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[Translation/Read-through] The Gospel of Saturn

Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2019 4:25 pm
by Nefastos
Gospel of Saturn is a writing of mine, published first in 2005 by Ixaxaar in "Fosforos ja muita kirjoituksia" ("Fosforos and Other Writings") and then self-published again in 2010 as a revised and added edition. Since it seems unlikely that this text will be going through actual hardcore translation and publishing process in any near future, I thought it might be fun & perhaps also useful to make a unofficial translation here as a slow read-through. I do not promise to go through the whole book, and even if that happens, it might take a while. You are welcome to participate any way you would like, by thought or questions – or even partaking in the process of translation, if you know Finnish. Especially the latter would be most welcome.

Why this particular book? First I thought to go through Ihmisen ikäkaudet ("The Ages of Man") in the same way, but then I remembered that many of the main ideas of that book have already been given in the members' side of this forum, so it felt a bit redundant to start going through it. Of the many untranslated Finnish books of mine, the Gospel of Saturn seems to me convenient at this time, since it ponders the role of Saturn-Satan, the cold, deathly and rational aspect of the numinous master, which beckons to me intensely right now.

I will be translating the newest edition, of course, the one published in 2010. I apologise in advance my mistakes in translation and poor English overall. The whole idea of this read-through is to make compromises in language in order to get some new English material available. There will be a lot of mistakes in form present; most likely I will not even read my own translation before putting it online, for I am not goint to take any additional stress because of this little side project. Because of this, in some parts I might also translate the meanings more loosely rather than put much effort in verbatim translation. I will, however, try to follow the feeling of the text, and will inform the reader of any major changes in language.

With these disclaimers, let's go. The back cover text:

"GOSPEL OF SATURN is a writing about the magical power of matter and its formulation through the Saturn archetype. The uniting together of freedom and responsibility, creation and annihilation, the realities of material and spiritual realities are the main themes of this opus, which concludes a certain cycle. This revised edition has been supplemented with clarifying footnotes and a new text has been added to it. DEMONS' CUBE discusses the organization of spiritual hierarchies and their administration through the formula known as the cube of Metatron."


I will not include the Demons' Cube text here, since it will be published in English in Demons' Cube and Other Writings on Magic at later date (being at the time in process of editing).

The front cover of the 2010 version is made by Iris Astraya after my instructions. It depicts a white king in dark purple regal robe, sitting at the cubic block of stone, holding his two arms upwards, palms raised, facing the reader. On his right is the head of a serpent, white with black underbelly, head a bit above the king's palm, and body going to right. On his left the serpent's tail is similarly shown. On his regal robe's hem a certain text from Sepher Yetzirah is shown. A very steep mountain is shown behind king Saturn, forming something like an aura around him. Near its top, above the figure, are shown five winged beings, head downwards, their wings red and yellow as if on fire. Around these angelic beings are depicted four parts of celestial constellations.

When opening the booklet, the book itself begins with the motto:

Lo, these are parts of his ways: but how little a portion is heard of him? but the thunder of his power who can understand?

– Job 26:14


This King James translation does not seem to give the whole majesty of the old Finnish translation. The more precise translation of the latter would be something like: "Behold, these are only like distant looming of the borders of His being; and how quiet is the whisper we hear of/from Him! But who can understand the thunder of His strength?" Vulgata gives the following: "Ecce haec ex parte dicta sunt viarum ejus: & cum vix parvam stillam sermonis ejus audierimus, quis poterit tonitruum magnitudinis illius intueri?"

Re: [Translation/Read-through] The Gospel of Saturn

Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2019 6:00 pm
by Smaragd
Great to hear of this. I have been meaning to ask you ages ago if a republishing is coming because I've not managed to get the Finnish version on my hands yet. I will definitely at least follow the project eagerly, maybe see if I have time and abilities to help with the translation later in the Autumn. Strongly emphasizing on the maybe. :D
Nefastos wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 4:25 pm Of the many untranslated Finnish books of mine, the Gospel of Saturn seems to me convenient at this time, since it ponders the role of Saturn-Satan, the cold, deathly and rational aspect of the numinous master, which beckons to me intensely right now.
I've been trying to get in to terms with Saturn for so long and it just keeps throwing curve balls endlessly. This week has been interesting in both failings and brushing the edge of some escaping epiphany through Timo K. Mukkas writing of the unbearable heaviness of earthly life with beautiful poetic skills that conjure something like a backdoor to the coldness of the archetype. It will be interesting to continue from here to your text. Great timing!

Re: [Translation/Read-through] The Gospel of Saturn

Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2019 7:24 pm
by Nefastos
Thank you for your interest, and also for the "maybe"! In case I will be active enough to go through the Gospel early (it's not a very long text), we might think about continuing this kind of translation read through to other texts.
Smaragd wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 6:00 pmI've been trying to get in to terms with Saturn for so long and it just keeps throwing curve balls endlessly.

That is his m.o., isn't it? Actually, the same paradox just came up in the first chapter I am now translating.

The text consists of the prologue (For the Reader, given below) and eight chapters. Here is what to expect:

I: 8 pages
II: 3 pages
III: 2 pages
IV: 2 pages
V: 7 pages
VI: 4 pages
VII: 5 pages
VIII: 2 pages

So, most of these should be quick & easy enough to (translate and) read & absorb. Every chapter have mottos of their own.

