I.       . The Great Father

Anyone 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
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
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
4. Whether emphasizing the great father’s character as creator, first king, or Heaven Man, widespread traditions proclaim him to be the planet

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

In 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. Frazer4 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 ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, reveal a tradition of a “great god” reaching back into prehistoric times. Moreover, a comparison of early and later sources, rather than suggesting a development, actually indicates the disintegration of a once-unified idea into magic, astrology, totemism, and other elements with which the evolutionists associate the “first stages” of religion.

 

1. Atum, the solitary god of

There are grounds for speaking of an archaic monotheism, astral in nature, existing long before the idea of God received its spiritual and philosophical elevation in Hebrew and Greek thought. To the ancients themselves the entire question was simply a matter of concrete history: the present world is a fragmented copy of an earlier  age, in which the supreme light god stood alone in a primeval sea, occupying the cosmic centre.

Ancient Egyptian texts repeatedly invoke a singular figure worshipped as the greatest and highest light of the primeval age. One of his many names was Atum, a god “born in the Abyss before the sky existed, before the earth existed.”5 These are the words of the Pyramid Texts, perhaps the world’s oldest religious hymns, but the texts of all periods look back to the same primordial time when Atum shone forth alone. “I came into being of myself in the midst of the Primeval Waters,” states the god in the Book of the Dead.6 More than once the Coffin Texts recall the time when Atum “was alone, before he had repeated himself.”7 He “was alone in the Primeval Waters,” they say.8 “I was [the spirit in?] the Primeval Waters, he who had no companion when my name came into existence.9

Each locality in Egypt appears to have possessed its own special representative of the father god.10 To some he was Horus, “the god who came first into being when no other god had yet come into existence, when no name of anything had yet been proclaimed.”11 Other traditions knew him as Re, “the God One who came into being in the beginning of time . . . O thou who didst give Thyself birth! O one, mighty one of myriad forms and aspects, king of the world . . .”12

The followers of Amen proclaimed their god “the Ancient of Heaven . . . , father of the gods.13 “ Ptah was “the splendid god who existed alone in the beginning.”14

The different local names of the primeval deity, though adding complexity to Egyptian religion as a whole, do not cloud the underlying idea. He is the “god One,” the “Only One,” the “father of beginnings,” the “Supreme Lord,” the singular god “except whom at the beginning none other existed.”15

Surveying Egyptian religion one cannot fail to notice the priests’ obsession with the past—and their vivid portrait of the great god in his “first appearance.” Those who look for an unseen creator in early Egyptian religion will be disappointed. He is a visible and concrete power, the “lord of terror,” or “the great of terror.”16 The memory of this solitary light god and creator was as old as the most ancient Egyptian ritual. His appearance—and eventual departure—shaped every aspect of the Egyptian world view.

So also in Mesopotamia, about which Stephen Langdon raises the question of archaic monotheism. After prolonged study of Semitic and Sumerian sources, Langdon concludes that veneration of spirits and demons had nothing to do with the origins of Mesopotamian religion. Rather, “both in Sumerian and Semitic religions, monotheism preceded polytheism and belief in good and evil spirits.”17

Langdon notes that on the pictographic tablets of the prehistoric period, the picture of a star repeatedly appears. The sign , he claims, is virtually the only religious symbol in the primitive period, and in the early Sumerian language this star symbol is the ideogram for writing “god,” “high,” “heaven,” and “bright.” It is also the ideogram of An, the oldest and loftiest of the Sumerian gods.

 

An (or Anu) was the father of the gods and the central light at the universe summit, a god of “terrifying splendour” who governed heaven from his throne in the cosmic sea Apsu.

But the Sumero-Babylonian pantheon is filled with competing figures of the primordial creator. Enki (or Ea), Ningirsu, Ninurta, Tammuzeach appears as a local formulation of the same great god.18 Each shares in the character of the singular An, ruling as universal lord, fashioning his home above and radiating light in the midst of the celestial ocean.

Here, as in Egypt, the god of archaic monotheism is not a transcendent spirit or invisible power, but a central light. A Sumerian epic to Ninurta proclaims, “Anu in the midst of Heaven gave him fearful splendour.” Ninurta, according to the text, is “like Anu,” and casts “a shadow of glory over the land.” 19 All Mesopotamian figures of the primeval god possess this tangible character, and accounts of the god’s radiant appearance are more of a historical than a speculative nature.

Egyptian and Mesopotamian traditions of the solitary creator find many parallels in later Hebrew, Greek, Persian, Hindu, and Chinese mysticism and philosophy. But it is the earlier imagery which illuminates the later. And however unorthodox the idea may seem, the oldest records treat the great god’s birth in the deep and his acts of “creation” as events experienced by the ancestors. “Hearts were pervaded with fear, hearts were pervaded with terror when I was born in the abyss,” proclaims the god in the Pyramid Texts.20 The solitary god, in the presence of the ancestors, brought forth the primeval world or “earth.” To understand the great god’s creation one must put aside modern philosophical and religious conceptions. The tradition has nothing to do with the origins of our planet or of the material universe. The subject of the original creation legend is the formation of the great god’s visible dwelling above. The legend records that when the creator rose from the cosmic sea a great band or revolving island congealed around the god as his home. The band appeared as a well-defined, organized, and geometrically unified dwelling—a celestial “land” fashioned by the great father. All space outside this enclosure belonged to unorganized Chaos.

In a later section of this book I intend to show that ancient races the world over recorded pictures of the great god and  his  circular  abode.  The  images  were   and  (the second, more complete form showing streams of light radiating from the god to animate his “city of heaven”). The words which in the ancient languages denote this enclosure receive various translations as “heaven,” “cosmos,” “world,” “land,” “earth,” “netherland”—terms which take on vastly different meanings in modern usage. In their original sense the words signified one and the same thing: a band of light which appeared to set apart the “sacred ground” of the great god from the rest of space.

(One cannot begin a survey of the great father without confronting his celestial enclosure, but a full discussion of this dwelling will be possible only after certain other aspects of the single god receive clarification. I mention the enclosure now in order to indicate the general, and unconventional, direction of this investigation. When texts cited in the following pages employ the terms “heaven,” “earth,” or “world” the reader should know that the usual interpretation will not be my interpretation.)

