The hero sun

The finest of all symbols of the libido is the human figure, conceived as a demon or hero. Here the symbolism leaves the objective, material realm of astral and meteorological images and takes on human form, changing into a figure who passes from joy to sorrow, from sorrow to joy, and, like the sun, now stands high at the zenith and now is plunged into darkest night, only to rise again in new splendor.

The psychic life-force, then libido, symbolizes itself in the sun59 or personifies itself in figures of heroes with solar attributes. At the same time it expresses itself through phallic symbols. Both possibilities are found on a late Babylonia gem from Lajard's collection (fig. 19). In the middle stands an androgynous deity. On the masculine side, there is a snake with a sun halo round its head; on the feminine side another snake with a sickle moon above it. This picture has a symbolic sexual nuance: on the masculine side there is a lozenge, a favourite symbol of the female genitals, and on the feminine side a wheel without its rim. The spokes are thickened at the ends into knobs, which, like the fingers we mentioned earlier, have a phallic meaning. It seems to be a phallic wheel such as was not unknown in antiquity. There are obscene gems on which Cupid is shown turning a wheel consisting entire of phalli60. As to what the sun signifies, I discovered in the collection of antiquities at Verona a late Roman inscription with the following symbols:

The symbolism is plain: sun=phallus, moon = vessel (uterus). The interpretation is confirmed by another monument from the same collection. The symbols are the same, except that the vessel has been replaced by the figure of a woman... From here it is clear that sexuality as well as the sun can be used to symbolize the libido. 

Footnotes:

1. Hence the beautiful name of the sun-hero Gilgamesh, "The Man of Joy and Sorrow," in Jensen, Das Gilgamesch-Epos.

59. Among the elements composing man, the Mithraic liturgy lays particular stress on fire as the divine element, describing it as [Gr. "the divine gift in my composition"]. Dieterich, Mithrasliturgie, p. 58.

60. An illustration of the periodicity or rhythm expressed in sexuality.

- Jung, Aspects of the Masculine, p.3