Gold, the Sun Among Metals

In the classical scheme that paired the seven metals with the seven planets, gold is the metal of the Sun, and the pairing is the most secure and universal of the set: gold is yellow and lustrous like the sun, it does not tarnish or corrode, and its perfection made it the natural solar metal. The scheme is set out in Greek and later alchemical sources and became standard in the Latin West; the alchemists used the same glyph, a circle with a central dot, for both gold and the Sun.

Alchemically gold is the goal and the perfection of metals, the incorruptible end toward which base metals were held to aspire, so that the transmutation of lead into gold stood also for the perfecting of the soul. Its ritual and symbolic uses follow: gold marks the divine and the royal, gilds sacred vessels and images, and signifies the eternal and the highest. Of all the planet-metal pairings, gold and the Sun is the one that needs no argument.