Of the Egyptian Atum (or Re) I note these special characteristics:

1. Primeval Unity. Atum is the “One,” but also the “All.” Though he is the solitary god of beginnings, an assembly of lesser gods emanate from him and revolve in his company. These secondary deities, the paut or “circle” of the gods, constitute Atum’s own “limbs.” Atum’s body is the primeval Cosmos,21 denoted by the circle in the sign
2. Atum is the stationary god, the “Firm Heart of the Sky.” His hieroglyph,  however, is the primitive sledge  ,     signifying “to move.” As the central light or pivot, he imparts motion to (or “moves”) the heavens, while he himself remains em hetep, “at rest.” Directing the celestial motions (and the related cycles) he becomes the god of Time.22
3. The Word. The Egyptians recall Atum as the ancient Voice if heaven:

The Word came into being.

All things were mine when I was alone.

I was Re [=Atum] in his first manifestations.

The texts describe the god’s “first manifestations”23  as the bringing forth of his companions (his “limbs”), which   issue

—or explode—from the god as his fiery “speech.” This circle of secondary divinities receives the name Khu, meaning “words of power,” but also “brilliant lights” or “glorious lights.”

4. Water God. A well-known chapter of Book of the Dead includes this description of Re:

 

I am the Great God who created himself. Who is he?

The Great God who created himself is the water it is the Abyss, the Father of the Gods.24

The great god and the celestial oocean—“a lake of fire”—are fundamentally one. The waters issue from the god yet, paradoxically, give birth to him.

5. The Seed. Atum is the masculine power of heaven, the luminous Seed embodying all the elements of life (water, fire, air, etc.), which flow from him in streams of light. He is the universal source of fertility animating and impregnating the 25

What is most compelling about the portrait of Atum-Re is that numerous Egyptian divinities duplicate the image. The very traits of the great god, outlined above, are endlessly repeated in the figures of Osiris, Ptah, Horus, Khepera, and Ameneach of whom appears as the solitary god in the fiery sea; the god One who brought forth the company of gods as his own limbs; the god of the reverberating speech; the unmoving god producing the celestial revolutions; the final source of waters and the impregnating Seed of the Cosmos.26

If we were to inquire of an Egyptian priest how he arrived at this notion of the supreme god, the priest would tell us that he did not “arrive” at the idea at all. The great god was a historical divinity, who ruled heaven for a time, then  departed amid great upheavals. The hymns and ritual texts (the priest would say) simply record the incarnation of the god in the primordial era and recount the massive cataclysms which accompanied the collapse of that era.

As the following sections will show, the general tradition is global and highly coherent.

The Universal Monarch

The same cosmic figure whom the oldest races knew as the creator and supreme god appears in the myths as a terrestrial king, reigning over the Golden Age. His rule was distinguished for its peace and abundance, and he governed not one land alone but the entire world, becoming the model of the good king. Every terrestrial ruler, according to the kingship rites, received his charisma and authority from this divine predecessor.

No mythical figure remains more enigmatic than the great king to whom so many ancient peoples traced their ancestry. Who was Osiris, the legendary ruler who led the Egyptians out of barbarianism and reigned as king of the entire world? Who was Enki, whom the ancient Sumerians revered as the “universal lord” and founder of civilization?

The same figure appears repeatedly as one passes to India, Greece, China, and the Americas. For the Hindus it was Yama; for the Greeks, Kronos; for the Chinese, Huang-ti. The Mexicans insisted that the white god Quetzalcoatl once ruled not only Mexico but all mankind. In North America the same idea attached to the primordial figure Manabozo.

So vivid are the recollections of the Universal Monarch that his story usually forms the first chapter in the chronicles of kingship. And the kingship rites meticulously preserve a memory of the god-kings rule. Each  stage in the inauguration of a new king reenacts the “first” king’s life and death. The rites take the initiated back to the beginning—to the mythical “creation.”

An extraordinary theme emerges: In the original age of cosmic harmony and human innocence the gods dwelt on earth. Presiding over the epoch of peace and plenty was the Universal Monarch, who founded temples and cities and taught humanity the principles of agriculture, law, writing, music, and other civilized arts. This Golden Age, however, ended in the god-king’s catastrophic death.

What is most puzzling to modern commentators is that the king of the world, “ruling on earth,” is at the same time the creator, the “god One.” How did the ancients come upon this paradoxical notion?

The Age of Kronos

Greek legends recall a remote and mysterious era of Kronos, the creator god who, wielding his sickle, ruled from the summit of Olympus. Eventually displaced by his own son, against whom he warred violently, Kronos seems to have appeared to the Greeks as a split personality, at once a radiant god—the very author of the world

—and a dark, demonic power.

But in an old tradition, with roots in earliest antiquity, Kronos is preeminently the good king, his darker side concealed. “First of all the deathless gods who dwell on Olympus made a golden race of mortal men who lived in the time of Kronos when he was reigning in

 

heaven. And they lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: miserable age rested not on them . . . The fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint. They dwelt in ease and peace upon their lands with many good things, rich in flocks and loved by the blessed gods”27

When Hesiod wrote these lines the Golden Age of Kronos was but a faint and often confused memory. To observe the antiquity of the idea one need only refer to the cradles of ancient civilization—Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Among the Egyptians the father of the paradisal age possessed many names, but each tradition proclaimed the same original excellence of creation, subsequently corrupted. The peaceful epoch was distinctly the age of Kronos, under a different title. “Throughout their history the Egyptians believed in a time of perfection at the beginning of the world,” observes Clark.28

In the earliest age, say the Egyptian sources, the great god was the first king, a ruler whose life served as a model for all succeeding ages. With the god-king Osiris the Egyptians constantly associated a vanished Golden Age. As king, Osiris, the “Beneficent Being,” taught his subjects to worship the gods, gave them the arts of civilization, and formulated the laws of justice. Founding sacred temples and cities and disseminating wisdom from one land to another, he became the benefactor of the whole world.29  But his eventual murder brought world-wide destruction.

