CHAPTER EIGHT
The year 1977 marked the beginning of quantavolutionary publications about Saturn. Three articles appeared, written by David Talbott, by Dwardu Cardona, and jointly by Harold Tresman and B. O'Gheoghan. A few months later, Velikovsky, who had inspired the studies in each case, without participating in them released a fragment of his manuscripts on Saturn [1] .
"Two stars erupted from the planet Saturn and caused the Deluge." So states the Talmud, in Velikovsky's translation [2] . This is one of the several principal conclusions reached by the other writers. Saturn was a second sun, shining by day and night upon Earth. The record of the star is preserved in the legends of every ancient people. It was the dominating star of its age and most of the basic mythology of the world is traceable to its varying aspects, behavior, and fate. After leaving its infinitely complex imprint upon Earth and mankind, Saturn exploded in a nova or collision; a deluge fell upon the Earth; and Jupiter became king of the heavenly hosts.
From David Talbott we summarize more of the abundant material. For the ancients
"it was Saturn who introduced the day... what the Babylonians called Saturn's 'coming forth in splendor' signified the beginning of the archaic 'day. ' Saturn dominated the night and competed with the sunlight during the day.
Mythical records are unanimous in saying that Saturn, during his reign, stood in the north.... The Egyptian Ra, Osiris, Horus... the Mesopotamian Ninurta, Enki, Anu, Shamash... the Hebrew, or Ugaritic El... the Hindu Brahma, Vishnu, Varuna, Surya... the Chinese Huang-ti or Shang-ti... the Greek Kronos -- all appear as stationary suns... They are described as fixed at the polar summit... Ra comes forth and diminishes em hetep, which means 'while standing in one place. ' He comes forth and diminishes at the center, which is also the summit -- the celestial Pole." [3] Saturn was also the Babylonian Entil.
The points of difference among the several authors and between them and the theses of this book will be subjected in time to elaborate criticism, but the developing consensus amounts to a serious challenge to conventional opinion in the full range of historical and natural sciences.
Whether Saturn achieved stardom and kingship by the route delineated in this book or by means of some other cosmogony, we see, in the age of Saturnia, a divine figure of exquisite symbolism. Talbott presents the configuration of Saturn and analyzes its details as they are supplied by comparative mythology and archaeoastronomy. The configuration is presented in Figure 25. I have placed beneath each item of Talbott's Saturnian imagery a sloganized identification of it. The reader, already alerted to what is to come by what has been said in earlier chapters, can promptly grasp the significance of the parts and the whole and move confidently thereafter through the main body of this chapter.
The parts of the symbols are used in many ways in all areas of the world. The whole depicts at one time a winged angel, another time a long-robed priest-god, and other symbols as well. Not surprisingly, the Christmas Tree, crowned by a star, traces its descent into the remote past.
Figure 25f is taken directly from an Assyrian plaque [4] . It illustrates the full form, containing several of the elements "a" to "e", that represents a real-life imitation of Saturn, the god of the second and dominating sun in the period following the emplacement of the Moon and creation of the oceans. Two half-human, half-bullish figures uphold the Saturn image.
The drawing 25g shows an ancient Mayan figure from Uxmal, Yucatan, Mexico, and is called a "solar symbol" which it is, but a symbol of the second sun Saturn [5] . Figure "h" is the full composite drawn by Talbott. Figure "i" is a Dogon item of today; Temple has described the astronomy of this remarkable African tribe. Earlier, I expressed an eclectic view of independent invention, diffusion, and common experience, in pre-history.
Figure 25
COMPOSITION OF SATURN IMAGES
(shown below a to i) .
gg h i g. Solar Symbol at Uxmal. (Publications of the Bureau of Ethnography vol. ii., pl. 57, no. 5) from Goblet, p. 226.
h. A composite of Saturn imagery (drawn by D. Talbott). In terms of Solaria Binaria, the view is up the Magnetic Tube from Earth
i. Pendant called "The Female Sun." *From Fisher H. Mesmith, Jr., (1979) "Dogon Bronzes," XII African Arts, No. 2, (Feb.) 23.
These similarities are products of forceful similar experiences, depicting the experiences on the basis of originally derived ecumenical techniques and older experiences; yet, some element of diffusion may also be present, particularly since, in the "golden age of Saturn", great stretches of now sunken continental land were still above the sea, peoples were closer, and the seas were more navigable.