FOR THE READER

This text, the Gospel of Saturn, is the latter in the pair of writings about the forces of matter, and whose first part was Magna Mater. This opus discussed the magic power of matter in its feminine basic form, met in erotic energy and fertility of manifestation. The text at hand, in turn, discusses the opposite force: the limiting, organizing, positioning principle of crystallation or freezing, which the astrologico-occult symbolism knows in the form of Saturn.

Gospel, evangelium, means good message, happy news. The word implies that the presentation holds a meaning of freeing, of giving elation or happiness. When we talk about Satan, especially under his cold, severe expression as the modeller and therefore also the judge of the material world, this might seem strange. But as our eyes open to the beauty of darkness and of death, when we stop trusting in our instinctive fear towards these manifestation of the sacred, when we start to openly study and openly understand them, the greater is the katharsis when we notice how that which we had tried to escape from was actually something subtly graceful and not terrifying at all. Even at the lips of the Prince of Darkness the almost unobservable smile ripples; his open hand is not rising against us, but beckoning: Man, at its own time let drop off that which is already changing from power to burden...

The latter text, Demons' Cube, continues to discuss the topic towards even more practical applications in the sphere of formal magic. We will study how the spiritual powers seek by formulation of energy their manifestations in the elemental world of matter, and how the occultist who has managed to brighten his creative power is able to press the seal of his intention to the working of the elemental powers, thus conjuring the spiritual forces as the immediate carriers of his impulse of will. Let the Master help us to understand and use these deep forces rightly and wisely.

– Johannes Nefastos, December 21, 2010


Tomorrow: Chapter One.

Re: [Translation/Read-through] The Gospel of Saturn

Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2019 10:24 pm
by Cerastes
That's good news. I'm really looking forward to read this.
Saturn is the most inaccessible but also the most fascinating planetary power for me.

Re: [Translation/Read-through] The Gospel of Saturn

Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2019 5:50 am
by Silvaeon
Great and exciting news! I will definitely be reading along with this.

Re: [Translation/Read-through] The Gospel of Saturn

Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2019 1:02 pm
by Nefastos
The first half of Chapter One:
CHAPTER I

”It should be remembered: The Good God, embodiment of goodness, is so implacable in His anger, that only human sacrifice suffices for atonement! Unbearable this is, something that the modern man cannot swallow unhesitatingly. And blind must one be, in case he cannot see how blatant light the character of God is herein put and how false are in it seen the talk of God as love and greatest good.”
– C.G. Jung: Answer to Job

”The modern church crucifies Christ with his head downwards.”
– William Blake

The Answer to Job quote is not actual translation from German, but just a rough translation made from the Gospel's Finnish quotation. Blake quotation's source I can no longer remember – I thought it would have been from the Marriage, but it is not – but a quick internet search gave the wording which I adopted, without stating the original source either.

In the previous part(*1) we discussed the spirit we serve on her feminine side, the essence of Moon, through which – when its foundation is well known – can be seen straight to the archetype of Lucifer-Venus; the one who is Holy Spirit in our system. Now we will once again turn our attention to the more masculine part of out pantheon, most of all to its Father aspect. By grief, shade and death does he approach men; melancholy is his essence in us, despair, gloom and perdition. But what is the voice of elation, which yet echoes from those depths? At first its form is seen like as the subconscious tendency to gloominess and anguish, but later as known – sought for – it can be seen purified and holy, understood as an important aspect of truth. Marvelous is its beauty, marvelous, because for our modern cultrue it is both familiar and strange, distant, but yet instinctively understood by every sensitive individual. The love of death, of darkness! The beauty of sorrow! Wisdom, which manifests in retreat from realm of men to loneliness, from seeking entertainment to silence, where the more divine voices speak to the soul.

This is the Saturn aspect of Master Satan, cold and dead outwardly, inwardly full of meaning and power. It is very different to his aspect of Mars, the one which manifests in the mystery of Azazel – but in full union with this first one, for their core is clearly the same. The one is retreating, another surrendering; the one is solid immoving ice and the other the most ecstatic fire. Even Mann's dilettante devil(*2) presents this aptly when talking about hell: ”It s, after all, just a continuation of an exceptional life. To say it with few words: The esscene or, if you would rather like, the 'idea' of hell is that it lets its residents choose only between extreme cold extreme ardor…” And isn't this peculiar unity of the opposites visible to us even in our own familiar sphere of experience, in case there is in us even the smallest amount of real artist or inner ingeniosity, which in fulfilling of its own calling is able to make any amount of violence towards everyday routine and our physical personality that is dependent on it? Yes, yes, mediocrity is suitable for ”life”, insignificance is consistent to ”God's” plan(*3), but all real originates from the father of the flame, Satan. And no God is able or even willing to oppose His strength, its whole torturing power and the grief which breaks down world after world, when the soul reaches towards the most real.

How this kind of life has been able to been born? How is our star able to exist, live under its sufferings, at the two forces' intersection, where only the suicide of a soul in one form or another(*4) can give real redemption? This no one can understand, and all our pieces of art and millennial culture are monuments for this wondering, awe that borders on exaltation and horror. Whatever the seeming reasons for carrying different flags and insignia, beyond everything breathes like an animal that eternal question, the wordless doubt of irrationality, which makes the masses procreate in order to avoid answering themselves to the question and thus passing it on; that same one which drives men to insanity and criminality, fanaticism and illness, destruction and works of heroism – to found and destroy religions and ideologies, to kill each other and search the meaning from wilderness and monasteries. That one, wordless question is behing this all. An artist or a philosopher hears it, the sound of Nature or his Soul, the most pious believer hears it thinks in it to hear God's personal address to himself; and those slumbered into matter do not realize hearing it, even though all their undertakings are only fumbling and promiscuous answers to that one and the same, eternal and cosmic question.