Among classical writers (Herodotus, Diodorus, Plutarch) the idea prevailed that Osiris lived on our earth as a man or man-god. Egyptian sources, too, often portray him in human form. Yet the early religious  texts  say again and again that Osiris was the supreme light of heaven, ruling from the cosmic centre. He was, in fact, “the lord of the gods, god One.”30 His body formed the Circle of the Tuat, the celestial residence of the gods. And the secondary gods themselves constituted the limbs of Osiris.31

Indeed, the traditions of Osiris melt into those of Re, the “god One, who came into being in primeval time.” Just as Osiris’ followers remembered his rule on earth, so did other Egyptians recall the terrestrial reign of the Creator Re. To this age, states Lenormant, the Egyptians “continually looked back with regret and envy. To declare the superiority of one thing above all other  things imaginable, it was enough to affirm, ‘its like had never been seen since the days of Re.’32

Re, the father of the gods, reigned over the terrestrial world, but wandered away when the heavens fell into disorder. “All chronological tradition affirms that Re had once ruled over Egypt,” writes Budge, “and it is a remarkable fact that every possessor of the throne of Egypt was proved by some means or other to have the blood of Re flowing in his veins . . .” 33 But the same belief applied to Horus, the god-king par excellence, as well as Atum, Khepera, Ptah, and Amen. The fact which must be explained is that the memory of the creator-king and his original age of abundance was far broader than any local tradition.

And the story was not limited to Egypt. According to the theologian and historian Eusebius (who relates the account of the Babylonian priest-historian Berossus), the ancient tribes of Chaldea owed their civilization to a powerful and benevolent figure named Oannes, who ruled before the Deluge. Prior to Oannes, the tribes lived “without order, like the beasts.” But the new god-king, who issued from the sea, instructed mankind in writing and various arts, the formation of cities, and the founding of temples. “He also taught them the use of laws, of bounds and divisions, also the harvesting of grains and fruits, and in short all that pertains to the mollifying of life he delivered to men; and since that time nothing more has been invented by anybody.”34

Oannes was simply the Greek name for the Babylonian Ea (the Sumerian Enki), worshipped in the city of Eridu at the mouth of the Euphrates. The tradition dates to the earliest stage of Sumerian history, a time when the myths say that Enki and his wife Damkina governed the lost paradise of Dilmun, the “pure place” of man’s genesis.

They alone reposed in Dilmun; Where Enki and his wife reposed,

That place was pure, that place was clean . . .

In Dilmun the raven croaked not. The kite shrieked not kite-like.

The lion mangled not.

The wolf ravaged not the lambs.35

The inhabitants of this paradise lived in a state of near perfection, drinking the waters of life and enjoying unbounded prosperity.

 

Ruling over this favoured domain, Enki introduced civilization to mankind, founded the first cities and temples, and set down the first laws.

If, in the account of Berossus, the bringer of civilization appears as a man (or part man, part fish), the earlier accounts call him the creator. His home was the cosmic sea Apsu, the celestial waters of “fire, rage, splendour and terror.”36 The priests of Ea or Enki deemed him Mummu, the creative “Word.” Like the Egyptian creator, Enki brought forth the secondary gods through his own speech.

Diverse localities worshipped the same cosmic power under different names. In the ancient city of Lagash the priests honoured the god Ninurta as the father of the paradisal age. Ninurta founded temples and cities; the  years of his rule, connected with the beginning of the world, were “years of plenty.”

Ninurta—scaled the mountain and scattered seed far and wide, And the plants with one accord named him as their king.37

The Sumerians themselves knew that Ninurta was the same as the “vegetation god” Damuzi (or Tammuz), “son of the Apsu”—the shepherd of mankind whom classical mythology knew as Adonis and whose catastrophic departure or death became the focus of ritual lamentations for many hundreds of years.

But Enki, Ninurta, and Damuzi were only aspects of the creator An, whose ideogram (as previously noted) appears as the earliest Mesopotamian sign of divinity. In all the myths and temple hymns, the Sumerians distinguish the present age from “that day,” or “the days of old,” when the gods “gave man abundance, the day when vegetation flourished.”38 The supreme figure reigning over this remote age was AN, the central and highest light, whose foremost epithet was lugal, “king.” The Sumerians claimed that the very institution of kingship descended from “the heaven of An.” It was An who produced the beneficent age—“when the destiny was fixed for everything that was engendered (by An), when An engendered the year of abundance.”39

How widespread was this memory of a Golden Age, foundered and governed by the creator himself? It appears that the tradition was either preserved in or migrated to every section of the world. In Mexico, legends recount the ancient rule of Quetzalcoatl, who appeared from the sea to become the good and wise ruler of Tollan, in the Golden Age of Anahuac. The legend describes the god as a “lawgiver, teacher of the arts, and founder of purified religion.”40 He was the “Ancestral Founding King,” and all later Toltec kings considered themselves his direct descendants41 Of Quetzalcoatl the Toltecs sang:

All the arts of the Toltecs,

their knowledge, everything came from Quetzalcoatl. The Toltecs were wealthy,

their foodstuffs, their sustenance, cost nothing.

They say that the squash were big and heavy . . .

And those Toltecs were very rich, they were very happy;

There was no poverty or sadness. Nothing was lacking in their houses, There was no hunger among them . . .42

In the story of Quetzalcoatl one finds the same confusion of man and god as in the legends of Egypt and Mesopotamia. The chronicler Sahagun writes, “Although this Quetzalcoatl had been a man they respected him as a god.” 43 Indeed, he was the creator, for “He made the heavens, the sun, the earth.”44 The Toltecs claim that in the beginning their race knew only one god:

Only one god did they have, and they held him as the only god, they invoked him,

they supplicated him; his name was Quetzalcoatl.45

Not only was Quetzalcoatl the “Giver of Life”; the legend proclaims that the first divine generation emanated directly from him. But eventually the god (like his counterparts around the world) suffered a violent fate, bringing to an end his Golden Age. To the

 

Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and American Indian accounts of the remote epoch correspond numerous legends of India, Iran, China, and northern Europe:

India. The Hindu Brahma, Yama, Vishnu, and Manu converge as representatives of a solitary supreme god and creator governing a lost paradise as the first king, setting forth the first moral codes, and imparting to mankind the fundamentals of civilization. Yama appears as the “universal lord”; Manu, as the “king of the world” or “universal legislator,” to whom later monarchs traced their lineage.46

“In the beginning,” say the Upanishads, “there arose the Golden Child. As soon as born he alone was lord of all that is.”47 This was Brahma, the “god One.” His prosperous epoch, however, ended in his own death and a world-destroying conflagration.

