#esoteric

Cat

Its eyes being variable, the cat symbolizes the varying power of the sun and the waxing and waning of the moon and the splendour of the night; it also denotes stealth; desire; liberty.

As black it is lunar, evil and death; it is only in modern times that a black cat has been taken to signify good luck.

Amerindian: The wild cat portrays stealth.

Celtic: Chthonic powers; funerary.

Chinese: A yin animal as nocturnal; powers of evil; powers of transformation. A strange cat is unfavourable change; a black cat, misfortune, illness.

Christian: Satan; darkness; lust; laziness.

Egyptian: Lunar, sacred to Set as darkness; as lunar the cat can also be an attribute of Isis and of Bast, the moon; it represents pregnant women as the moon makes the seed grow in the womb.

Graeco-Roman: Attribute of the lunar Diana. The goddess of liberty has a cat at her feet.

Japanese: Powers of transformation; peaceful repose.

Scandanavian: Attribute of Freyja, whose chariot is drawn by cats.

Witchcraft: A familiar and disguise of witches; the black cat as the witches’ familiar is evil and ill luck. Cats and dogs as witches’ familiars are rain-makers.

[Source: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Traditional Symbols by J.C. Cooper]

OWL

Ambivalent as the bird of wisdom and of darkness and death.

Amerindian: Wisdom; divination

Celtic: Chthonic; ‘the night hag’; the 'corpse bird’.

Chinese: Evil; crime; death; horror; ungrateful children.

Christian: Satan; the powers of darkness; solitude; mourning; desolation; bad news. The call of the owl is the 'song of death’. The owl was used to depict Jews who preferred the darkness to the light of the gospel.

Egyptian: Death; night; coldness.

Graeco-Roman: The screed owl symbolized wisdom and was sacred to Athena/Minerva. The owl was an attribute of the Etruscan god of darkness and of Night.

Hebrew:Blindness.

Hindu: Emblem of Yama, god of the dead.

Japanese: Death; ill omen.

Mexican: Night; death.

[Source: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Traditional Symbols by J.C. Cooper]

Harp

Shares the symbolism of the ladder as leading to the next world. The harpist is Death. An emblem of King David in the Old Testament, and of Wales, and an attribute of Dagda, the Celtic fire god, who calls up the seasons and whose playing originally brought about the change of the seasons.

[Source: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Traditional Symbols by J.C. Cooper]

Ivy

Like all evergreens, the ivy is immortality and eternal life; it is also revelry; clinging dependence; attachment; constant affection; friendship.

Christian: Everlasting life; death and immortality; fidelity.

Egyptian: ‘The plant of Osiris’, immortality.

Greek: Sacred to Dionysos who is crowned with ivy and whose cup is an 'ivy cup’; his thyrsus is encircled with ivy and one of his emblems is a post sprouting ivy leaves.

Semetic: Sacred to the Phrygian Attis; immortality. The ivy-leaf is phallic, depicting the male trinity.

[Source: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Traditional Symbols by J.C. Cooper]

“So Danae endured, the beautiful,
To change the glad daylight for brass-bound walls,
And in that chamber secret as the grave,
She lived a prisoner.
Yet to her came Zeus in the golden rain.”

[Source: Mythology, Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes by Edith Hamilton]

“Endymion the shepherd,
As his flock he guarded,
She, the Moon, Selene,
Saw him, loved him, sought him,
Coming down from heaven
To the glade on Latmus,
Kissed him, lay beside him.
Blessed is his fortune.
Evermore he slumbers,
Tossing not nor turning,
Endymion the shepherd.”

From the third-century poet Theocritus.

[Source: Mythology, Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes by Edith Hamilton]

“O Bacchanals, come,
Oh, come!
Sing Dionysus,
Sing to the trimbel,
The deep-voiced trimbel!
Joyfully praise him,
Him who brings joy!
Holy, all holy
Music is calling!
To the hills, to the hills,
Fly, O Bacchanal
Swift of foot!
On, O joyful, be fleet!”

