First, it is simply a representation of an object or a phenomenon, that
is, a pictograph. Thus the zigzag was the mark or sign of lightning.
Secondly, “the sign of the concrete grew to be the symbol of the
abstract. The zigzag of lightning, for example, became the emblem of
power, as in the thunderbolts grasped by Jupiter; or it stood alone for
the supreme God; and thus the sign developed into the ideograph.”[170]
[170] H. Colley March, “The Fylfot and the Futhorc Tir,”
_Trans. Lancashire and Cheshire Ant. Soc._, 1886.
Thirdly, retrogression set in when new religions and new ideas had
sapped the vitality of the old conceptions, and the ideograph came to
have no more than a mystical meaning. A religious or sacred savour, so
to speak, still clung about it, but it was not a living force within
it; the difference is as great as between the dried petals of a rose
and the blooming flower itself. “The zigzag, for instance, was no
longer used as a symbol of the deity, but was applied auspiciously, or
as we should say, for luck.”[170]
The last stage is reached when a sign ceases to have even a mystical
or auspicious significance, and is applied to an object as a merely
ornamental device.
“By symbolism,” writes Count Goblet d’Alviella, “the simplest, the
commonest objects are transformed, idealised, and acquire a new and, so
to say, an illimitable value. In the Eleusinian mysteries, the author
of _Philosophoumena_ relates that, at the initiation to the higher
degree, ‘there was exhibited as the great, the admirable, the most
perfect object of mystic contemplation, an ear of corn that had been
reaped in silence; and two crossed lines suffice to recall to millions
of Christians the redemption of the world by the voluntary sacrifice of
a god.’”
As that author points out, “We live in the midst of symbolic
representations, from the ceremonies celebrating a birth to the funeral
emblems adorning the tomb; from the shaking of hands all round of a
morning to the applause with which we gratify the actor, or lecturer,
of the evening. We write as we speak in symbols.
“It is sentiment, and above all, religious sentiment, that resorts
largely to symbolism; and in order to place itself in more intimate
communication with the being, or abstraction, it desires to approach.
To that end men are everywhere seen either choosing natural or
artificial objects to remind them of the Great Hidden One, or
themselves imitating in a systematic manner the acts and deeds they
attribute to Him—which is a way of participating in His life.” The
symbols with which we will here occupy ourselves are not those of acts
or rites, but those of objects or emblems.
In all but the last stages of its career a symbol is a living sign, now
this vitality is very real, and by virtue of it, strange modifications
take place.
For example, when a nation that employed a particular symbol came into
contact with another nation that had a somewhat similar symbol, the two
symbols, if quite alike, were indistinguishable, and one passed for
the other; but if there were slight differences between the symbols
a process of amalgamation took place, and they approximated more and
more towards one another. In either case the meanings of both would
doubtless commingle, and a more energetic vitality would ensue from the
cross-fertilisation.
St. Anthony’s cross, =T= (_croix potencée_, “gibbet-cross”), is found,
with almost the same symbolic signification, in Palestine, in Gaul, and
in ancient Germany, in the Christian Catacombs, and amongst the ancient
inhabitants of Central America.
Among the Phœnicians and kindred peoples this cross was an alphabetical
sign, _tau_, and it was also used separately as a symbol. From a
passage in Ezekiel[171] we learn that it was accounted a sign of
preservation, and was marked upon the forehead, like its corresponding
Indian symbol.[172] The symbolic signification of the _tau_ is
explained by its resemblance to the Key of Life, or _crux ansata_ of
Egypt, so widely diffused throughout all Western Asia.
[171] Ezekiel ix. 4-6.
[172] Schliemann, _Ilios_, p. 350.
“This _tau_ was unquestionably the emblem of life, and, therefore, of
the greatest virtue. M. Letronne, in his researches on the Christian
monuments of Egypt, has shown in the most conclusive manner that
the first Christians of that country adopted this sign, possibly to
establish that Christ was pre-eminently the source of life, or as a
prophetic sign. All the gods of the ancient Egyptian mythology bore in
their hand the sign of Christianity, the monogram of Christ; they were,
according to the first Christians of Egypt, supposed to announce the
coming of Jesus.”[173]
[173] G. Ferrero, _Les Lois Psychologiques du Symbolisme_,
1895, p. 142.
The Double Hammer of the Celtic Tarann and of the Teutonic and
Scandinavian Thor is a symbol of the lightning. “Thor was the sun-god
proper; god of the sun in its active aspect; the thunder-god likewise,
and thus the wielder of the hammer or axe (named Mjolnir, ‘the
crusher’) representative of the thunderbolt, rendered in the form
=T=. Thor was also lord of the Under-World, and guardian against the
monsters that infested its precincts; he was likewise a protector
against sickness, and was much worshipped by the franklin and peasant
classes.”[174]
[174] The Earl of Southesk, _Origins of Pictish Symbolism_,
1893, p. 12.
“To this day a representation of the hammer of the God of Thunder may
be found on the barns and stable-doors of some German villages. It is
stated that in the northern, midland, and eastern counties of this
country—wherever, in fact, the Teutonic element has made its strongest
imprint—some old church bells still bear the same sign as a charm
against the tempest.
“As applied to Thor, this tree-shaped cross symbol sustains his double
quality as the fiery Cleaver of the Clouds, who even as such represents
the principle of fertility and the Sanctifier of the fruitful union of
hearts.”[175]
[175] Karl Blind, “Discovery of Odinic Songs in Shetland,”
_Nineteenth Century_, June 1879, pp. 1097, 1098.