Iran. Yima, the Iranian transcript of the Hindu Yama, is the patriarchal lord of mankind, the “brilliant Yima” who first introduced law and civilization to the world. His age knew “neither cold nor heat . . . neither age nor death.” So resplendent was his rule that “the world assembled round his throne in wonder.” But then (when Yima diverged from the path of justice), the Glory fled from his kingdom, and he was put to death. Thereupon, the eternal spring became a devastating winter.48

China. In the earliest age, according to ancient Chinese lore, the purest pleasure and tranquillity reigned throughout all nature. Mankind suffered neither hunger, nor pain, nor sorrow. “The whole creation enjoyed a state of happiness . . . , and things grew without labour; and a universal fertility prevailed.” It was over just such a paradise that the “Yellow Emperor” Huang-ti ruled. Considered the father of the Taoist religion, Huang-ti was the creator, a universal lawmaker and founder of arts and civilization. He was also a mortal, and his fruitful era vanished upon his death.49

Northern Europe. During the “peace of Frodi,” a mythical Danish king, no man injured another and a magical mill ground out peace and plenty for the entire land. Frodi is the Norse god Frey, founder of temples and religious rites, the “generous lord under whom peace and fruitfulness abounded,” both the “lord of the Swedes” and “god of the world.” In the footsteps of the Scandinavian Odin (the creator) well-being, peace, and good seasons followed. The legends style him the first king, the “inventor of arts,” and the source of human wisdom. But the age of Frey dissolved in flames, just as Odin and his prosperous kingdom came crashing down in the fires of Ragnarok.50

Here then, is a world-wide motif, deeply ingrained in the religious and historical records of all principal races. “The idea of the Edenic happiness of the first human beings constitutes one of the universal traditions,” states Lenormant. 51 Ministering over this age is the Universal Monarch. While extolled as the solitary supreme god and the creator of the world, he yet appears as a ruler on earth, the ancestor of terrestrial kings. By his teaching mankind rose from barbarianism. But in the end the god met a catastrophic fate, and his death or departure brought a violent termination of the first world order.

The Rites of Kingship

The ritual surrounding ancient kings amounts to a summary of ancient beliefs about the Universal Monarch, for every local sovereign was the successor and representative of the great god who ruled the world during the Golden Age. The rites of kingship testify to the enormous power which the collective memory of this god-king held over later generations. Chronicles of kingship from Egypt, to Mesopotamia, to Persia, to China, to Italy, to northern Europe, to pre-Columbian Mexico all trace the line of kings back to the first king, a supreme cosmic deity who “founded” the kingship rites.

“When history begins there are kings, the representatives of the gods,” states Hocart. 52 No greater mistake could be made by historians than to assume that the sovereignty of kings grew out of economic or material concerns. Instead, the crucial forces were religious. The king was a product of ancient ritual, and the ritual centered in cosmic beliefs which, for several millennia, could not be shaken loose. To comprehend the mighty influence of kingship in the ancient world one must penetrate the mystery of the king’s prototype, the Universal Monarch.

In the first king’s life and rule originated the prerogatives and obligations of all local sovereigns. It was the duty of every king to perform the rites instituted by the great god in the beginning, and to renew, if only symbolically, the primordial era of peace and plenty.

In the ritual, the king turns the wheel of law first turned by the great god, rides on the god’s own cosmic ship, takes as spouse the great mother (mistress of the great father), builds temples and cities patterned after the god’s celestial abode,  and subdues the forces of darkness (barbarians), just as the god defeated chaos in the beginning. Whatever the marvels of the great father, it is the duty of each local king to repeat them, or at least ritually to reenact these accomplishments as if he were the great god him self.

In his study of kingship in Egypt, Henri Frankfort tells us that the great god was the first king: “Whether named Re, Khepri or Atum, he is the prototype of Pharaoh, and the texts abound in phrases drawing the comparison.” 53  To certify his

 

authority as a successor of the Universal Monarch, the king credits himself with having introduced an age of abundance like that of the ancestral sovereign. Thus, Thutmose III not only sits “upon the throne of Atum,” but claims to have achieved “what had not been done since the time of Re” and to have restored conditions “as they were in the beginning.” 54 Amenhotep III strives “to make the country flourish as in primeval times”55

Similarly, when the Sumerian king Dungi ascended the throne, the people supposed that a champion had arisen to restore the Paradise which existed before the Flood (but was lost through transgression). 56 Each king, states Alfred Jeremias, was expected to reproduce the wonders of the great god, the primeval king.57 Thus does Assurbanipal proclaim that upon his ascension to the throne “Ramman has sent forth his rain—the harvest was plentiful, the corn was abundant—the cattle multiplied exceedingly.”58

Among the Hebrews, “Every king is a Messiah, and at times the hope is expressed that the king will introduce a new Golden Age.59 “ Such is the test of the just or good ruler, who brings prosperity and a fruitful earth. This belief, which seems to have held sway over the entire ancient world, receives insufficient attention from historians: it points directly to the extraordinary memory of the Universal Monarch.

Consider: Homer gives as the ideal “a blameless king whose fame goes up to the wide heaven, maintaining right, and the black earth bears wheat and barley and the trees are laden with fruit, and the sheep bring forth and fail not, and the sea hives store of fish, and all from his good guidance, and the people prosper.”60

Can this be anything other than the lost age of Kronos? Why should a fertile soil confirm the righteousness of kings? The connection becomes clear once one takes the Universal Monarch as more than an esoteric fiction and recognizes him as  the shaping force behind the ideals of kingship. Just as peace and plenty followed in the footsteps of the first (ideal, “good”) king,  they should follow those of his successors who share in the charisma of the great predecessor.

“The further we go back in history,” observes Jung, “the more evident does the king’s divinity become . . . In the Near East the whole essence of kingship was based far more on theological than on political considerations . . . it was self-evident that the king was the magical source of welfare and prosperity for the entire organic community of man, animal, and plant; from him flowed the life and prosperity of his subjects, the increase of the herds, and the fertility of the land.” 61 This image of the local king is drawn directly from the image of the Universal Monarch.

Thus did every ancient ruler call himself the “king of the world” and claim to radiate power and light. Thompson tells us that the Mayan ruler declared himself “as something like King of Kings, ruler of the world, regent on earth of the great Itzam Na . . . a sort of divine right of kings which would have turned James I green with envy.”62 What Thompson calls an “inflated notion of grandeur” seems to characterize all ancient kings (who “shine like the sun” and direct the heavenly motions); but the reason must be appreciated: every king was, in a magical way, the Universal Monarch reborn. The institution and ritual of kingship point to the same great god and the same Golden Age as do the myths of cosmic beginnings.

In what historical conditions did this collective memory originate? And if the Universal Monarch governed the entire heavens as the god One, why was he called an “ancestor”?