The same analysis may be applied to the Pleiades constellation. Many places around the world mark the beginning of November as the Day of the Dead; it is All Saints Day; Halloween; All Souls Day; etc. The time is associated with the Pleiades for reasons not clearly understood yet [6] . The coincidences of time, mood, ceremony, and stellar assignation is so great as to exclude independent invention except in particulars and to insist upon a common experience of explicit quality. Only this may be said on behalf of diffusion: if the event "X" that threw the whole world into mourning in regard to the Pleiades occurred before the Moon eruption, then diffusion may be accepted. But if the event occurred in the time of Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury or Venus, then diffusion, like independent invention, must be reduced to particulars, and common experience and common observation must be the cause of the coincidences.
Cardona produces evidence to show that Saturn (Khima) is connected with the Pleiades [7] . For one thing their names are often confused, as in the King James and other versions of the Bible where Khima is translated as 'Pleiades' instead of as 'Saturn. ' The Pleiades are connected with the Flood of Noah (Saturn) in many places. Further, two stars from (Super) Saturn caused the deluge. As Ginzberg reports the legend, "the upper water rushed through the space left when god removed two stars out of the constellation Pleiades [Saturn]." [8] The stars, says Cardona, were better called comets; the Earth was deluged when it passed through their tails. (Super) Saturn was in the North polar region prior to its explosion. The Pleiades were presumably behind Saturn. After the Deluge, Saturn had been moved and the Pleiades were observed in his place.
Now we recite the Osiris-Saturn legend in Egypt. The great and beloved god, Osiris, is drowned by the devil god, Seth, who then cuts his body to pieces and scatters its fragments. The Pleiades, we surmise, are the fragments and worshipped on the day of Saturn's death. The discrepancy between early November and late December, when Saturn is celebrated and the Saturnalia are held, indicates that the length of the year shifted once again after the deluge, perhaps from 260 to 320 days or so. At least one of the Pleiades has since lost much of its brightness, for many peoples, who can today observe only six stars, cite its true number of seven stars.
From the very beginnings in Urania, mankind was impressed by the great eye that appeared in the "northern" opening of the sky. In Talbott's drawings (Figure 25) we see it. In the course of the day, the eye is often lidded with the crescent of the Sun's reflection (the inverted sky-boat). The image also changes into the face of the Heavenly Cow, horned by the crescent. Rudolf Anthes writes :
The concept of the Eye of the highest god was mentioned in the story of the heavenly cow. The Eye occurs either as the Eye of Horus or the Eye of Re, though not exclusively : we encountered the Eye of Atum before. The characteristic of the Eye appears to be that its removal from the highest god means disturbance, while its return means pacification and the restitution of order." [9]
The great battle when Seth plucked out the Eye of Horus (Jupiter) was one such occasion. The Eye prevailed until the end of Jovean times; it is still found in many occult philosophies and on the face of the American dollar.
Saturn replaced Uranus as binary sun and god some twelve thousand years ago. More correctly, it would be "Super-Saturn", for the birth of Jupiter from Saturn had not yet occurred. The transition from the one god to the other occurred as one more in the series of disasters, the climax of which to Solaria Binaria was the fissioning of the darker binary, Super-Uranus, while the climax to earthlings was the pass-by of the exploded body and the eruption of the Moon. The behavior of the Moon was foremost in human attention for many centuries.
Expectedly, the ancients appear to have been sometimes unclear about the succession of events. They were clear in having Saturn descend directly from the heaven-god, not the Moon, and especially from a father, Uranus. They were often confused, however, about the exact form of transmission from Uranus, so that increasingly we find them according the work of creation to Saturn, rather than Uranus. The student today must depend upon scraps of evidence. The distinction between Super-Uranus and Saturn was more apparent to the earliest peoples than to us toady, or even than to the Greeks, many memorial generations later.
The Hebrew Genesis credits the work of creation to Elohim or Saturn, but a close reading of its first lines may reveal that the work-week of Elohim traverses the times of Urania and Lunaria. It may be premised that every creation mythology will ultimately afford a predecessor to Saturn. And, "in each case, the successor to the original deity was a Saturn-like god." [10]
The beginning of Saturn's kingdom was fashioned by the Greeks into a story of celestial revolt [11] . Mother Earth aroused the giants born of Ouranos and herself. These united behind her son, Kronos, who in the struggle castrated his father. The giants or Titans ascended from the bowels of the Earth into heaven. Ouranos was exiled into farther space, possibly in reality constituting planet Uranus or Neptune, leaving the Earth bloody and battered by his passage.
