Sun & Moon Tattoo Meaning
Balance, duality, union, and the eternal dance of opposites.
The sun and moon together form the great pair of the heavens — day and night, light and dark, fire and water, the masculine and the feminine, the two complementary powers whose alternation makes the rhythm of all life. To depict them together is to depict the union of opposites and the wholeness that holds them both. To carry the sun and moon is to carry the union of opposites and cosmic balance — day wedded to night, the two great lights and powers held together, the wholeness that embraces both light and dark, the harmony and the eternal dance of complementary forces.
In alchemy the sun and moon were among the most important of all symbols, representing the two great opposing principles whose union was the goal of the entire Great Work. The Sun (Sol) was gold, fire, the active, hot, dry, 'masculine' principle, associated with the king and with sulphur; the Moon (Luna) was silver, water, the receptive, cool, moist, 'feminine' principle, associated with the queen and with mercury. The whole of alchemy turned on bringing these opposites together.
The culminating image was the coniunctio, the 'chymical wedding' — the sacred marriage of Sol and Luna, sun and moon, king and queen, whose union produced the perfected 'philosopher's stone,' the reconciliation of all opposites into a transcendent whole. The sun and moon joined was the emblem of this great alchemical mystery: that wholeness and perfection come only through the union of opposites, the marriage of the light and the dark, the male and the female, into one. The alchemical sun and moon is the chymical wedding — Sol and Luna, king and queen, gold and silver, the sacred marriage of opposites whose union produces the philosopher's stone and the perfected wholeness that reconciles all things.
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