A Dictionary of Symbols (Dover Occult)

by adminOccult

A Dictionary of Symbols (Dover Occult)

Language: English

Pages: 528

ISBN: 0486425231

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


Humans, it's said, are symbolizing animals. At every stage of civilization, people have relied on symbolic expression, and advances in science and technology have only increased our dependence on symbols. The language of symbols is considered a science, and this informative volume offers an indispensable tool in the study of symbology. It can be used as a reference or simply browsed for pleasure. Many of its entries — those on architecture, mandala, numbers, serpent, water, and zodiac, for example — can be read as independent essays. The vitality of symbology has never been greater: An essential part of the ancient arts of the Orient and of the Western medieval traditions, symbolism underwent a 20th-century revival with the study of the unconscious, both directly in the field of dreams, visions, and psychoanalysis, and indirectly in art and poetry. A wide audience awaits the assistance of this dictionary in elucidating the symbolic worlds encountered in both the arts and the history of ideas.

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Blossom. Sometimes, the allegorical figure carries a cornucopia full of fruits and flowers, or has both hands leaning on a spade or a hoe. The Zodiac is also included, to indicate the importance of the yearly cycle and the sequence of the seasons and the work that each season implies (8). Air Of the four Elements, air and fire are regarded as active and male; water and earth as passive and female. In some elemental cosmogonies, fire is given pride of place and considered the origin of all things,.

Equivalent to that of the sword, the hammer and the cross. But much more important and complex is the significance of the twin-bladed axe, related to the sign tau (4). This double-headed axe is to be found in a host of works of art from India to England, and specially in the Mediterranean countries—in Africa and 22 BABYLON Crete. Very often it is located over the head of an ox, just between its horns, when it comes to symbolize on the one hand the mandorla (related to horns because of its.

Flesh-tints, it was also the colour of resurrection. To come back to the colour orange, the beautiful explanation of some allegorical figures in the alchemic Abraham the Jew contains a reference to orange as the ‘colour of desperation’, and goes on: ‘A man and a woman coloured orange and seen against the background of a field coloured sky-blue, signifies that they must not place their hopes in this world, for orange denotes desperation and the blue background is a sign of hope in heaven.’ And.

And universal sense, it is a symbol of strength and of the power of the libido (42). Indian tradition has it that elephants are the caryatids of the universe. In processions, they are the bearers of kings and queens. It is interesting to note that, because of their rounded shape and grey colour, they are regarded as symbols of clouds. By a twist of magic thought, there arose first the belief that the elephant can create clouds and then the mythic postulate of winged elephants. A mountain-top or a.

Development. To lose one’s hair signifies failure and poverty’ (56). Now, the reverse of loss brought about by forces outside Man’s control is, in part, willing sacrifice. For this reason, Zimmer points out that all who renounce and defy the principles of procreation and multiplication of life, in order to embark upon the path of total asceticism, are bound on principle to cut their hair short. They must simulate the sterility of the aged and hairless who form the last link in the chain of.

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