1001 Symbols Jack Tresidder First published in the United Kingdom and Ireland in 2003 by Duncan Baird Publishers Ltd Sixth Floor Castle House 75–76 Wells Street London W1T 3QH Conceived, created and designed by Duncan Baird Publishers Copyright © Duncan Baird Publishers 2003 Text copyright © Jack Tresidder 2003 Commissioned artwork copyright © Duncan Baird Publishers 2002 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Managing Editor: Christopher Westhorp Editor: Diana Loxley Designer: Allan Sommerville Commissioned artwork: Sally Tayor, Matthew McKenna and Chris Daunt Picture Researcher: Alice Gillespie For copyright of photographs see page 384 which is to be regarded as an extension of this copyright British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 1-904292-58-5 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Typeset in AT Shannon Colour reproduction by Scanhouse, Malaysia Printed in Thailand by Imago
CONTENTS Introduction
6
1 Blessings and Hardships
18
Protection Mortality and Transience Longevity Fertility Fecundity and Plenty Wealth and Prosperity Fame and Fortune Bad Luck Health
20 35 40 43 56 64 70 76 80
2 Human Qualities and Powers
86
Power Authority Sovereignty Strength and Stability Masculinity and Virility Femininity and Maternity Beauty and Grace Knowledge and Learning Vigilance and Guardianship
88 96 102 108 114 122 130 134 138
3 Virtues and Vices
142
5 States and Conditions
264
Goodness and Benevolent Power Evil Innocence Truth and Deceit Charity, Care and Compassion Faith and Hope Justice Fortitude and Courage Temperance and Humility Gluttony, Sloth, Avarice and Pride Chastity and Virginity Prudence and Wisdom Fidelity and Loyalty Purity and Incorruptibility
144 152 164 166 171 174 180 182 187
Peace and Freedom War and Victory Defeat, Cowardice and Betrayal Duality and Union Harmony and Meditation Death
266 272
6 Spiritual Life
302 304 316 322 325 330
4 Emotions and Instincts
222
Love Lust Envy and Jealousy Anger and Cruelty Happiness and Joy Grief, Mourning and Melancholia Instinct, Intuition and the Unconscious
224 240 244 247 250 254
Divinity and Sanctity Salvation and Redemption Images of the Soul Immortality and Eternity Rebirth and Resurrection Enlightenment and Transformation Ascension and Axial Interchange Purification, Atonement and Propitiation Divination Index
374
Acknowledgments
384
192 196 205 212 216
260
280 282 290 294
340 348 358 368
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INTRODUCTION
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Traditional symbols form a universal language which is becoming more mysterious as we move further away from the thought patterns and worldview of those who produced it. Originally, these symbols – typically, familiar objects standing for something abstract, such as an idea, quality, emotion, value, aspiration, belief, hope or fear – were anything but mysterious. Their intention was to provide an instantly recognizable representation, or mental picture, of a concept. Images have always conveyed ideas more swiftly than words, and they predated written words by thousands of years. The pictograms and ideographs that led ultimately to the invention of the alphabet drew on earlier symbols that were used for primitive magical purposes. Signs and symbols often overlap each other but have different purposes. Whereas signs simply provide information, symbols give ordinary things a larger dimension, often a spiritual one. To take a basic example, a quality such as courage, regarded as a fundamental virtue in the ancient world, was represented by a creature that seemed to embody it – the lion. Once chosen, the strength of the symbol intensified as artists created forceful images of it and it was woven into the whole fabric of a society’s life through myth, legend, ritual and architectural or costume decoration. It might also begin to acquire wider meanings.
