+ Numerology/Symbolism: Animals, Tarot/Games, Objects, etc.

[futureidol]

I cannot find any significance in the total number of 815. I have noticed that if you add up the individual numbers in 815 they are equal to 14, and there are 14 main characters on the show. However I cannot find any significance in the number 14 except that divided by 2 you get 7 and that's a very significant number. And the individual numbers of 8 1 and 5 are important numbers according to mythology, cultures, religion, belief etc.
Here is the significance in the numbers 8, 1, and 5 that I have found in The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols. The definitions are kind of lengthy so bear with me:

8 Universally eight is the number of cosmic balance. With the addition of the intermediate points, it is the number of the CARDINAL POINTS and the number of the pointer on the weather-vane of the Tower of the winds in Athens. It is often the number of spokes on a wheel, in the rowels of Celtic bits and in the Buddhist Wheel of the Law. There are eight petals on the LOTUS and eight paths in the Way, eight TRIGRAMS in the I Ching and eight pillars in the Temple of Heaven. There are also eight angels which form the Throne of Heaven and it is also a number - in what precise form is not known - of the Mirror of Amaterasu. As the pillars of the Temple of Heaven, the angelic supporters and the octagonal plan of the LINGAM would indicate, the number eight and the octagon have also the quality of intermediation between the SQUARE and the CIRCLE, between Heaven and Earth, and are therefore linked with the intermediate world.
In Hindu art and architecture the symbolism of ogdoads is given ample scope. Vishnu has eight arms, corresponding to the eight Guardians of space; the planets (grahas) grouped round the Sun are eight in number, as are the shapes (murti) taken by Shiva and incorporated in the eight lingrams set round a central lingram in two of the Angkor group of temples. In the Bayon of Angkor Thom the statue of the Buddha stands in the centre of a lotus-blossom of eight radiating chapels, the arrangement ensuring that the duties of Shiva are performed along with those of the king, or chakravarti, who is the person who turns the Wheel in the very centre of the Universe.
This symbolism of central equilibrium, which is also that of justice, it should again be observed, recurs in Pythagorean and Gnostic ogdoads (groups of eight).
Another aspect of the symbol is reflected in the fact that, from a very remote age, Japan has been called by its inhabitants 'Great-Eight-Islands', meaning that it is composed of a countless number of islets. Eight is a number often to be met with in the oldest Shintõ sacred writings in this sense of multiplicity and has become a sacred number. However, eight is not an indefinite or dissipated multiplicity, but a multiplicity with constitutes the entity expressed by eight.
An example from our own day is the National Centre for Spiritual Education built at Yokahama in 1932. It is on an octagonal plan and contains within it the statues of eight world sages - Shakyamuni, Confucius, Socrates, Jesus Christ, the seventh-century Prince Shõtoku, the ninth-century Japanese Kõbõ Daishi and the thirteenth-century Japanese priests Shinran and Nichiren. The octagonal ground plan was not chosen because of the eight world sages, nor was the number of sages a limiting factor, the shape of the building and the number of sages signified infinite wisdom in countless shapes at the centre of all spiritual endeavor, all education and all research.
In African belief eight is the number which completes the grand total. This is certainly true of the Dogon, to whom the number which is the key to creation is not FOUR, but eight, because of its quality of being twice four. As we know, in Dogon thought all that is unadulterated, in other words, that is fair and balanced, is double.
Thus there are eight hero-creators and eight human families sprung from eight primal ancestors of whom four were predominantly male and four female, although all possessed both sets of sexual organs. The seventh ancestor was the lord of speech itself. The Word is therefore symbolized by the number eight, which also comprehends water, semen and the whole range of fertilizing powers. Word and semen wreathe eight times round the womb to impregnate it, just as the spiral of red copper, another substitute for primeval water, encircles eight times the pot of the Sun to give light to the world. Lastly, man is himself the figure eight in his skeleton, reinforced by the eight joints of the limbs (GRIE). These joints are of primary importance since from them comes the man's semen.
Man, the image of the macrocosm, is controlled by the number eight not only in mechanics of procreation and in his bodily structure, but also in the creation and ordering of everything upon which his continuing survival depends. Thus the seeds of the plants which he grows were brought down to Earth in the collar bones of his eight ancestors and these eight primordial seeds were planted in eight fields set at the cardinal points around the village.
Lastly, the Dogon sacralization of the number eight overlaps with that of seasonal renewal, eight being the number of the Genius and of the Ancestor - the oldest ancestor - who offered himself in sacrifice in order to ensure the regeneration of the human race once it was firmly established on Earth (GRIE, DIED). Only after this sacrifice was the Earth purified and made fruitful by the first rain, the first fields were sown and the first sounds of metalwork came from the smithy to the north of the village.
The Quechua myth which tells of the origins of the Inca dynasty also mentions eight ancestors, four brothers and four sisters.
Christian tradition, like the Dogon, makes eight the number of fulfillment and completeness. According to St Augustine, all the activities of this life relate to the number four, while THREE governs those of the SOUl, After SEVEN, comes eight which seals the eternal life of the righteous and the damnation of the wicked.
As for the Eight Day, following the six days of creation and the seventh day of rest, this is the symbol of resurrection and of transfiguration and heralds the age of eternity which is to come. It comprises not only Christ's resurrection but that of the human race. If the number seven is especially the number of the Old Testament, eight corresponds with the New. It foretells the bliss of the life to come in another world.
Finally we should remind ourselves that the mathematical symbol of infinity is like an eight on its side and that the eighth Tarot is JUSTICE, symbol of final summing-up and of balance, matching perfectly the Dogon four plus four equals eight.

