Aratron is the Saturn-associated Olympic governor named in the Arbatel. The 1575 Basel print and Turner’s later English version preserve different forms of his account.
- Planetary category
- Saturn ♄
- 1575 province line
- 49
- Source passage
- Aphorisms 16–17
Place in the seven-name list
Aratron opens the seven-name sequence in Aphorism 16 and is paired with Saturn in Aphorism 17. The Basel leaf assigns 49 visible provinces to this governor. The text later describes a hierarchy beneath him using descending groups of kings, princes, presidents, dukes, ministers, familiars, and messengers. These enumerations convey an imagined celestial administration; they are not a demographic count or a set of independently observed entities. Beginning the series with the Saturn-associated governor also sets up the stepwise province pattern that exposes the Bethor numeral problem on the following line.
What the book attributes
Aphorism 17 gives Aratron one of the longest office descriptions. It associates him with turning objects to stone, reversing coal and treasure, instruction in alchemy, magic, and medicine, making the barren fruitful, and extending life. The passage is internally linked to what the book calls Saturnian effects. These spectacular actions are promises within the early modern work, not verified capabilities. A modern list may flatten them into “Saturn demon of transmutation,” but the Arbatel names an Olympic governor in a religious cosmology and makes his actions dependent on divine permission.
The printed record
Aphorism 16 singles out Aratron with Saturday and the first hour of that day before referring to the other governors in their corresponding days and hours. That statement is evidence for the source’s timing idea, not a universal instruction recoverable from a sigil image alone. The print supplies character figures in the surrounding discussion; later redrawings may alter their lines. The Basel figure belongs to a particular early print. Aratron’s elaborate office beside Phaleg’s much briefer entry shows how uneven the supposedly neat sevenfold system actually is.
