Sterling Silver Jewelry: Deities Of The Silver Moon

The roots of the Moon’s appropriation to femininity, and the subsequent connection of Silver to them both lie in the ancient lands of Mesopotamia, once home to the world’s most advanced civilizations during the Neolithic period.

Observing the Moon’s waxing and waning within a 28-day cycle, the Mesopotamians were the first to connect the synchronicity between our sister planet’s movements and the female reproductive cycle. This led to the Moon symbolizing fertility, and its eventual appropriation with the Mesopotamian god and goddess, Nanna and Ningal.

Ningal and Nanna were the patron deities of one of the most important cities in southern Mesopotamia, Ur. They resided in the temple called Ikinugal, meaning the 'House of Moonlight’ and were often represented by a crescent Moon shape. Archeologists believe that this shape was not only used to signify the crescent Moon, but also the shape of the womb and equally the horns of a bull, a sacred symbol of fertility in Mesopotamia and the successive cultures of Greece and Rome.

Although the Mesopotamians had already recognized the seven planets, assigning each one a god or goddess, it was the Egyptians who were the first to appropriate the planets and their deities with metals, starting with gold and Silver. Alchemists in Egypt represented gold in hieroglyphs as a circle, the sign of perfection, and appropriating it with the Sun and its singular ruling male deity: Amun. Silver was symbolized by a half-circle, secondary to gold’s full circle, and represented by the moon and a multitude of inferior female goddesses including Isis. These gender-biased associations may also provide part of the answer as to why silver has always been perceived secondary to gold.

All seven visible planets and their gods were finally associated with the seven known metals in the classical Greek period. For instance, Iron used for the fabrication of instruments of warfare, became associated with the male god of war Mars. Whereas pliant copper used in ornamentation and jewelry, was appropriated to Venus. Both these metals ancient alchemic signs are still used today to denote male and female gender.

The seven metals were highly revered in Greek culture, not only being identified with the gods and planets themselves, but were also used to symbolize their generations. First, born from Chaos, came the Titan Gods. The Titans marked the ‘Golden Age’ of classical Greek mythology; the succeeding generation of gods were the Olympians who gave rise to the ‘Silver Age.’

Born from the Titan’s ‘Golden Age,’ the first Greek goddess of the Moon was known as Selene. Although she survived the Titans she wasn’t fully accepted in the Greek Olympian pantheon, and never became one of the twelve great gods and goddesses of the Olympian ‘Silver Age’. Interestingly, Selene as is the case for many ancient Greek deities, gave her name to a metal: Selenium. A metal, similar to the tales of Selene, whose properties change in relation to the density of light.

Selene, daughter of Hyperion and Theia, was the sister of Eos the goddess of the dawn and Helios the Olympian sun god. It was said that everyday Selene bathed in the sea waiting for her brother Helios to complete his journey across the sky. Selene represented the evening and the night, and in this sense was often depicted as a young woman with a lily-white complexion. She traveled across the night sky in a Silver chariot pulled by two horses carrying a torch and adorned with a diadem of a half moon on her head.

Selene, a romantic favorite with painters and poets, was known for her many ‘liaisons d’amour’. Two of her most notorious affairs were with Pan and Zeus. However, Selene’s most famous love affair was with a handsome mortal called Endymion, who she visited each night kissing him to sleep. Selene begged Zeus to give Endymion anything he wished, hopping that he would ask for immortality, but Endymion was vain and instead asked Zeus to preserve his good looks for eternity. Zeus complied, putting the young man in eternal sleep.

During both Greek and Roman Empires the goddesses of our sister Moon, much like the planet itself, had dark and light sides and were often represented in an almost schizophrenic manner. This symbolic significance becomes clearer through understanding the physical nature of the Moon and its affect on the Earth. The different cycles of the Moon were represented by different goddesses and their attributes. Selene, known to the Romans as Luna, was the ‘Waxing Moon' fertile and full she was the mother goddess pregnant with life. Artemis, known as Diana to the Romans, was the virgin goddess of the hunt reflecting the qualities of the ‘New Moon'. Hecate, Trivia to the Romans, was the goddess of the waning or Moonless night, cloaked in mysticism with the power to heal or transform.

As mentioned before the Romans had their equivalent of Selene in the form of Luna. Appearing in much the same way with a crescent Moon on her head, and driving a silver two-horse chariot, Luna was also connected to the Moons changing faces. Luna could be kind as much as she could be crazed; it is from the latter that we derive the term “Moonstruck’, ‘Lunatic’ and ‘Lunacy’. The etymological roots of Lunatic and its appropriation to the goddess’ name are related to bi-polar disorder or cyclothymia: an excited mental state where moods can be altered by light intensity.

For the Romans the Moon's dark side was symbolized by the goddess Trivia, goddess of the crossroads said to appear when the ebony Moon shone. Trivia was often depicted as having three heads: a dog, a snake and a horse and was usually seen with two ghost hounds. Often misunderstood as the goddess of witchcraft or evil, Trivia did many heroic deeds including the rescue of Persephone, Demeter's daughter, from Hades in the Underworld. Trivia was said to haunt a three-way crossroad, each of her heads facing in a certain direction from this the Romans gave her the name Trivia.

Understanding the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman view of the Moon it is clear to see how it and silver appropriated a female persona. During the height of the Greek Empire, the Moon it’s goddesses and the connection to silver became so important that they were immortalized into one of the most amazing feats of the ancients: The Temple Of Artemis: One Of The 7 Ancient Wonders.

This article was written by David-John Turner for the Silvershake website, an online retailer of silver jewelry at wholesale prices. Purchase today and get gemstone silver jewelry worth up to $60...Free!

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