This is the cross of the Zodiac, one of the oldest conceptual images in human history.
It reflects the sun as it figuratively passes through the 12 major constellations over the course of a year. It also reflects the 12 months of the year, the four seasons, and the solstices and equinoxes. The term Zodiac relates to the fact that constellations were anthropomorphized, or personified, as figures, or animals.
The sun, with its life-giving and saving qualities was personified as a representative of the unseen creator or god—“God’s Sun”
We have already seen that the ancient cultures have considered the sun as divine; hence, it is either God, a god, or a son of God/a god. Indeed, this ―sun of God as son of God‖ motif is common in the mythology of India, Greece, Rome and Egypt, to name a few of the more well-known nations. In Egypt,
this ―son of the sun‖ is the god Horus, among others, while in Greece it is Apollo, son of Zeus, whose name means ―God.‖ This same tradition was discussed by Plato, as related in The Book of the Sun
(1494) by Neoplatonic-Christian philosopher Marsillio Ficino:
According to Plato [Republic, VI, 508c18], he called the Sun not God himself, but the son of God.
And I say not the first son of God, but a second, and moreover visible son. For the first son of God is not this visible Sun, but another far superior intellect, namely the first one which only the intellect can contemplate. Therefore Socrates, having been awakened by the celestial Sun, surmised a super celestial Sun, and he contemplated attentively its majesty, and inspired, would
admire the incomprehensible bounty of the Father .
In a chapter (2) entitled, ―How the light of the Sun is similar to Goodness itself, namely, God,‖ Ficino summarizes the ―god‖ characteristics projected upon the solar orb by ancient cultures extending into modern times:
…Above all the Sun is most able to signify to you God himself. The Sun offers you signs, and who dare to call the Sun false? Finally, the invisible things of God, that is to say, the angelic spirits, can be most powerfully seen by the intellect through the stars, and indeed even eternal things—
the virtue and divinity of God—can be seen through the Sun.
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