It seemed logical by analogy: He who had overburdened and oppressed Mother Earth, who had buried her children under the Earth, lost his virile member. The perennial connections among astronomy, geology, sex and religion were reinforced (not only in Greek myth but everywhere) [12] . Humans developing from hominids very much like themselves, employed the most obvious and personally salient analogies. The mountain of sexualized religious myths rose like a new volcano.
Saturn the god was identified by the Romans with the planet Saturn. As sun and king of gods, Saturn's names were many. Besides those listed by D. Talbott above (p. 179), one might mention as Saturnian Elohim (Hebrews), Odin (norse), Baal (Near East), and Tiamat-Apsu (Assyrian). Many identities are lost or undiscovered; several were once used for Uranus (as Varuna) or are given to later gods (as Baal became Venus). Also god heroes and gods act interchangeably, as Manu and Vishnu (Hindu) [13] . His home is supposed to be in the north where he presided on his throne. An early Egyptian account in the age of Mercury says that "when [Pharaoh] Pepi standeth upon the north of heaven with Ra, he becometh lord of the universe, like unto the king of the gods." [14] Pepi is also called brother of the Moon. A Chaldean oracle called him the companion of Helios, the Titanic Sun [15] . M. Jastrow (1898) states: "... at all events, the fact that Saturn was also called the 'sun' is vouched for, both by explanatory notes attached to the astrological connotations, and by notices in classical writings to that effect." [16] Many peoples of the Age of Saturn could see the planet there; it was huge and becoming more continuously distinct as the boreal heavens cleared of the Uranian canopies and the Lunarian debris. Saturn was the first irradiator of light, wrote Westropp and Wake [17] , but we recognize Super-Uranus in this capacity and Saturn, the son of Uranus, as continuing where he left off.
The costly mechanics of the Lunarian period had purchased a reprieve to life upon Earth. The land surface of the Earth included the continental shelves and slopes, for the oceans were lower. The Sun shone feebly from the South. Its Saturnine binary, darkly brooding upon its children, dominated the northern sky, reflecting the Sun with some of its brightness and clarity that the Moon, daughter of Uranus, possessed. The Earth was almost never in full darkness. The climate of Saturnia was even and damp, a tropical greenhouse. The clouds still were much heavier than the skies of today.
Language became well-developed and replete with celestial references. Drawing and picture symbols occur. Memories of Uranus were historicized. Memories of the lunar catastrophes were suppressed, but persisted in lunar myth and rites. Literature and music of a liturgical kind developed. "Religious" history was the pretext for music and art. The Romans regarded the most ancient Latin verses as Saturnian music, barbaric, chanted by fauns and augurs
The jagged flint sickle with which Saturn was said to have castrated his father became the inspiration and symbol of the useful tools of a golden age of agriculture. It also became the harp or lyre of music, when strung. Women and men, indeed all people, worked in general equality. Rulers merged sacred and sacred ideas. They were something like totem animals, not all-powerful, not gods, but steeped in the divine and used as scapegoats and advocates before the gods.
Government by God-kings of the Egyptian, Babylonian, and Chinese type evolved later. First a kind of sacred republican rule prevailed. Then the sacred ruler became the God-King. The transition may have been "natural", as aggressive people enslaved others and their kings expanded royal power generally on the basis of their especial powers over slaves. Since the desire to control others, as well as to control the gods, was so strong, there would be no psychological resistance to absolutism in government. There appear to have been no Saturnian monolithic civilizations; Tiahuanacu and Atlantis did not seem to have the kind of state that dynastic Egypt and Sumeria developed in the next age of Jove. Perhaps Saturn was peaceful, the Moon calm now, and mankind generally restrained in behavior.
Civilizations, now separated by oceanic waters, entered upon a golden age, supposedly under the benevolent rule of Saturn. The altars addressed his northern polar throne. Saturn is "the generator," "the devourer," and the "vital vortex." [18] His are the virtues of rusticity. Peace was believed to have characterized his reign. Something of the old aggressiveness seems to have absented itself from the human breast. Thousands of years later, the Romans deposited the ensigns of the legions in the temple of Saturnia when at peace. Many place names are of Saturn or his qualities. Latium of the Latins, for instance, was supposedly named for his place of exile, when he hid (latuit). Life appeared generally easy to humanity during the "golden age" of Saturn, with universal warmth, moist conditions, an absence of marked seasons, low atmospheric turbulence, and a suffused golden color from the translucent remaining canopies.
