Saturn & Moloch – Spirit of the Age

Moloch at the Colosseum [via twitter]

I recently stumbled upon an article that confirmed that a large statue of Moloch had been placed at the entry to the Colosseum in Rome, best known as the site of Christians sacrificed to wild animals and gladiators for entertainment and as an admonition that Christianity was an enemy of Rome – to be shown no mercy. What is particularly curious about this story, is that the statue was put there with the apparent blessing of the Vatican.

The article states the following by way of explanation;

“Previously, the Catholic Church had made the Colosseum a sacred site to honor these first Christians martyred for their faith, even placing Stations of the Cross there for the faithful to contemplate their sacrifice. Now it’s guarded by the pagan god Molech, whose demand for child sacrifice has been compared to the modern epidemic of abortion, and the faithful are greeted with a statue honoring a pagan deity whose murderous spirit still seeks to kill children.”  (CBN News).

Once in a while, there is a story that has the power to capture the Spirit of the Age or Zeitgeist. We are living in particularly Saturnine times and with the upcoming Grand Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in Saturn’s domicile, the already ominous signs beg further analysis. Moloch is Saturn by another name. As the god of money, he emphasizes the materialism of Saturn. More grotesquely, he is known as the god who demanded child sacrifices, consumed by a furnace in his belly.

We live in a world where millions of children are sacrificed to the god of money by their labour in dark mines and backbreaking work of all kinds. Their childhoods have in effect be consumed by the worship of Moloch, aka Saturn. Moloch is without mercy. The current global economic appetite requires the poor to manufacture or mine items that they could never afford for themselves.

William Blake, The Book of Urizen, c.1794.

The image of Saturn as the one who eats his own children is usually interpreted as an allegory of time, that brings into being that which it will then devour. Chronos is time and the illusion of time keeps us enthralled by the material realm. At the speed of light, we can see that the solid, material universe is ultimately an illusion and in the words of William Blake (1757–1827), “energy is eternal delight … and Reason is the circumference of energy” Life is not something that Saturn supports with the enthusiasm of essence, but by creating a structure that often conceals what it tries to describe,

. The pedantic restrictions of Saturn are oppressive to the life force.  He is Blakes aptly named “nobodaddy.” – as in, “nobody’s daddy.”

“Glad Day” – William Blake

Blake also invented a character and named him Urizen. Blake was a cockney, so it would be pronounced as “your eyes on” of “horizon.”  The gits is that the poet urged the reader to see through and not with the eye. This is a spiritual vision. The idea of the horizon adds the added significance of limitations – especially limited vision.

Saturn is known in Vedic astrology as the “lame one.’   His metal is lead.  He sinks rather than rises. He stands for much of what early Christianity holds to be the greatest impediments to spiritual growth, such as greed, materialism, inequity, cruelty to innocence and the epitome of the Jealous god.

[Video – Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Saturn Devouring One Of His Sons, 1821-1823, 143.5 x 81.4 cm (Prado, Madrid) Speakers: Dr Beth Harris and Dr Steven Zucker. Courtesy of Khan Academy.]

This is the context in which we find this strange god placed by the Vatican to guard the Coliseum. I have no

interest in conspiracy theories surrounding this matter, but the image and context are too bold to be ignored. I’m grateful that this has caused us to look a little closer to what is happening and the revelations we now have about the choices we can make. It is all about consciousness.

Consider this succinct passage from Britannica:

“The laws given to Moses by God expressly forbade the Jews to do what was done in Egypt or in Canaan. “You shall not give any of your children to devote them by fire to Moloch, and so profane the name of your God” (Leviticus 18:21). Yet kings such as Ahaz (2 Kings 16:3) and Manasseh (2 Kings 21:6), having been influenced by the Assyrians, are reported to have worshipped Moloch at the hilled site of Topheth, outside the walls of Jerusalem. This site flourished under Manasseh’s son King Amon but was destroyed during the reign of Josiah, the reformer. “And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the sons of Hinnom, that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Moloch” (2 Kings 23:10).”

Yet Judaism is under Saturn, while Islam, for example, is under Venus. It is therefore not unreasonable to conflate Saturn with Moloch.

For our immediate purposes, the juxtaposition of Saturn and Moloch provides us with a means of assessing the nature of the astrological Saturn as well as the shadow, jealous god in the Pentateuch. The Age of Aquarius is the Age of Saturn.  Knowing this affords us a warning and presents us with some choices. We won’t be fooled by the tickling of the ear with lies about a perfect New World under one god and one leader.

I must add that this is not simply an issue of Christianity versus Moloch. All true spiritually hold a reverence for life and provide admonitions regarding the seductions of materialism. It is therefore unfair to brand Moluch as a “pagan” god. The term Paganism derives from classical Latin pāgānus “rural, rustic.” It is the route of the word peasant as a dweller of the natural world. The terms were however used as a pejorative by Christians who intended the meaning of worshipper of strange or many gods.

It is curious and tragic that nature was too often considered as “other” in the Abrahamic faiths. The Celtic tradition, for example, is nature-based, Life is affirmed and nature is seen not as something other than us, but a spiritual communion of all beings, including what civilized people mistakenly consider to be inanimate.