The astrological symbol of the sun, a circle with a dot in the center, has its origin in the alchemical symbol of gold, the most perfect of metals, which has always been associated with the central star of the solar system. In Juan Eduardo Cirlot’s Diccionario de símbolos the entry Gold reads:

According to Hindu doctrine, gold is “mineral light.” According to Guénon the Latin word aurum (gold) is equal to the Hebrew aôr (light). Jung transcribes the beautiful explanation of alchemist Michael Maier, in De circulo physico cuadrato, for whom, as a consequence of the millions of rotations around the earth (or inversely), the sun has spun gold around her. Gold is the image of sunlight and therefore of divine intelligence. The heart is the image of the sun within man, as gold is within earth.

One need not follow Guénon to another linguistic family to find the relationship between gold and light. Aurum comes from proto-Indoeuropean root aus “brightness of the rising sun,” which also gave rise to the name of the goddess Eos, Aurora in Latin, who represented the “first light of the morning.” Likewise, the name of golden-garlaned Phoebe, daughter of Gaia and Ouranus (1.1), comes from the Greek phoibos which means bright and shining and symbolizes the brilliance of divine intellect and wisdom, attributes once assigned to the sovereign.

There are metals like gold, silver and platinum which are deemed noble. They are characterized by their resistance to corruption and oxidation, even when exposed to the atmosphere. They are the “aristocracy” of metals, (from the Greek aristoi, “excellent” and kratos, “rule”), and, like the human aristocracy they refuse to combine with other elements. Gold, according to alchemy, is the metal king to which all others aspire, which constantly transmute underground in an effort to perfect themselves, to excel. In the premodern world the planet was seen as a huge retort where everything tended naturally to its intrinsic end, the philosophical gold; the task of the alchemist was to merely assist in accelerating this process.