Karl Blind has also drawn attention to a mediæval German church legend
which affords a good example of the persistence of pagan ideas and of
the pagan-christian overlap. “Thus Trauenlob makes the Virgin Mary say
of God the Father—‘The Smith from the Upper-Land (Heaven) threw his
hammer into my lap (_schôz_).’”[176]
[176] Karl Blind, “Troy found again,” _Antiquary_, 1884, p. 200.
Amongst the early Christians it was a form sometimes given to the Cross
of Christ, itself called the Tree of Life; but if they made of it a
symbol of life, it was spiritual life that it typified to them; and
if they sometimes gave it the form of the _patibulum_ (gallows), it
was because such was the instrument employed among the Romans in the
punishment by crucifixion.
In Central America, where, according to M. Albert Réville, the Cross
was surnamed the Tree of Plenty, it assumed also the form of the _tau_.
This pre-Columbian American Cross, =T=, was a symbol of fertility
because it represented the rain-god; it is, in fact, an abbreviated
rain-shower (as will be seen on reference to Figs. 62-64). Similarly
the four-rayed cross represented the four quarters whence comes the
rain, or rather the four main winds which bring rain, and it thus
became the symbol of the Tlaloc, god of rain and waters, fertiliser of
earth and lord of paradise, and lastly, of the mythical personage known
by the name of Quetzacoatl. From North to South America the Latin cross
symbolises “the Father of the four winds” (Argentine Republic), “the
old man in the sun who rules the winds” (Blackfeet Indians), or similar
personages. But all crosses are not the four quarters of the wind, as
will be seen on reference to Figs. 100 D, E, 102 A. For an account of
the American cross, Colonel Mallery should be consulted, _Tenth Ann.
Rep._, p. 724.
Mr. Beal, in the same number of the _Indian Antiquary_, which contains
Mr. Thomas’s remarks on the Svastika (March 1880), has shown that in
Chinese 毌 is the symbol for an enclosed space of earth, and that
the simple cross + occurs as a sign for earth in certain ideographic
groups.[177]
[177] Max Müller in Schliemann, _Ilios_, 1880, Eng. edn.,
p. 349.
The four-rayed cross, separate or inscribed within a circle, is a very
common symbol of the sun in prehistoric Europe.
As different waves of culture drifted across Europe, as new religions
permeated the mass of the people, the stream-borne symbols found
physical and spiritual analogues among the indigenous symbolism, and
union naturally took place. In some cases, at all events, the cross
fertilisation, as I have termed it, resulted in a higher or more
spiritual meaning animating the old symbols; thus the symbol of the
Avenger, the crushing Hammer of God, became that of the God Redeemer of
the world.
When symbols become merely the dry-bones of defunct religions they may
retain a certain magical quality, but then they pass out of religion
and enter the domain of magic, where in fulness of time they may be
born anew and start a fresh career as the symbols of modern science.
Besides this natural approximation of analogous symbols and symbolism,
there is a more conscious and complex amalgamation, a heteromorphism.
As Count Goblet d’Alviella says,[178] “At other times the symbolic
syncretism is intentional and premeditated; whether it be in the desire
to unite for the sake of greater efficacy, the attributes of several
divinities in a single figure, as is shown in certain pantheistic
figures of Gnostic origin; or a wish to state, by the fusion of
symbols, the unity of the gods and the identity of creeds, as in the
mystic monogram wherein the Brahmaists of contemporary India have
testified to their religious eclecticism by interweaving the _Om_ of
the Hindus with the Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross.
[178] _Loc. cit._, p. 264.
“Sometimes, too, the sacerdotal interest must have tended towards
accentuating the analogies rather than the dissimilarities of symbols,
in order to assist the absorption or unification of the doctrines
which they represented. Finally, we must take into consideration the
popular tendency towards syncretism, which, when not held in check
by a rigorous orthodoxy, acts upon symbols, as well as upon creeds,
by introducing into the new form of worship the images consecrated
by a long veneration. Or else it is the innovators themselves who
take advantage of symbolism in order to disguise, through borrowing
from antique forms, the newness of their doctrine and, if need be, to
transform into allies the emblems or traditions which they are unable
to boldly extirpate.
“Need I recall to mind Constantine choosing as a standard that
_labarum_ which might be claimed both by the religion of Christ and the
worship of the sun? The Abbé Ansault has shown, firstly, that heathen
nations used as religious emblems Greek, Latin, Maltese, _pattées_,
_gammées_, _potencées_, _ansées_, _trêflées_, and other crosses; and,
secondly, that the Christian Church has always accepted these different
forms of the cross as the representation of its own symbol.
“Buddhism was even less scrupulous. In some of its sanctuaries it
did not hesitate to preserve the images of the worship paid by the
natives of India to the sun, to fire, or to serpents, whilst ascribing
these rites to its own traditions. The Solar Wheel thus became
easily the Wheel of the Law; the Cosmic Tree represented the Tree of
Knowledge, under which Sakya Muni attained the perfect illumination;
the seven-headed serpent Naga was transformed into the guardian of
the impression left by the Feet of Vishnu, itself to be attributed
henceforth to Buddha, and so on.”
The learned author from whom I have borrowed so much gives numerous
examples of this process of the transference and amalgamation of
symbols, and I must refer the reader for these details to the book
itself.