Arturo Reghini: "The myth of Saturn in Western Tradition"

An extract from Arturo Reghini's essay "On the Western Tradition", originally published in 1928 on the pages of "UR", focusing on the myth of Saturn in the Latin and more generally Indo-European tradition. For those interested in reading it in its entirety, we have attached the PDF downloadable for free.

di Arthur Reghini

(aka Peter Negri)


FROM THE ESSAY "ON WESTERN TRADITION" (UR, 1928)

THE LEGEND OF SATURN

Everyone knows the Greco-Latin tradition of the four ages; in chronological order the age of gold, silver, bronze and iron. The oldest, the golden age, it had been the most beautiful, the blessed age, mourned and sung by poets, and the world had gone worse since then. The Latin tradition identified that happy time with i ยซSaturnia reignsยป (Virgil, Aen., IV, 6; VI, 41; I XI, 252) because tradition said that Saturn, ousted by Jupiter and expelled from heaven (Ovidio, Fast., I, 292), had landed in Italy taking refuge and hiding in Lazio, where Janus, king of Italy, received him and reigned with him during the golden age . He gave the name to Italy, called precisely Saturnia Tellus (Virgil, Aen., VIII, 329; I, 569; Geo., II, 173; Ovid, Fast., I, 232; Macrobius, I, 7; Festus, ed. Teubner, p. 430); and Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Antiq. Rom., I, 34) says that "all of Italy was sacred to this god and to the inhabitants (incolis) was called Saturnia as it is found declared in the sibylline poems and also in other oracles rendered by the gods ยป.

The Ancients said that even the Lazio it was so called because Saturn was hidden there (latere, Virgilio, Aen., VII, 322; Ovidio, Fast., I, 232). The correct etymology is probably from latum, broad, side; but the erroneous etymologies of the Ancients still have great importance, because they are not arbitrary but are aimed at confirming events and facts connected to the thing. We will return to it. Returning to Saturn, he settled at the foot of the Capitol Hill, said for this reason (Festus, p. 430) Saturnius Msgr; in fact, his temple stood there, one of the oldest in Rome. The first modest sanctuary had been dedicated to him there by Tullo Ostilio, on the occasion of the institution of the ยซSaturnalia"; Tarquinio conceived the plan to replace it with a temple, and the republic two or four years after the fall of the tyrant actually built it in the chosen place dedicating it to Saturn. It was restored in the time of Augustus and eight imposing Ionic columns still remain. The legend said that this altar on the Capitoline hill was dedicated to him before the Trojan war (Festus, p. 430); and that on the Sabine hill of the Capitol rose a city of Saturn (Dionysius of Alic., I, 34; VI, I, 4).

To the inhabitants of Lazio, Saturn taught agriculture and the art of navigationAnd; the legend told that in the end he had suddenly vanished from the earth (Macrobius, Sat., I, 7). There was also talk, in Rome, of an ancient saturnian population that he would have inhabited the countryside and the city; and of those who, remaining faithful to the ancient customs, lived from the cultivation of the fields, it was said that they were the only ones left of the race of King Saturn (Varro, RR 3, 5). These, in short, are the salient features of the legend, the arrival, the refuge, the reign, the apotheosis and the teaching of Saturn in Italy.

This Latin legend of Saturn connects to the traditional doctrine of "cycles" and it is only with the existence of an original traditional doctrine that the evident concordance between the four ages of the classical tradition and the four Yugas of the Hindu tradition can plausibly be explained. The legend, linking the golden (Virgil, Eg., II, 538) Saturn to the golden age, traces his teaching back to archaic time, and tells us that Saturn hid with his teaching in Lazio. The teaching of Saturn is therefore linked to the "primordial tradition"; found a refuge in Lazio, it is secretly transmitted there. The moral of the story from our point of view is this: the tradition of Roman wisdom derives from the primordial one of the golden age, and exists occultly in Lazio.

