The Sun and the Moon - from Ancient Civilizations to Masonic Symbolism
by MARIAN MIHĂILĂ
Assistant to the Grand Master, National Grand Lodge of Romania
"Oh, Sun! You, my only love Oh, gulf of fire! Oh, blood Oh, gate! Gold! Gold! Sacred fury I die. Someone will tell that, dying with my arms spread out, I held The sun in my lap..." Thus does the mason writer Paul Claudel describe, in his first drama, written in 1889, the death of the protagonist "Tete-d’Or". But let us turn first to the ancient civilizations’ appreciation of the importance of the sun. This primordial importance of the sun is found in all civilizations, all of them now vanished from all the continents. In the ancient religions of Asia, the sun was in Sumer-Babylon, Assyrie, and the god of the Sun, Shamash, presided over justice. Symbolically rendered as a winged discus or as a discus surrounded by rays, he is the one who dictates the laws in the code of Hammurabi, which later influenced legislation in the Near East. Likened to the creator in the Egyptian religion, Ra – the Sun-God – holds an essential role. Egyptians presented him thus: "Master of eternity that does not cease traversing the years / For whom the time of life has no limits / Old and ever growing younger and never ceasing to traverse the infinite space / Old God transforming into a youth / With numerous eyes and multiple ears". The theme of permanent growing young of the star surpasses the simply mythological characteristic, as it is meant to identify a thought. If "the infinite space" can be translated as "eternity", the image presented in the last sentence suggests Ra’s omnipresence, the creator possessed of eternity. This essential role explains the fact that we find him under different names in all regions of Egypt: thus, Amon, the God of Egyptian Thebes, passes his solar attributeson to Ra and becomes Amon-Ra, adored in multiple places of worship, such as the temple in Luxor. In the case of the Greeks, the attributes of the Sun-God are diverse: Phebus or Phoibus, the "Briliant" was known as Apollo. The son of Zeus and Leto, his attributes multiply over the centuries: God of divinities, music, and poetry, protector of the Muses, at once warrior and shepherd. Sometimes he becomes a purifier and a healer, a Sun-God, a symbol of clarity, an avenger, violent, driven by fury, despite his glory beauty. In Central America, covered in swamp-like land, constantly flooded by the tropicale rainfall, the Olmecs also centered their religion on the sun.The jaguar symbolized the Sun, travelling on the ground by night, to show up in the form of vulcanic eruptions, hence the direct relation. This associaton was later found with the Maya, in the temple of the sun in Palenque, where the main basrelief centers around the "mask of the jaguar representing the sun in his nocturnal aspect", as the American anthroplogist Michael D. Coe writes.In the nineteenth century, North American indians gave the sun an exceptional importance. The Cheyenne, as many other tribes, celebrated the creation of the world and terrestrial renewal through a ceremony for "the renewal of life", or "Sun dance" that could last as long as four days. As was only natural, masonic symbolism confers a great importance to the sun. Reprezented on the apprentice’s trestleboard, the sun appears in the upper right corner as one of the two light-givers, one of the three "lights" of the Lodge, correspondin to Orator. Practically, the sun is found on the right, above the "J" column, a generator and creator of the world. Activities in the Lodge are symbolically opened at noon, when the sun reaches its zenith. The symbolism of the sun is most clearly explained by Gilbert de Chambertrand, an investigator of masonic symbolism, in his book: "To understand and practice modern astrology". For him, "the sun is the essential vitality, the Father, possessed of a generous fecundity. Without him, we would not exist. We exist for him. It is not a blade of grass, it is not a piece of a man of an elephant that does not obey the law, which owes its life to me. Its influence is the vital image, the expanding influence. He offers balance, health, weal. He glorifies and fortifies. He is the active principle, and is autonomous." But, after quoting Gilbert de Chambertrand we must underline the idea that the sun that corresponds to the element fire not only offers life through its ray, but also can kill. Radiation in-between the infrared and ultraviolet can be noxious. So powerful, the sun is rarely evoked without his nocturnal double: the Moon. Ancient civilizations showed a much more complex reception of the Moon than of the sun, as she was perceived ambivalently, being both maleficient and beneficent. In India, the moon is a masculine deity that often couples with the daughter of the sun; in China, she is evoked as a feminine character. Masculine or feminine, Cambodian tradition emphasises her beneficent role: the Moon spreads the rain and fertilizes the rice fields.She marks time and divides the months in "two clear weeks" and "two somber weeks". Between the two, the moon marks the culmination of luck, when chances are balanced. Observing the moon is part of soothsaying, of the reading of the mysteries of germination, of prosperity or calamity... The moon is the light and the motion in the representations of the Khmer: "the moon takes on itself the burden to