A New Translation of the Orphic Hymn to Kronos (Saturn)
And Deep, Somewhat Trippy Thoughts on the Nature of Bodies and the Space-Time Continuum
*CW for brief description of genital mutilation in the context of myth.*
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Going Beyond Popular Myths about Saturn
Kronos, aka Saturn, is a hard one.
In popular astrology, He is often spoken about with fear and trembling. The “Greater Malefic,” he’s called, which I’ve always thought makes him sound like Ursula from the Little Mermaid. Or an aging drag House Mother. (Neither of whom I’d want to tangle with, honestly.)
And of course, there’s the dreaded “Saturn return” we go through when the planet returns to its starting point in our natal chart (when we’re about 29, and again at 58, and if we’re lucky, again at 86). These turning points are usually associated with hardships ranging from difficult reality checks, to massive lifestyle changes, to endings of relationships, illness, and even death.
In short, Saturn is often portrayed as some sort of King Ball-Breaker—which is actually not entirely inappropriate, given that, according to myth, He started out His life by castrating his own father Ouranos/Uranus (whose name means “Heaven” in ancient Greek).*
But this admittedly terrifying myth isn’t just all about fear. There are much deeper truths to be gleaned from it about the cosmic significance of Kronos/Saturn.
Others, including the imminently wise Diana Rose Harper (IG:@ddamascenaa), have written or spoken eloquently about the gifts that an active engagement with Saturn can bring. You should definitely check her stuff out if you’re someone struggling with Saturnian themes.
What I’d like to do here is a little different, though. What I want to do is look at Kronos through the lens of His Orphic Hymn, because it gives us a glimpse of the underlying cosmology of Kronos/Saturn. How getting to know and appreciate Him through the Hymn can help us make sense of everything just a little bit better, including our own role in the Grand Scheme of Things.™
A Brief Recap of the Kronos Myth
To make a long and complex set of varying myths relatively short, Kronos (which means “Time” in Greek) needed to rescue His siblings—collectively known as the Titans— from imprisonment in the belly of their mother Gaia, or Earth.
Gaia’s womb had been stopped up by Ouranos with his own rather formidable (ahem) appendage. He literally would not stop fucking Her and let Her Titan babies be born. (To be fair, the Titans were a surly bunch…they included the Cyclopes, for example, and when they were eventually released, they wound up wreaking havoc until they, in turn, were deposed by Zeus/Jupiter.) But since Gaia understandably wanted a break from Ouranos’ eternal prick (and her own eternal pregnancy), she plotted with one of her Titan children, Kronos, to come to everyone’s rescue.
Kronos’ method was simple, but effective: He took an adamantine sickle, chopped off Ouranos’ genitalia, and liberated both Gaia and Her children. (The spurting sperm from Ouranos’ castrated genitals produced the sea-foam out of which Heavenly Aphrodite would be born. But that’s a story for another time.)
Kronos then became King Himself, modeling His reign on his father’s by swallowing his own children so they couldn’t inherit his Kingship. Once again, a tricky Queen (Rhea, which means “Flow,” or “Ease”) helped the trapped children escape. Instead of feeding Her consort Kronos the baby Zeus as she was supposed to, Rhea substituted Zeus with a rock wrapped in swaddling. Greedy Kronos gobbled it up, and Zeus was hidden away. He eventually grew up to become strong enough to force His father to vomit up all His other siblings, who became the Olympian gods.
So that’s the myth as we’ve come to know it. And certainly the Orphic Hymn to Kronos draws on its images and themes.**
Let’s look a little closer at a few of them now.
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Kronos/Saturn as “Original Ancestor”
We’ll begin with one of Kronos’ most significant titles, or epithets: genarka, or founding/original ancestor of a family. (He likewise is called “Father of Gods and human males.”***)
So when we think about Kronos, we should first and foremost be thinking of a family. But which family? Who exactly are we talking about here?
The Hymn gives us a very clear answer: Us. All of us.
Not just (as in the very first line of the Hymn) the family of the gods, nor just the “family” (which is to say, genera or class) of human males, nor even of humans in general.
Rather, as we discover through the course of the Hymn, Kronos is the Original Ancestor of all beings who exist within the domain of space-time.
Kronos EMBODIES what we might call today the space-time continuum.
Let’s unpack that. Contemporary astrophysics tells us that space and time co-originate—that is, they arise simultaneously. Similarly, Kronos, in the Orphic Hymns, encompasses both space and time as two sides of the same coin. This is told to us in story form in His myth(s), where everything is one big sex-mush until Time literally carves out Space by creating Heaven and Earth as separate Beings.
So if Kronos IS space-time, then everything…EVERYTHING that exists in Heaven and Earth has Kronos as their original ancestor. Everything from the tiniest microorganism (even the extremely Saturnian tardigrade) to the farthest Fixed Stars (and the Zodiac and everything in between). We all exist here as bodies in space, in time, because of Him.
