Dusty Millenial

Remember our friend the Sun Cross?

It's also the astrological (and alchemy) symbol for Earth. In astrology (zodiac) each sign is assigned to one of the four elements, Earth being one of them. Zhongli's birthday is Dec 31st, making him a Capricorn. Not only is Capricorn an Earth sign, but is often described in astrology as the oldest and wisest. I'll save the astrology talk for another time...especially since I haven't dived in too deep on all of the nitty gritties of how astrology works. Another symbol that represents the Sun in astrology, ALSO represents the symbol of gold in alchemy:

Mora can only be minted using the power of the Geo Archon, AKA Morax. He also mentions gold in his voicelines:

In the description of the Prithiva Topaz, he compares Mora to his "flesh and blood"

One of Albedo's voice lines indicates a connection with creating gold "naturally," along with his E-skill being linked from the earth to the sun:

Furthermore, there are a TON of in-game images of Zhongli (or things related to Liyue) that also have imagery of the sun. Here are just a few examples:

In another scene from the Guoba backstory, we see this shown as the symbol representing the sun:

It's portrayed as the same symbol for the Sun in astrology, gold in alchemy, AND... The Monad

Now, that isn't to say that I think Zhongli is actually The Primordial One, and that is to assume if the Monad and The Primordial One share the same role. But it also CAN'T t be a coincidence, considering Genshin's ties to Gnosticism references. I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from that; only that it is VERY sus.

--- If we backtrack to the Moon Sisters, according to their story they were "in love with the morning stars." If we go with the Solar Chariot version of the Chasm's origin, the "morning stars" would be the ones driving the Solar Chariot, AKA the Sun. As far as when Morax was born vs when he actually descended is a little unclear (unless someone can dig something up, I wasn't really able to). It's a huge stretch, but maybe Morax descended as a morning star during the calamity? Not necessarily as the one that landed in the Chasm, but it is entirely possible that there were fallen stars given the calamity is described as  "the disaster that toppled heaven and earth descended." There is ONE piece of evidence I recently came across (thanks to the many other lore enthusiasts of Genshin Reddit) that did make me reconsider the possibility of Zhongli being connected to the Chariot driver: