Gods of Death: Saturn, Cronus, & Ba’al Hammon
Saturn/Cronus/Chronos/Ba'al Hammon is a god of time. For information on Saturn as the Greek god Chronos (”Time”), see my post on He and His consort, Ananke (”Necessity”), and my post comparing Chronos and Cronus. Ba'al Hammon (“Lord of the Brazier”) is a Phoenician god of vegetation whose worship spread to Greece, where He was known as Cronus (“Time”), a god of time. Later, He became known in Rome as Saturn (“The Sower”), a god of death. “The Sower” has nothing to do with sowing crops, as He is associated with the winter solstice and the transition from the old year to the new year. During that time, grains were opened, dried, and milled; sowing played no role. Therefore, I assume He sows souls, like a grim reaper. Like Hammon, Cronus and Saturn have agricultural associations, as Cronus and Saturn are credited with the introduction of agriculture to the Greeks and Romans. As a god of death, Saturn is a guardian of the crossroads between liminal states, such as life and death.
Even though Saturn was a “foreigner,” He was one of the first gods to appear in the Roman pantheon. His first temple was the Temple of Saturn at the bottom of Capitoline Hill, in Rome. According to the Romans, it was built in 497 B.C.E., and there was an altar there before the temple was built. In front of it is the spot that marks the founding of the Roman Empire. This circular plaza is called the mundus (Etruscan for “pit”) and the umbilicus Romae (Latin for “The Navel of Rome"), and it is where the grains were stored. My hypothesis as to why a god from such a faraway place was worshiped at one of the first cultic centers in the Roman Empire is that I think incense must have been very important in pre-Roman Italian rituals, and the Phoenicians were known for their incense industry.
Saturn’s festival was Saturnalia (originally December 17-December 19, and later on December 17-December 24), which stemmed from the Greek festival for Cronus, Kronia. Saturnalia primarily served agricultural purposes, but it was also a festival that created the conditions on Earth of the paradise that Saturn has to offer in the next life - a place of equality, freedom, indulgence, and charity.
Saturn was depicted as having cloth tied around His ankles like shackles. Statues of Saturn and Cronus were dressed in actual clothing and He was adorned with a head covering. Ba'al Hammon’s head covering is a veil that represents His merman fins, since He protects those on land and at sea. As it was a Phoenician attribute and it did not exist as a fashion in Greece, the Greeks and Romans had no idea why He wore a head covering. They inferred that the shadows it cast on His face conveyed His internalized and gloomy disposition. As one might expect from a god of death, Saturn has a scythe on His person.
Loaves of bread were presented to Cronus as offerings, and any person was allowed to consume the bread once it was offered, because Cronus is charitable. To present offerings and to invoke Cronus’s presence, the head covering was removed from Cronus statues. According to the Greeks, blood sacrifices were inappropriate for Cronus because that goes against His peaceful message. The Romans only held one animal sacrifice per year to Saturn, a pig. This sacrifice was the first ritual at Saturnalia, a practice that took place starting with the first Saturnalia in 217 B.C.E.
Ba'al Hammon is a protector of cattle and sheep, and seems to have been invoked to bring fertility to them. Both Saturn and His consort, Lua (“The Liberator”), have the ability to both increase fertility and to prevent people from having children.
The plants that were the most sacred to Saturn were deadly nightshade, hellebore, henbane, mandrake, savin juniper, and wolf’s bane. Spooky-looking, resinous, poisonous (but ingestible in miniscule doses), psychotropic plants used as incense, hallucinogenic drugs, anesthetics, and abortifacients, and also used in mourning rituals.
Every day, the Greeks poured olive oil over the Cronus statue at Delphi. At every festival, they wrapped the statue in wool, like a mummy. I hypothesize that that means He dies or travels to an underworld realm, then comes back to life or back to the realm of the living. Similarly, prominent Roman statues of Saturn were hollow and, on a daily basis, olive oil was poured inside. Wool cloth was tied around the ankles, and was only taken off during Saturnalia.
Saturn is the god of people suffering from depression. Dreary as He is, He was simultaneously described as charitable and the life of the party. I hypothesize that the cloth shackles on His feet represent a state of depression, which are untied during Saturnalia after drinking and merriment. I also hypothesize that the binding of the feet might be a reference to Ba'al Hammon’s merman form. Moreover, I agree with H.S. Versnel’s theory that Saturn is ‘liberated’ from His shackles because Saturnalia coincides with the 'liberation’ (the opening of) of the grain stored in front of the Temple of Saturn.
During Saturn’s presence in the terrestrial realm, for a time, He lived in Latium, Italy. The name Latium comes from a latente deo, “the hidden god.” That is because Saturn is the god of hidden things. I hypothesize that these hidden things are depression and other psychological issues. Saturn’s association with hemlock may attest to that because the Greeks and Romans used it as medicine for “madness.” 'Madness’ in the ancient world meant everything from serious mental illness to panic attacks to falling in love. The god of hidden things epithet is similar to that of Consus, who is the keeper of secrets. Like Saturn and Lua, Consus and His consort, Ops, are gods of death who were honored at Saturnalia for the opening of the grain silos. One secret that Saturn certainly keeps is Lua’s True Name, which is forbidden to speak.
Orpheus’s Sorrow by Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, 1876
Topic Sources: Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman Religion: Transition and Reversal in Myth and Ritual (2nd Ed.) by H.S. Versnel; Pagan Christmas: The Plants, Spirits, and Rituals at the Origins of Yuletide by Christian Rätsch & Claudia Müller-Ebeling (Trans. Katja Lueders); Phoenicians by Glenn Markoe