The legend acquires a precise meaning for those who have reasons to recognize the existence above or below the earth of a supreme initiatory center, in the past and today. This connection and derivation from the supreme initiatory center is clearly affirmed and confirmed by Virgil (Aen., VIII, 319): primus ab aetherio venit Saturnus Olympos, and from Ovid: caelitibus regnis to Iove pulsus erat (Ovid, Fast., I, 292). Saturn gives men riches, prosperity and freedom; the feasts of him, i Saturnalia, they were celebrated in December (sacred to Saturn, as the following month was sacred to his host Janus); they were the feasts of abundance, license and unbridled joy, which gave the freedom (the "December freedom") also to slaves. This popular orgiastic character of the Saturnalia is known to all; and, ordinarily, the Saturnalia is not thought to have had another character as well. The analogy with orphism and with bacchanalia on the other hand, it should already give rise to suspicion.

What we have found about the initiatory character of Saturn and its connection to the "primordial tradition" and at Olympus it logically makes it plausible and probable that there must have been such a character of the Saturnalia. And in fact so it turns out. We are informed by a Latin writer, Macrobius, who (Sat., I, 7) says that "he is allowed to reveal not that origin of the Saturnalia which refers to the arcane nature of divinity, but that which is mixed at times fabulous, or what physicists teach the common people. Since not even in the initiatory ceremonies themselves (in ipsis quidem sacris) it is not permitted to narrate the reasons hidden and emanating from the source of pure truth (ex mere true source); and if anyone follows them, he is ordered to contain them protected within his conscience ยป.

By means of Saturn ยซhoc prince and with the science of the good arts - says Macrobius (lc) - from an uncultivated and dark life we โ€‹โ€‹are almost brought out into the light ยป. For this merit of his ยซJanus ordered that Saturn be honored majestate religionis, virtually vitae melioris auctorem". Note also that the Italian Saturn is a god of the depths, an underground god, a particularity entirely consistent with the tradition of the underworld where the initiatory hierarchy is hidden and remains according to what Saint-Yves d'Alveydre and ossendowski. Therefore, tradition from the earliest times, from the arrival of Saturn in Italy, gives an occult character to his stay in Lazio and together with what Macrobius says it shows that this initiatory center and his teaching have had an occult character ever since. And since tradition says that Saturn taught the inhabitants of Lazio about agriculture, the peritiam ruris (Macrobius, I, 7) and the art of navigation in which he excelled (Virgil, Aen., V, 799), the indication that this doctrine or teaching should be sought under the agricultural and seafaring symbol arises spontaneously.

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ETYMOLOGY OF SATURN

The mainly agricultural character of Saturn was confirmed, according to the Ancients, by the very etymology of the name. Saturn is a very old name and already appears in the poem of the Salii: qui deus in saliaribus Sateurnus named (Festus, ed. Teubner, p. 432). The suffix urnus which is found in Diurnus, noct-urnus, Volt-urnus, certainly suggests a similar formation and derivation of Saturn from a radical village o villages; it would be, as for diurnal and nocturnal, a kind of adjective or characteristic attribute of the god or king Saturn, capable of constituting its characteristic designation, becoming its name.

For Varro (De ll, V, 64) Saturn is so called ab sat. One hundred it is the action of sowing or planting; and it is voice, let us note, also used in the figurative sense (cf. Cicero, Tusc., 2, 13). Saturn would be like this il tent, the cultivator par excellence. This etymology was accepted until a few decades ago. Not anymore today. Schwegler (Rรถm. Gesch., P. 223) derives Saturn from contains = ฯ€ฮปฮทฯฯ‰ฯ„ฮฎฯ‚ ฯ€ฮฌฯƒฮทฯ‚ ฮตฯ…ฮดฮฑฮนยตฮฟฮฝฮฏฮฑฯ‚, the source of all happiness. The "Dictionnaire รฉtymologique du Latin" of Regnaud (1908) instead derives Saturnus from a hypothetical archaic voice: svaurn-us, hence the other voice always hypothetical (s) veter-nus connected to clothes.

