Painting depicting Saturn devouring babies...

[Calm Like a Bomb]

A couple of years ago in one of the 4 humanitites classes I took in college, we learned in depth about the mythology behind Saturn and the painting that shows him ascending to eat children; I'm almost positive there was a reference to the number 10 as well. I forget who the painter is but I remember that someone famous from the same era loved the painting so much they had him paint it on a wall in their house.

When I learned all this, the parts of the song about Saturn not only made sense to me, but supported the theme of the song.

"Saturn ascends, Choose one or ten. Ignorant to the damage done."

I see it as a metaphor for the destructive side of us coming out and doing horrible things (like the god Saturn ascending to devour children) and then us not regretting them because we're so obsessed w/ whatever our "grudge" happens to be.

If anyone wants to research or clear up the details of the painting & mythology behind Saturn, you'll probably find parallells to this song as well.

[Kapoo]

Interesting

[ctprelude]

nice thought. The painter BTW was Goya.

[Mr Omnipotent]

Interesting

you lie

[Lackymacky]

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/goya/goya.saturn-son.jpg

is this it?

[Mr Omnipotent]

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/goya/goya.saturn-son.jpg

is this it?

riveting

[Calm Like a Bomb]

LackyMacky: That's definitely it. What a beautifully disturbing masterpiece that painting is.

Yeah it was Goya. There's a whole story behind the painting as well; obviously there's all kinds of mythology behind Saturn, but there's a story specifically having to do with him rising once in a while to feed on children. It was particullarly violent & intresting subject matter for a college humanities class.

[Thrakandor]

A couple of years ago in one of the 4 humanitites classes I took in college, we learned in depth about the mythology behind Saturn and the painting that shows him ascending to eat children; I'm almost positive there was a reference to the number 10 as well. I forget who the painter is but I remember that someone famous from the same era loved the painting so much they had him paint it on a wall in their house.

When I learned all this, the parts of the song about Saturn not only made sense to me, but supported the theme of the song.

"Saturn ascends, Choose one or ten. Ignorant to the damage done."

I see it as a metaphor for the destructive side of us coming out and doing horrible things (like the god Saturn ascending to devour children) and then us not regretting them because we're so obsessed w/ whatever our "grudge" happens to be.

If anyone wants to research or clear up the details of the painting & mythology behind Saturn, you'll probably find parallells to this song as well.
"Saturn comes back around;
Lifts you up like a child
Or drags you down like a stone; consumes you
'til you
Choose to
Let this go..."

Hmm. Why did he eat the children? Was it ascension on their part? Cleansing?

[Circe]

He ate his children b/c an oracle (I think) told him that one of his kids would overthrow him. He didn't eat just random kids, they were his kids. Eventually, his wife had zeus (again, I think, I don't feel like grabbing my mythology book right now), and gave saturn (actually Cronos in greek) a stone to swallow instead of the baby, then, when baby zeus grew up, he overthrew his daddy, with the help of his mom, and became king of the gods.

[CyberWolf]

Bah.. Greek Mythology.. Bunch of Gods raping each other.. Have to admit, it's a lot more interesting to study than modern day 'orginized' religions though. :P

I don't think the song really had anything to do with Saturn as in the Greek God.. but .. The more I think about this the more I seem to consiter it.. I kinda doubt it's exactly what Maynard meant there, as he had said before a lot of the album was about self-realization and Saturn coming 'round every 28-30 years..

Saturn eating Babies makes more sense though.. yeah. XD