SATURNALIA AS PAGAN PASSOVER
The ancient Roman holiday of Saturnalia is a deeply coded astrological event. This only becomes clear in light of close examination of Greek and Roman mythology and the coding of traditional astrological sign rulership.
It is the festive celebration of Saturn taking over rule of the skies as the Sun moves from Sagittarius, ruled by Jupiter, into Capricorn. Saturn’s rule. It would happen generally from around December 17-25, spanning the time of the winter Solstice as the Sun reaches it’s most southern point on the ecliptic, until the days get perceptibly longer, around the 25th.
This period is Saturnine in that the days neither get perceptibly shorter or longer for 3 days before and after the Winter Solstice. Saturn is linked to slowness, great distance and lack of motion. The skies reflect this.
This celebration is one of great complexity and irony, and has led to much confusion about what Saturn represents. Saturn is not an agricultural god in any traditional sense, although apophatic magic and propitiation to keep him at bay would make perfect sense.
A feast honoring Saturn, the God of time, decrease, old age, death, castration, limitation, poverty, taxation, status quo, lameness and illness, recalls the myth of Saturn eating his own children, consuming his own babies to prevent them from usurping his rule.
The myths tell us that, after the paranoid Saturn had eaten all of his older children, Rhea, Saturn’s wife, kept their youngest son Jupiter out of Saturn’s reach by feeding Saturn a rock swaddled like a baby in Jupiter’s place. She then kept the baby hidden in caves with surrogate nurses.
In order to keep Saturn from hearing the cries of the infant Jupiter, Rhea enlisted the Couretes, a band of warrior dancer/ singers to make a great loud ruckus to distract Saturn.
In line with this idea, Saturnalia was known for being an incredibly loud, raucous and crazy holiday. Saturn himself is associated with quietude and
Saturnalia likely was a type of Passover for Jupiter, celebrating Jupiter’s escape from Saturn’s maw.
During this period, the Romans would switch social roles and the slaves might temporarily act like the slave owners, the poor like the rich.
They would even have a lottery by which a temporary new “king” would be chosen from the lower classes or slaves who would act out in ridiculous ways.
The practice of choosing a “new King” during the Saturnalia would be equivalent to Rhea deceiving Saturn with a “stone”. The foolish surrogate “king” was a sacrifice, a stone proxy for Jupiter, giving us the premise for the statement “stupid as a rock”.
The false King trope, and the idea of sacrifice of the King, has persisted through history, going back to at least Babylonian times. It was a part of Norse and Germanic culture. During times of trouble, war, crop failure, blight, massive weather changes, floods or fires, sickness or plague, or astrological besiegement, Kings and other leaders would often push another person into their position temporarily, or sacrifice a scapegoat in order to satisfy the gods, or more accurately, the masses. If the king was unpopular or embroiled in scandal this could potentially provide cover to redirect attention away from his crimes. They would place themselves in the role of Jupiter, while the proxy king would be eaten like Rhea’s stone.
A successful Saturnalia would metaphorically fool Saturn over the winter months to save the baby Jupiter from Saturn’s table. Jupiter rules over the Sun’s time in Sagittarius prior to Saturnalia, and then assumes rulership over the skies again once the Sun is in Pisces in late February.
Pisces is a feminine water sign, and the masculine Jupiter is known for his many affairs and dalliances: he had many, many children, among them chimeras, gods, Demi-gods and humans by many goddesses and mortal women alike. Jupiter’s jealous wife, Hera, would often chase down and confront the women who Jupiter seduced and punish them in often horrific ways, but Jupiter himself managed to remain in control and avoid the worst of the consequences.
This successful navigation of the feminine world is why Jupiter’s rule of this feminine sign makes perfect sense. Out of this primordial mixing of Jove’s secret seeds with the feminine waters, the god Ares or Mars is born at the equinox. Mars/ Ares was traditionally the god of the Spring and later took on the warlike meanings we now know.