Saturn would be the veteran of the Gods, and therefore the father, the creator of the universe; Regnaud validates this etymology with the analogy with the Greek ฮบฯฮฟ-ฯŒฮฝฮฟฯ‚, the creator, the antecedent of all things. Cronus was in fact confused with Chrono (ฮบฯ-ฯŒฮฝฮฟฯ‚); and this was one of the reasons why Cronus, and then the Latin corresponding Saturn, from agricultural divinity became the god of time; and consequently the sickle, agricultural attribute of Saturn, became the sickle of time. The Pauly Real Encyclopedia (ed. 1923, p. 188) says on the other hand that the name of the underground god Saturn, of which the ancient form Sateurnus also exists, is undoubtedly identical to the name Satre of the corresponding Etruscan deity, and reports the opinion of Herbig, who by the proximity of the two Latin and Etruscan forms is induced to trace a common root thesis (from the name ฮฃฮฌฮฒฮฑฯ‚) in a language of Asia Minor.

These modern etymologies are not very satisfying, and we take the liberty of proposing another one. The similarity with the Etruscan Satre it already makes it plausible to look for the etymology of Saturn outside of Latin; all the more so since it is also worth taking into account the similarity with the Anglo-Saxon Saeter. Now, as is known, the planet farthest from the earth also bears the name of Saturn. Due to its spatial distance Saturn is the first planet, followed by Jupiter, as the kingdom of Saturn was the most ancient in time and preceded the dominion of Jupiter. The Old German called Satjar the planet Saturn; and when at the end of the republic the use of the week was introduced, the days of the week were named in correspondence with the planets and their divinities. Similar denominations received the names of the Anglo-Saxon week, and the comparison shows how the Anglo-Saxon Saeter was considered as a deity equivalent to Saturn, to whom the planet Saturn was dedicated (Saturn star; Virgil, Georg. I, 336 and II, 406) and on Saturday, the Saturni dies of Tibullus (I, 3, 18).

If we count the days of the week two by two, proceeding with the odd numbers, they occur in the same order as the planetary system of the ancients: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. To the Lunae-dies matches the Moon day English, al Mercuri-dies il Wednesday, the day of Woden (Wotan) Odin; to the Veneris-dies il Friday as Frigedaege by the deity Freya; to the Domains-dies il sun-day, the day of the Sun; to the Martis-dies il Tues-day, Tyr's day (gen. Tys), etymologically akin to div di diovis; to the Jovis-dies il Thurs-day o thursday, German Donners-tag, day of God Thor, day of thundering (Jupiter) thunder = German. Give = thunder); and on the Sabbath (Hebrew voice), the Saturns-dies, matches the Saturday, ancient as saeter-tag. The correspondence, if not perfect, is always such as to identify the Latin Sateurnus and the German saeter and to indicate a common derivation.

Now we have seen that the four ages of Greco-Latin antiquity correspond to four yugas of the Hindus. It is therefore possible a similar correspondence also in the name Saturn. There is no correspondence for the name of the planet which is in Sanskrit shani which means low and indicates the lowest, farthest planet; but there is a correspondence, for us much more important, with the Sanskrit denomination of the golden age. The first of the four yugas has in fact two denominations, both of which are interesting for our question. I'm krta-yuga e satya yuga. Krtayuga it's the perfect age (per-fectum), from the root kra = to do, to accomplish, from which according to Curtius also derives the Greek name Cronos of Saturn; satya yuga it is the good age, the true age. The adjective satya, true, it is connected to village, being, and therefore the real, the true. Satya-yuga is the age of Sat, the age of "Being".