The Heaven Man

So vivid was the great father’s celestial image and so overpowering was his influence on civilization in its infancy, that the ancient chroniclers often gave him human form, recalling him as the “first man.” But he was no mortal of flesh and blood. In his original character he upheld the Cosmos as the Heaven Man, a celestial giant whose body encompassed all the gods and composed the “primeval matter” of creation.

The great father reigned over the prosperous age and then departed amid great upheavals. The mythical accounts give this imposing figure such tangible and “human” traits that more than one scholar reduces him to a living man

—an esteemed tribal ancestor whose heroic exploits succeeding generations progressively enlarged until the entire universe came under his authority.

This is the approach of William Ridgeway, who, in a survey of the best-known figures of the great father, argues that only an actual tribal chief could have left such a profound imprint on primitive communities. Ridgeway asks us whether the abstract “sky,” or the solar orb, or a vegetation spirit—common explanations of the great father

—could produce such devotion as is evident in the annual lamentations over the ruler’s catastrophic death. Osiris, Brahma, Tammuz, Quetzalcoatl—their devotees remember each as a living ancestor, whose passing was a terrifying calamity.63

Of course Ridgeway does not assume that one man alone accounts for all the traditions of a great father. Rather he seeks to identify each in terms of a historical figure quite distinct from the venerated ancestors of other tribes. If his arguments against prevailing astronomical and vegetation theories carry great weight,    they fail to

 

explain the global parallel between the respective myths. Nor can one reconcile Ridgeway’s interpretation with the incontrovertible fact that, in the earliest accounts, the great father is manifestly cosmic.

That many sacred histories, however, present the creator-king in human form is a paradox requiring an explanation. The solution lies in the nature of the legendary “first man.”

Who Was Adam?

If one compares the traditions of Adam with the global image of the great father there can be little doubt that this primal ancestor was simply a special form of the Universal Monarch. According to Hebrew legends  Adam’s stature was so great that he extended from earth to the centre of heaven.64 His countenance obscured the sun.65 Like the Universal Monarch, “Adam was lord on earth, to rule and control it,”66 teaching his subjects the first arts and sciences.67 The myths say that terrestrial creatures “took him to be their creator, and they all came to offer him adoration.”68 While the chroniclers call this a “mistake,” substantial evidence shows that the tradition pertained more to a god than a man.

In Gnostic and other mystic systems Adam is not a mortal but a cosmic being whose body contained the seed of all later creation. As observed by G.G. Scholem, summarizing the traditions of the Hebrew Kabala. Adamor Adam Qadmonis the “primordial man,” that is, “a vast representation of the power of the universe,” which is concentrated in him. 69 This Adam is a “man of light” occupying the centre of the Cosmos and radiating energy along the axis of the universe. He is creator and supporter of the world, whose body encloses all the elements of life.70

Islamic mystics called Adam “the universal man” or “the perfect man” upholding the cosmos.71 To the Ophites of the early Christian era, he was Adamas, “the man from on high” or, in the words of Lenormant, “the typical perfect man, that is, the heavenly prototype of ‘man.’“ In one of the cosmogonic fragments preserved in the extracts of Sanchuniathon (as recorded by Philo  of Byblos) Adam is born at the beginning of all things and is identical with the Greek ouranos, “heaven.”72 The modern day Mandaeans of Iraq know Adam as the “King of the Universe,” a personification of all that spiritual man is intended to be and achieve.73

This, of course, sounds almost exactly like the primordial god One of global legend. Indeed, in the myths of many lands the first man and creator-king are identical. Though the Hindu Yama and his counterpart Manu appear as the creator and king of the world, they also signify the primal ancestor. Their character as first man, however, does not mean flesh and blood. They are the celestial prototypes, notes Lenormant, symbolic of “man” in general.74

The role of the Hindu Yama is filled in Persian myth not only by Yima, but also by Gaya Maretan, a legendary first king, a man of perfect purity, “produced brilliant and white, radiant and tall.”75 He, too, “appears as the prototype of mankind.”76

Many myths make no distinction between the creator and first man. The Oceanic Tiki “is at once the first man, and the creator or progenitor of man.”77 Among the Koryak the creator of the world is also “the first man, the father and protector of the Koryak.”78 The Assiniboin, a North American Siouan tribe, say that it was the First Man who brought the World out of the primeval water. “ . . . They also say of the First Man, the Creator, that no one made him, and that he is immortal.”79

The Altaic Tatars similarly speak of a World Man or First Man. In the creation myths he doubles for god himself and raises the World from the cosmic waters.80 Comparable is the World Man of the Laps,81 or the Lonely Man whom the Yakuts deem the first ancestor and whose dwelling pierced the summit of heaven.82

If the general tradition be our guide, Adam is the solitary god of beginnings, presented in human form. This was the opinion of the controversial Gerald Massey, who, enchanted by the depth of Egyptian cosmology, proposed that the Hebrew Adam echoed the older Egyptian Atum, the god who shone forth alone in the Abyss. 83 It matters little whether the relationship of the two figures is as direct as Massey suggested. Throughout the ancient world the original god One passed into the legendary first ancestor.

As the creative intelligence and voice (Word) of heaven, the great father came to be viewed as the thinking and speaking “man”—a towering giant whose body was the original Cosmos. Both Atum and the later Adam possess this distinctive character as Heaven Man, but certain developments of the idea stand out:

1. In the Egyptian version of the myth the great god (Atum-Re), through tumultuous “speech,” brings forth a circle of subordinate gods as satellites revolving in his company and forming his own limbs. The central god and his revolving members compose the primordial cosmos (Heaven, World). The crucial term is paut, “primeval matter,” referring to the material emitted by Atum, which took form as the Paut is equivalent to the Khu or fiery “words of power” uttered by the great god. The term

 

signifies at once the “circle” of the gods and the “body” of Atum-Re. Which is to say: Cosmos = Company of Gods = Creator’s Limbs, Body.

That the created Cosmos emanated from the primordial god is a theme which persisted in later traditions of Adam. From Adam Qadmon sprang successive degrees of creation. Gnostic tradition knew Adam as the prima materia of the Cosmos84—a remarkable parallel to the Egyptian primeval matter, the limbs of Atum-Re.

The great god’s body embraces and is “heaven”—not only in Egyptian but in all principal cosmologies. Like Atum, the Sumerian An encompasses “the entire heaven”; indeed, his very name signifies “heaven,” and one can trace the equation of “god” and “heaven” (or “shining heaven”) through all of the ancient languages. The Chinese tien signifies both the high god and “heaven,” as does the Altaic tengri. The Sanskrit dyaus (Latin deus) carries the double meaning “god” and “heaven.” It is useless to look to the open sky for an explanation of this equivalence. Originally, “heaven” meant the organized Cosmos (or body) of the god One, formed by the circle of lesser gods. The myths unanimously insist that this celestial order collapsed with the death of the great god, the Heaven Man.

