The original meaning of the word ‘syzygy’ is that of ‘a pair of oxen yoked together. The word ‘syzygy’ itself comes to us from the Greeks.
Zygon is also related to the Old English geoc—the source of the Modern English yoke—and the Latin jungere, from which the English words join and junction are derived.
Astrological Meaning
Pronounced syzygy • \SIZ-uh-jee\ • noun. : the nearly straight-line configuration of three celestial bodies (such as the sun, moon, and earth during a solar or lunar eclipse) in a gravitational system. Examples: The full moon and new moon phenomena occur when the earth, sun, and moon are in syzygy.
Symbolic Meaning
The syzygy has three components: a man’s femininity and woman’s masculinity; the experience man has of woman and vice versa; and the masculine and feminine archetypal image. Archetypal symbolic pairings are ‘yoked together’ by this term. Contrasexual (male-female) pairings occur in dream symbolism.
Syzygy Spirituality
in addition to its literal meaning it meant either marital or sexual union. Further figurative use of the word is found among certain Gnostics (Gnosticism), who used the concept to express their own dualistic ideas and Aions.
Syzygy, female–male pairings of the emanations known as Aeon where various emanations of God are known by such names as One, Monad, Aion teleos (αἰών τέλεος “The Broadest Aeon”), Bythos (βυθός, “depth” or “profundity”), Arkhe (ἀρχή, “the beginning”), Proarkhe (προαρχή, “before the beginning”).
Their Aions, for instance, were male and female deities combined in one—hermaphroditic deities called Syzygies. Here, however, the term ‘syzygy’ is used to denote the general concept of “a pair of opposites, united in their opposition”.
Syzygy, is also equivalent to a complementarity. What is more, a special complementarity—the Syzygy of Self and Other—is here taken to be the ontic equivalent of the materialistic Void, the “ground state of the Universe” that early physicists also called the Vacuum.
Philosophy
A concept in the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov denoting “close union”
Carl Jung used sysygy to mean a union of opposites, e.g. anima and animus
Scientific Sysygy
Mathematical– linear relation between generators of a module.
Biological – The pairing of chromosomes during meiosis. Zygon is also the source of zygote (“a cell formed by the union of two gametes”) and zygoma, which refers to several bones and processes of the skull, including the zygomatic bone (a.k.a., the cheekbone).
The best we can do for our rational, objective understanding is to give analogies that we can understand, analogies that exemplify the structure that the Syzygy must posess in order to serve as an ontological foundation of the Cosmos and its physical components.
This fundamental “nothingness” of Physics turns out to be an infinitely powerful field of virtual energy. And the Syzygy, in its fullest (dynamical) sense, is the philosophic counterpart of this physical concept—the metaphysical analog of the physical ground of the Universe. Unfortunately, that’s about all we can know about the Syzygy, due to its profoundly primordial role. Even though it is equivalent to the ground of existence (in particular, the ground of our personal existence), it is ultimately so far removed from our own personal experience as to be virtually beyond conception.
Uses of Syzygy
Syzygy endgame table bases, used by chess engines!
This does not rule out our ‘knowing’ it, since—as it is real and it is our foundation—this “ground” is perhaps accessible through something like Intuition/ Meditation/LSD/etc.
