of the ziggurat and other “sun” temples, Shamash occupies the “summit house,” the “fixed house,” or the “house of rest.”227 The top of the ziggurat, a symbolic model of the Cosmos, is the “light of Shamash,” and the “heart of Shamash,” denoting (in the words of E. G. King) the pivot “around which the highest heaven or sphere of the fixed stars revolved.”228

The Babylonian tradition of the polar sun has been preserved up to the modern era in the tradition of the Mandaeans of Iraq. In their midnight ceremonies these people invoke the celestial pole as Olma I’nhoara, “the world of light.” With the following words they beseech the polar god: “In the name of the living one, blessed be the primitive light, the Divinity self-created.” This polar god, states one observer, is the “primitive sun of the star-worshippers.”229

India

The Hindu Dhruva, whose name means “firm,” stands at the celestial pole—“a Spot blazing with splendour to which the ground is firm, where is fixed the circus of the celestial lights of the planets, which turn all around like oxen round the stake, and which [the Spot] subsists motionless.”230 What remains to be explained by mythologists is that the “obviously solar” god Surya “stands firmly on this safe resting place.”231 Surya, states V. S. Agrawala, “is himself at rest, being the immovable centre of his system.”232 And just as the Egyptian primeval sun “rises and sets” in one place, Surya occupies samanam dhama—“the same place of rising and setting.”233

Another name for the stationary sun is Prajapati. “The sun in the centre is Prajapati: he is the horse that imparts movement  to everything,” writes Agrawala.234

 

5.  Resting Brahma

 

6. Resting Buddha

The motionless Dhruva, Surya, and Prajapati compare with the light of Brahma, called the “true sun,” which, “after having risen thence upwards . . . rises and sets no more. It remains alone in the centre.” 235 Brahma, observes Guenon, is “the pivot around which the world accomplishes its revolution, the immutable centre which directs and regulates cosmic movement.”236

In fact, every Hindu figure of the primeval sun appears as the fixed mover of the heavens. The Hindu Varuna, “seated in the midst of heaven,” is the Recumbent,” the “axis of the universe.”237 “Firm is the seat of Varuna,” declares one of the Vedic hymns.238 In him “all wisdom centres, as the nave is set within the wheel.”239 One of Varuna’s forms is Savitar, the “impeller.” While the rest of the universe revolves, the impeller stands firm. “ . . . Firm shalt thou stand, like Savitar desirable.”240

 

Occupying the same resting place is the supreme god Vishnu “who takes a firm stand in that resting place in the sky.”241 The location is the celestial pole, called “the exalted seat of Vishnu, round which the starry spheres forever wander.”242 Vishnu is the polar sun or central fire: “fiery indeed is the name of this steadfast god,” states one Vedic text.243

A fascinating and archaic form of the Hindu great god is Aja Ekapad, originally conceived as a one-legged goat, the support and mover of the universe. Observes Agrawala: “The question arises as to the meaning of ekapad. It [Aja] is called ekapad or one-footed for the reason that ekapad or one-footed denotes the absence of motion.”244 Agrawala calls this supreme being or principle that of “Absolute Static Rest.”245 “The principle of Rest,” writes the same author, “is inexhaustible and the source of all motion.”246

The sacred ground occupied by the Hindu great god is the “middle place,” “the steadfast region,” or “the motionless heaven.”247 In the Brahmanist tradition it is Nirvana, “the Supreme Resting Place” at the centre and summit.

To the Buddhists this is the nave of the cosmic wheel, the throne of the Buddha himself. It is acalatthana, the “unmoving site,” or the “unconquerable seat of firm seance.”248 The Buddha throne crowned the world axis, states Coomaraswamy.

China

The ancient Emperor on High, according to a universal Chinese tradition, stood at the celestial pole. Chinese astrologers, according to Schlegel, regard the polar god as “the Arch-Premier . . . The most venerated of all the celestial divinities. In fact the Pole star, around which the entire firmament appears to turn, should be considered as the Sovereign of the Sky.”249 The supreme polar god was Shang-ti, the first king. His seat was “the Pivot” and all the heavens turned upon his exclusive power.

Raised to a first principle, the polar god became the mystic Tao, the motor of the Cosmos. The essential idea is contained in the very Chinese word for Tao, which combines the sign for “to stand still” with the sign “to go” and “head.” The Tao is the Unmoved Mover, the god One who goes or “moves” while yet remaining in one place.

