Today, if someone is asked to find a silver or gold color in nature the chances are their eyes will search skyward to the attendant lights of our sibling planets, gold to the sun and silver to the moon. But the colorful relationships drawn between terrestrial metals and celestial bodies are far from being tenuous reveries; they form the very framework on which civilization is built.
It all started in the ‘Chalcholithic’ period of western Anatolia, now called Turkey, after the first discoveries of a series known later as the ‘Seven Metals Of Antiquity’. Preceding both iron and bronze ages the ‘Chalcholithic Period’, translated into plain English as the ‘Copper Age’, marked the transition of Neolithic man and his use of stone, obsidian and flint tools into the first organized societies. This stage in humanity’s evolution is based upon the use of ores transformed into metallic implements and items of jewelry such as rings, earrings, pendants, necklaces and bracelets.
For a period of more than 7000 years, from 6000 B.C. until 1400 A.D., there were only seven metals known to man. These metals are collectively known as the ‘Seven Metals Of Antiquity": Gold, Silver, Copper, Iron, Tin, Lead and Mercury. Mercury was mistakenly thought to be a type of silver, and in Greek was called ‘Hydrargyrum’, meaning ‘Watery Silver,’ this morphed into the English ‘Quick Silver.’
From the archaic to the medieval, civilizations and their leaders venerated silver and the other six metals above all else. The common notion of these pre-scientific periods was that the Earth, and everything on it, was a reflection of the heavens: ‘As it is above so it is below,’ this is the fundamental belief of alchemy. So, when the high priests, oracles and alchemists looked to the skies and saw seven heavenly bodies, they found their equivalent number in the powers and properties of their most precious of materials: metal.
It was clear to see that gold with its radiance personified the Sun, and silver with its shimmering luster was the embodiment of the Moon. All that they needed to do now was to assign each metal a symbol. The circle, the Sun sign of perfection, was given to the oldest and most precious of metals: gold. The second most precious, silver, given the Moon’s half crescent. Accordingly the less noble a metal the more flawed the circle.
In both Mesopotamia and Egypt some of these symbols were already in use, designated to the deities of planets. The circle in Egypt was the sign of the Sun god Amun, in Mesopotamia the sign of Shamash. The crescent in ancient Egypt denoted the ‘Mother of Heaven’ and ‘Goddess of the Moon": Isis. It’s from this association that the crescent shaped hieroglyph became the alchemic symbol for silver, and why we associate silver with the moon today. These symbols, although evolving slightly overtime, were to be used by alchemists such as Robert Boyle and Sir Issac Newton right up until the 18th Century A.D.
In ancient Greece the moon goddess was called Selene, to the Romans she was known as Luna. Despite the fact that Luna’s powers were not as revered as her Egyptian counterpart, Isis, they were powerful enough that her name was given as an element in another concept based around the number 7. A concept that had its roots in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, and one which forms the very foundation of modern civilization: Time.
The indispensable silver light of the Moon goddesses Luna was absorbed into the concept of time and celebrated by ‘Dies Lunae’ meaning the ‘Day of the Moon’. We now know that time period not as Moon day, but as Monday one of the seven days of a week.
Read Silver Jewelry The Alchemists And The Number 7 – Part II The 7 Days Of The Week
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Source by David-John Turner
Silver Jewelry Alchemy And The Number 7 - Part I The 7 Metals Of Antiquity
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