The devil, Satan and Saturn
Revelation 12:9 describes “that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.” (New International Version) Satan, the devil and ‘the enemy’* are generally used interchangeably to name God’s chief opponent.
This conflation has been going on for some time. According to a footnote in Wikipedia, “Both the words satanas and diábolos are used interchangeably in the New Testament and in later Christian writings.”
Who is Satan?
Satan comes from the Hebrew sâtan, meaning ‘adversary.’ Early translators rendered it into Greek as diábolos(‘opponent’ or ‘accuser’), the root of the English word ‘devil.’
Wikipedia tells us that “Satan, also known as the Devil, is a devilish entity in Abrahamic religions who seduces humans into sin (or falsehood).” (Note that Wikipedia personifies the devil with a capital, which the New Testament writers did not.)
Wikipedia describes the pre-Christian evolution of Satan:
“A figure known as ha-satan (‘the satan’) first appears in the Hebrew Bible as a heavenly prosecutor, subordinate to Yahweh (God), who prosecutes the nation of Judah in the heavenly court and tests the loyalty of Yahweh’s followers. During the intertestamental period… the satan developed into a malevolent entity with abhorrent qualities in dualistic opposition to God.”
This is Christianity’s Satan. Let’s examine its source.
Satan in the Old Testament
Satan appears 14 times in the Old Testament and 33 times in the New Testament. It only appears in three Old Testament books: 1 Chronicles, Job, and Zechariah:
“Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census.” (1 Chronicles 21:1) “One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them.” (Job 1:6) “Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right side to accuse him.” (Zechariah 3:1)
All three books date from the Persian period (540-330 BC), also known as the Babylonian captivity**. 1 Chronicles contains a genealogy that ends in 539 BC. Zechariah prophesied during the reign of Darius the Great (ruled 522-486 BC). Babylonian influences suggest that Job was also produced in this period.
The Great Tester
Job contains nearly 80% of the Old Testament references to Satan, making it the key text on the topic. Satan enters in verse 1:6 above. Then comes the much more revealing 1:7: “The Lord said to Satan, ‘Where have you come from?’ Satan answered the Lord, ‘From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.’”
After a brief exchange, the Lord empowers Satan to test Job to the utmost: “Very well, then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.” (Job 1:12) Then follows the well-known tale of Job losing everything but remaining faithful to the Lord and being restored to favour.
In a nutshell, God deputises Satan to test Job to his limits.
In astrology, the planet Saturn fulfils exactly this role. It’s called the great tester (also called the great teacher and the great tempter). Saturn is the planetary influence that develops our discipline and responsibility by testing us and tempting us to ill-discipline and irresponsibility—just as happened to Job.
Saturn achieves this by facing the earth at various angles (e.g., squares) and forward and retrograde (appearing to go backwards) motion—“roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it” (Job 1:7).
Whether you accept astrology or not, the similarities are startling. I’m not the only one who’s noticed it—Kilaya Ciriello blogs about it here—but it amazes me that Christianity remains blind to these similarities.
Babylonian astrology
For me, the names, roles, and mechanics of Satan and Saturn are too close to be co-incidental—particularly when we throw in another close coincidence. The astrological concept of Saturn as the great teacher comes to us from Babylon—the exact place the Jews were in captivity when Satan entered their scriptures.
Babylonian astrology dates to circa 1800 BC. It later migrated to a Babylonian sub-culture known as the Chaldeans who emerged towards the end of the 2nd millennium BC. They adopted Babylonian astrology—as well as liver divination—and it’s under the guise of Chaldean astrology that it came down to us today.
Before you dismiss Chaldean liver-diviners and astrologers as nutty (well, more nutty than Christianity), you should know that they associated each of the seven planets of the ancient world with a metal. Saturn is associated with lead, the heaviest metal.
The Babylonians/Chaldeans also had a specific sequence for the planets—and their associated metals—which is by atomic number. While attempting to predict the future by examining animals’ entrails, they also pre-empted the periodic table by three and a half millennia.
The divider
So, is this astrologically derived Satan the devil?
The devil doesn’t appear at all in the Old Testament but appears 33 times in the New Testament, which begs a question: why did both terms survive?
There’s certainly evidence the terms have been used interchangeably, most notably in Matthew chapter 4: “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” (Matthew 4:1) This is Satan/Saturn’s patch.
But in The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, French theologian Jean-Yves Leloup casts a different light on the translation of the Greek diabolos: the ‘divider.’ Opponent and accuser are less precise terms; they describe an effect but not its cause.
The divider in us creates a blamer in us—someone who sees fault and accuses. Leloup writes that “Evil and sin arise from the blamer in ourselves.” This speaks to Matthew 7:3: “You can see the speck in your friend’s eye, but you don’t notice the log in your own eye.” (Contemporary English Version)
While many mentions of the devil in the New Testament reference an external influence, others suggest Leloup’s inner divider and blamer:
“Do not give the devil a foothold.” (Ephesians 4:27) “Put on the full armour of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.” (Ephesians 6:11) “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” (James 4:7)
The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
The divider is our perception of good and evil. Where does this come from? It’s the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. That’s what happened at the Fall: we stopped seeing the unity of God’s creation, saw division instead, and fell into blaming.
The most telling presence of the divider is in 1 John 3:8: “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.” Here we simply cannot use the word Satan interchangeably. When we understand Satan as Saturn, Jesus destroying the planet is nonsensical.
Jesus came instead to destroy division. “Do not judge, or you will be judged,” he warns in Matthew 7:1. Leloup writes that “When he [the divider] is dead, and there is no longer a place for him in us, we are free.”
This is the great promise of the Christ Jesus, recorded in the last chapter of the Bible, Revelation 22:14: “God will bless all who have washed their robes. They will each have the right to eat fruit from the tree that gives life, and they can enter the gates of the city.”
When the divider is dead, we return to perceiving the singularity of God—and that each one of us is a unique fractal of the godhead.
And this is why it’s important to separate Satan from the devil. They are not the same. Whether you believe in astrology or not, there is a force that pushes us into temptation, ill-discipline, irresponsibility. Satan activates the divider in ourselves, tempting us to play the blame game. But the divider is within.
Overcome temptation. Do not feed the divider/blamer. When we succeed, our robes are a little cleaner, the city gates of the Kingdom of Heaven one step closer.
Notes
* The term ‘enemy’ seems to stem from Matthew 13:39 (“the enemy who sows them is the devil”) and 1 Peter 5:8 (“Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion”); to me it’s a vague, emotive, and unhelpful term.
** Following the siege of Jerusalem by King Nebuchadnezzar in 597 BC, thousands of Jews from leading families were forcibly deported to Babylon. The last descendants of these exiles returned to Jerusalem in 444 BC.
Photo by NASA Hubble Space Telescope on Unsplash