The affinity between satya and German Satyar it's obvious; saeter-tag it's the day of the true god, like Thursday it is the day of the thundering god. Latin sate-urnus, German saeter, the Etruscan tailor they would all indicate the true god, real par excellence. The derivations of these three names from the village di satya yuga, and those of the Greek Cronos from kr of the Krta-yuga, correspond and mutually prove each other. It is like the Sanskrit suffix ya combined with Sat gives the name of the golden age, thus the Latin suffix urnus combined with Sat gives the name of the golden Saturn, the king of the golden age.

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With this etymology the doctrine of Saturn becomes the true doctrine, the doctrine of sat, the doctrine of "being". Thus we find another confirmation of the connection between this archaic Latin tradition and the primordial tradition; that is, from the beginning of our difficult investigation we find the titles of the "spiritual orthodoxy" of the Roman tradition. The presence in Latin and in the ancient Italic languages โ€‹โ€‹of this archaic Indo-European voice Sat may perhaps seem to some a strange and isolated fact. But is not so. Another example is given by the entry Acca, the name of Acca Larentia, the nurse of Romulus and Remus, and the mother of the first twelve Arval brothers, who in Sanskrit (okka), as the Preller notes (Les Dieux de Ancienne Rome, Paris, 1865, p. 291), means mother. Another example, this one not yet recognized, is given by the voice Anna (root ad, Latin edo), in Sanskrit nourishment, which reappears as it is in Anna Perenna, the mythical Roman food of immortality, equivalent to the ambrosia of the Greeks.


ADDEND

There are many other things to report and observe about Saturn and Cronus. A distinction must certainly be made between the Greek Cronus and the Latin Saturn, but, according to what we have seen, Saturn and Cronus, both reigning in the Golden Age, are etymologically linked to the two Sanskrit denominations of the Golden Age, and this shows that the identification of the Latin Saturn with the Greek Cronus, made later by the Romans, had its profound reason for being in the common connection with the archaic sat and with the Satya-yuga. However, due to their significance and their esoteric importance, we observe that:

1 ยฐ) Cronus is the son of Uranus and Gaea (heaven and earth); it is the characteristic of the twelve Titans (Hesiod, Theog., 133), of the cyclops (beings endowed with the third sight, the cyclical sight), as well as of the Orphic initiates, who make themselves strong in this genealogy of theirs to invoke the right to drink at the source of Mnemosine, overcome that of Lethe, and from mortal to become immortal by this means. And in the Roman tradition Saturn, son of heaven and earth, does not die; he suddenly vanishes, like Enoch and Elijah in the Jewish tradition.

2 ยฐ) Plutarch mentions a legend according to which Kronos dethroned sleeps on an island in the North Seas (De delf. Orac., 18); for this reason the sea to the north of Asia, according to the geographer Dionysius, was called the glacial or saturnian sea. This legend connects Saturn with the tradition of the hyperborean initiatory center, equivalent to the same primordial tradition.

3 ยฐ) The legend of the ยซbetiloยป made to swallow to Cronus with all its developments. But since we are mainly interested in the archaic Italic character of Saturn, we prefer not to have recourse to Greece to prove his esotericity; likewise, we will not deal with the consecration of the planet Saturn to Saturn in astrology, the day of the week in the calendar and the lead in the hermetic tradition.

On the other hand, we believe it is not without interest to observe how other traditions also attribute to Saturn the teaching of agriculture understood allegorically. This is what happens in an ancient tradition contained in the "Nabataean agricultureยป, An archaic poem translated into German by Daniel Chwolsohn from an ancient Arabic version of the Chaldean text. The author or scribe Qu-tรขmi on the first page of the revelation of him says that the doctrines contained in the text were originally taught by Saturn ... to the Moon, who communicated them to his idol, and the idol to his devotee, the writer, the adeptoscribe of the work Qu-tรขmi (see HP Blavatsky, Sec. Doct., II, 474). Chwolsohn places the first Arabic translation at 1300 BC We do not know what the Chaldean word translated with Saturn was, but it seems that it was the planet. In any case, the presence of this agricultural character in Saturn is also curious among this ancient Semitic tribe.