Living Inside the Belly of the Beast
But it’s not just that we live because of Kronos. We also live INSIDE of Him. We see this in the myth too—how Kronos goes on, once He’s King, to devour all His children.
Think about it a moment: We exist as individual bodies, inside of a cosmic body. To put it in contemporary terms, we might say we (humans, animals, plants, stones, etc) are like the micro-organisms inhabiting the innards of Space-Time Himself.
The Orphic Hymns teach us that not only is the Earth alive, not only are the Heavens and Heavenly Bodies alive, but that Time-Space itself is alive and is a being with a body.
And we can call that time-space being-body “Kronos.”
And you thought your last edible was a trip.
I don’t know about you, but I’ll be (pardon the pun) digesting that knowledge probably for the rest of my life. Because what would it mean to live inside space-time as though we are cells living in a body?
What would it mean to move through our lives as though we were swimming in the blood and lymph of a holy Being?
I don’t claim to have answers to these questions, which are (appropriately for Kronos) far-reaching and require extended contemplation. But I do know that one of the gifts of Kronos is precisely this challenge: to relate to each and every thing in our cosmos as alive and thrumming with the vitality of the body of Kronos Himself.
Kronos as “Unbreakable Bond”
So now that the Orphic Hymns have taught us to view Space-Time as the body of a god, we can return to the question of Kronos'/Saturns’ more familiar astrological roles: creating boundaries, limitations, and structures. I hope you’ll agree that it’s a little easier not to jump straight into a fearful relationship with Saturn now.
Because once we start seeing Kronos as the space-time body in which “everything, everywhere” is born, grows old, dies, and is reconfigured/reborn, we can see how He quite literally that which “Holds the boundless cosmos in check.”
If we (and everything else existing in Space-Time) are the cells in Kronos’ body, our bodily movements are contained within and delimited by His form.
And even our soul movements, for that matter, exist within Kronos—at least insofar as our soul that travels here and there through dreams, in visions, and into and out of incarnations. This is perhaps one reason why Saturn is often associated with plant material that can cause time to bend in odd ways. (“Reefer madness,” anyone?)
So to return to the common fear of Saturn, it really is a matter of perspective. (Terrible space-time pun intended.)
On the one hand, yes—Kronos/Saturn really is about limitations, sometimes even painful ones. He is: Growing up, Discovering we can’t have our cake and eat it too, Being obligated to handle all the tedious and sometimes terrible restrictions of “adulting.” He is: Aging, Decay, Death, and Decomposition. We could even go so far as to say Kronos/Saturn is all the constraints that shackle us (literally and figuratively) within a particular timeline, narrative, or story arc.
And yet…and yet.
Kronos/Saturn is ALSO about the mushroom that sprouts from the decomposing log.
The mycelial space-time system without which the forest of Being cannot grow.
The amniotic sac within which the human body-soul swims, and the air the newborn breathes into its tiny lungs.
The doctor’s hard slap on the back and the mother’s milk that we suckle.
He is our Alpha and Omega, our Beginning and End. The cycle of birth, and death, and rebirth that animates not just us, but ALL of existence—animals, plants, stones. Even mountains, asteroids, planets, galaxies, black holes, and universes. And gods. Even them. We all are simply (and beautifully!) cells in His Holy Multiversical Body.
With the love of Earth and Starry Sky,
Kristin
Hymn to Kronos-Saturn
Incense: Storax
Smoldering Father of the Blissful Gods
and also, especially, of Males:
Your designs are spotty, yet
You are somehow Unstained,
Supreme Strength, Burly Striver,
Formidable Chalky Titan.
You expand and expend
everything, everywhere,
Even as you augment it, too:
Unbreakable Bond,
You hold the boundless
Cosmos in check.
Time, All-sowing Seeder of Aions,
Time, Multiversical Myth-maker,
Sprung from Earth and Starry Sky.
Source and Force of Generation and Decay,
Partner of Flow and Ease,
Sacred Foresight,
Original Ancestor:
You abide in each part
And destiny of the cosmos.
Bravest one,
Bender of best-laid plans,
Hear the words of your supplicants:
At the end of a prosperous life,
Send us off into perfect eternity.
Notes from the Essay
*A note on gender: In this Hymn, the poet emphasizes Kronos as seed-planter/inseminator, a role that was ascribed to males in Greek medical theories of fertility. This is most likely why Kronos Himself is gendered male in the myths. Kronos’ consort, Rhea (the literal translation of which means “flow” or “ease”) is placed alongside him in the Hymns, and it’s interesting to read them as different faces/facets of the same Being. My translations always follow the Greek gendering for clarity of translation, though to be clear, I believe we can find Kronos in any gender, as well as none at all.
