Aqua Bull Horn Ring
A 4 ct. Aquamarine Gemstone is set in this 8 gram, 22 karat Gold Ring. Excluding the design phase, it took 192 hours hand craft between the Capricorn New Moon (Jan. 17, 1999) and the Aquarius New Moon (Feb. 16, 1999). This design was inspired by the horns of a Bull. A pair of conjoining, hand carved golden horns, resolve their polar opposition at the treasured center of the Aquamarine Gem. Like the Chinese Tao the union of both sides is not opposition but complementation. Horns like the majestic Bull itself traditionally represent a double power, the Sun and Moon, God and Goddess, Strength and Knowledge etc.
Dating from the Paleolithic period (twenty seven thousand B.C.) voluptuous Goddess figurines were variously pictured holding a horn. This horn was presumably blown to gather the animals for the hunt. The Goddess was mother nature and her horn, the Horn of Plenty. Eventually Pluto, the underworld lord, from whose dark realm arises the new born sprout, golden metals and precious jewels, inherited this cornucopia which is alternatively known as the “Horn of Amaltheia”, the provider of wealth. Horns are suggestive of the moon, fertility and nourishment. Sexual hormones of animals cyclically fluctuate between the genital region and thier horns. With the hope of absorbing some of this sexual potency certain types of horn are ground to powder and ingested by aging men. Like the Minotaur at the Labyrinth’s centre, the Bull stands at the crux of all traditions. The Bull, as a symbol, is deeply rooted in the mythic-religious experience of humanity. Through bovine analogies and subtle correspondences it has helped shape traditions as diverse as Christianity and Hinduism. It is at once, the living God, the sacrificed Lord and the resurrected Saviour. In the Neolithic settlement of Catal Huyuk, the heads of bulls were found buried next to corpses. “The shape of a bull’s head has been compared to the human uterus, and its horns to the fallopian tubes, so placing a dead body near to a bull’s head would be a way of preparing it for rebirth”. (The Goddess, Husain Pg 14) Also in Anatolia around the seventh millennia B.C. the male god, sometimes taken as a boy, adolescent or bearded man, is represented mounted on or next to a bull. In Egypt This God was the Sun god Re, the Lord King Osiris and his resurrection/son, Horus (the Infant); in the Vedas This God was Rudra/Siva and his son Kumara; in Crete This God was Minos and his offspring the Minotaur; in Greece This God was Zeus and his son Dionysus; in Rome This God was the Sun/Mithras and Nature/Mithra;
This God was also the semantic Yahweh, the “Bull of Israel” and his son the Savior, Christ. This God is the Sun who is sacrificed at night to be reborn flooding the morning with light. The eulogy listing the titles of This God fill innumerable pages in the chronicles of time. According to Jean-Clarence Lambert as quoted by Alain Danielou, “the Sanskrit word Go (bull) is one of the etymologies for the English word God, Scandinavian Gud and German Gott.” (Siva and Dionysus Pg 113) The Bull is not only a symbol of masculine power, of the Lord of Heaven, lightning and thunder but is also a feminine one, imbued with fertility, the rain and the lunar principle; Bull horns resemble the crescent moon.
© Shunyata 2008