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In Egypt, for example, the lion became more than just a symbol of a human attribute. It was an emblem of the power and majesty of the sun and, by extension, of the pharaoh, who was the sun god’s earthly representative. The human-headed lion that sits beside the Great Pyramid of King Khufu, built by the pharaoh Khafre some five thousand years ago, is a spectacular example of the way in which a symbol could be used to consolidate the dynastic and religious framework that held an entire nation together. Through such powerful symbols and rituals, a priestly class could control society and impose ethical rules on it. The symbolism of the lion could not only expand outward but also turn inward to the minutiae of daily life. Because the zodiacal lion sign, Leo, represented the sun in its most fiery phase between July and August, the lion was linked with the fertile flooding of the Nile at this time of the year. Given this entirely new connection between the lion and water, it was a short symbolic step to the production of lion-headed fountains for Egyptian palaces and public buildings. Lion water spouts are just as popular with garden
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✴ designers today, but their origins and symbolic meaning have been forgotten. Many people must speculate as to why a lion – associated with hot, dry habitats – should preside over a stream of water. Scores of traditional symbols have a similar history of development, moving from having one meaning to having many. The serpent, an early and fundamental animist symbol of the cosmic lifeforce animating all things, has at least ✴ 20 other emblematic meanings, which vary according to context or culture. Some are positive, others negative. Even the dragon, with which the snake shares some of its symbolism, is ambivalent. It embodies evil in Western tradition, but in Asia is an emblem of fertilizing spring rain – and this is the significance of the paper dragons that are carried or used as masks in Chinese festive processions. Thus, symbols do not have fixed meanings. To take two famous modern examples: the swastika was once a sign
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of beneficial cosmic power, and pointing two fingers upward in a “V” sign was insulting. In Hitler’s hands, the swastika became a symbol of brutal force; in Churchill’s, the “V” symbolized victory against that force because he turned his hand so that his palm was opened towards his audience. In forming their own language of symbols, different societies often selected the same images from the natural world – particular animals, birds, fish, insects, plants, features of the earth or cosmos – and, to a remarkable degree, the meanings attached to them are similar also. A phenomenon such as lightning suggested in all cultures divine power or wrath, virility and fertility, so that peoples with no knowledge of each other might recognize jagged linear motifs as symbols of these ideas. But the interpretation of other symbols depended on the social, emotional or spiritual needs of specific cultures. The jackal, an embodiment of evil in India, became in Egypt the attribute of a respected underworld deity, Anubis, charged with care of the dead and responsible for ushering souls to judgement. The thinking behind such a transformation sometimes remains mysterious. In elevating the status of the jackal, were the Egyptians attempting through
sympathetic magic to stop jackals raiding graves? Or were they offering a consoling image to families whose graves were desecrated in this way? Symbolism is full of such puzzles, and symbolists often disagree about the origin of a particular emblem. The fish is a famous early symbol of Jesus Christ, and Christian scholars suggest that this was because the letters of the Greek word ichthus (fish) formed an acronym for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour”. But was this an ingenious way to validate Christianity’s use of a much more ancient pagan symbol for divinity? The Sumerian creator-god Enki was depicted as a man in the guise of a fish. Differences of interpretation do not make the symbols less valid but they do mean that some knowledge of their cultural origins is needed to appreciate their allusive richness. Many symbols are based on ancient myths and legends, which were transmitted orally before being written down and which are themselves full of symbolic and allegorical significance. For example, myths of powerful contending gods controlling wind and weather at the four main directions of space – north, south, east and west – led to the number four acquiring extraordinary
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symbolic power throughout much of pre-Columbian America in religious rites directed towards maintaining an advantageous balance between these supernatural forces. The same number stood much more widely for totality, stability and universal power. The four seasons themselves seemed to support the idea of a cosmic order based on the number four. In many traditions, the repeating cycle of spring, summer, autumn and winter symbolized a pattern of birth, growth, decline, death and regeneration which made sense of the human life-cycle and offered the expectation of rebirth in a spiritual sense if not a physical one. The supreme gods of Egypt and Hindu India were shown with four faces, and Hindu society was organized into four castes, again with the symbolism of order and stability. In the West, an entire symbol system was erected upon the notion of four elements – earth, air, fire and water – being the basis of order and harmony, not only in the cosmos but in the human body. In medieval medicine, physicians assigned physical and temperamental characteristics to each element and sought to harmonize them. The advance of science has dismantled such obscurantist beliefs. And it is undeniable