Chinese sources proclaim the Tao to be the “light of heaven” and “the heart of heaven”250 that is, the central sun. Action is reversed into non-action,” states Jung. Everything peripheral is subordinated to the command of the centre.” 251 Thus the Tao rules the “golden centre,” which is the “Axis of the World,” according to Erwin Pousselle.252

Yet while many writers have observed the polar station of the Chinese supreme power, few indeed have noticed that Chinese astronomers identify this central sun as the planet Saturn. Saturn, according to the astronomical texts, is “the Pivot,” his primeval seat the celestial pole. It is Saturn, states Schlegel, who imparts motion to the universe.253

One of the few writers to notice Saturn’s connection with the pole is de Saussure, who tells us that Chinese astronomy places the planet in the Centre, around which all secondary elements and powers revolve: “ . . . the Centre represents the Creator, Regulator of the entire Cosmos, the Pole, seat (or throne) of the supreme Divinity.”254 Saturn, states de Saussure, “is the planet of the centre, corresponding to the emperor on earth, thus to the polar star of Heaven.”255

The Americas

In southern Peru the Inca Yupanqui raised a temple at Cuzco to the creator god, the authentic sun, who was superior to the sun we know. Unlike the solar orb he was able to “rest” and “to light the world from one spot.” “It is an extremely important and significant fact,” writes Nuttall, “that the principal doorway of this temple opened to the north.” (Since the north celestial pole is not visible from Cuzco, 14-deg below the equator, Nuttall assumes that this tradition of a polar sun was carried southward.)256

In Mexico a form of the central light is Tezcatlipoca, who, though said to “personify the Sun,” yet resides at the pole— as does Quetzalcoatl, the “sun,” first king, and founder of civilization, who Nahuatl priests say inaugurated the era of “the Centre.”257

 

7.  Resting Xiuhtecuhtli

Burland tells us that, among the Mexicans, “the nearest approach to the idea of a true universal god was Xiuhtecuhtli,” recalled as the Old, Old One who enabled the first ancestors to rise from barbarism. Xiuhtecuhtli appears as the Central Fire and “the heart of the Universe.” “Xiuhtecuhtli was a very special deity.258 He was not only the Lord of Fire which burnt in front of every temple and in the middle of every hut in Mexico, but also Lord of the Pole Star. He was the pivot of the universe and one of the forms of the Supreme Deity.” An obvious counterpart of this central sun is the Mayan creator god Huracan, the “ Heart of Heaven” at the celestial pole.

The Pawnee locate the “star chief of the skies” at the pole. He is the “star that stands still.” Of this supreme power they say, “its light is the radiance of the Sun God shining through.”259

The American Indians also have a counterpart to the Egyptian Still Place and the Hindu Motionless Heaven. A Zuni account relates that long ago the heart of the great father Kian’astepe rested in a sacred spot called the Middle Place. Here, at the cosmic centre, the holy ancestors “sit perfectly still.”260 It does not take a great deal of imagination to see that this is, once more, the stationary pivot of the heavens.

From one land to another one encounters the same connection of the great father or primeval sun with the celestial pole. To the traditions cited above, one might add the following:

In the Persian Zend Avesta the sun god Mithra occupies the summit of the world axis, a fixed station “around which the many stars revolve.”261  The common identification of Mithra with the Zoroastrian Zurvan/Saturn cannot be ignored.

Iranian cosmology, as reported by de Saussure, esteemed the celestial pole as the centre and summit of heaven, where resided “the Great One in the middle of the sky.” who is equated with Kevan, the planet Saturn.262 Throughout the ancient Near East, states H. P. L’Orange, the “King of the Universe” appears as a central sun, “the Axis and the Pole of the World.”263

The Greek sun-god Helios, in an old tradition, resides at the centre of the Cosmos, with the heavenly bodies revolving around him.264 Upon evaluating the imagery of Helios in Homer’s Odyssey, Butterworth concludes that the mythical sun remained always at the zenith, the celestial pole.265 What gives meaning to the tradition is the identity of Helios and the planet Saturn, as earlier documented.

“According to Jewish and Muslim Cosmology,” writes A. J. Wensinck, “the divine throne is exactly above the seventh heaven, consequently it is the pole of the Universe.”266 Thus Isaiah locates the throne of El (originally the planet Saturn) in the farthest reaches of the north.267

The alchemists regarded the pole as the dwelling place of “the central fire,” the motor of the heavens. “ . . . The whole machinery of the world is drawn by the infernal fire at the North Pole,” notes Jung. 268 An alchemical text proclaims: “At the Pole is the heart of Mercurius, which is the resting place of his Lord.”269 “Most important of all for an interpretation of Mercurius,” Jung writes, “is his relation to Saturn. Mercurius senex [the aged Mercurius] is identical with Saturn.”270

Records of numerous nations around the world stand as a collective witness to a strange, yet consistent idea— an idea which finds no explanation in the heavens we know. Global myths insist that when the first civilizations rose from barbarism a brilliant light occupied the celestial pole. This steadfast light was the ancient sun-god, repeatedly identified as the planet Saturn, the Universal Monarch.

Is it possible to reckon with this extraordinary memory in terms acceptable to the modern age? Mythologists and historians of religion always assume that archaic astral traditions, though filled with imaginative explanations, nevertheless refer to the very celestial order which confronts us today. The entire Saturn myth challenges this long-standing assumption. Could it be that Saturn’s image as the polar sun—however strange, however difficult to reconcile with present physical theory—represents true history?