Footnotes:
*1 Magna Mater.
*2 Thomas Mann: Doctor Faustus.
*3 Views of Protestant theology.
*4 Two forms of soul's suicide: Either the gradual mortification of the desires of lower personality and assimilation of their basic essence to one's formless individuality, or one's own higher consciousness likewise gradual murdering for nutrition of his lower ambitions. About these "two perditions", the options of the paths of ascension and descension, have been discussed at greater length in Discordamelior.


This brings to my mind some other ideas given by Jung in the book I am reading right now. He says:

"The stirring up of conflict is a Luciferian virtue in the true sense of the word. Conflict engenders fire, the fire of affects and emotions, and like every other fire it has two aspects, that of combustion and that of creating light. On the one hand, emotion is the alchemical fire whose warmth brings everything into existence and whose heat burns all superfluities to ashes (omnes superfluitates comburit). But on the other hand, emotion is the moment when steel meets flint and a spark is struck forth, for emotion is the chief source of consciousness. There is no change from darkness to light or from inertia to movement without emotion." (Jung: The Mother Archetype)

This question is our hierophant, it is our silence, it is our glaciation and our silence, the depth, the damnation, the foundation of our philosophy. How we answer it to what degree we are able to be initiated to its living truth is the question of the Son's essence in us; and it gives birth to the breath of the Master within us. It is the fire, born from the depths, the ardor born from absolute cold, which burns us and everything we touch. Right was Nietzsche: Whoever has the fire, he is able to do whatever he wills – he must do ”whatever”, for he has risen above the human definitions to his own definition: he has found a part of himself, and that innermost essence of his is the same which he in the eyes of the world seems to have been lost. Incomprehensible, my friends, but true. He does not have borders anymore, he is free, he is his own lord, has has gobe through Satanic baptism. But to the degree that this is true, he will recognize his fetters even stronger; he is unable to bear the burden of his freedom.

This is the paradoxical fetter of existentialism, and of nihilism – the humanity's own feeling of responsibility. For leaving the material bonds he has come to the sphere of another, even more binding law.(*5) There is nothing, no means whatsoever, with which he could free himself from that living knowledge that he has drawn upon himself. Thus every aspirant becomes cursed with truth and bound with it; for the existing absolute truth is the most terrible thing in the world, for it does not tolerate any explaining nor applying. From this day on there is only yea and nay, and nothing can be added to that.(*6) Because of this let every friend of the idea of superhuman remember Raskolnikov(*7) and avoid his mistake. There are those for whom ”everything is allowed”, but that which they do is not from themselves: they work as channels of the higher one, not from the basis of emotion or intellect, but pure spirit. Herein lies a mystery that few can realize. No one is free, but we join to different powers in the hierarchy of the world. In case we join to the lower, we are subordinate to them; and if we join to the higher, we can transcend the demands of the lower ones as meaningless to ourselves. But the higher ones are demanding also, and even more demanding than those which they reign over, and because of this all augmented power and moral freedom brings with it even greater responsibility.

Footnotes:
*5 There are occult schools who have mixed up these two, the artificial bounds made by diminutive psychology of humanity, and the lofty obligations of higher reality. The confusion is understandable and humane, but all the more dangerous. The so called Right Hand Path often errs to take the rebukes of psychological subconscious as a voice of God, from which follows useless, childish shame and fear before the comprehensiveness of life; and in a similar way the so called Left Hand Path often errs to throw the child away with the wash-water, or to reject the higher notes of existence along with the constraints of human personality, which it interprets with simplification to mean only useless defences.
*6 Matthew 5:37. In other words, one cannot appeal to the ecstatic logic of grey area, for he is truly and fully responsible for each and every action and thought of his.
*7 Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment.


I very seldom approach Nietzsche, since I see that his texts – edited enough to be mutilated, some say – give wrong ideas far too easily, even to the point that the author himself is not free of that responsibility. But like I stated in the back cover text, the Gospel of Saturn is the end of one cycle, and at this point, I had to wrestle with the common misunderstanding of Satanism that had become very familiar to me in black metal circles. The lacking Dostoevskian answer to the misreading of the superhuman "freedom" – given in some way or another in most of his books, especially in The Possessed – most often creates terrible consequences in people drawing close to the telos archetype of Saturn-Satan and âtma principle's power aspect. The Gospel of Saturn is in conversation with this misunderstanding, because of which it uses the same vocabulary.

Interestingly enough, in the book I mentioned before Jung comes straight back to this Saturn of Nietzsche a bit later. He writes:

"Nietzsche, as we know, substitutes for the Christian mystery the myth of Dionysus-Zagreus, who was dismembered and came to life again. His experience has that character of Dionysian nature myth: the Deity appears in the garb of Nature, as classical antiquity saw it, and the moment of eternity is the noonday hour, sacred to pan: "Hath time flown away? Do I not fall? Have I not fallen – hark! – into the well of eternity?" [= Puteus Gigantum of Argarizim X (JN)] Even the "golden ring," the "ring of return," appears to him as a promise of resurrection and life. It is just as if Nietzsche had been present at a performance of the mysteries." (Jung: Concerning Rebirth)

Because of this the first path always leads to darkness, forgetting the old, freedom of the soul from the premisses which have carried us duly, but which still are ultimately lie. This is the journey to the center of the earth, which we go through it under Father. After this renunciation and prolonged contemplation we will meet another guardian in the center, and this belongs to the essence of the Ego: the Holy Spirit and of Mother. The third path is the one of the Son, it is the path of sacrifice and surrender in the everyday life. At every gate man gives something from himself, because only by giving up the apparent we are able to attain something more real than apparitions.

