Element Encyclopedia Of Secret Signs And Symbols

The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Signs andSymbolsThe Ultimate A-Z Guide from Alchemy to the ZodiacAdele Nozedar

For Adam and for the seven secrets

‘In every grain of sand there lies Hidden the soil of a star’Arthur Machen‘I do not need a leash or a tie To lead me astray In the land where dreams lie’YoavIn Nature’s temple, living pillars rise Speaking sometimes in words of abstruse sense; Man walksthrough woods of symbols, dark and dense, Which gaze at him with fond familiar eyes.Like distant echoes blent in the beyond In unity, in a deep darksome way, Vast as black night and vastas splendent day, Perfumes and sounds and colors correspond.From “Correspondences,” Charles Baudelaire

Table of ContentsCover PageTitle PageEpigraphIntroductionPart One Signs and Symbols of Magic and MysteryPart Two FaunaPart Three FloraPart Four Flowers of the UnderworldPart Five Sacred Geometry and Places of PilgrimagePart Six NumbersPart Seven Sacred Sounds, Secret SignsPart Eight The Body as a Sacred MapPart Nine Rites and Rituals, Customs and ObservancesPart Ten The Nature of the DivineCopyrightAbout the Publisher

INTRODUCTIONThe aim of this book is to seek a true understanding of the secret signs, sacred symbols, and otherindicators of the arcane, hidden world that are so thickly clustered around us. During this process,we’ll shed light on the cultural, psychological, and anthropological nature of our signs and symbols.We’ll also be surprised to discover that many of the everyday things we take for granted can holdhidden secrets, and by having the key to this knowledge we’ll gain an insight into the minds andconcerns of our forbears who constructed these symbols.NO BEGINNING, NO END: ANATOMY OF A SIMPLESYMBOLRodin said, “Man never invented anything new, only discovered things.” While it’s true to say thatsome symbols have been man-made for a specific purpose, it’s equally accurate to argue thateverything is inspired in some way by the natural world around us, by the forms of nature, plants,animals, the elements. Even a reaction against the fluid forms of nature is generally inspired by adesire to provide an alternative. Sometimes the revelation of a natural symbol is immediate; othersuch discoveries are the result of years of painstaking observation.One of our simplest symbols has elaborate and arcane origins.Here is a picture, not of a manmade or computer-generated pattern, but of the shape made in thesky by the Planet Venus. Venus is the only planet whose dance around the Sun in the depths of spacedescribes such a definite and distinctive form, and we can only imagine the sense of wonder that musthave been felt by the ancient Akkadians who first charted the design. They also realized that theMorning Star and the Evening Star, previously considered to be two separate celestial bodies, wereone and the same. This discovery had a profound effect, which has cast such a long shadow over the