[Source: Mythology, Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes by Edith Hamilton]

“…BECAUSE THE EARTH  IS SENDING UP DEITIES THAT ARE TELLING PEOPLE TO DESTROY THAT WHICH IS CREATING THE ATROCITY OF SUFFERING AND RAPE OF LIFE THAT IS CHRISTIAN-BASED SOCIETY.”

ihavenohonor:

Figure 5 (p19).

“In allowing her boundaries to be penetrated from within by an emerging Other, the Goddess demonstrated her true creativity. She became the universal Mother. This crucial moment of birth was synonymous with creation, according to the ancient concept. This was the moment when the Goddess (not the emerging God) said, ‘Let there be light,’ because the eyes of her newborn first perceived the light of existence, as he himself might become the light of fire or the sun. In the classical world, the Goddess had names like Juno Lucina or Diana Lucifera, the Bringer of Light. From her the biblical Yahweh copied his Fiat lux.

“The god’s birth was celebrated each year at midwinter. The nocturnal festival was known as the Night of the Mother to pre-Christian Britons, which may explain why Christmas Eve (the time of the actual birth) carried even more significance in Old England than Christmas Day. In Alexandria, the god’s birth was hailed by joyful shouts: ‘The Virgin (Kore) has given birth! The light grows!’ The naked image of the divine birth-giving Virgin was decorated with gold stars and carried seven times around the temple.

“Just as, in pagan belief, creation was a birth, so every birth was a new creation. Each year the Aeon or year-god was reborn from the eternally virgin, eternally maternal Goddess. Thus, at the mystic point of creation itself, the graphic symbol of the Mother became three broken lines, while that of her son-spouse was three solid lines.

“Male and female triangles, one separated, came together again in a very ancient figure that later rounded off to the mathematical symbol of infinity in so-called Arabic numerals, which were actually Hindu in origin. The two tangential circles or teardrop shapes of this sign meant the same as two tangential triangles: the two sexes in contact (Fig. 5). The female triangle above now took on the aspect of a nourishing breast, while the male received her nourishment.

“This was also taken as a sexual sign, in unconscious but nevertheless real recognition of the connection between adult sexuality and bond between mother and infant. According to Tantric symbolism, the female triangle was placed above the male, who then assumed all forms of relationship with her: offspring, twin, spouse, and eventually sacrificial victim, as he became the eternally dying-and-reborn god, similar to Osiris, Attis, Dionysus, Adonis, Orpheus, Yama, and so on. Therefore Tantric yogis and their shaktis (priestesses) favored female-superior sexual positions, which Vedic and Confucian patriarchs condemned because of their association with the Old Religion that they wanted to erase. Though this style of lovemaking was instituted by Shiva as Universal God and the original ‘daughters of the sages’ (shaktis), patriarchal Brahman priests insisted that it was a perversion” (p17-18).

Glyph from Barbara Walker‘s The I Ching of the Goddess

PYRITE

Folk Names: Fool’s Gold, Pyrites, Iron Pyrite
Energy: Projective
Planet: Mars
Element: Fire
Powers: Money, Divination, Luck

Magical/Ritual Lore:

Pyrite was used by ancient Mexicans in fashioning polished mirrors, which may have been used to divine the future. Pieces of this strange mineral were also placed in American Indian shamans' medicine bundles, perhaps to lend extra energy.

In ancient China this stone was used to guard against crocodile attacks, a problem which, fortunately, most of us seem to avoid without the stone.

Magical Uses:

Popularly known as fool’s gold, pyrite is often found associated with real gold. So who, exactly, is the fool?

Because of the yellowish shimmer and shining nature of this "stone,“ it is used to draw wealth and money. Set five pieces of pyrite on your altar. Surround them with five green candles. Light the candles and visualize money coming your way, fulfilling your monetary needs.

Pyrite is also carried to bring money and luck. 

A flat, shimmering surface of pyrite can be used as a magic mirror to awaken psychic impulses. Carried, it is a luck-bringer.

“I know you won’t believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others." 

-Socrates

Albrecht Dürer, Saint Jerome in His Study, 1514.

Gustave Moreau, Hercules and the Lernaean Serpent, 1876.

Jan Provoost, Allegory of Christianity, c1515.

François de Nomé (Monsù Desiderio), Hell (Les enfers), c1622.