Father / Phase I / Giving up / Saturn
Mother / Phase II / Rebirth / Venus
Son / Phase III / New life / Mars

Using the theosophical schema of principles we can propose an approximate depiction of the work of the phases in different human principles:

Phase / Under working / Under activation(*8) / Goal

I / Kâma manas / Manas / Knowledge, truth
II / Kâma / Buddhi / Devotion, love
III / Linga sharîra / Âtma / Will, power

Naturally these three phases also correspond to the three alchemical main colours: black, white, and red. For to use in one's own studies a Hebrew letter may be joined to the phases thus: Shin – Son, Tet – Father, and Nun – Mother.

Footnotes:
*8 In the downward path the new principles are not activated, but their potential is used for to energizy their lower correspondences: in other words, the worked and activated principle swap places in the table. Goals therefore become: knowledge of methods, devotion to desires (which are pseudospiritual), and developing of mechanical will power. In the lower path everything focuses on bodily, i.e. to the lower trinity into which with the most seen body belongs the mind and emotional life which are bound to matter and time. Two latter are thus collected to the first: all principles are brought subordinated to the heaviest one, the physical body, and man binds his whole essence into the centrifugal force of entropy. Because the mechanically produced personal solidity is so perfect, thus accomplished focused personality is much stronger and more endurable than in the case of a common, incomplete personality. In the beginning of this path one's only ideal is the lack of ideals, and in the end it is adding of [entropic diversity which is] suffering as a value of its own.


When thinking about the threefold world in "three astrals" of White in linga sharîra (ether), Red in kâma (dream or phantasm world), and Black in kâma manas (deep astral), we must bear in mind that the colours have been changed after modifications have been made in the brotherhood system as told in different editions of the Book of Paths. These dynamic forces are in motion according to the sub-phase of the work.

Much of the Gospel's text is a bit outdated and no longer an important part of the brotherhood's ideas (since these particular challenges have been largely met already), but the footnote text about the vampirization process of the downward path towards the aspirant's own higher principles is an important one.

Note: I will edit the text when I come back to this topic & spot any glaring mistakes.

Re: [Translation/Read-through] The Gospel of Saturn

Posted: Sat Jul 20, 2019 11:29 am
by Aquila
Nefastos wrote: Fri Jul 19, 2019 1:02 pm

”The modern church crucifies Christ with his head downwards.”
– William Blake

Blake quotation's source I can no longer remember – I thought it would have been from the Marriage, but it is not – but a quick internet search gave the wording which I adopted, without stating the original source either.
Just a little note here, the original quote seems to be "The modern church crucifies Christ with the head downwards" instead of what is above. At least I could find many references with this version but maybe there has been others as well which haven't found their way to internet yet!

Very good project and I'm happy to read the translations here! I think my copy of the Gospel of Saturn is on loan somewhere so I haven't been able to read it in a while.

Re: [Translation/Read-through] The Gospel of Saturn

Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2019 6:02 pm
by Nefastos
Thank you Aquila, and Cerastes & Silvaeon for following! This is quite interesting project for me as well, since I haven't read this book for some time, and consciously thought only those parts of it which form the basis for the more practical Demons' Cube text.

The following is once again written without reading it through afterwards, so proceed at your own risk. The second half of Chapter One:

Correspondences naturally extend to everything. While investigating them, the reader should always remember how the law of reflection reverses its influence and the the forces swapping their polarities periodically change to their opposites and back again: no tabulation is ever absolute nor applicable in all the situations, the for the cosmic pattern is multidimensional and can be approached from many different directions.(*9) Just layering facts and details upon each other leads to confusion, and this is one reason why pure intellectual investigation can never bring about very nutritious fruit.

Like the reader notices, the influence of the Moon does not belong to our tabulation at all, and no path belongs under it. This is because the Moon itself is just a force, without a dynamic essence of its own and acting as a mediator, and its correspondence is more like the matter and matrix, working of the paths than the means or inner being of Work. Moon is the ”pure maiden” of the myths and legends, which the neophyte wins for himself; it represents his own workable and opening potential personifcated, his bride and the perfected Grail – which is the archetypical, feminine chalice in its purest form, as the cup of eternal life and sacralisation.(*10)

Footnotes:
*9 For example, the order of the three paths given in The Book of Paths [1st edition] swaps the places of the first and the thirt path from the basic form herein presented. These changes occur because of temporal agents, which also must be taken into consideration when pondering on practical application in question.
*10 And accordingly, before this "purification of the Moon" and finding of its inner silver has been accomplised, Moon represents also all that deception and illusion that rises to oppose the aspirant as projection of his own subconscious mind. But all the distortion which gets reflected back to us from the Moon has its origin in ourselves, it has been made possible by our own wrong thinking. From this follows that in practice as well as in symbolism the Moon is covered by its difficult and dangerous aspect.


In the later years of brotherhood, the inner Moon have given birth to this higher octave of the hidden, fourth and double aspect of Chalice. It can be seen under the secret womb of the Moon in the "Peaks of Mountain Meru" transmutation of the Hieroglyphic Key in The Book of Paths and in Unseen Fire #1, page 83. I didn't remember this later work was already sketched in the Gospel of Saturn.