Still religion flourished, and with it the practice of human sacrifices to Saturn. Long into the Roman Empire, despite legal suppression, the sacrifices were continued. Baal and Moloch were names for Saturn that endured in the Hebrew world until they came to stand for evil gods. The Phoenicians joined him to Baal and pictured him as a lion whose head was crowned by rays, a solar (binary?) image [19] . Animal representations -- among them the snake, bear, lion, and bull continued to assist in worship.
In the endless process of transferring gods and names, the names of Saturn descended to Jupiter and then to Venus, who were also called Baal and Moloch. However, the confusion among the ancients has been compounded by the lack of data and by the ideological prejudice of Solarian scholars who, regarding the gods as divinely named anthologies of fiction, were in no condition to distinguish the true identity of the gods to whom sacrifices were made.
The multiple kingdoms of Atlantis that Plato described may have been of the political and social order of Saturnia. Atlantis was a set of kingdoms of related cultures [20] . It was perhaps Celtic and in close touch with the Tethyan-Mediterranean culture. Its survivors may have been the Stonehenge and megalithic builders of Western Europe. They remained under the influence of the Minoans, Phoenicians, and Mycenaeans.
Atlantis can be best defined by a line enclosing all of the European northwestern continental platform from the Bay of Biscay to Scandinavia on the north, from the western banks of Ireland into Denmark and France. It is difficult to decide whether the Pillars of Hercules that led to the several kingdoms were at Gibraltar, or whether the "Pillars" referred to the innumerable megalithic dolmens that later lined the shores in honor of Hercules, perhaps even in conjunction with a precursor to the English Channel [21] .
Saturn taught mankind the arts, possibly after the Lunarian catastrophes. Metals were occasionally worked where they had fallen or erupted; stone and wood construction were fully elaborated. The science of geometry governed temples, roadways, and navigation. The great seas of Lunaria could be crossed for the first time and international commerce flourished. Carli insisted that before the Deluge of Saturn, the inhabitants of the globe might pass readily between Africa, Europe, and America. Maps were probably drawn [22] , considering that the so-called "Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings" which came to light recently show Antarctic shores as they are today beneath the ice; the area has not been free of ice since the colder climates of Jovea arrived around 6000 years ago.
The differentiation of races is a result of ancient catastrophes. The races of hominids had been several in Pangea [23] . The race of mankind sui generis, was agglomerative in Urania. Its near extinction of Lunarian times produced many new breeds in isolated spots of the globe. Saturnia was a time of the multiplication of humans. Still the propagation was not uniform. Rather, isolated pockets of older strain remained, while three fairly distinct races flourished and dominated the world.
The three constituted the three major modern races. The areas of the Tethyan welt that runs around the world east and west included the original Caucasian peoples who can be called the Atlanteans and the Tethyans. Even today some evidences of their original occupation of the Tethyan belt are noted in the Caribbean belt and Polynesia. Nor is Northwest Europe devoid of hints of the Atlanteans. Further, the American Indians of the East Southeast were perhaps originally Tethyans [24] . The Sines were split into Asians and American. The Africans were divided into those who remained in North and Central South America and in Africa and those who were transported long distances upon the moving Indian subcontinent and into Australasia [25] .
Neanderthal, other "modern" types, and a number of hominid branches were wiped out as breeding groups by ecological disasters and by the new humans who were aggressively schizoid. In each of these three races, the surviving strains that rapidly bred were partly related to some common Uranian ancestors. Although they developed many special features they were still possessed of the basic schizoid humanness that incorporated the methods of survival in its madness.
The population of Saturnia was large. It developed religious, political, artistic, and linguistic forms that were to persevere through the ages until the breakthroughs of enlightenment and science in the 6th century B. C. (2,600 B. P.) in China, India, the Near East and Mediterranean; that is, until the end of the Martian terror [26] . The archaic Mesoamerican cultures that Spinden and Coe believe to have stretched from southwestern U. S. A. to the Andes, a full neolithic culture, was Saturnian, and probably at bottom Uranian.
Saturnia ended in disaster. Super-Saturn, the remnant binary of the Sun, underwent the same fate as Super-Uranus. It progressively engorged material from space it could ill digest. Its rotation was interrupted by the meals of "his children," as the Greek myth would have it; Figure 26 is an artistic rendering of the myth. Only Zeus (Jupiter) escaped, by the wiles of his mother and nurses (the Kuretes). Atum, the Egyptian Saturn, means "the One who has been completed by absorbing others." [27] Finally, near the year 6000 B. P., Saturn appeared to be in a frightful fit of rage; it brilliantly exploded much of its shell of gas and waters into space, and fissioned. It was a nova, still marked today by its emission of x-rays.