2. The all-embracing character of the great father facilitated an important development of the god’s image at a time when cultural mixture could have destroyed the “monotheistic” theme. In ancient Egypt almost every district seems to have had its favoured representative of the god One, a fact which gives the great compendiums of Egyptian religion (Pyramid Texts, ) a misleading appearance of confusion. How can we speak of a solitary god when Egyptian texts refer to an endless number of primary deities?

In more than one locality the priests themselves at least partially resolved the problem by adopting alien gods as the limbs of the local great god—a process obviously encouraged by the preexisting image of the god as Heaven Man. This habit was widespread in Egypt and occurred as early as the Pyramid Texts, which assimilate a number of once-independent gods into the body of Atum:

Your head is Horus of the Netherworld, O Imperishable . . .

Your nose is the Jackal [Ap-uat], Your teeth are Sopd, O Imperishable,

Your hands are Hapy and Duamutef . . .

Your feet are ‘Imsety and Kebhsenuf . . . etc.85

A hymn from the Papyrus of Ani similarly honours Osiris: The hair of Osiris Ani is the hair of Nu.

The face of Osiris Ani is the face of Re.

The eyes of Osiris Ani are the eyes of Hathor. The ears of Osiris Ani are the ears of Ap-uat. The lips of Osiris Ani are the lips of Anpu . . .86

In almost the same words, the Papyrus of Nu joins the divinities Osiris, Ptah, Anpu, Hathor, Horus, Isis, and others to the body of Re.87 In the Memphite theology Atum, Horus, Thoth, and the company of gods became the limbs of Ptah.88 Syncretization of this sort, though appearing absurd to us today, actually helped to preserve the original idea against the eroding forces of cultural assimilation. Faced with a growing number of competing deities, the priests proclaimed: there was only one great god in the beginning, whose body encompassed a circle of subordinate deities.

3. In a subsequent development of the myth, the Heaven Man passed into a mythical-philosophical explanation of our Earth and the material universe as a whole. Here the god appears as a primordial giant who existed before the Deluge and gave his body to creation—not the creation of the primordial Cosmos, but of our world with its mountains, seas, clouds, and surrounding heavenly

A noteworthy example is the Scandinavian primeval giant Ymir. In the Prose Edda the gods fashion “the world” from the giant’s body—“from his blood the sea and lakes, from his flesh the earth, from his bones the mountains.” His teeth become rocks and pebbles, his skull the sky, and his brains the clouds. The sparks and burning embers produced by his dismemberment become the stars.89

Compare the Hindu giant Purusha, whose body formed the world: “His mouth was the Brahman, . . . his two thighs the Vaisya; from his two feet the Sudra was born. The moon was born from his mind; from his eye the sun was born. From his navel was produced the air; from his head the sky was evolved; from his two feet the earth; from his ears the quarters.”90

Purusha is the Primal Man. In Buddhist lore this cosmic giant is Bodhisattva Manjucri; elsewhere in China the role  belongs  to  the  demiurge  Pan-Ku,  whose  body  provides  the  material  for  creation.91   The Zoroastrians

 

claimed that the created world was the giant Spihr (“Cosmos”), the body of the great god Zurvan.92 All such heaven- sustaining giants can be best understood by reference to the original Cosmos of the god One, rather than the open expanse to which the term “heaven” normally refers today.

4. If the giant myths emphasized the material form of the Heaven Man, an age of metaphysics stressed the god’s character as universal intelligence, raising his image to a high degree of philosophical purity. The god One became the First Principle, First Cause, Mind, Word, or Self (logos, nous, sophia, tao, ). Yet in none of these cases did detached philosophy succeed in creating a pure abstraction. The Greek nous, the animating “Mind” or “Intelligent Spirit,” was never fully divorced from the antecedent tradition of the Heaven Man. Both Eusebius and Syncellus identify the great Mind with Prometheus, the Primordial Man who lived before the Deluge.93 In Orphic description of the universal Mind it is hardly distinguishable from the Hindu giant Purusha: “ . . . All things were contained within the vast womb of the god. Heaven was his head: the bright beams of the stars were his radiant locks . . . The all-productive earth was his sacred womb: the circling ocean was his belt . . . ; his body, the universe, was radiant, immovable, eternal; and the pure ether was his intellectual soul, the mighty Nous, by which he pervades, animates, preserves, and governs, all things.”94

Nous was the primordial One, from which all things emanated—the central light which produced and regulated the Cosmos (body). An exactly equivalent notion was the Hindu Universal Self. Here the original concept certainly did not mean “invisible soul” or anything like it. The cosmic Self was Brahma or Prajapati, the “Golden Child” who appeared alone on the first occasion. “In the beginning,” say the Upanishads, “Prajapati stood alone.”95

The same texts say, “In the beginning there was Self alone.” From the primordial Self, enclosing all the life elements, issued the creation in successive degrees. “From the Self sprang ether; from ether, air; from air, fire; from fire, water” . . . etc. 96 (Adam Qadmon radiated the elements in similar fashion.)

Hindu thought portrays the Universal Self as the first form (and the animating soul) of the Heaven Man. “In the beginning this universe was nothing but the self in the form of a man. It looked around and saw that there was nothing but itself, whereupon its first shout was ‘It is I!’; whence the concept ‘I’ arose.” Then the Self “poured forth” the creation. The created World (Cosmos), in Hindu myth, took form as the giant Purusha, recognized as the body of Prajapati-Brahma (Self).

Numerous traditions view the emanation or pouring out of creation as the great god’s “speech.” This is the root meaning of the Greek and Hebrew “Word,” which signify, really, “visible speech.” (The Chinese tao, the primeval unity or First Cause, also conveys the idea “to speak.”) “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,” states the Hebrew Psalmist (Ps. 33:6). “This idea of the creative Word of God,” observes John Allegro, “came to have a profound philosophical and religious importance  and was, and still is, the subject of much metaphysical debate. But originally it was not an abstract notion; you could see the ‘Word of God.’“ In the Hebrew creation legend the “speech” of the creator is poured out as “spittle” or “seed.” “The most forceful spurting of this ‘seed’ is accompanied by thunder and the shrieking wind.”97 The imagery takes us back to the thundering voice of Atum.

