Picture 1-Stunning Fireplace in a Historic Stockholm Apartment

Picture 2- farmer silos

Picture 3- lighthouse

Picture 4- castle tower

Picture 5- church bell tower

Picture 6- church steeples

What an interesting bunch of similarities.

Probably just another coincidence....right?

@canadiancuriosities

To the ancients the highest form of expression was symbolism; it was the correspondence between the thing expressed and the real thing understood.

It is the strongest language we can convey. A visible sword and dove are more expressive than their representative words.

All the words of our language are but a sign or figure of something understood, and mean nothing of themselves only what we compel them to mean by conventional use.

The Egyptian Thoth, or Hermes the wise man, was said to have invented symbols, and Thoth was the moon, the god of wisdom who invented signs and characters.

This symbolism is the associated of idea; it is finding the relationship or correspondence of one thing to another. Representing one thing always by another which has some striking analogy or likeness or a metaphysical idea expressed by a natural or visible object, by which they sought to give these recondite mysteries a natural or a conventional form. It seemed so natural to use one thing for the mirror of another. We speak of a well of life or fountain of life and call the lightning the serpent of the sky.

All language is but symbolism. All words are but symbols and have no meaning of themselves.

𖢻 Symbolic mythology and translation of a lost and forgotten language, John Martin Woolsey, 1917.

@explorationoftruth 🕊️

XII. A Mandrake.

Tʀᴀɴsʟᴀᴛɪᴏɴ:

Here is a quite famous and quite singular root, called Mandrake, which has more imposture than truth. We show them of both sexes, and we almost give them children; but all this is discovered and done at pleasure. It is only true that there are roots that Naturalists call Mandrakes, that they put of two species, male and female; but to believe that they have the shape of a man, that they are formed under the gallows from the urine of a hanged man; that the one who digs them and pulls them out of the ground dies, and finally that they have the virtues attributed to them, all this is fabulous. The one we have in our Cabinet, and all the others that I have seen, are artificial; these are forked roots which separate in two, giving rise to legs; we then make their arms as they are with a knife, adding hands with ankles, and other parts that may be missing, to make a thing that has some human figure; & to make them grow hair in the places where we want, we put grains of millet inside, & then we bury this root in the ground, where these small grains germinate and grow large filaments which are like hair . This is all the artifice and imposture of these Mandrakes.

Le Cabinet de la Bibliotheque de Ste. Genevieve, Claude Du Molinet, 1692.

@explorationoftruth 🕊️

Mirror, Mirror

Because of the once universal belief that one’s reflection is a vital part of one’s soul, mirrors and other reflective surfaces were long regarded as soul-catchers or doorways to the other world of spirits. Egyptians used the same word for “mirror” and “life.” Celtic women were buried with their personal mirrors, which were supposed to be their soul-carriers.

In India, the Great Goddess was called the Mirror of the Abyss, in which the Great God (Shiva Mahadeva) constantly reflects himself. Buddhists said that all existence is like a reflection in a mirror, anticipating the New Testament writer by some five hundred years in the claim that life on earth is like seeing “through a glass, darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12). Later, the truth is to be revealed “face to face.”

Beginning with the myths of Dionysus, whose soul was caught in a mirror by the Titans, and of Narcissus, whose soul was trapped in his water reflection, Europe abounded with fairy tales about magic mirrors and their dangers. Witches were said to be adept at scrying with magic mirrors. The rather muddled theory behind this form of divination seemed to be that is all existence was but a reflection of a hidden truth, then looking through the “doorway” of the mirror would reverse the process and reveal reality instead.

Medieval scribes sometimes claimed that the spiritual power inherent in a mirror could strengthen the eyes tired by excessive study. They set mirrors before them when writing, to gaze into occasionally, “so that their sight may not be dimmed.”

𖢻 𝙱𝚊𝚛𝚋𝚊𝚛𝚊 𝙶. 𝚆𝚊𝚕𝚔𝚎𝚛

@explorationoftruth 🕊️