Father is cold reason; he holds the golden fetter of inevitability, with which human beings so eagerly engirdle themselves. He is cold, eternally cold in his majestic loneliness, eternal contemplation at the edge of time and space. He is merciless, he is dark, but not less reverable because of this nature of his. We human beings do not yet understand evil, nor vice; we refuse to perceive but the form, and thus become deceived. Evil purified is divine.(*11) What forms would be left to be afraid of in the perfect darkness, which the confused fantasy of human mind would left unanimated by its chaotic conjurings?

Saturn is the ultimate, deepest essence of Earth; the prince of the center's fire (its primordial creative fire) and ice (the ceasing of creation), for in their perfect absoluteness these two do meet. Elemental ice is Earth purified to its limits; it is crystallized life, the solidified form of water without a blemish. Saturn itself is the same Stone of which we have already spoken about. That Stone can be seen also in the legend about himself as Cronos: it is answer set forth by him.

Footnotes:
*11 What is "purified evil"? Acting aout destructive and nocturnal impulses in a way wherein no hurting or lovelessness is allowed. This is possible only for a very highly advanced entities. A high adept, who finally learns the nature of evil, gets to his hands a tremendous power, and is able to use it in a perfectly instructive way without adding in any way but in greatly lessening the distress of humankind and all the nature. In what way this happens must remain impossible to understand for men whose consciousness yet lives on the planes of form. It is enough to say that the form of such a magician, towering to the almost inconceivable heights, is similar to that of his master and teacher, Saturn: outwardly immobile, cold as stone, and inwardly filled with the highest kind of magical activity, which has the power to transmute the energies of being and extract from the gross shape its golden core.


In Fosforos I wrote about the Rock (Stone) which must be turned upside down to form that celestial foothold that is mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount. It is not only ethics, but the rockbed unto which the ethics are based: the irrational idealism in metaphysical trust to chosen ideals which are seen as actual spiritual constellations. The legend of Cronos is the following one:

Wikipedia wrote:"The period in which Cronus ruled was called the Golden Age, as the people of the time had no need for laws or rules; everyone did the right thing, and immorality was absent.

Cronus learned from Gaia and Uranus that he was destined to be overcome by his own sons, just as he had overthrown his father. As a result, although he sired the gods Demeter, Hestia, Hera, Hades and Poseidon by Rhea, he devoured them all as soon as they were born to prevent the prophecy. When the sixth child, Zeus, was born Rhea sought Gaia to devise a plan to save them and to eventually get retribution on Cronus for his acts against his father and children.

Rhea secretly gave birth to Zeus in Crete, and handed Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, also known as the Omphalos Stone, which he promptly swallowed, thinking that it was his son. Rhea kept Zeus hidden in a cave on Mount Ida, Crete. According to some versions of the story, he was then raised by a goat named Amalthea, while a company of Kouretes, armored male dancers, shouted and clapped their hands to make enough noise to mask the baby's cries from Cronus. Other versions of the myth have Zeus raised by the nymph Adamanthea, who hid Zeus by dangling him by a rope from a tree so that he was suspended between the earth, the sea, and the sky, all of which were ruled by his father, Cronus. Still other versions of the tale say that Zeus was raised by his grandmother, Gaia.

Once he had grown up, Zeus used an emetic given to him by Gaia to force Cronus to disgorge the contents of his stomach in reverse order: first the stone, which was set down at Pytho under the glens of Mount Parnassus to be a sign to mortal men, and then his two brothers and three sisters. In other versions of the tale, Metis gave Cronus an emetic to force him to disgorge the children. After freeing his siblings, Zeus released the Hecatoncheires, and the Cyclopes who forged for him his thunderbolts, Poseidon's trident and Hades' helmet of darkness. In a vast war called the Titanomachy, Zeus and his brothers and sisters, with the help of the Hecatonchires and Cyclopes, overthrew Cronus and the other Titans. Afterwards, many of the Titans were confined in Tartarus. However, Oceanus, Helios, Atlas, Prometheus, Epimetheus and Menoetius were not imprisoned following the Titanomachy. Gaia bore the monster Typhon to claim revenge for the imprisoned Titans."


It is interesting to see here the three different "paths" how the god-child could be nourished (Zeus is the over-god, the One God of the ancients, and this name is used by Platonists and other Greek initiates in the same meaning as esotericists use "God" when the fallacies of the church are not meant). Also one should note well the Omphalos stone, which is the polar stone, the omnipresent Center.)

By understanding this secret we will triump over the ”Malignant Father”.(*12) Absorbing and realization of a certain power, these are the prizes for true psychomachia or soul's struggle. For when we conquer the father within ourselves, we understand him outside of us, and vice versa. When we stop being in subordinate relation to one or other power – i.e. when we stop hoping and fearing – then the creative potential of the power in question surrenders to our use. This is a law of nature that applies in all levels. It is the secret reason to why the Oriental and Orientally inspired systems have so much stressed the need to attain psychological independence, like a state of certain kind of indifference, where everything flows as if by nature and effortlessly. For an Occidental character the journey to this point is usually more easily attained by active working rather than devotional surrendering.

Footnotes:
*12 Constrictedly or possessively realized aspects from the high archetypes rise against their opposites rather than being able to assimilate it to themselves. Thus the "evil father" is the matter-hating intellect, which emphasizes severity and cold discipline, where the "evil mother" is the darkness that absorbs others to itself, the suffocation of consciousness with astral experiences of form. In reality there is no such evil entity in the archetypal world; suffocating factors are born only from the deluded conceptions of the cognizer.