In most creation legends and certainly in the Egyptian and Sumerian prototypes—the great father, his life-bearing rays, his voice (word), and the company of gods (limbs) all appear as powers seen and heard. The god is the celestial “Man” whose history became the overwhelming obsession of ancient ritual. Residing at the stationary centre—the domain which the Egyptians called Maat (“truth” or “wisdom”) and the Mesopotamians denominated Apsu (residence of “wisdom”) the god commanded the cosmic revolutions. He was, in short, the creative “intelligence,” producing a new and harmonious celestial order. Thus was the Heaven Man the ideal man and the ideal king.

The Great Father Saturn

The lost epoch of peace and plenty was the age of the planet Saturn. Ancient myths and rites present Saturn as the god One, the first king, and the all-encompassing Heaven Man.

Adam, the first ancestor, presided over a garden of abundance. Among the Hebrews such sacred occasions as the Sabbath and Jubilee commemorated this original state of man and the world, when Adam ruled Eden and the land produced freely without human effort. The Greek celebration of the Kronia similarly hearkened back to the lost Golden Age of Kronos. The parallel was no coincidence: Adam was Kronos, in human form.

What the Greeks called the Kronia, celebrating the fortunate era of Kronos, the Latins termed the Saturnalia, a symbolic  renewal of the Saturnia regna or reign of the planet Saturn. In the mystic heritage Saturn is the Universal Monarch, whose prosperous age all ancient people sought to recover.

These are the words with which James G. Frazer summarizes the Latin tradition:

[Saturn] lived on earth long ago as a righteous and beneficent king of Italy, drew the rude and scattered dwellers on the mountains together, taught them to till the ground, gave them laws, and ruled in peace. His  reign was the fabled Golden Age: the earth brought forth abundantly: no sound of war or discord troubled the

 

happy world: no baleful love of lucre worked like poison in the blood of the industrious and contented peasantry. Slavery and private property were alike unknown: all men had all things in common. At last the good king, the kindly king, vanished suddenly; but his memory was cherished to distant ages, shrines were reared in his honour, and many hills and high places in Italy bore his name.98

The Latin poet Ovid knew the tradition well:

The first millenium was the age of gold; Then living creatures trusted one another; People did well without the thought of ill: Nothing forbidden in the book of laws, No fears, no prohibitions read in bronze,

Or in the sculpted face of judge and master . . .

No brass-lipped trumpets called, nor clanging swords. Nor helmets marched the streets, country and town.

Had never heard of war: and seasons traveled. Through the years of peace. The innocent earth Learned neither spade nor plough;

she gave her Riches as fruit hangs from the tree; grapes Dropping from the vine, cherry, strawberry

Ripened in silver shadows of the mountain, And in the shade of Jove’s miraculous tree The falling acorn, Springtide the single Season of the year.99

But then, states Ovid, “old Saturn fell to Death’s dark country.” There is not a race on earth that forgot this cataclysmic event— the death of Saturn, the Universal Monarch; or the fall of Adam, the Heaven Man. And peoples the world over, for thousands of years, awaited the full turn of Time’s wheel, when Saturn’s kingdom would appear again to rescue the world from a decadent age of Iron (the present age, marking the lowest of the descending ages after the Golden Age). The powerful memory of Saturn’s age gave rise to a prophesied return, as announced in the famous lines of Virgil:

Now is come the last age of the Cumean prophecy: the great cycle of periods is born anew. Now returns the Maid, returns the reign of Saturn: now from high heaven descends a new generation. And O holy goddess of childbirth Lucina, do thou be gracious at the boy’s birth in whom the Iron race shall begin to cease and the Golden to arise all over the world . . .”100

That Saturn governed the Golden Age is a supreme tenet of the ancient mysteries. This is why the most sacred day of the week, commemorating the primordial era, was dedicated to Saturn. The Hebrew Sabbath, the seventh day of the week, was the day of Saturn, as was the seventh day of the Babylonian and Phoenician weeks.101 For the Romans the seventh day was Saturni dies, “Saturn’s day.” This was the Anglo-Saxon “day of Seater [Saturn],” which, of course, became our Saturday.

The archaic god One, the father of all the gods, was not the solar orb, not the “open sky,” but the planet Saturn.  “Saturn possessed the double property of being the forefather of all other planetary gods, and of having his seat in the highest heaven,” writes R. Klibansky, E. Panofsky, and R. Saxl in their study of Saturn and Melancholy.102 The tradition was  maintained with striking consistency from its early expressions in Sumero-Babylonian religion through the age of medieval astrology.

On the subject of Mesopotamian religion and astronomy, three widely respected researchers are Peter Jensen, Alfred Jeremias, and Stephen Langdon. A survey of their works will reveal these conclusions concerning the identity of the great god in Mesopotamia: An, the oldest and highest of the Sumero-Babylonian gods, whose primordial age was “the year of abundance,” signified Saturn, according to Jensen.103 The same verdict is tacitly maintained by Jeremias and Langdon, who identify the great god Ninurta as both the planet Saturn and a form of Anu.104 The shepherd Tammuz was likewise Saturn, according to Jeremias.105 And one can add the well-known fact that the Sumerian Enki (Babylonian Ea, the Oannes of Berossus) came to be translated Kronos (Saturn) by the Greeks.106

 

The identity of the creator-king as the planet Saturn seems to occur throughout the ancient world.  The Canaanite (and Hebrew) El—closely corresponding to the Sumero-Babylonian An—was Saturn.107 The Hindu Manu, the king of the world, was Satyavratta, the planet Saturn.108 Collitz tells us that Yima, the Iranian transcript of the Hindu Yama, god of the Golden Age, likewise denoted Saturn.109 The Zoroastrians knew Saturn as the heaven-sustaining Zurvan, “the King and Lord of the Long Dominion.”110 The Chinese Huang-ti, mythical founder of the Taoist religion, “is acknowledged to be Saturn.111 “ Even the Tahitians say of Fetu-tea, the planet Saturn, that he “was the King.”112

In classical thought Saturn is the primordial satus, “seed,” from which the Cosmos sprang; the mind or cause which brought forth the original creation; the universal source of water, fertility, and vegetation; and father Time, the regulator of the cosmic  cycle.113

It was Saturn who, before retiring to the nether realm, dwelt on earth, establishing his rule over the entire world. An Orphic fragment declares: “Orpheus reminds us that Saturn dwelt openly on earth and among men.”114 This before the reign of Zeus, “Kronos [Saturn] ruled on this very earth,” writes Dionysius of Halicarnassus.115

Saturn was the cosmic Adam, bringing forth a company of secondary deities as his own limbs. In the ancient Sumerian city of Lagash the priests deemed Saturn (Ningirsu or Ninurta) “the man whose stature filled the an-ki” the entire Cosmos.116

The Sumero-Babylonian worshippers of the planet Saturn, observes Hildegard Lewy, “conceived their god as the embodiment of the whole universe, the various deified astral as well as natural phenomena being imagined as members of this divine body and, therefore, as executors of a unique will.” “The guiding idea . . . [was] the belief in the existence of only one great god.”117

To preserve “the strictly monotheistic principle,” notes Lewy, the priests composed this hymn to Saturn (Ninurta):

O Lord, Thy face is the sky . . .

