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A remarkable counterpart is provided by the Ashanti of Ghana, who remembered the old sun god as "the dynamic center of the Universe, from which lines of force radiate to all quarters of the heaven." Thus, according to the Ashanti, this former sun god is "the center around which everything revolves."

This idea of an ancient sun god ruling from the axial center stands in dramatic contest to the common suppositions of mythologists and historians. To the modern mind nothing could be more absurd than a polar sun. Yet the unmoving sun is the ancient tradition, as noted by E.A.S. Butterworth in his insightful work, The Tree at the Navel of the Earth. Upon evaluating the archaic images of Helios and other ancient sun gods, Butterworth concluded that this luminary "is not the natural sun of heaven, for it neither rises nor sets, but is, as it seems, ever at the zenith! There are signs of an ambiguity between the pole star and the sun."

How could such an improbable "ambiguity" have dominated the cosmological thought of ancient star worshippers—in every corner of the world? Butterworth's insights have a considerable history behind them. The precedence of the cosmic center among the great ancient cultures has been noted and documented by others. Almost a hundred years ago, William F. Warren, in his groundbreaking work, Paradise Found, identified the celestial pole as the home of the supreme god of ancient races. "The religions of all ancient nations...associate the abode of the supreme God with the North Pole, the centre of heaven; or with the celestial space immediately surrounding it. [Yet] no writer on comparative theology has ever brought out the facts which establish this assertion."

In the following years a number of scholars, each focusing on different bodies of evidence, reached the same conclusion. The controversial and erratic Gerald Massey, in two large works (The Natural Genesis and Ancient Egypt), claimed that the religion and mythology of a polar god was first formulated by the priest-astronomers of ancient Egypt and spread from Egypt to the rest of the world.

In a general survey of ancient language, symbolism, and mythology, John O'Neill (Night of the Gods, two volumes) insisted that mankind's oldest religions centered on a god of the celestial pole.

The renowned Mesoamerican authority, Zelia Nuttall, in Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilization, undertook an extensive review of New World astronomical themes, concluding that the highest god was polar. From Mexico she shifted to other civilizations, finding the same unexpected role of a polar god.

Reinforcing the surprising conclusions of these researchers was the subsequent work of others, among them the noted Finno-Ugric authority, Uno Holmberg (Der Baum Des Lebens), who documented the preeminence of the polar god in the ritual of Altaic and neighboring peoples, suggesting ancient origins in Hindu and Mesopotamian cosmologies; Lopold de Saussure (Les Origines de l;'Astronomie Chinoise), who showed that primitive Chinese religion and astronomy honor the celestial pole as the home of the supreme "monarch" of the sky; Ren Guenon (Le Roi du Monde and Le Symbolisme de la Croix), who sought to outline a universal doctrine centering on the polar gods and principles of ancient man.

In the nineteenth century and early twentieth century these revelations were viewed as highly unorthodox and generally given little attention. But more recently the pioneering historian of religion, Mircea Eliade, together with many of his colleagues, has documented numerous traditions of the cosmic center—the place where it all began—and noted again and again the relations of the cosmic center to the celestial pole.

Most of the writers cited above possessed a common—if unspoken—faith in the ceaseless regularity of the solar system, seeking to explain the polar god in strictly familiar terms: the center of our revolving heavens is the celestial pole; the great god of the center and summit, in view of his role as axis, must have been the star closes to this cosmic pivot.

But then, as we have seen, it's simply impossible to separate the tradition of the polar power from that of the former sun god, the central sun, lighting the world from one spot. So it is not just a matter of ancient star worshippers looking up at the pole and noticing that the circumpolar stars slowly wheel around that center. The mystery is the location of the supreme luminary, the power many nations called "sun", at this improbable station in the sky. How did an idea contradicting all natural experience today, establish itself around the world?

In this investigation we will see that many threads of evidence lead to the same unified conclusions. In preceding segments we have reviewed these unexplained associations:

1) Helios as Saturn; Helios as central sun, and Helios as axis of the celestial revolutions.

