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Symbols In Art
30,000 B.C.-2000 A.D.

Introduction

In the preliterate age, which stretches from man’s early beginnings up to the Renaissance in the western world and, in many other areas, up to the present, art is never for art’s sake. It is intended to represent the divine order of the world: to portray, teach, worship and affirm it.

In order to understand that art, therefore, one has to understand its context. Otherwise, one cannot appreciate the skill with which the message is conveyed or why its elements are ordered as they are (we would often have done it much differently.) Nor can we explain the intensity it often conveys, though we may feel it.

What follows, then, is intended to make clear--to the art student, the architect, even the archaeologist and anthropologist--the meaning of the symbols used in that art, and their function in the complex system of thought and worship which prevailed, until the modern age, for thousands of years and over most of the inhabited world.

The discussion of the symbols, with the art that illustrates them, falls into eight sections

UPPERWORLD AND UNDERWORLD
PERSONNAGES
    GOD 1
    TWINS
    GODDESS 1
    GOD 2
    GODDESS 2
    GOD 3
    GODDESS 3
NUMBERS
HATS ETC.
ACTIONS
ANIMALS
LANDSCAPE
COLOR

Although the order of these sections is intended to give a step-by-step explanation
of the material, you may for future use reach any of them by clicking here, or anywhere else in the work where these titles appear in caps and are underlined as hyperlinks.

Because of the uncertain status of reproduction rights for originals, and the unsuitability of many of them for computer reproduction, most of the more than 200 illustrations which accompany the text are original copies by various artists.

Upperworld and Underworld

To the Inuit, the world is a round disc surrounded by sea. To inland peoples it is a round disc (village, settlement, tribal territory) surrounded by a wilderness of woods, deserts and wild animals. Thus, physically, the world of preliterate man falls into two categories, paralleling the dichotomy of day/night, winter/summer, man/woman.
And there is a third, overriding category, which unites the two: world, year, human being.
This is the structure of prescientific thought, found everywhere it has been looked for. There is this world, the community, order, the good season, the world of the adult human being which orders its activities. And then there is the other world, the world of sea and wilderness, of savage creatures, of winter, and of untamed children and the elders or shamans who have power over them and it.


SYMBOLS OF THIS WORLD
As the disc is the symbol of the ordered world, contained and protected, so the circle as crown, necklace, collar, bracelet, ring, girdle emblematically designate those whose domain is the ordered world. Initially, in the world before cities, these are tokens of initiation into full manhood or womanhood, and they are primarily awarded to young males following initiation ordeals. Initiation rites, worldwide, follow much the same pattern: seclusion, tests of courage and strength, a mock death (circumcision, scarification, loss of a tooth or fingertip) which is thought to have tamed the young’s wild nature and made the initiate a “new person”. From the “man’s belt’ of the Australian Kurnai to the wreath crown of the medieval May king, the imagery is identical. But at the same time it carries two meanings: taming or discipline; and the concomitant assumption of power.
As above, so below, and vice versa (not a medieval invention, but a heritage.) As there is one aspect of man’s life which combines circular emblems, discipline and power, there is an aspect of godhood too which stands for maturity, community, law, government, summer and day, and which also wears or carries the circular emblem which on this earth below belongs to kings, chiefs and adult males.



Jupiter’s thunderbolt and Vishnu’s chakra.


The symbol of the sun god Shamash of Babylon, who gives King Hammurabi “the symbols of his commission” From a 12th century B.C. boundary stone of Nebuchadnezzar, now in the British Museum.

The king of Mari, in the 18th century B.C., receives a similar symbol from the goddess Ishtar. Mural from the court of the palace of Mari, now in the Louvre, Paris.

Symbols of the gods Ashur and Adad, both from the 9th century B.C. Ashur and Adad are both national gods associated with the kingship. :The wings that flank the circle are probably those of (Jupiter’s) eagle./ (See ANIMALS, Birds.) Adad’s circle is bounded by the thunderbolts which he, like Jupiter, Zeus and other near eastern royal gods, has the power to wield.

