15/10/2020
The Sunrise Symbol
..Of all forms, yellow, all-knowing,
The supreme goal, the one light, giving heat.
Thousand-rayed, existing in hundred forms,
The sun rises as the breath of creatures.
Prasna Upanishad
The Latin word for the rising, or morning, sun is oriens. The name given also to the direction from which it rises: the East, or the Orient. We are ''oriented'' when we face or point toward
the East. An ''orient'' gem is one that is lustrous or glowing. The noun oriens is formed on the verb orior: rise or become visible. By extension, the verb means ''growing'' or ''springing forth'', ''origination'', ''coming into being'' and birth.
Decisively marking the division of time between night and the day it brings into being, sunrise is symbolic not only of the creation of the world, but of the birth of consciousness - the ''day'' of physic life and the ego that that is its presiding and orienting luminary. And just as the sunrise is emblematic of the savior god who sinks into the land of the dead, only the to ascend again, so the daily resurgence of consciousness from the ''little death'' of sleep and dream is a rehearsal of resurrection.
To be sure, sunrise is not always a welcome event. The Egyptian goddess who raises the sun is ''she who annihilates...(who) comes out of the darkness.'' Thought the goddess certainly dispels the last vestiges of night, and may represent a spirit who destroys the enemies of the god Re, the epithet likely refers to the annihilating quality of the sun.
Commenting on the chakra Manipura, ''lustrous like a gem'' located at the region of the solar plexus, a Sanskrit text observes that through meditation ''on the region of Fire'' triangular in form and shinning like the rising sun... the power to destroy and create ( the world) is acquired.
Preeminently, however, sunrise evokes birth, new beginning and manifestation.
'' The Book of Symbols''
