Saturn (mythology)

Saturn (Latin: Saturnus) is a god in ancient Roman religion, and a character in myth. Saturn is a complex figure because of his multiple associations and long history. He was the first god of the Capitol, known since the most ancient times as Saturnius Mons, and was seen as a god of generation, dissolution, plenty, wealth, agriculture, periodic renewal and liberation. In later developments he came to be also a god of time. His reign was depicted as a Golden Age of plenty and peace.

...Saturn is a complex figure because of his multiple and long history. He was the first god of the Capitol, known since the most ancient times as Saturnius Mons, and was seen as a god of generation, dissolution, plenty, wealth, agriculture, periodic renewal and liberation. In later developments he came to be also a god of time....

Quotes

...the post-Christian Gnostics, with a very trifling change, applied the same fable to the man Jesus, and asserted that the same " Good Divinity," Saturn (Ilda-Baoth), had, in the shape of the Dragon of Life, glided over the cradle of the infant Mary. In their eyes the Serpent was the Logos. - Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.

Temple of Saturn in Rome - Saturn is the god of sowing or seed. The Romans equated him with the Greek agricultural deity Cronus. The remains of Saturn’s temple at Rome, eight columns of the pronaos (porch), still dominate the west end of the Forum at the foot of the Clivus Capitolinus. The temple goes back to the earliest records of the republic (6th century bc). It was restored by Lucius Munatius Plancus in 42 BC and, after a fire, in the 4th century AD. It served as the treasury (aerarium Saturni) of the Roman state. - The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica.

Cicero, in his treatise concerning the Nature of the Gods, having said that three Jupiters were enumerated by theologians, adds that the third was of Crete, the son of Saturn, and that his tomb is shown in that island. - Lactantius.

The ancients counted seven planets, thus arranged : the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. There were seven heavens and seven spheres of these planets; on all the monuments of Mithras are seven altars or pyres, consecrated to the seven planets, as were the seven lamps of the golden candelabrum in the Temple.- Albert Pike.

• Their ancestors had maintained, before the Christian era, that the Great Serpent — Jupiter, the Dragon of Life, the Father and "Good Divinity," had glided into the couch of Seniele, and now, the post-Christian Gnostics, with a very trifling change, applied the same fable to the man Jesus, and asserted that the same " Good Divinity," Saturn (Ilda-Baoth), had, in the shape of the Dragon of Life, glided over the cradle of the infant Mary. In their eyes the Serpent was the Logos.
  • Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1891) in:Isis Unveiled: Theology, J.W. Bouton, 1891, p. 505

• Saturn is the god of sowing or seed. The Romans equated him with the Greek agricultural deity Cronus. The remains of Saturn’s temple at Rome, eight columns of the pronaos (porch), still dominate the west end of the Forum at the foot of the Clivus Capitolinus. The temple goes back to the earliest records of the republic (6th century bc). It was restored by Lucius Munatius Plancus in 42 BC and, after a fire, in the 4th century AD. It served as the treasury (aerarium Saturni) of the Roman state.
  • The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica in: Saturn, Encyclopædia Britannica, 18 March 2014

• As thus he spahe, the Son of Saturn gave
  The nod with his dark brows.
  The ambrosial curls
  Upon the Sovereign One’s immortal head
  Were shaken, and with them the mighty
  Mountain shaken, and with them the might
  Mount
  Olympus trembled.
  • Homer in: James Manning Sherwood Hours at Home, Volume 11, Charles Scribner & Company, 1870, p. 490

• Deep in the shady sadness of a vale
  Far sunken from tie healthy breath of morn.
  Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
  Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone, Still as the silence round about his lair;
  Forest on forest hung about his head ..star, Sat gray-hair’d Saturn, quiet as a stone,
  Still as the silence round about his lair;
  Forest on forest hung above his head
  Like cloud on cloud.
  • John Keats in: Thomas Campbell, et al., The New Monthly Magazine, Part 2, E. W. Allen, 1820

• Cicero, in his treatise concerning the Nature of the Gods, having said that three Jupiters were enumerated by theologians, adds that the third was of Crete, the son of Saturn, and that his tomb is shown in that island.
  • Lactantius in: Reverend Alexander Roberts The Ante-Nicene Fathers: The Writings of the Fathers Down to A. D. 325, Volume VII Fathers of the Third and Fourth Century - Lactantius, Venantius, Ast, Cosimo, Inc., May 1, 2007, p. 23

See also

• Saturn