The jade disc which was used in the investiture of the Chinese emperor. It is supposed to represent “sky” and the hole in the center is for his lightning to descend.

This gold pectoral, from early South Amer ican Chibcha, bears all the marks of ruleship, and strongly resembles the multifeathered headdress still worn by boys at initiation.

Ahura Mazda, the ‘day’ god of Zoroastrianism as opposed to dark god Ahriman. From a Persian bas-relief.

And a curious fashion note: these metal anklets, which make it very hard to walk, are donned by the Ibo women of eastern Nigeria upon coming of age.

(Further examples may be found in PERSONNAGES, God and Goddess 2)


The same symbol which stands for community, adult, married, ruler, has also been interpreted (and often wrongly) to mean Sun. In the near east and west the sun is a latecomer among sacred symbols. Osiris was worshipped long before ra, the Indoeuropean world for sun is not even consistent in gender, and the Roman Emperor did not call himself Sol Invictus until historical times.
In America and some parts of Africa, however, where there is no adult male ruler and the tribe is run by a council of elders, Sun does appear as an adult male deity ruling the heavens, like Zeus or Jupiter. And, like Zeus or Jupiter, he is married to a wife who nags him about his infidelities!
Thus, even when rays clearly indicate the symbol means “Sun” its associations include those of the simple circle: this world, day, maturity. And except in some very late imagery where the Sun may be described in all three god forms, as young man at dawn, adult at noon, and old man at sunset, Sun is never associated with winter or night or any age group except the adult.


When the circle becomes cross-in-circle, two things happen. First, in many ways it retains the meaning of adulthood, rulership and community oriented in time and space; but secondly, it also takes on the meaning of ‘the whole’ and ‘the year’. The change emerges from the idea that the cross represents not only the four directions (its earliest meaning) but also the four seasons of the year. In human history, the seasons are first thought of as two, summer and winter; then, in some places, three--winter, spring and summer, pictured as a triskele. Finally, they become the four we know today, and the festivals, of which we shall speak later, tend to adopt the same pattern, first two, then three, then four. Those at the start of summer and winter are however by their antiquity by far the strongest survivors.

If cross-in-circle represents ‘the year’, ‘the whole’ then it must include the underworld as well. This evolution leads to some curious elaborations: assigning to its four directions specific colors, qualities, even specific gods of the underworld as well as the upperworld. That these elaborations are late is made clear by the fact that they are not consistent from area to area, even within the same parent language group. Thus the Celts put knowledge (priesthood) in the west, battle (warrior youth) in the north, music (an attribute of junior druids) in the south, and prosperity (farming, adult males) in the east. But in Indian royal forts priests sat in the south, warriors in the east, farmers in the south and serfs in the west. As for COLOR, even the various Hopi settlements do not agree.
However, since ancient art is an esoteric discipline passed from master to disciple with strict injunctions against change, these elaborations appear only in such later sophisticated works as the Codex Fejervary-Mayer.

1. Cross-in-circle as Community.

This Amazon village (sketched from Richardson, Archaeoastronomy in the Americas) and this Mexican city, Mexcaltitlan, are laid out in the same way, the principal streets aligned to the four points of the compass, and thus in harmony with ‘this world’ The same pattern, however, may be found in many other parts of the world, in the Indian royal fort, the Viking fort at Trelleborg, at Baghdad and Babylon in Mesopotamia, in Etruria, Rome, Sumer, Parthia, West Africa, and ultimately in England as at Chichester. Within the city, palaces and temples were also exactly oriented, like the Ur Nammur palace at Sumer or the temple at Babylon. For that matter, it is still traditional to orient a church east-west with the entrance at the east end.