Needless to say, the Star of Azazel seeks to join these two hands. In the terminology of the principles, âtma-manas is the path of Work and âtma-buddhi the path of devotion. Without the âtma or telos aspect of will (striving, mental effort) either one would be left barren. When it is present, it unites the two like the upward point of a unilateral triange gives birth to the formal existence and ascending direction of the lower points right and left.

Saturn is the prince of time, and thus of timelessness; the power of eternal repetition, repercussion, retribution and of justice. He equalises everything. He is the reaper, Abaddon. The name of his planetary intelligence is Zazel, our Azazel in his latent, challenging form. The influences of the planets are the priests to the mysteries, they are presentators of the problems for the human beings, and the man who is able to solve the mysteries of the planets in his own life, by living the spirit of the law, goes through the narrow gate to Life.(*13) But that Life is something completely different than what usually is meant by this word in everyday language. We human beings, who have arranged our lives accoring to time and matter, have never relly seen Life, we know nothing of Life befoe the great journey of initiations has been undergone. Only the perfect perdition from all we have thought to be life will open the gate to the kingdom of Sat.(*14)

Father, the force behind the symbol of Saturn, is Satan, the keeper of keys; he who has the power to bind and release, as for the model for the Roman Catholic pope, who also holds the title of God's steward on earth. This matter-refracted reflection and his direct unconscious "avatâra" is that Peter, the threefold betrayer, the builder of the three churches;(*15) the one who was crucified upside down;(*16) who tempter of his master;(*17) he, who wanted to follow the ideal across the waters, but sank to the waves;(*18) he, who chose violence instead of turning the other cheek;(*19) this hot-tempered man, who rather saw the mote in his apostle brother's eye rather than the beam in his own – he truly represents the whole church of the score of centuries, and the Roman Catholic ecclesia especially, he, the denier of the creed of his master.(*20)

Footnotes:
*13 Matthew 7:14.
*14 Sat (Sanskrit) = reality, existence in the word's deep metaphysical meaning.
*15 Matthew 17:4. These three "tabernacles" are to do with the expressions of the lower triad. Their "builder" is the lower demiurge or kâma manas.
*16 Acts of Peter, 37.
*17 Matthew 16:23.
*18 Matthew 14:28-30.
*19 John 18:10.
*20 That rock of the Self or, we might say, inner objectivity, upon which the artesan must build, represents also the objectivity of matter when rightly realized. In the school of life many classes can be completed without connecting one's process to this center of matter's magical power, but the final most enduring phase will be accomplised only and solely with it; by taking conquered Saturn as part of the process. How many Christian esotericist has seriously pondered, why Jesus chose to give special position to this difficult a man? Precisely because he like all the high masters knew that reality is great Unity, and that Unity is applied to the living and fully potentialized development by creating a system that includes its own opponent. Judas is another application of the same profound truth in another situation. A master teacher is not blind to the so called evil, and the Nazarene adept was not a naive idealist: he realized very well what he was doing, and that in order to accomplish the long timespan's cataclysmic revolution in the world of spirit he had to take into himself and thus gradually alchemically change the opposing charge. For like the interpretation of the Christian mystic presents to us, crucifixion of Jesus did not end in his death two thousand years ago, but it is still going on. In the world of spirit – which in its own way is as exact as the physical world – the apostasy and lie of Peter (the Roman Catholic church) carries on to this day; and again and again he denies his master because of fear and lack of faith, like Judas again and again betrays him "for the greater glory of God". An occultist, who would like to understand the meaning of the difficult planets (Saturn and Mars) and thus attain their powers, is advised to ponder the actions of these characters of Christian mythology as well as their correspondences in world history and its anticipated future.


I refer to the fact how the Christianity has turned upside down Jesus' creed of love and honesty from the very beginning of Peter's first church. The name Peter, or Cephas, means Rock, and was given to him by Jesus for to be the foundation of his church.

"Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity." (Matthew 7:21-23)

As vessels of our Master(*21) the Christian churches have indeed sunk into the waves of the illusion of materiality again and again, and would they not in this work only unconsciously follow the inspiration of the two actually embracing systems of development, we could not help but to laugh that unbeliavable heresy, that the Churches throw onto face of their master daily and hourly.

We have mentioned this analogy before: the apparent part of the Catholic Church in our as well as their common working.

Footnotes:
*21 Satan, to be understood as the manifestation of God in the world – the fullness of spirit and matter which is magic. For an orthodox Christian the Holy Matter, Nature itself, is ”The Adversary”.


Here "our" means the Left Hand Path, and "their" the Right Hand Path, following two differing theological statements as well as fundamental ideas of practice. At the end of the chapter comes the part which a bit later formed the motto and the starting point for the both parts of Argarizim:

For precisely because of its “fall” – mirabile dictu! – the Roman Catholic Church has done the work assigned to it, full of meaning as is Judas' betrayal in the soteriological legend. For at the same time, it has both conserved the outer body of the teaching of the earlier age's redeemer as if embalmed, and on the other hand, made possible – no, necessary – the replacement of that outer body and the creation of a new revelation. The most marvelous mystery! Certainly we do not claim that it would have been carried out knowingly, but all the more surely under the straight inspiration of the archetypical powers. Christianity has accomplished its mission in bringing these two, the Sermon on the Mount and the myth of the Fall of Lucifer, to the threshold of the new age, misunderstanding both, reaching the perfection of neither. For here are the two paths, the Right Hand Path and the Left Hand Path, so clarified and perfected that they meet each other in that mercilessness which is a sign of the presence of the absolute justice in the long process of human development. Who truly comes to understand one of these most miraculous characters, Christ or Satan, will understand both; and in the path he has chosen he truly will ascend above the heights of the clouds (i.e., the subtle constructions of pure reason); and will be like the most High.(*22)

Footnotes:
*22 Cf. Isaiah 14:13.


