Saturn
Also called Saturnus.
The Roman god of sowing who became king of the Golden Age, and whose festival reversed the year by letting the dead back for twelve nights.
At a glance
- Tradition
- Roman mythologyAlchemical tradition
- Region
- Mediterranean (place of origin)
- Trait family
- The Rain-Holders
Near this figure
Symbols
Judged against the description by a model. Meanings are our own paraphrase.
- lead bears Lead denotes weight, density, inertia, ignorance, death, and Saturn’s unregenerate state, while alchemy treats it as matter awaiting transformation.
why
In the later symbolic tradition Saturn accumulates a great deal more — time itself, fate, rational constraint, and the lead that alchemy waits patiently to transform — but every one of those is an accretion onto a god who began by looking after the sowing.
- Saturn is Saturn is the Roman agricultural god and Golden Age king, later symbolizing time, fate, death-rebirth, rational constraint, and alchemical lead awaiting transformation.
why
Saturn is the Roman god of agriculture, identified with the Greek Cronus — perhaps, the sources suggest, because their two consorts Ops and Rhea were equated first in myth and the husbands simply followed them across.
Traits
Read from the figure's description, which a model wrote. Open "why" for the sentence a trait came from.
Utility powers
- Harvest control
why
In the later symbolic tradition Saturn accumulates a great deal more — time itself, fate, rational constraint, and the lead that alchemy waits patiently to transform — but every one of those is an accretion onto a god who began by looking after the sowing.
- Time manipulation
why
The Saturnalia sits at the winter solstice and is described as his sinister aspect: the death of the old year and the birth of the new, the passage from chaos back into cosmos, and the outright suspension of time.
Roles
Judged from the works' own entries, not from the description. Carries: the figure holds the role. Meets: the role is in its stories, held by something it meets.
- Circle carries both readings
2 citations
- Firdausi, translated by Arthur George Warner and Edmond Warner, The Sháhnáma.
- J. C. Cooper, An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols, s.v. "Saturn."
- Death carries
2 citations
- Firdausi, translated by Arthur George Warner and Edmond Warner, The Sháhnáma.
- J. C. Cooper, An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols, s.v. "Saturn."
- Father carries both readings
2 citations
- Firdausi, translated by Arthur George Warner and Edmond Warner, The Sháhnáma.
- J. C. Cooper, An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols, s.v. "Saturn."