The Earth at Perihelion
The Earth at perihelion - closest to the Sun. Perihelion can fall anywhere between January 2 and January 6 in a given year. Image from https://earthsky.org
From the ARAS database- Archive for Research in Archetypal Research- Ball Symbolism
“The ball's capacity for rolling, bouncing, and careening through space have made it the focus for many sports and a poetic image of play and movement on both a human and a cosmic level. In many myths, fairy tales, and sacred rituals, the ball is the object par excellance that is pursued, manipulated, fought over, and passed between protagonists. The ball has a curiously multivalent character: it is both a neutral medium through which we connect (both cooperatively and contentiously), fully immersing ourselves in play, and it becomes an intrinsically valuable prize, possessing special powers.
The dawning sun suggests the golden ball that is a "treasure hard to attain", the quest of heroes through all time. (Jung, vol. 9.1, 311) It is an image that recurs in fairy tales as the gift of the frog to the princess who must kiss him, or as as a rolling apple or sphere that the hero follows to an unknown goal. The ball, seemingly with a life of its own, represents the impulse of the Self to move beyond what it knows. It is the psyche's creative capacity to express itself in consciousness, spontaneously bounding into view and taking us where it will.
A Zen parable tells of a monk who is entranced by a radiant ball of light that appears in the zendo hall. He follows the elusive globe that rolls away, just beyond his grasp, into the forest. He chases it up a tree where he is stranded, and must wait for rescue.
The bright, perfect sphere, which vanished before the monk's eyes, is that which we seek for so desperately outside ourselves. The parable asks us to look inward, to the glowing ball of our own hearts.”
https://aras.org/