As for the eminently agricultural character of the archaic Italic Saturn, it is indisputable. All agricultural inventions date back to him; that of grafting, for example, and that of manure, the laetamen which gladdens and makes the earth fruitful. The symbol of Saturn is the sickle which is used to clean the soil of evil herbs, to prune the plants and to reap the harvest. Festus says that Saturn presided over the culture of the fields, quo etiam falx est ei distinguished, and Macrobius (Sat., VII) makes the sickle the emblem of the harvest. However, its occult character must be associated with this agricultural character, a combination that also occurs in other Italic agricultural and chthonic divinities. Among these we note the Musa Tacita of Numa (Plutarch, Numa, 8), the goddess Muta of Tatius (Ovidio, Fast., II, 583), the goddess Angeronia del Velabro represented with a finger above the mouth and in a silent attitude (hours obligato signatoque). The association of the agricultural and marine character of Saturn also reappears in other Italic divinities. "The earth goddesses of Italy - writes Andrรฉ Piganiol (Essay on the origins of Rome, Paris, 1917, p. 112) - are very frequently at the same time goddesses of sailors. Fortuna holds a rudder and Venus, like Aphrodite, protects the ports ยป.


AGRICULTURAL SYMBOLISM IN ROME

Virgil, the initiated poet, calls the terra magna parens frugum, Saturnia tellus (Georg., II, 173; Aen., VIII, 329) and calls the fields i Saturnia arva (Aen., I, 569). Ar-vum quod aratum nec satum est (Varrone, RR, I, 12), is the worked, parched land. The root ar, of which it is difficult to determine the oldest meaning, simply means to work; plow it is the tool of this work, which has the effect of opening the bowels of the ground and exposing the clods to solar action.

The profound connection between agriculture and worship is already evident from the fact that the archaic altar (from the old Latin so), the altar in its first sense of altar destined to light the sacred fire above it (turarian macaw), consisted of a simple clod of earth and was called altar, when it was high off the ground; Festus tells us that "altaria ab altitude dicta suntBecause the Ancients made sacrifices to the upper gods in buildings ground excitatis, to the earthly gods on earth, to the underworld gods in effosa earth (in a pit). The ara was also often a simple grass macaw (eg in Virgil, Aen., XII, 118; Ovid, Met., VII, 241; etc.); but originally it was a clod of earth; and, as Vico says (Principรฎ di Scienza Nuova, II), "the plowed lands were the first areas in the world". And since, according to Varro (II, V), Saturn is fire, so much so that with this identification of Saturn and fire it was explained (Varro, ll, V; Macrobius, Sat., I, 7) the custom of sending wax candles to the "superior saturnalia", the ara it is doubly linked to Saturn: because it is made of a simple clod of earth, and because it is destined to light up the sacred fire.

The word ara is not the only one that rises from the primitive agricultural meaning at the end of the religious cult. Traces of agricultural allegory and symbolism still appear today in Neo-Latin languages. Like this the culture of the fields, the culture of the soul and the religious cult are designated by closely related words, deriving from the Latin colere. GB Vico (Principรฎ di Scienza Nuova, II) writes: ยซThe first cholera that arose in the world of gentility was cultivating the land; and the first cult was to erect such altars, to light such a first fire, and to make sacrifices on them, as has just been said, of wicked men (the "Saturns hostiaeยป). Cult was called both that of the fields and that of the Gods. Virgil sings together with the arvorum cultus et sidera caeli (Georg., I, 1); and invites farmers to learn propeios cultus (Georg., II, 47); Horace confesses parcus deorum cultor. Uncultivated still today indicates both uncultivated land and man without culture. So long as just as it is necessary to cultivate the earth to obtain the fruits that it would not give itself, so it is necessary to cultivate man to obtain the fruits that do not ripen by itself.