** An aside for the Orphic geeks among us: There are other variations of the Kronos myth—including one involving the famous “Orphic Egg.” In that one, the cosmic snake form of Kronos and His fellow snake-helper Ananke, or “Necessity,” wrap themselves around a giant primordial egg. Kronos and Ananke squeeze the egg so tightly that it cracks, resulting in the two hemispheres of Heaven (the celestial dome of Ouranos) and Earth (the rounded bosom of Gaia). While this myth is associated with certain Orphic texts, we don’t see much emphasis on it in the Orphic Hymns themselves. Perhaps the line I have translated as “All-Sowing Seeder of Aions” comes the closest to acknowledging the other mythic strain—particularly because it is followed by the epithet poikilomuthe, one meaning of which can be “of many stories,” or “of various myths.” This could be the poet’s nod to the many variations of Kronos’ tale, though the Hymn itself adheres more closely to the archetypal Ouranos/Kronos myth.
***I’ll admit that I’m still working on understanding this distinction the poet is drawing here. The Greek here specifies andrōn, or males, as distinct from the more gender-neutral word anthropoi, or humans—probably for the same seed-planter/inseminator reasons mentioned above. However, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from these Hymns, it’s that each word is chosen with incredible deliberation in order to convey multiple meanings. We modern folx might associate Mars with archetypal masculinity (as in “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.”) But we don’t see that sort of association in the Hymn to Mars. Rather, it turns up here, in Saturn. Perhaps this is because the ancient ideal figure of masculine power was not the warrior (envisioned as a young man at the height of his physical powers, but still fighting on behalf of someone or something other than himself), but the king/emperor (an older man at the height of his wisdom and with the full rulership of his family and domain).
If we were mapping Orphic Kronos onto the Tarot, he might not only be associated with the World, but also perhaps with the King of Swords—the intellect at its fullest power, ready to cut off or curtail whatever does not cause His kingdom to flourish.
Notes on the Hymn
“Smoldering Father”
The word in Greek is aithalēs, meaning smoky, charred, or ashy. This could refer to several things: 1) the appearance of Saturn in the sky, which resembles a glowing coal (as opposed to the bright white-ish light of say, Venus or Jupiter); 2) Kronos’ identity as a Titan. Hesiod claimed that the name came from the Greek verb titainō (to strain) and also tisis (vengeance). However, we also know that in Orphic and Dionysiac mystery myths, the Titans disguised themselves with gypsum chalk (Greek: titanos) to avoid being recognized by the child Dionysius, whom they were about to kill. Sources: Hesiod, Theogony, 207-210. Nonnus, Dionysiaca 6. 155 ff
“Sprung from Earth and Starry Sky”
This phrase echoes the “password” used by Orphic initiates in the afterlife. I’ve written about that fairly extensively in my commentary on the Orphic Hymn to Selene (the Moon). Here, it seems to be used to draw attention to the parallel between Kronos and ourselves, the initiates—we both are contained within the body of Kronos.
“Partner of Flow and Ease”
I chose to translate out the full meaning of Rhea’s name because I feel it’s more evocative that way…any ancient Greek would have been able to understand the name “Rhea” as both a proper name, and the word that means “flow,” “spring/running water,” and by metaphorical extension, “ease.” A modern parallel might be the name “River Phoenix”—it’s a proper name, but it also uses words that we use in daily life.
“Sacred Foresight”
Same here. The Greek is semne promētheu, or holy/sacred Prometheus. It can be read as a proper name—equating Kronos with Prometheus, who we best know as the Titan who stole the fire of heaven and gave it to humans. And it also quite literally means “foresight” or “forethought,” as in someone who thinks ahead or has foresight into what might happen.
Plato wrote that Prometheus (Forethought) and his brother Epimetheus (After-thought) were put in charge of using earth and fire to make all the creatures. Epimetheus, being a little slow on the uptake, gave away all the “good stuff” (fur, fangs, claws) to the animals, which left Prometheus in the position of needing to steal fire from Haephestus and craftiness from Athena so that humans wouldn’t be left totally defenseless. (Source: Plato, Protagoras, 320c-322a) Here, the Orphic poet may be equating Kronos and Prometheus because they both are considered progenitors of the human family.
Finally, there is a deeper esoteric meaning. We could say that Kronos, as the body or container of the cosmos, is in fact, the VERY FIRST created being—because Space-Time is the precondition for other forms of existence. In that sense, Kronos is the “first thought” of the One who lies beyond all duality and division. Just who this One is will have to wait for another post. (Spoiler alert: if you think about it hard enough, there’s only one Being who is the ultimate embodiment of Union.)
And finally, because you made it to the end of this very long post, this meme:
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