Thy two eyes, oh Lord, are the gods Enlil and Ninlil. The lids of thy two eyes are Gula (and) Belit-ili.

The white of thy two eyes Oh Lord, are the twin (god)s Sin and Nergal. The lashes of Thy two eyes are the radiance of the Sun god . . .

Thy chin, oh Lord, is the astral Istar.

The gods Anum and Antum are thy two lips. Thy tongue is the god Pabilsag . . .118

Though the language pertains to the later-evolved imagery of the Heaven Man, it leaves no doubt that the archaic doctrine conceived Saturn’s body as the entire Cosmos. The legendary cosmic giant originated in the mythical recollections of Saturn’s all-encompassing form.

In Zoroastrian myth this celestial giant is Zurvan, widely recognized as Saturn. The mystic traditions define Zurvan as the “first principle” and the “original seed.” He is, writes Zaehner, “the father of the Cosmos. From his seed proceeds the entire material Cosmos . . .”119 In the creation Zurvan provided, or emitted, the “original unformed matter” from which the wheel of the Cosmos was produced. The idea is precisely that of the Egyptian “primeval matter” or the alchemist’s prima materia,  i.e., Adam, the Primordial Man.

The created Cosmos, say the Zoroastrian texts, took the form of an immense giant named Spihr, housing the elements of fire, wind, water, and earth. The Spihr was “the First Body,” “the body of Zurvan of the Long Dominion.”120 “As the god whose body is the firmament he is the macrocosm [Cosmos as a whole] corresponding to man, the microcosm [Cosmos in miniature],” observes Zaehner. Thus did Zurvan come to be viewed as “the prototype of man,” eventually acquiring human form as the first ancestor—“the origin of the human race.”121

Saturn’s identity as the Heaven Man and first ancestor occurs again and again in Gnosticism, in alchemy, and in the traditions of the Kabala. “As the first man,” observes Jung, “Adam is Homo maximus, the Anthropos [Man par excellence] from whom  the macrocosm arose, or who is the macrocosm. He is not only the prima materia but a universal soul which is also the soul of all  men.”122  Saturn, Jung adds, is a synonym for Adam and the prima materia. The planet is the Philosophical Man or Original  Man

—“the blessed Man on high, the arch man Adamas.”123

In the Great Magical Papyrus of Paris, Kronos/Saturn is “Lord of the World, First Father.”124 Orphic thought identifies the primordial man Prometheus with Saturn;125 the Lapps speak of the ancient Waralden Olmay or “World Man”—who “is the same as Saturnus”126; and Norse legend identifies Saturn as the Heaven Man Kroder.127

 

All of this means simply that the primordial Cosmos originally signified the limbs of Saturn, a circle of secondary lights revolving in the company of the giant planet. The terms conventionally translated as “Cosmos,” “heaven,” “world,” “universe,” or “firmament” (as in the previous paragraphs) denoted the primeval celestial order of which Saturn was king and which collapsed with Saturn’s fall.

The Saturn Myth Reconstructed

From the foregoing evidence a distinctive portrait of Saturn emerges. In the earliest age recalled by the ancients the planet—or proto-planet—came forth from the cosmic sea to establish dominion over the primeval Cosmos. The planet-god ruled as the solitary, central light, worshipped as the god One—the only god in the beginning.

Saturn’s epoch left a memory of such impact that later generations esteemed the god as the Universal Monarch, the first and ideal king, during whose rule occurred the prehistoric leap from barbarianism to civilization. Throughout Saturn’s era of cosmic harmony  no seasonal vicissitudes threatened men with hunger or starvation, and men suffered neither labour nor war.

In the “creation” Saturn, the primal Seed, ejected the fiery material (“primeval matter”), which congealed into a circle of lesser lights (the Cosmos). The myths describe this resounding birth of the secondary gods as Saturn’s “speech”: Saturn was the Word or voice of heaven.

The ancients conceived Saturn as the visible intelligence bringing forth the Cosmos as his own body and regulating its revolutions. Thus was the planet denominated the Heaven Man, a being eventually recalled as the prototype of the human race—the first ancestor.

When Saturn departed the world, the Golden Age catastrophically ended. This is the universal tale of the dying god, the overthrown “first king” or fallen “first man.” Whether betrayed by a dark force, or chastised for having committed the forbidden sin, or inflicted with old age and a weariness of mankind, the result is the same: a corruption of nature and a progressive worsening of the human condition. The story is the first—and one could almost say, only, theme of tragedy and drama in antiquity: Saturn’s Golden Age came to a sudden and catastrophic end, either caused by or accompanied by the fall of the great god.

That the distant planet Saturn should loom at the centre of ancient rites is a fact which conventional wisdom  will not easily explain. One looks in vain for any characteristic of Saturn, the present-day planet, which might account for Saturn, the primeval god. Could the present speck of light have provoked the ancient memory of a creator standing alone in the deep? Or produced the universal legend of the first king and the lost age of abundance? Or inspired the myth of the Heaven Man?

If, as is almost universally believed, the heavens have undergone no major changes in astronomically recent times, then the myth—however meticulously developed—can only be a fabrication, produced through the purest disregard for actual observation and experience. I do not ask the reader to ignore this possibility, and I am fully aware that to many mythologists myth and fancy are synonymous. Since the argument of this book rests on the coherence of the Saturn myth as a whole, and since many details remain to be covered I urge only a willingness to consider the evidence in its entirety. Whatever the true origins of the myth, it constituted for the ancients a compelling vision—a vision deserving careful study by all students of history, religion, and mythology.