Light

First, the historical significance of the sun. I had to look up the meaning of Theogony:  an account of the origin and descent of the gods.

In Theogony, the sun represents the moment, surpassing all others in the succession of celestial dynasties, when the heroic principle shines at it's brightest. Symbolically, according to my book on symbols, the sun appears as a direct descendant and heir to god of heavens; and, inherits a noble attribute, it sees all, and in consequence, knows all...but really, in it's youth, the sun is associated with "the hero" as opposed to the "Father"

From our earliest recorded history, man has, perhaps, worshiped, or at least been extremely aware of the sun. This perhaps reached it's most advance stage in the new world, Mexico, but in earlier history all nations followed the sun. It was always associated with brightness, or splendour.

Now, with the question being to do with the historical significance of the sun as a symbol, I must go on!

Since time immemorial, the Sun and the Moon have been symbols of the active and the passive principles of the universe. For the primitive, astrobiological mind, there was an essential connection between the two. This was across all societies and cultures, the Orientals call it Ying and Yang. Science, in electricity know it as positive and negative.

The Sun, to some extent, is behind it all!

Just as one example, there are pre historic drawings that may be interpreted to depict this...and it really gets into the symbolism of dualism, which I've spoken about before. Coming more into our generation, or slightly before; Mircea Eliade March 13 1907 – April 22, 1986) was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. He was a leading interpreter of religious experience.

He said, "For Pigmies and Bushmen, the Sun and Moon, represent the eyes of God, the Sun the good eye, the Moon, the evil eye." He said, the moon must suffer pragmatism, since it wanes. I am leaving out a lot of detail here, trying to get to the next point. Which is, how to they relate to the orientation of the Masonic Lodge.

In my opinion, the lodge room being situated due "East and West", is for all of the reasons attributed in our ritual...

We enter the lodge room from the west, symbolically the gateway of life! We travel down the north side, the place of darkness, symbolically a time for development...then, we arrive in the east, where we receive light.

In the circumambulation of the Lodge, our candidate follows the path of the Sun, in the Northern Hemisphere, where our ceremonies originate... would it not be a terrible tragedy to consider this is by accident? No, the writers of our ritual work, were indeed genius!

We enjoy a life time of learning to come up to speed, so to speak.