archeology of symbols that we are still governed by it today. Here’s why.Because of Venus’s proximity to the Sun, its light is often obliterated, and so it is visible only inthe early morning or in the evening, either just before sunrise or just after sun-set. The Greeks calledthe morning star Eosphoros, “bringer of the dawn” (later, the star would be called Lucifer, thebrightest of the angels cast out of the Heavens). As the Evening Star, it was called Hesperos, “star ofthe evening” (which gives us the name of evening prayers, or vespers).It takes eight years and one day for the appearances of Venus to complete an entire pentagram.These days we can plot these movements relatively easily, but for our ancestors the process musthave been elaborate and painstaking, as uncertain and laborious a voyage of discovery as thetraversing of any great physical ocean. The Goddess that we know as Venus was, to the Akkadians,Ishtar/Inanna, divinity not only of love and harmony but also Goddess of war. Incidentally, Venus isthe only major planet of our solar system, aside from the Earth itself, to be designated a femininespirit.The Mayans determined their calendrical system from the movements of Venus, and chosepropitious positions of the planet to determine the time of a war. The five-pointed star that is stillused as a military symbol—stenciled onto tanks, for example, or used in insignia—derives from thestately movement of this great astral Goddess.Similarly, the apple given by Eve to Adam contained a hidden symbol within it; the pentagramcreated by the pattern of the pips. Eve offered Adam not only knowledge of the divine feminine—aholy grail indeed—but offered him a symbol of the true marriage of opposites, the feminine numbertwo wedding to the masculine number three. Eve, therefore, personifies Ishtar/Venus/Aphrodite as theGoddess of sensual love (and Venus, incidentally, is the derivation of the word “venereal”). Further,Ishtar was demonized in the Bible as the Whore of Babylon.So, a seemingly simple thing such as the shape made in the sky by the path of a planet can be fullof complexities and contradictions, which not only clarifies some aspects of the symbol but alsoposes further questions. The truth is that the quest to understand the meaning of a symbol is as much apersonal voyage of discovery as a collective one, and it is in the spirit of exploration that I hope youwill adventure into this book.THANKSThere are several people without whom this book would never have been written. I’d like to thankKaty Carrington, Terence Caven, Jeannine Dillon, Chris Wold, Simon Gerratt, Graham Holmes, KateLatham, Faith Booker, and Laura Summers at HarperCollins. Charlotte Ridings, Martin Noble, andMark Bolland were the editors. I’d also like to thank Wanda Whiteley.Any book about symbols would be nothing without the illustrations. Paul Khera has done thebulk of these, with additional thanks to Anat Cederbaum, Myong Hwi Kim, Kruti Sanaija, and YukiNakamura for advice and help with some aspects of these pictures. I am also lucky enough to haveFinlay Cowan contribute images to this book.Other illustrators include David Little, Lyndall Fernie, and Kalavathi Devi. I would also like tothank Willa and Milo Seary for their drawings. Thanks are also due to Gavin and Davina Hogg,Sigorour Atlason, Caroline Danby, Tania Ahsan, Hamraz Ahsan, Carla Edgley, Judy Roland, TheoChalmers, the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, Stuart Mitchell, and the good people of Raquetty

Lodge, Hay on Wye. Most of all I have to thank starship commander Adam Fuest for putting up withmy obsession about this book and my possible bouts of absent mindedness about anything else duringthe writing of it.FIRST SIGNS: THE BASIC SHAPES OF SYMBOLSThere are certain elemental structures that occur repeatedly, not only as component parts of moreelaborate symbols, but also with rich meanings of their own. In fact, it’s probably true to say that thesimpler the symbol, the more scope there is for interpretation; ergo, the more meaningful it is and,paradoxically, the more complex it becomes. These primary shapes transcend barriers of time,geography, and cultural context, part of a universal language that goes before, and beyond, words.Don’t be fooled into thinking that these basic shapes are as self-explanatory as to need no analysis. Atrue understanding of what they represent can only add to the comprehension of the more elaborateshapes and symbols that follow in this section.SPACEThe elements of a symbol are defined only by the space that is a part of its construction. Like thewind, the effect of space is gauged by its effect on the things within it or surrounding it. The conceptof space, the void, is a profound part of our experience. To reach a state of “emptiness” is, for many,the ultimate spiritual experience and a way of connecting to the Absolute. When John Lennon wrote“Imagine,” whose lyrics gradually strip away the trappings of the material world, it was this idea thatinspired him.To be aware of the possibility of space within a flat, two-dimensional representation is to givethat shape substance and a new kind of reality that lifts it off the page and makes it real. Space is notflat and cannot be confined by lines on a piece of paper. The page and the shape on it do not exist inisolation, but are a part of a greater cosmos. This book and you, the reader, are a part of this equation.The concept of zero is a space. Indeed, the realization that “nothing” can be “something” markeda profound leap forward in man’s development. All creation myths begin with a Void, symbolic ofpotential.Although attempts to explain the concept of space are inevitably faulty, it might help to think of ablank page. Before a mark is made upon the paper, the potential for what might appear there is so vastas to be unimaginable, a consideration which causes consternation for some artists and writers.Without this space, there is no arena for anything else to exist. This absence of any thing means that nothing is the most important symbol in the World.DOTA dot might seem to be an unassuming little thing, the first mark on the pristine sheet of paper. In thiscase, the dot is a beginning. But see what just happened there? The dot, an essential component in thestructure of the sentence, closed it, making it a symbol of ending. Therefore, the dot is both anorigination and a conclusion, encompassing all the possibilities of the Universe within it, a seed fullof potential and a symbol of the Supreme Being. The dot is the point of creation, for example the