The roots of silver's appropriation to femininity and the Moon lie in the ancient lands of Mesopotamia, once home to the world's most advanced civilizations during the late Neolithic period.
Observing the Moon's waxing and waning within a 28-day cycle, the Mesopotamians were the first to connect the synchronicity between our sister planet's movements and the female reproductive cycle. This led to the Moon symbolizing fertility, and its eventual appropriation with the Mesopotamian god and goddess, Nanna and Ningal.
Ningal and Nanna were the patron deities of one of the most important cities in southern Mesopotamia, Ur. They resided in the temple called Ikinugal, meaning the 'House of Moonlight' and were often represented by a crescent Moon shape. Archeologists believe that this shape was not only used to signify the crescent Moon, but also the shape of the womb and equally the horns of a bull, a sacred symbol of fertility in Mesopotamia and the successive cultures of Greece and Rome.
Although the Mesopotamians had already recognized the seven planets, assigning each one a god or goddess, it was the Egyptians who were the first to appropriate these planets and their deities with metals, starting with gold and silver.
All seven planets and their gods were finally associated with the seven known metals in the classical Greek period. The seven metals were highly revered, not only being identified with the gods and the seven visible planets themselves, but were also used to symbolize their generations. First, born from the waters of Chaos, came the Titan Gods, the Titans marked the 'Golden Age' of Greek mythology. The succeeding generation of gods were the Olympians, led by Zeus, who gave rise to the 'Silver Age' of classical Greece.
The first Greek goddess of the Moon was Selene, later known by the Romans as Luna, who was born from the Titan 'Golden Age.' Although she was elevated to a very high status in the Greek pantheon, she was never fully accepted as one of the twelve great gods and goddesses of the Olympian 'Silver Age'. Interestingly, Selene as is the case for many ancient Greek deities, gave her name to the metal Selenium whose properties change in relation to the density of light, much like the goddess of the Moon herself.
Selene, daughter of the Titan sun god Hyperion and Theia, was the sister of Eos the goddess of the dawn, and Helios the Olympian Sun god. It was said that everyday Selene bathed in the sea waiting for her brother Helios to complete his journey across the sky. Selene represented the evening and the night, and in this sense was often depicted as a young woman with a lily-white complexion. She traveled across the night sky in a silver chariot pulled by two horses carrying a torch and adorned with a diadem of a half moon on her head.
Selene, a romantic favorite with painters and poets, was known for her many 'liaisons d'amour'. Two of her most notorious affairs were with Pan, and the father of Olympus Zeus. Zeus and Selene were alleged to have conceived the Nemean lion, immortalized in the first trail of Hercules, which was said to have fallen to Earth from the Moon. However, Selene's most famous love affair was with a handsome mortal shepherd called Endymion, who she visited each night kissing him to sleep. Eventually Selene begged Zeus to give Endymion anything he wished hopping that he would ask for immortality, but Endymion was vain, and instead asked Zeus to preserve his good looks for eternity. Zeus complied and put him in eternal sleep.
During the Greek and Roman Empires the goddesses of our sister planet the Moon were represented in an almost schizophrenic manner. Their symbolism becomes clearer through understanding the three distinguishable cycles of the Moon: waxing, waning and new. Three different goddesses and their attributes represented the three distinguishable cycles of the Moon and their affect on the Earth.
Selene was the 'Waxing Moon' fertile and full she was the mother goddess pregnant with life. Artemis was the virgin goddess of the hunt reflecting the qualities of the 'New Moon'. And finally there was Hecate, who was the goddess of the waning or moonless night, cloaked in mysticism with the power to heal or transform. Hecate was the Greek goddess of the crossroads said to appear when the ebony Moon shone. Hecate was often depicted as having three heads: a dog, a snake and a horse and was usually seen with two ghost hounds. Often misunderstood as the goddess of witchcraft or evil, Hecate did many heroic deeds including the rescue of Persephone, Demeter's daughter, from Hades in the Underworld.
Like the Greeks, the Romans also had three deities representing the three cycles of the Moon. Selene was known as Luna, appearing in much the same way with a crescent Moon on her head driving a silver two-horse chariot. Luna could be kind as much as she could be crazed; it is from the latter Roman goddess that we derive the term 'Moonstruck', 'Lunatic' and 'Lunacy'. The roots of the appropriation of the goddess' name to this excited mental state are related to bi-polar disorder, or cyclothymia, which is a type of depression where the sufferer's moods can be altered by light intensity.
The Greek Artemis had her equivalent in the Roman goddess Diana, and was depicted in much the same way, often armed with a silver bow and arrow. Finally the Roman's had the Moon's dark side symbolized by the goddess Trivia, who like her Greek counterpart was said to haunt a three-way crossroad, each of her three heads looking in three different directions the past, present and future lit by the light of silver candles.
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