Gold: dawn; the power of brightness. It can be present at any time of the day or night, but always dispels darkness, whether that is physically or figuratively understood. One of gold’s figurative meanings is as a soft yellow metal of great worth, which is treated as a concentrated form of dawn’s power within the body of the earth, in the same way that dawn increases in intensity until it gives rise to the sun. Another of its figurative meanings is as life burning in a candle or rising from a stem as a flower in the spring, as if the stem has embodied the sun on the earth and streams with it, which, in effect, it has.

Willow Catkins in Bloom, Vernon, British Columbia, Canada