Composition of the Planetary Sigils (Video Transcript)
11.14.2011
Hi, Jeremy Crow here. In this video I'd like to go over the seven planetary sigils and the symbolism behind their composition but to start I just want to explain that the word planet is a word that means wanderer and it's reference to the fact that if you look up, the night sky, all the bright objects, all the dots and any bright object in the sky will move in a pattern around the North Star, which is just a circle. So you may have seen those images where they point a camera directly at the North Star and then leave the exposure open and all the other stars draw a perfect circle around it. So you get all these circles and in the point in the center is the North Star. The only exception are the planets and the moon and the Sun. So all of these planets they move from the ancients perspective. They moved in their own... of their own accord. They didn't necessarily move in the same way until eventually they started to recognize the pattern behind the movement so they called them "wandering stars" and that's where the word planet comes from. Means wanderer.
So the original seven planets of classical astrology were the ones that people could see with the naked eye. In a lot of the systems they use a terra-centric worldview, where earth is the center of the universe. And in this view, which you know is mathematically just as valid as as calculating things with the Sun as a center, but I mean logically now that we understand it the Sun does make more sense but from the perspective of the earth if you look up in the sky it does appear that these wandering stars or planets are in certain levels, like how close they are to the earth and in order from from the earth to the farthest planet away from the earth, would be: the moon is the closest and then Mercury, then Venus, then the Sun, then Mars, Jupiter, and then Saturn. Any of the other planets beyond that you can't see with the naked eye. So those are the seven planets of classical astrology.
If you look at the composition of the sigils, for each of them they're composed of three components: a circle, a crescent, and a square (or a 90-degree angle or a cross... all those, a square, 90 degree, cross, all of them have a 90 degree angle in them.) The 90 degree angle or square represents the earth. The crescent is a representation of the moon and the circle is representation of the Sun. So if you look at how these are composed you'll see that every single one of the seven planets is composed of at least one of these symbols. But usually they're composed of a combination.
So the easiest one, the Sun is a circle, usually with a dot in it. The moon is a crescent. Simple as that. And those form a natural pair, like a couple, I guess you could say. But the the next pair is, you could say Venus, which is a circle with a cross beneath it. So that says the Sun above the earth. Now it's pair is Mars, which is a circle and above it you have a ninety degree or a square. And usually people think of this as an arrow because it's connected in an interesting way. It's not connected directly. On the end of the square that line goes up to the center of the 90 degree angle and connects to the circle that way. So Mars and Venus form a natural pair. One is love and one is war. So that makes sense. Jupiter is composed of a cross with a crescent up above and to the left a little bit. And Jupiter usually represents abundance or expansion. Its natural pair is Saturn, which represents death and constriction and focus. The symbol for Saturn is a cross and on the bottom of it you have the crescent.
Now the only one that remains without a natural pair is a symbol of Mercury. The symbol of Mercury... on that we'll start at the bottom. It's a cross on the bottom with a circle above that. And above that with a crescent, which looks almost like horns on the circle. So that one in itself is the only one of the seven symbols that has all three. It represents the divine androgen or the union of all of the three components of the self: the body, the soul and the spirit are all united and harmonious and all of the dichotomies have been resolved into synthesis within Mercury. And that's why sometimes Mercury is seen as... is used as a symbol for the philosopher's stone in alchemy. But you know there's a lot to contemplate about how these symbols are composed. And it tells you a lot about the actual planet planetary energy itself.
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