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"This symbol is a ladder with 7 gates, and above them an 8th gate - He is the way for him who passes by."
The quote is from the Mithric Mysteries; the image to the left is from the Western Hermetic Tradition. They do not refer to each other but they cover the same semantic territory. Actually the quote is from Celsus, who is himself referring to Philo's De Somniis, wherein a Patriarch with a vision is explaining a system of the descent and ascent of matter and spirit. Sometimes meaning lies at a distance from the symbol.
Saturn stands over a green and peaceful valley; the road is actually a long driveway and the entire estate enjoys perfect privacy in all directions. Most of the land is covered with a thick mat of dark green pine which extends as far as you can see. The Captain used a contrasting wood for the 4 plaques and his caps and finial. Iwojima molded ferro-cement for the lush fruit-like caps to the verticals. You can see one of the Rock's moons cast a shadow which every sunny day traces an orbit on the face of the stone which passes the shadow from the East face of the Rock to the West face as the sun climbs over it and hands off its light from one moon to the other in the rear. The traced orbit of the daily shadow - because the Rock hangs perfectly perpendicular to the noon of earth's gravity - will exactly describe both the longitude and latitude of the site and also the precise time of day and of the year.
To the ancients Saturn was the farthest Planet from both the Earth and the Sun, thus its element was Lead, farthest from the Gold in the Alchemical Process. Saturn has dominion over both Aries and Aquarius. In Greek, the Planet and the God are called Cronos - KRONOS - and like the Hindu God Kali, Cronos means "Time," and like Kali, Cronos devours all, including his children. Saturn reminds us that nothing lasts in the material and that only the Spiritual Gold is Timeless.
To the left is a small copy of a poster I made which unpacks the symbols of Bells generally and of Saturn/Cronos specifically. The symbols arrayed on the vertical are those which we carved into the plaques on the sculpture. The ascent of matter into spirit thru the 7 gates of the Planets and their Metals is not a journey of conquest where a demon or a god is overcome. The Passer-By is meant to take from each gate - each Planet & Metal - the Powers of those Doors and then to walk thru them. Alchemy is also a Periodoi - an account of Travel. It's a Chorea Mystica - a Round Dance. Like the Zodiac, or the seasonal turnings of the Year which the dance of the Zodiac describes. We never told Jay, the new owner of Saturn, that the sculpture knew how to tell time. Time is the big gift of the Cosmos, and only Man the Monkey knows that. Or the other side of the gift - death. Saturn/Cronos/Kali are all emblems of the Grim Reaper, the tax collector who stands at the Gates and takes his cut from our passage. Jay can Grok that shit for himself.
