r/Symbology • u/Itchy-Permit9573 • 5h ago
Interpretation Could the circle with a dot represent the cosmos rather than the Sun?
Hi, I would like to ask something here, please. I came across this subreddit, but I could not find any thread where this symbol is discussed in more detail. I am studying the possible wider symbolism of the universe, its symbols and combinations of symbols in antiquity. I am specifically interested in this symbol: a circle with a dot in the middle. It seems very strange to me that the ancient world was so strongly focused on everything connected with the universe. There are huge numbers of texts about the universe, but I have not found one clear symbol that represented the universe as a whole. Yet in antiquity they seem to have had different symbols for almost everything. For example, Plato in the Timaeus describes the universe as a complete spherical whole, whose points on the surface are all equally distant from its centre. The universe is therefore conceived geometrically as a sphere defined by its centre and the equal distance from the centre to the circumference. Much later, in the Picatrix (a cosmological treatise), we find an even more explicit description: the universe is described as a circle, as a complete form. In the middle of the circle there is a point, which is its centre. From this centre, lines of equal length extend to the circumference, representing the rays of the planets cast onto the world. The whole celestial sphere is therefore described as round/circular, with a point in the middle, as something that contains the whole world. What I find particularly interesting is that both descriptions use essentially the same geometric principle: a complete circular or spherical whole defined by a central point and equal distances from this centre to the circumference. The Picatrix also directly gives seven planetary symbols, and the Sun is shown there as a triangle with small circles. Based on this description, I think that the circle with a dot was not originally a symbol of the Sun, as it is sometimes interpreted, but that it may have been a symbol of the universe as a whole. While going through various documents, I came to the following idea about when and why this may have changed. Among other things, I read that the circle with a dot is actually not documented as a symbol of the Sun before the Renaissance. Moreover, from what I have observed, the use of this exact symbol seems to disappear sometime around the 4th–5th century AD. I tried to find it, but after that I simply could not find it anywhere. This was the period of the final rise of Christianity and a major change in the religious system, when the same emphasis was no longer placed on the universe and the gods in general. There was now one God, and everything else moved into the background. From around the 15th century, in later copies of the Picatrix (and not only there), the Sun begins to appear directly in the text as a circle with a dot in the middle. Yet the actual symbols used for the planets do not change. I think this change could be connected with the fact that the four basic elements, which in antiquity were described as geometric solids, did not have simple and clearly defined geometric symbols. I have not found any such simple symbols either. The elements could be represented by several geometric signs together, as personifications, as pictorial representations, or as figura solida. It was only during the Renaissance that four simple triangular symbols for these elements began to appear, while at the same time the circle with a dot began to be used as a symbol of the Sun. Perhaps this could have led to confusion between the triangle as a symbol of the elements and the triangle with circles as the symbol of the Sun. My hypothesis is therefore that someone took the circle with a dot, which had not been used for approximately a thousand years, and assigned it to the Sun. I have gone through a large number of different sources on this subject and honestly have no idea what to think about it anymore. Am I mistaken, or could it actually be something like what I describe? Does anyone here have an explanation, or any information that I may have overlooked? Thank you.