The Earth suffered a deluge of water and salt [28] . In addition to the Saturnian salt waters, the high clouds that blanketed the Earth most of the time were brought down in the ensuing destruction of the world. The "beloved" and "melancholy" old god of time was assaulted, as the Greek myth goes, by his wife in league with Zeus, his son (Jupiter). When he became visible again to human survivors, he was in farther space, bound up forever in his rings. The bonds were known to the ancients who thought them meant to restrain the old god and penalize him in a way for the crime of infant cannibalism [29] . So his last pictures, memorialized commonly in graphic media of classical times, was of a king receiving a wrapped stone in lieu of the infant Zeus. (See Figure 13.) The legerdemain that was to be his undoing, according to Greek legend again, was a fate that was foreseen and foresworn by his own father, Ouranos, when Ouranos was exiled into far space.
While the astronomical drama was interpreted and reworked in these terms by some of its human observers, the peoples of Saturnia were practically obliterated. An electrical storm of cosmic dimensions ensued as Jupiter and Saturn separated. Lightning discharges were exchanged even among Jupiter and the planets. The axis of the Earth tilted sharply and quickly. Anaxagoras, the ancient Greek scientist, says that the Earth's pole tilted at the time of the flood [30] . The north pole, instead of pointing towards Saturn, now was nearly perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic. The seasons became severe because of the loss of cloud cover and far atmosphere. Ice collected in the polar regions. Earthquakes shook the globe. In the Hebrew story, Adam and Eve, representing all people, were driven from the Garden of Eden by Yahweh, who made them feel intense guilt and shame. They felt their nudity physically, too, and needed warm clothing.
Figure 26.
SATURN DEVOURING HIS CHILDREN.
Not only did a new cold climate come upon Earth. Also, waters of Saturn were blown back along the solar axis, making dense the atmosphere of the thinning magnetic tube. But the great axis of fire, the electrical current of Pangea, was practically gone and the tube could not generate the magnetic field to support a universal atmosphere. The cataclysms began again. A great deluge of Noah (Near East), of Manu (India), and of many names elsewhere swamped the Earth. The waters fell upon continents and oceans. They fell as snow and ice at the polar regions. They ran off the continents into the sea.
The great heights reached by the floods according to many ancient myths suggest that tidal forces were operating, as well as deluges. The necessary cause of the tides may have been a large, electrically charged body passing near to the Earth. This could have been Saturn itself as it whirled from Jupiter in a great ellipse before retiring into farther space of its present solar orbit. Certainly in such a case, mountains too would have been further elevated. The tides would have also occurred if the Earth's axis shifted suddenly, with a consequent whirlpool of the Earth's waters and a rebounding of the flattened polar rocks.
Hence the high peaks upon which heroes around the world were stranded were probably revealed as the waters receded, but might also have been somewhat raised up at the time. The survivors, such as Noah and his family and animals, and Manu and his wise men, would have found little left of their own cultures. Survivors from the northern belts of the Earth would have migrated towards the center afterwards. They would have suffered devastation by cross-tides, deluges, and the ravaging of the atmosphere by wind, electricity, and fall-out of cosmic debris and particles.
The species were again decimated and their populations drastically reduced. The survivors, animal and human, fled together to the caves and highlands. The green world became browner and drier. People had to labor; they survived "by the sweat of their brows."
Numerous continental area, shelves and slopes, that had escaped aquatic burial before were now drowned, never to rise again. Great earthquakes accompanied the floods, following upon the primeval but still continuing imbalances and the crustal shock of tilting, the movements of waters, the lithospheric adjustment to the old and new equatorial bulges, and the electrical interruption of the Earth's rotation.
Atlantis sank in a day of furious trembling and flood, it was told. Portions of the sialic continents that had remained above the oceans were deluged, not only at Atlantis but throughout the world. Total destruction came upon the large part of the Earth's population which was living on the continental margins. For these suddenly became the vast continental slopes and shelves of the oceans.
The ocean basins had not been deliberately designed for water, much less a quota of waters. They were the cups paved with basalt, volcanically transformed, placed where the crust had been removed and between the separating continents. That waters filled them from the beginning was a geological coincidence. That waters now overflowed them was an equally understandable lack of congruence.
