The alchemy of silver jewelry and the number 7 – Part I The 7 metals of antiquity
Today, if someone is asked to find a silver or gold color in nature, their eyes are likely to search the sky for the auxiliary lights of our sister planets, gold to the sun and silver to the moon. But the colorful relationships drawn between terrestrial metals and heavenly bodies are far from being dim reveries; they form the very framework on which civilization is built.
It all started in the ‘Chalcolithic’ period of western Anatolia, now called Turkey, after the first discoveries in a series later known as the ‘Seven Metals of Antiquity’. Preceding the Iron and Bronze Ages, the ‘Chalcolithic Period’, translated into plain English as the ‘Copper Age’, marked the transition of Neolithic man and his use of stone, obsidian and flint tools in early organized societies. . This stage of the evolution of humanity is based on the use of minerals transformed into metallic implements and jewelry items such as rings, earrings, pendants, necklaces and bracelets.
During a period of more than 7000 years, from 6000 a. C. until 1400 d. C., the man only knew seven metals. These metals are collectively known as the ‘Seven Metals of Antiquity’: gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, lead, and mercury. Mercury was mistakenly thought to be a type of silver, and in Greek it was called ‘Hydrargyrum’, which means ‘Aqueous Silver’, this became the English ‘Quick Silver’.
From archaic to medieval, civilizations and their leaders revered silver and the other six metals above all else. The common notion of these pre-scientific periods was that the Earth, and everything on it, was a reflection of the heavens: “As above, so below,” this is the fundamental belief of alchemy. So when the high priests, oracles, and alchemists looked up to the sky and saw seven heavenly bodies, they found their equivalent number in the powers and properties of their most precious material – metal.
It was clear to see that gold with its brilliance personified the Sun, and silver with its glittering brilliance was the embodiment of the Moon. All they had to do now was assign a symbol to each metal. The circle, the sun sign of perfection, was given to the oldest and most precious metal: gold. The second most precious, silver, given the crescent moon. Consequently, the less noble a metal is, the more defective the circle.
In both Mesopotamia and Egypt, some of these symbols were already in use, designated to the deities of the planets. The circle in Egypt was the sign of the Sun god Amun, in Mesopotamia the sign of Shamash. The crescent in ancient Egypt denoted the ‘Mother of Heaven’ and the ‘Goddess of the Moon’: Isis. It is from this association that the crescent-shaped hieroglyph became the alchemical symbol for silver, and that is why today we associate silver with the moon. These symbols, although they evolved slightly over time, were to be used by alchemists such as Robert Boyle and Sir Issac Newton until the 18th century AD.
In ancient Greece, the goddess of the moon was called Selene, and the Romans knew her as Luna. Although Luna’s powers were not as revered as her Egyptian counterpart, Isis, they were powerful enough that her name was given as an element in another concept based on the number 7. A concept that had its roots in the ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, and one that forms the very foundation of modern civilization: time.
The indispensable silver light of the Moon goddesses, Luna, was absorbed by the concept of time and celebrated by “Dies Lunae”, which means “Day of the Moon”. We now know that period of time not as the day of the Moon, but as Monday, one of the seven days of the week.
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