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This assimilation of man, and more particularly of the human body, to the earth is very ancient and widespread. According to the dictionary of Brail and Bailly it is not impossible that the same word homo you designate man as an inhabitant of the earth. From homo (hominis) is usually derived humanus. Then humanus it would be indirectly connected to earth, but it would not be connected with the voice phonetically so close humus, a voice that designates the humid earth (humor, humor) and therefore cultivable, in contrast with the dry, arid and parched earth (tersa = earth for rotacism).

However, the connection between humus e humanus it seems to us anything but to be excluded; its verisimilitude is proven by the existence, which also has its importance, of a similar parallelism in other languages โ€‹โ€‹and traditions, and by the existence in Indo-European languages โ€‹โ€‹of words etymologically connected to these Latin words, and having similar meanings. The Dictionnaire รฉtymologique de la langue grecque by E. Boisacq (1923, p. 104) connects the Homeric dative ฯ‡ฮฑยตฮฑฮฏ (on the ground) to a hypothetical ie hmmmai, hence the Latin wet (dative = grounded) and the hypothetical voice homos, humus, humilis, the V. lat. hemonem, the Oscan humuns (men), Umbrian homones etc.; and to this root ie also the other root ghom, ghem which, with the loss of the aspirate, is found in German gam in groom, English bridegroom (antique ), clues and residues scattered in the various Indo-European languages โ€‹โ€‹of an archaic assimilation between man and earth. Assimilation, which has its parallel in Hebrew, where adamah means earth, as an element, matter, ed ADAM it means man, and is the name of the first man, formed by God, according to "Genesis", with the mud of the earth.

Anyway, explicit identification between body and earth it is categorically made by two ancient Latin writers, Ennio and Varrone. Varro says (De ll, V, 59): "Haec duo, Caelum et Terra, quod anima et corpus. Humidum et frigidum terra eaque corpus, warm coeli et inde anima". In other words: Heaven and earth are the same as soul and body. The body has for elements the damp and the cold which are the earth, and the soul has for its essence the heat or the sky. And a little further: "humores frigidae sunt humi". Then Varro (De ll, V, 60) writes: "Pacuvio is right who says: Animam aether adjugat (the ether couples the soul) "; and Ennio: "Terram corpus quae dederit, ipsam capere, neque dispendi facere hilum(The earth itself or the body takes what [the soul] gave it, nor does it make the least loss).

"The separation - continues Varrone (De ll, V, 60) - of the soul from the body is for living beings an exit from life, exitus; what is the name of death exitum (cfr. ital. fatal) and birth it starts because the body and soul in unum ineunt". According to Ennio and Varro, therefore, as the earth opens thanks to the plow to be able to receive the seed thrown by the cultivator and make it bear fruit, so the body opens to conceive the soul, and the matter thus becomes the mater of the soul; and the obvious and not casual reference to Mysteries (it starts) it makes us understand that the comparison has value and must be referred not only to the case of human birth, but also to the case of initiatory rebirth (the palin-genesis), the birth to the "new life".

Varro and Ennio, therefore, work in a spiritual and even initiatory sense il symbolism of agriculture. On the other hand, place this passage by Varro next to the one reported above by Macrobius on the character and esoteric meaning of the Saturnalia, and see if the two passages do not complete and clarify each other, and if together do not give us the confirmation of the existence, and of the persistence in classical times, of a Roman initiatory tradition connected and deriving from the primordial tradition of the golden age. See if it is not legitimate, even limiting oneself to a simple cultural investigation, to see in the culture of the fields over which Saturn presided, the symbol of culture in the spiritual field, and in the expertise ruris, in the art of cultivation, taught to the Latins by Saturn, the doctrine and art of man's cultivation, the traditional, primordial doctrine that Saturn, the true god, the satya-deva, comes from ethereal Olympus, and occulted in Lazio in the golden age.

Arturo Reghini as a young man

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ARTURO REGHINI (signed "Pietro Negri"), ON THE WESTERN TRADITION

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