The Meeting of the Sun and Moon

0 Comments | April 15, 2009 at 8:57 am by mahud
Filed under Meton, Gilbert Murray, Cosmic-Lunar Cycles, Joseph Campbell, Greek (Classical) Mythology

As mentioned by Joseph Campbell (citing Classical scholar Gilbert Murray: Occidental Mythology p.162-163), in Homer’s Odyssey, there is found a grand celestial and mythic theme that mirrors the 19 year Metonic Cycle (the meeting of the sun and Moon). Yet the Odyssey pre-dates the discovery by the astronomer Meton (5th century BC), by well over one hundred years.

Odysseus is parted from his wife for ten years during the war against the Trojans, and then another ten, lost at sea. He is identified with the sun, making his journey beyond Oceanos to the Underworld and back out again, and arrives home at Ithaca at the winter solstice (on the verge of the 20th year) during the festival of Apollo. His long suffering wife Penelope, represents his bride in her lunar aspect, who has promised to marry one of the many suitors who seek her hand in marriage, upon completion of a tapestry which she continually weaves and un-weaves, hoping for her husband’s return, much like the waxing and waning moon, and ultimately like the cosmos itself.

the Axis-Mundi

Odysseus also fashioned a bed, “from start to finish” (23:224), from a living olive tree, and decorated it with silver and gold, the metals of the moon and sun. The immovable bed of bliss may well be understood as the Axis-Mundi, that corresponds with the threshold between temporal cycles, upon which the opposites unite and transcend into eternity.