Coming up next: A much more compact chapter of Saturn's Nemesis (?) relation to Sanat-Kumâra and Narada.

Re: [Translation/Read-through] The Gospel of Saturn

Posted: Tue Jul 23, 2019 3:25 pm
by Nefastos
With the familiar caveats, let's advance to Chapter Two. In this chapter, the quotations are taken from the original English sources.
CHAPTER II

”Makaram, There is some difficulty in interpreting this word; nevertheless it contains withinitself the clue to its correct interpretation. The letter Ma is equivalent to number 5 and Kara means hand. (...) So, Makaram or Pan-chakaram means a Pentagon. (...) Makaram may be taken to represent simultaneously the microcosm and the macrocosm, as external objects of perception. (...) [T]here is another universe – perhaps we may call it the universe of Astral Light (...) [T]his hidden universe on astral light is to be represented by an Icosahedron. The connection between an Icosahedron and a Dodecahedron is something very peculiar and interesting though the figures seem to be so very dissimilar to each other.”
– Subba Row: The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac

How will we able to understand the Father, how could we attain his truth? – By dying, but not only bodily, but in soul. Because there is no real matter, and the form of matter is just mirror image from the forms in psyche – skandhas or the magnetic framework with its tiniest details –, we must kill out our soul to reach the truth. Mind is the real labyrinth, which the body only veils. ”Let the Disciple slay the Slayer”, tells The Voice of Silence. Man must get through the mystery of his own understanding. He must follow its(*23) first gently whispering, then bellowing, and finally deriding voice through the maze, which he had imagined to be the temple of opportunities, but which in reality is a prison built by Satan. When the essence of pride, hubris, the center point of Ego has finally been reached and seen cold, meaningless in itself, and completely neutral, then we see the countance of the Father.(*24) We have spoken of this before, but no words will be enough before the neophyte has taken has himself taken his destiny to his hands by walking the path presented by suffering himself, by striving himself.

Footnotes:
*23 His lower mind, i.e. kâma manas.
*24 Manas, which purified (”dead” to the outer) expresses âtma-buddhi.


This is the demanding path of changing one's focus in kâma manas to pure manas and, after it, to buddhi-manas and âtma-buddhi-manas. Of course, it is possible to work these later paths simultaneously, in which case the "cold face of Satan" (which is the moment where the mask of the master is seen as such) will not be seen as such intense, and painful, clarity.

One Sanskrit name for the Father is Sanat-Kumâra, which is possible to open anagrammatically: for Makâra, as Blavatsky presents in her Secret Doctrine, is the mystical ”crocodile”, ”dweller in the depths”, which reigns in the Zodiacal sign of Capricornus.(*25) Sanat in Sanskrit means ”the Ancient One”, and opens equally to anagrammatic permutations.(*26) Sanaka, Sananda, Sanâtana and Sanat Kumâra are, according to Theosophical Glossary, ”significant qualifications of the degrees of human intellect” – meaning the rulers, archetypes of those characteristics; and the lost one is the most important, the core of their being. It is advisable for the student to remember that all myths are real. Even the simplest of the fairy tales bring forth real essences from the great memory of nature, for the part of a human being is the mediator's part, and his geniosity always follows a certain logoic pattern, forming its creation from cosmic shapes.

From Indian mythology there is also another character, whose meaning the theosophists have stressed, but only hinting on his true being and associations. This is Nârada, whose names is equally permutable. de Purucker tells of this mysterious being: ”In other words Nârada is a kind of Śiva, destroyer and regenerator, but his destructions are always beneficial, he is always on the side of liberty, absolute justice to all irrespective of anything, and on the side of progress. If there is one thing that Nârada abhors, it is cruelty, cruelty of any kind, cruelty to friend or cruelty to foe. You immediately put yourself under the watchful eye of Nârada if you indulge in anything that is subhuman.”(*27)

Footnotes:
*25 Cf. Argarizim, footnote nr. 118. The chaper in question (Haeretici) deals in its entirety with this same topic.
*26 Sanat~Satan. Naturally it is not claimed that the etymologies of the languages would be actually united, but only that the prototypes of the words – logoi, the intellectual schematics of beings – do repeat themselves in different cultures; for the powers of the deities are hid in the essence of their names.
*27 Guy de Purucker: Fountain-Source of Occultism, appendix VI.


I warmly recommend the whole of de Purucker's article in question. It can also be found online, here: Narada by G. de Purucker.

That hindering Satan that ”opposes the carrying out the divine plan” in the world, is a false theological conclusion, and easily demonstrated as such – as we have pointed out in so many instances. The common idea belonging to these manifold depictions in many different cultures, the one archetype behind the countless masks is always one and the same, benevolent and necessary in his seeming evil; absolutely just even by human standards, in his seeming cruelty. He is the holy angel of retribution, death, and perdition, the highest of all.(*28)

Yet his workings are many according to which aspect he presents himself, and in this writing our purpose is to focus especially to his paternal aspect as the spirit of Saturn. To the celestial power in question has throughout the ages been connected not only a disintegrating and destroying, ”malignant” influence, but also its ability to inspire great geniosity as the dominating force behind the melancholical temperament. As one of the four basic humors Saturnal melancholy is withdrawing, gloomy, meditative, abstaining from creation, feeling attraction to death, sorrow, and diminishing.