Okeanos, the child of Ouranos, was the founder of the ocean: he had begun his descent from heaven in Uranian times. The first phase of the Jovean Age and last great flood of waters from the skies might be called the Poseidon Phase. In Greek myth Poseidon, son of Kronos and brother of Zeus, remained in Heaven after his father retired, but later made an accord with Zeus to descend and rule the seas. The same great god was a ruler of Atlantis and was ambitious to rule the whole Earth as well. He was "greedy of earthly kingdoms," [31] and famed for encroaching upon the Earth, as he did during the Atlantean collapse and flood.
F. Guirand provides additional helpful suggestions regarding Poseidon :
Poseidon was a very ancient Pelasgian deity, older even than Zeus. His province, later confined to the waters, was in primitive times much wider.... The name Poseidon seems to derive from the root meaning 'to be master'.... It is not impossible that this primitive Poseidon, this sovereign 'master, ' had once been a celestial god, as his attribute, the trident -- probably a symbol for the thunderbolt -- seems to indicate. Though supplanted by Zeus, Poseidon continued to exercise his empire over the entire Earth... [32]
At Sparta he was called "the creator." It is possible, then, that Poseidon was mistaken for Jupiter or may have been for a time a visible distinct element in the break-up of Super-Saturn appearing between the time of the nova of Saturn and the great Deluge.
Many neolithic sites uncovered in the Eurasian and African region are Saturnian. It was not an age of great temples. A stone age culture, quite decentralized, had existed in the land of Egypt before the first Egyptian dynasties were founded. There, little direct succession can be shown between Saturnia and Jovea. There is a great cultural leap and the physical type of the people changed [33] . The direct ancestors of the Egyptians were probably survivors from Tethyan northwestern Africa, or Indo-Africa.
Mullen surmises that the unification of Egypt "might have followed fairly directly after the deluge" from a study of the first king lists. "Most of the gods preceding Menes as divine kings are associated with the Osiris deluge legend. The fact that every king from Menes on identified himself with Horus, the planet Jupiter" suggests a new order under the auspices of a new planet.
Before the "Bronze Ages," so called, of Jovea, many surface contours from the Atlantic Ocean to Iran had been altered. The Saturnian centers were often not preferred as sites for the new Bronze Age centers. Most Bronze Age sites of Eurasia are marked by six catastrophes [34] . But to find sites below them is rare. One is led to believe that either an entirely new foundation was laid where none had existed before, or else an original settlement had been completely erased in the transition from Saturn to Jupiter.
That the new age of Jupiter was more physically and politically repressive is strongly indicated by the Saturnalia. Persisting to the present day, in one form or another (" the influence of the Saturnalia upon the celebrations of Christmas and the New Year has been direct") [35] the Saturnalian revivals reveal what must have been a long-extant view of life and even social practices. In the Saturnalia, which occupied seven days in Rome, beginning on December 17, the times of chaos and breaking up of an age are repeated ritualistically. Once a year they removed the bonds of linen that wrapped up the god in the ancient Tarquinian temple, only to replace them afterwards [36] .
But not only Rome, also in Mesoamerica, the Near East, Europe, and China Saturnalias are discovered [37] . They are days of equality; hierarchy is abolished, slaves are served by kings and masters. Saturn was believed to have dwelt among men. In some ways, Jesus of Nazareth was a Saturnian figure and feared and hated as such; early Christians, too, were suspected by the Roman authorities of conducting year-around Saturnalia. In the medieval "Feast of Fools" the Catholic hierarchy found itself often of two minds, caught up in the Saturnalian spirit and reproving it as pagan and anti-establishmentarian. The destructive-creative orgy was a complex of revolt against the gods succeeding Saturn, a psychologically terrified and disorderly recapitulation of chaos, and an expression of nostalgia for a better life once achieved, long-enjoyed, and irretrievably lost.
Notes (Chapter Eight: Saturn's Children)
2. ibid. 23; tractate Brakhot, Fol. 59.
3. Gibson (1977); Talbott (1977).
4. Larousse Ency. of Mythology.
10. Tresman and O'Geoghan (1977) 36.
12. Westropp and Wake 82, 84-6; Rix (1975), 58 ff.
16. (1898), 223, n. 58 quoted by Tresman and O'Geoghan (1977) 40, fn 66.
20. Cf. Timaeus and Critias, and Bellamy (1948).
28. Tresman and O'Geoghan (1977) 38-9, citing Martin Sieff's research.
32. Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, 133.
33. Mullen (1973) 12, quoting D. E. Derry.
35. "Saturn", VIII Encyclopedia Britannica 916.
36. Hild 1087, citing Macrobius.
37. Santillana and von Dechend 222.