The myth and religion of the Sun God (Helios) have their origins in the dawn of human history when the solar chariot drawn by horses with fire nostrils was one of the most famous sacred and ancient icons; such symbols and numerologies can be compared with those of Taoism .
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By Neoclassicism Enthusiast – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=100253053
The figure of Helios is the crossroads of Western mythology, a melting pot of religious stories of polytheism that set the stage for Christian monotheism which has roots in the evolution of the Egyptian Mysteries, where first Moses and then Jesus Christ were initiated.
According to the classical myth, the Sun crosses the celestial vault on its way, rising from the eastern part of the ocean and then plunging back into the western part in the evening; later tales were made about the chariot pulled by four fiery horses and about the seven herds of oxen grazing in Trinacria (Sicily) guarded by two nymphs (the Odyssey refers to this myth when it tells of Ulysses’ stay on that island). Also according to the Homeric poems, the Sun would have generated from Perse, daughter of the Ocean, Eeta and Circe, while Phaeton was also considered his son, protagonist of the famous myth narrated, among others, by Ovid in the Metamorphoses (II, 47- 324). The Sun God sees everything and hears everything, being the source of wisdom and giving prosperity and life.
In Ovid the horses are all males and their names are Eto, Piròo, Flegonte and Eoo, while Igino speaks of two males, Eoo and Ethiopian, and two females, Bronte and Sterope. However, Hyginus also refers to other sources that mentioned different names such as Abraxas and Terbeo. Then there is Fulgentius (Myth. Vat. II XX 21; Myth. Vat. VIII 6) who names them Erytreus, Acteon, Lampus and Filogeus.
Dante uses these sources by mixing them and naming the horses “the first they called Eoo, the second Pirroi, the third Eton, the fourth Philogeus” and associates the Chariot of Hyperion with the IV Heaven of Paradise, ruled by the Powers and in which the spirits of wise men, including St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, appear to the poet .
Horses, animals sacred to Poseidon, the Lord of the Abyss, recall the chthonic sphere, the deep and dark side of being. On Mount Taygetos a horse was sacrificed to Hêlios and, again in his honor, a team of four horses was drowned in the sea in Rhodes. In Rome, October Equus was celebrated on 15 October. According to Kerényi, these sacrifices of chthonian animals in honor of the Sun highlight the close relationship between the diurnal and the nocturnal world, between the luminous solar world and the darkness of the underworld.
On the other hand, the path of the Sun in its apparent motion around the Earth invites a quadripartite space-time subdivision that includes the alternation of light and dark, according to the classic morning, afternoon, evening, night phases, the regions of the local horizon (the 4 cardinal points) and of Heaven (east, west, zenith and nadir of the celestial sphere, or ascending, descending, and meridian points in the horoscope).
In recent times, a chariot of the Sun pulled by nine horses is also mentioned, instead of the traditional four, still bringing us back to numerology and the subdivisions into 5 (4 + 1) and 9 (8 + 1) that we know well rooted in Taoism and Feng Shui, with clear astronomical references.
In fact, the number 5 refers to the plate of the Earth of the Chinese Compass and the 5 visible planets contained in the Wu Xing, while the number 9 refers to the Ba Gua and the Constellation of Ursa Major (in ancient times composed of 9 stars: the current 7 plus 2 which were circumpolar at that time).
Keeping on with the numerological parallelism between West and East, apart from the improbable hypothesis of the chariot of the Sun pulled by 9 horses, we find a more reliable source in Homer, where in the XII book of the Odyssey, he tells that in Trinacria (or Island of the Sun) 7 herds of oxen graze led by 2 nymphs, numbers that complete the Kabbalah of 9 and could be associated with the myth of Helios.
To enhance the solar energy cycle of our homes it is recommended to use the center of the Ba Gua, which corresponds to the house’s center of gravity, by placing a solar symbol or mandala.