Footnotes:
*28 This is understandable by studying rigorously the functioning of karma – the functioning which is both spiritual, intellectual, developing, and not without empathy. Yet the cosmic development in subjective as well as objective planes of existence unavoidably demands the acting out of repercussion phenomenon, which is the conscousness' essential means to learn. From this realization the veil of mystery begins to open.


Diminishing, in the original "extinguishing". The word is the same as in Sanskrit nirvâna. Melancholy paradoxically becomes a creative temperament par excellence when it mingles with artistic tendencies, since it puts one to think and experience "outside the box" (outside the common continuum of mundane life). In my opinion, it is quite sad how the modern time has done away with the old humoral doctrine and nowadays basically deals with people as if everyone would be similar. I partly blame this kind of thinking of the common & amusing "special snowflake" problems, where everyone wants to be "different" – often in the same way with the others, to be in a group of different people. The change to diversity should have been in the opposite direction, but the hasty and terrified reaction to the problems of the 19th century doctrines of races, when applied so awfully in the early 20th century, forced everyone back into the same box. Melancholic temperament is the one which meditates itself at the bottom of group thinking, and finding the cold Lucifer at the core, gets resurrected via the mountain of purgatory. This is one way to interpret the Dantean journey, outlined in the text following the Gospel of Saturn, Argarizim.

For every Satanist it is essential to know this being at least as one aspect of the Master, the one which gives the initiations.


From this idea stems the articles on the seven aspects of Satan, given in Hylätty Kivi #1–#7. It starts with the Hierophant aspect and goes through all the seven celestial powers, ending with the Absolute aspect under Sun. Aspect of the Hierophant is the one where Saturnine kâma manas meets abstracted Venereal manas.

Not everyone's temperament is, nor should it be, withdrawing in this way – and yet the important meaning belonging to this archetype must absolutely be known. We can see that in modern societies this veneration of death has been forgotten, sorrow prohibited, introverted aspect seen as negative and dangerous. And dangerous it is, indeed, for introspection kills out the old person, it perceives madness and delusion in cultural and societal ”self-evidents”. But should ”the path of perdition” not be proceeded to its end, at least its first trail must be gone through in this observance of essentiality of death.

Always pitiful is the one who is unable to die; who is afraid of loneliness, darkness, and sorrow. Even if he does not walk under the black phase of the Father, but instead feels the red path of the Son, or the white path of the Mother closest to himself, under their rays also must he equally accept and realize the necessity of omnipresent and periodical death. A warrior who is afraid of death is a loser even should he win, for it is absolutely certain, that his time will yet come. A woman who is afraid of life will never be able to surrender herself perfectly and thus accomplish her mission as a vessel and mediator of forms.


The vocabulary should be self-evident by now: a "warrior" giving death is a masculine archetype, while a "woman" giving birth is a feminine archetype. These should have little to do with one's outward gender in the world. The symbolism of the terms used is apparent from the fact that the Azazelian philosophy accepts no literal "warriors" at all, being pacifistic not only in physical, but also in inner spiritual worlds: there should not be any "holy war" even against one's inner energies, although there is and must be psychomachia as a wrestle with these forces, to accomplish the alchemical processes of mortification and vivification both.
The love of death is an unavoidable guide on the path. But we should not think that the real death is the one which kills only the body. The real death is present in everything, it is the essence of the Spirit in soul and substance both, gradually changing them both like its own perfection.


In this brief passage are seen all the aspectual mottos of the brotherhood: "Fiat Nox" (Let There Be Night) of the Grey aspect, "Omnia Mors Poscit" (Death Demands Everything) in Black, "Igne Natura Renovatur Integra" (Fire Renews Nature Gradually), "Ad Perpetranda Miracula Rei Unius" (To Accomplish The Miracle Of Unity Of Being) in White.
The pentagram of Satan is the exterior surface of the cosmic dodecahedron, the ultimate and purified form for its realization, through which the Power is handled.


In the Finnish version: "...for its realization, through which the Power goes." Realization in Finnish is "käsittäminen", which literally means "to hand[le]" – perhaps because an idea has been reached, grasped. Thus these three topics of the pentagon/pentagram's "hand", understanding, and operation, could be drawn together in one word.

Re: [Translation/Read-through] The Gospel of Saturn

Posted: Wed Jul 24, 2019 3:32 pm
by Nefastos
Now, when I have read through about a third of the text, some thoughts on the content.

The Gospel of Saturn is more like a nexus of several currents, "the end of one cycle" as said, opening the doorway to the next, or actually to several others. As a literary work it is unsatisfactory, and is better understood as a signpost and a milestone. As a symbol, in my opinion it would validly be represented by a six-pointed star, which is the inside model for hexagram, the star of Saturn. Three lower and three higher pathways, and twice the third literary currents, meet at this point. Part of its outward hollowness is because of its practical nature (as a collection of practical statements rather than an opus having a refined soul of its own), and part is because the soul of Satan-Saturn has been already presented in a more holistic way in Fosforos, to which the Gospel formed an appendix of sorts. Had I not heard the opinions of my readers in those times, or had I met different kind of readers, the Gospel would have been very different a book, I'd wager.

Coming up next: Two brief chapters on melancholy and possibilities of handling the demanded "perdition" of the lower self. After them, once again: the Antichrist.