that, for all its imaginative and cohesive value in the rise of civilization, symbolism could have appallingly harmful consequences when it was misused. At the height of the Aztec Empire, the symbolic link between the sun as the heart of the universe and the human heart as the body’s “sun” led to 20,000 victims a year having their hearts ripped from their bodies. These sacrifices were justified as necessary to sustain the sun’s energy in its mythical daily battle with the forces of darkness. Blood, universally equated with the life-force, is one of the deepest and darkest of all symbols, as its role in sacrificial rites shows. It is one of many symbols overlaid with accretions of primitive animist beliefs, myth, religion, sympathetic magic and pure superstition. Science has been influential in eliminating superstition and belief in magic. It attempts to contain philosophical thought within a strict framework of space and time, a universe of physical laws which is indifferent to human life and morality. Because nothing is provable outside this framework, the possibility of a spirit that is not contingent
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on space and time has begun to seem conceptually outdated or irrelevant. The scientific mind-set is thus very different from the more imaginative and intuitive mind-set of those who developed the language of symbolism over thousands of years. For the societies from which traditional symbolism emerged, the realm of space and time was penetrated by a higher consciousness, however it might be delineated. The structures of mythology and symbolism which grew out of this belief seemed to offer an explanation of the cosmos and of human life which allowed for the larger context which, until now, humans have felt must exist. The idea that we are born, exist briefly and die answering to no higher power or purpose would have seemed not only unbearable but disastrous. Symbolic community rituals were thought to be essential to keep society in harmony with the rhythms of nature. Everything was interlinked. The individual was not alone. In other words, life was not the meagre thing it seemed to be, but had a spiritual dimension. Symbolism arose not from intellect but from imagination and a deep sense of identification with the whole cosmos. It had little to do with empirical facts. Its impact was usually visual,
sensory and emotional. Symbols based on apt analogies or metaphors and on psychic truths could be reassuring as well as persuasive. People associated with a powerful symbol felt enlarged by it. To some degree, the same can be said of modern symbols – as is evident in the emblems used by sporting teams. Insignia and badges give a sense of group identification and pride. In television advertising, the human talent for image-making has never been deployed more skilfully to convey concepts by means of images. Symbols of product benefits flashing up on screens and disappearing at almost subliminal speed are nevertheless recognized and understood by mass audiences. But they have shorter and shorter currency as their novelty-value disappears. What underlies them is commerce not belief. More traditional symbols emerged from a far more stable conceptual universe. Exploring it gives us insights into the development and meaning of the symbols and attributes used in figurative art for hundreds of years. At the same time, it reminds us how strongly people once believed that there was a mystical dimension to life and that the ordinary world could be transcended.
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About this book 1001 Symbols is organized more like a thesaurus than a conventional dictionary. Most reference guides to symbolism are arranged as alphabetical lists of symbols whose main and subsidiary meanings are defined and discussed individually. This book takes a simpler, perhaps more cohesive approach. It starts from the idea, quality or state symbolized and then discusses under this topic all the main symbols traditionally used to represent it. Important symbols with multiple meanings therefore appear under several different topic headings. Closely related topics are sometimes grouped together. The aim here is to provide an overview of the various symbols used by different cultures to stand for concepts such as Wisdom, Goodness, Evil, Truth, Justice, Chastity, Grief, Freedom and Salvation. A few concepts have an unusually large number of symbols, suggesting their exceptional importance to earlier societies. Fertility, Fecundity, Protection, Power, Love, Divinity, Immortality and Rebirth are all notable examples of categories that have always been a focus for symbolism in many cultures throughout the world. Apart from identifying these major preoccupations of early civilizations, the book shows that traditional symbolism as a whole was developed to represent a relatively small
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range of ideas which were seen as the keystones of civilization, and that symbols generally tended to emphasize positive rather than negative aspects of existence: virtues rather than vices, hope rather than despair, strength rather than weakness, peace and unity rather than war and discord. They evolved to provide ideals that would inspire respect for authority, social order, cooperation, ethical behaviour, spiritual discipline, resolution in the face of danger and reassurance in death as well as life.
Note on cross-references: Throughout this book, the reader will find boxes with cross-references to other (alternative or divergent) meanings of designated symbols. In each case, the symbol that is the starting point is referred to in the box by its entry number on that page. One or more different meanings of the particular symbol are then indicated by citing the thematic sections and the page numbers on which they occur. Thus, for example, in the section on “Health”, the reader is alerted to an ✴ alternative meaning for the symbol of the toad given elsewhere in the book: “196 Evil, p.159”.
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