light the world by night, to preserve as well as possible the lives of humans... along with the sun, she turns around Mountain Some (the center of the universe)... Its motion is less quick than that of the sun. For when the moon disappears, the sun appears. Both thus preserve life on earth." The rites confirms the importance of the myth of the moon, rites considered both kingly and peasantly dedicated celebrations to the moon in connection with the agrarian cycle. The king saluted the star from his royal Palace, whereas a descendent of the Brahmin of yore presented him with lustral water from a cone of gold, and the king besprinkled his children with it. The Buddhist monks were also invited to participate at the dinner held in the throne room, thus marking the presence of Buddhism at the heart of rites crucial to both the Brahmanic tradition and the agrarian cycle. In the villages, the celebrations required an offering of new rice, the lighting of candles and incense sticks when the moon reached its zenith, again in the presence of Buddhist monks who, often, sifted the dirt, thus mimicking the life-giving rain. These rituals show clearly that they are about fulfilling a ritual of fecundity, in which water and the moon were partners. This idea of fertility is found also in the Egyption religion of Hathor, daughter of Ra, who becomes a solar goddess after she leaves the Nubian desert, where she lived alone in the form of a lioness. In her breast took place the eternal gestation of the nocturnal sun that was reborn young and fresh in the morning. Purified through holy water, Hathor becomes also a goddess of love, thus embodying a double nature: creator and destroyer. Egyptian religion, very rich in gods, also honored the true god of the moon: Thot. A treatise of his mythological adventures presents him seeking the eye of the moon, which he recuperates from very far away in order to bring it back. The moon, nocturnal double of the sun, inferior to the sun, as the Egyptians saw it, was advanced to the rank of creator. The late astronomical representations of the temple linked it to the phases of the moon, which offered it the quality of calculator of time. This connection between moon and time appears clearly explained in another religion, that is Islam. The Koran is very explicit in this regard: "He [Allah] made of the sun clarity / and of the moon, light, and fixed its phases to / calculate the years and dates! (Koran, X, 5)." In the Islamic religion, the symbolism seems inverted, as the moon is the one that gives light, the sun being only clarity. The moon is determined by the Islamic calendar. According to the Koran, the Islamic year follows a lunar cycle: 354 days, divided into twelve months of 30 or 29 days. Like the sun, the moon is also present in masonic symbolism. It is the second "light-giver" in the "apprentice’s" tableau, where it appears as it "increases", symbolizing beneficence, to the left of the "B" column (the organ of fecundity). Activities in the lodge close symbolically at midnight, when the sun reaches its nadir, the moment when he moon presumably reaches its greatest resplendence. The second "light" of th Lodge corresponds to the Secretary. In the already quoted work, Gilbert de Chanbertrand insists on the extremely complex role of the moon. "As a light-giver, he says, it represents the reflection of the sun, and like the sun denotes health. Even though it is situated in the opposite side of the zodiac, it reaches its plenitude. The moon rises when the suns sleeps, and throughout the night it becomes the guide of the sun. However, if it passes before the sun, it shows us an obscure face. But slowly it grows to be again full. As a planet, the moon is a piece of the earth, a living part through links created by magnetic fields, transmitting to us in the course of its fast evolution the influences received from other bodies in the zodiac. The moon represents the passive principle, which receives and reflects. It depends at the same time on the Earth and the Sun. Its speed, the rapid succession of the influence it transmits characterize her as unstable and changing." To conclude, we can appreciate as follows the presentation in freemasonry of the sun and the moon. Their symbolism is universal, a universality that appears from the most ancient civilizations and all the way to our civilization. The sun and the moon were and are the founding elements of the universe; the two "Flames" that found their natural place in the lodge, which also is a part of this universe. Moving from the universality of this symol, we must not forget the existence of a relation between the ancient religions and freemasonry, which may be interesting. Opinions on this subject contradict one another, as they always have. In his "History of the freemasons in France", the historian Daniel Ligou rejects this hypothesis, claiming that only the post-Antiquity period matters to him. If the connection between people, on the one hand, and freemasonry, on the other, can be determined only with great difficulty most of the time, why would we not dare to create analogies and parallels between the elements that stand at the basis of the mystification of the two astral bodies by the ancient civilizations and the use that of mystification in masonic symbolism.
Copyright Masonic Forum
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