2. Cross-in-circle as emblem of authority.


The two attributes shown here--Thor’s hammer and the sceptre of the early Chinese emperors--have some remarkable similarities.
Thor is a “god of authority”, mature and married, associated with lawgiving, like the gods who carry the circle. His “hammer’ which descends from the stone axe and has come down to us as the judge’s gavel, is shown in this example from Iceland in the form of a cross. The Chinese royal sceptre also embodies an axe, but its central section if a circle. If we look more closely at the circle, however, we will see that its decoration divides it into four segments, a cross-in-circle. The cross-in-circle was also an emblem of the Algonkin god Kitamont, and probably of the Cretan royal god as well.




This design from a painted Minoan III jar at Knossos gives us a cross-in-circle ingeniously combined with the sacred royal double axe symbol.

3. Cross-in-circle as symbol of ‘this world”

In the Celtic and Swedish world, and sometimes in the near east, cross-in-circle may sometimes appear on tombstones as emblem of ‘this world”. Prescientific man believed in death and resurrection as the pattern of both the natural and human world, so that monuments often bore a ladder to facilitate the return. The commonest one is
the upright which penetrates underworld, this world and sky (see following section) but
in the three examples below, cross-in-circle is used to stress that it is ‘this world’ to which the dead is to return. The Celtic cross, however, is not only used as tombstone but carries all the meanings of cross-in-circle as sacred ‘this world’ universe.
The first memorial stone below is from Coptic Naq el Deir, the second is a tombstone from a 17th century Swedish graveyard; the last is an early Celtic cross.





The rose window at Chartres descends from the cross-in-circle emblem, and can stand at once for world, year and sun. What it is NOT is a rose, though the confusion is natural. For another example of this confusion, see PERSONNAGES, Goddess 3, Kichijoten.


A widespread tradition in ancient China, however, held that the earth was square, the capital and the kingdom square, and a square mound represented the sun god as royal deity. Amerind tradition too sometimes shows “this world” as square. The Hopi sand painting below simultaneously represent s “world” and “year”. The four trees, four birds, and four twin deities stand for the four seasons as well as the four directions. The center of a sand painting usually represents the sacred center (see Crossroads, following) in a variety of ways: it could be a ‘lake’ in the form of a blue bowl, or another symbol standing for the sipapu opening through which man emerged from the underworld. In addition a snake, representing the water element surrounding ‘this world’, may run round the painting.


Very similiar in concept, though round, is this Samara pottery dish from the 5th millenium B,C. Sea creatures surround the four figures representing the seasons and the directions. In another dish from Samara the pattern is abstract, but the idea of a circling of the seasons is even more vividly portrayed.



This intricate and elegant design, representing, the sun, the year/world and the four turns of the year in the four directions, comes from a terra cotta bowl ca 3000 BC found on Naxos (now in the National Museum, Athens) . It not only has the same watery surround but conveys even more skillfully the “transitional”: element in the change of seasons. (See Transitional Emblems, following, Spiral.) But such designs are common all over the world. The first, below, comes from a Gotland stone of the 5th century A.D. and the lower is an Amerind petroglyph, here correlated with the solstices and equinoxes. (Courtesy F.A. Barnes, “Canyon Country.”)

Crossroad
In some areas of the world, there are six directions, the other two being nadir and zenith, and everywhere, in concept, a vertical at a crossroads is an entrance or exit for the other world, enabling men and spirits to pass back and forth. In Europe, it is at the crossroads that witches meet, where offerings are made to Hekate, and this is why Santa Claus comes down the chimney.
As a design element, the figure is not important in art, but it is very significant in architecture. The ‘crosses’ at the center of English village squares, which are not crosses at all but uprights, the placing of temples in the very center of the city, and the erection of steeples over the crossings of churches, all these spring from this very ancient concept.
It also explains why, in Mesoamerica, an X cross or cross with a pronounded boss in the center is the emblems of gods not of this world, but of the other.

UPPERWORLD AND UNDERWORLD    UNDERWORLD   PERSONNAGES    GOD 1    TWINS    GODDESS 1    GOD 2    GODDESS 2    GOD 3    GODDESS 3    NUMBERS    HATS ETC.    ACTIONS    ANIMALS    LANDSCAPE    COLOR