2) Assyrian Shamash as Saturn, Shamash as central sun, Shamash at the polar "midst" and "zenith."

3) Egyptian Atum-Ra as central sun, Atum-Ra as Saturn, Atum-Ra atop the world pole.

There is a way to test the integrity of the ancient ideas we have reviewed. Are there any independent astronomical traditions enigmatically connecting the outermost visible planet to the celestial pole? This would be particularly significant because nothing in the appearance of Saturn today could conceivably suggest such a connection? And it would show a coherence of the collective memory beyond anything historians would have thought possible.

The answer is clear, and it is stunning. Wherever ancient astronomies preserved detailed images of the planet Saturn, it seems that Saturn was declared to have formerly occupied the celestial pole! The priestly astronomy of Zoroastrianism knew the planet Saturn as Kevan, called "the Great One in the middle of the sky" locating his primeval seat at the celestial Pole. In neo-Platonist symbolism of the planets, Kronos-Saturn is claimed to rule the celestial Pole, or is placed "over the Pole."

It is also known that Latin poets remembered Saturn as god of "the steadfast star," the very phrase used for the pole star in virtually every ancient astronomy. Thus Manilius recounts that Saturn, in his fall, toppled to the "opposite end of the world axis." Hence his original throne could only have been atop the world axis.

A stunning example of the polar Saturn is provided in Chinese astronomy, where the distant planet was called "the genie of the pivot." Saturn was believed to have his seat at the pole, according to the eminent authority on Chinese astronomy, Gustav Schlegel. In the words of de Saussure, Saturn was "the planet of the center, corresponding to the emperor on earth, thus to the polar star of heaven."

A planet at the celestial pole? The consistency of the message cannot be denied, and it is anything but the message anticipated by conventional models of the ancient sky.

As odd as this tradition of Saturn at the pole may appear, it has been acknowledged by more than one authority, including Leopold de Saussure. The principle also figured prominently in the recent work of the historian of science, Giorgio de Santillana and the ethnologist Hertha von Dechend, authors of Hamlet's Mill, a revolutionary work suggesting that, according to an ancient doctrine Saturn occupied the celestial pole!

But the authors, maintaining an unqualified attachment to the clockwork solar system, excluded in advance any extraordinary changes among the planets. Instead they spoke of Saturn's polar station as a "figure of speech" or astral allegory whose meaning remains to be penetrated.

"What has Saturn, the far-out planet to do with the Pole?" they asked. "It is not in the line of modern astronomy to establish any link connecting the planets with Polaris, or with any star, indeed, out of reach of the members of the zodiacal system. Yet such figures of speech were an essential part of the technical idiom of archaic astrology." This statement is made particularly interesting by the fact that the authors are able to adduce not a clue as to the origins of the idea.

It seems that the primordial age, as chronicled in accounts around the world, stands in radical contrast to our own era. One can no more explain Saturn's ancient connection with the pole by reference to the present arrangements of the planets than one can explain, within conventional frameworks, Saturn's image as the Universal Monarch, the founder of the Golden Age, or the primeval sun god. Yet the fact remains that throughout the ancient world these images of Saturn constituted a pervasive memory which many centuries of cultural evolution could not obliterate.

Separate threads of evidence, each posing its own mystery for the specialists, actually lead to a singular conclusion, albeit a conclusion far removed from modern-day belief. The threads are: Myth of the Golden Age, myth of the creator-king or celestial prototype of kings, reverence for a former sun god, the archaic day beginning at sunset, placement of the sun god at the cosmic center and summit, identification of the cosmic center with the axis of the turning sky, Saturn as founder of the Golden Age, Saturn as creator-king, Saturn as primeval sun or best sun, Saturn as god of the day (the day beginning at sunset), Saturn as resting god or ruling the "day of rest," Saturn at the cosmic center and summit, Saturn ruling from the celestial pole.