Symbols Through Art (Chapter 1)

The history of art is full of records of mankind’s attempt to express the absent and the transcendental through symbols. Intimate relationships between symbols, spirituality and religion can be found all over the ancient world, from the tombs of the Egyptians to the Renaissance paintings of Europe. In Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia for example, stonemasons would inscribe statues of priest kings and noblemen with the names of their owners in belief that the statues would provide eternal resting-places for the spirits after death. The Minoan civilisation of Crete and the Celtic courts of Ireland made extensive use of spirals, wavy lines and geometric icons on tombs, pottery and metal work. Many of these symbols, which represented the sea and the elements on a physical level, were also expressions of the relationship between humanity, the cosmos and their gods. As we have already seen the spiral was not only regarded as a talisman to ensure safe passage for travellers on the land or by sea, it also held profound meanings for many ancient cultures. It expressed their understanding of life, their spiritual journeys, their evolution, their timelessness and the passage of time itself from a much wider perspective.

In ancient India and the Near East certain symbols were believed to hold visual power that could alter the consciousness. This I believe to be a major character of symbols in art, whether they are offering a Christian view point or part of a tribal ritual. They come from the same source of energy. The erotic couplings of the Hindu Gods for example, symbolise the diversity of creation, through fertility and sexual union. Landscapes and the natural world are also full of highly potent symbols. Every part of the landscape was held to symbolise an aspect of mankind. In many tribal Goddess cultures, for example, water was considered the blood of the mountains, grass and trees their hair, caves the womb, clouds and mist their clothing. Mountains to the ancients were symbolic of the spiritual height we must climb, to be closer to the Creator or the gods. On another level shamanic landscapes (a term coined by the researcher Paul Devereux) also exist all over the Americas in the shape of effigy mounds, geoglyphs and abstract geometric patterns on the Earth. The seven liberal arts and what is known as sacred geometry, practiced by the ancients, was part of an advanced knowledge understood by the many mystery schools that started in prehistoric times. The skies were also full of signs and symbols to our native ancestors. In civilisations like Egypt, South America and what is now Cambodia, star maps and specific constellations were copied with mathematical precision onto the Earth herself. These places where marked by pyramids, temples and monuments, even scraped into the surface (as we have seen with the Nazca lines of Peru), all across the ancient world. The Gothic cathedrals were designed by brotherhood initiates, high ranking priests and secret fraternities, like the Knights Templar, who also had access to this knowledge of symbols and sound (acoustic resonance). Manley Palmer Hall in his book Masonic Orders of Fraternity, explains how the builders of temples and cathedrals were bands of wandering craftsmen, who never mingled with other people. Instead, these builders and craftsmen enjoyed extraordinary privileges, being priests and monks themselves, and they created an apprenticeship system of secrecy which protected their knowledge of art and geometry. I would go further and say that the Master Masons and higher ecclesiastical hierarchy were actually artists/magicians who practiced ancient forms of Paganism, which becomes evident when one observes the art, sculpture and architectural detail commissioned by these fraternities. Manley P Hall says of these artists:

“Thus it came about that the early Church employed pagan artisans or those of doubtful orthodoxy when some elaborate structure was required. So great was the power of these builders’ associations and so urgently were their skills required that it was deemed advisable to ignore religious nonconformity.”

It is quite obvious that the master craftsmen behind the temples of organised religion were worshipping in secret their own Pagan deities, all rooted in Gnosticism and Manichaeanism, while offering the public another version of Paganism called Christianity. Gnostic and Manichaen sects emerged in the formative days of Christianity and were persecuted as heretics by the Orthodox Church. The burning of the great library at Alexandria was the deliberate attempt to destroy the evidence for Gnostic belief opposing the orthodox doctrines. Gnostic and Manichaen beliefs surfaced again in Eleventh Century France with the Cathars, who were also destroyed by the orthodox Roman Catholic hierarchy. Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430) the father figure of Christianity, was publicly accused by leading Gnostics of being involved in Pagan Manichaen rituals.46 Priests, like Augustine, and other `artist monks’ who drew up the plans for temples and cathedrals understood how esoteric symbols can change, alter or manipulate the human psyche. To the masons that built the cathedrals they were considered books of stone, full of esoteric symbolism that spoke of duality and correspondences – an ancient magical form of cognition. It was also a use of symbolism employed by alchemists and the Temporal/Masonic Orders. The high ranking Freemason Baron Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) used principal symbols in his mystical philosophy which would go on to inspire artists, poets and other Theosophical groups. Correspondences considered the mystical union formed by the sun (king), the moon (queen) and the star (Holy Spirit), a triangle template that has been used in all religious orders. We can follow the sun-moon, king-queen, masculine-feminine, left-right thread in many places. The great cathedrals of Europe are steeped in symbolism that refers to Correspondence and duality, many of which have ‘twin towers’ which are representative of the solar-lunar relationship to Earth. This relationship is also referred to as the Alchemical Wedding and how the Sun and the Moon appears to be the same size from the surface of the Earth. The ratio that is used by astronomers and geometers to calculate this Correspondence is 3:11. This ratio translates to 27.3%, which can be observed in how long it takes the Moon to orbit the Earth – 27.3 days. At the same time, the Suns average rotation period of a sunspot is also 27.3 days. When geometers have drawn down the Moon to Earth based on this ratio of 3:11, the geometry that occurs is a circle squared, which is achieved by taking the centre of the Moon has a circumference and drawing a circle which is equal to the perimeter of the Earth square. The ancients understood this relationship and hid it in the definition of the mile.47 Esoterically artists like William Blake used Correspondences many times within his paintings. In one illustration for his epic poem Jerusalem, he depicts the Sun and the Moon separated by a third central figure that places ‘Masonic style’ compass dividers on the Earth. In this image we are being told about sacred geometry (earth measure) and the secret societies that designed and built these great temples. Blake also lived through the period in which Swedenborg’s work and that of his theosophical clandestine groupings were being published.