1 One is the symbol of homo eretus. Human beings are the only species to walk upright and there are anthropologists who see in this their distinguishing characteristic, a characteristic more profound even than their powers of reasoning.
One may be found in the images of the standing stone, the erect phallus, and the upright staff. It stands for human activity associated with the work of creation.
One is also the immanent First Cause from which, nevertheless, all manifestation originates and to which, once its fleeting essence is exhausted, it returns. It is the active principle: the creator. One is the symbolic place of being, the beginning and end of all things, the cosmic and ontological centre.
As well as being the symbol of Being, it is also the symbol of Revelation, the intercessor which raises mankind through knowledge to a higher plane of being. One is the mystic centre, too, from which the Spirit radiates like the Sun.
There is justification for the distinction which Guénon draws between one and Oneness. The latter is an expression of absolute being, incalculable, transcendent, the One God, while the former allows reproduction in its own likeness and reduction of the many to the one within a pattern of departure and return in which both external and internal pluralism have parts to play.
Aside from its general and universal characteristics as a foundation and point of departure, the figure one displays certain more specific developments, especially in Iranian literature and folklore.
first and foremost one (yak) stands for One God. The figure is written in the same shape as the letter alif ('a') in the Arabic-Persian alphabet. In the abjad alphabet (A B J D) this letter also has the properties of one.
The heroes of the legends and literature of chivalry proudly affirm their adherence to an Islamic culture which flourishes and spreads throughout the East and of which the battle-cry is 'There is no other God than the One God.' The hero sets himself up as defender of the faith in which he has been nurtured and, to defend his own Muslim community, wars upon the believers of other faiths, especially Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and Hindus. It is a struggle in which the figure one in some sense stands for what is at stake.
When a Muslim paladin enters the court of an infidel kind or emir he announces defiantly: 'I greet those within this court who know that in the eighteen thousand universes there is One God.'
In legend and folktale, the One God is often symbolized by the figure one.
Jung classifies separately a whole series of what he calls 'unifying' symbols. These are the symbols which tend to reconcile opposites and to achieve a synthesis of contradictions, such as, for example, squaring the circle, mandalas, the Star of David, hexagrams, wheels, the Zodiac and so on.
The unifying symbol would be charged with extremely powerful psychic energy. Jacques de la Rocheterie has observed its occurrence in dreams only when the process of individuation is well advanced. The subject is then able to draw on all the energy of the unifying symbol in order to achieve within him- or herself harmony between consciousness and the unconscious, a dynamic balance of resolved contradictions and the combination of irrational and rational, intellect and imagination, real and ideal and concrete and abstract. Totality is unified within the subjects whose personality develops fully.

5 The number five derives its symbolism in the first place from the fact that it is the sum of the first even and odd number (2 plus 3 equals 5) and secondly because it is at the CENTRE of the first NINE numbers. It is a sign of marriage (the Pythagorean 'nuptial' number) as well as being the number of the centre, of harmony and of balance. It is therefore the number governing sacred marriages between the principles of Heaven (2) and the Earth Mother (3).
Furthermore, it is the symbol of the human being, which, with arms outstretched in the shape of a CROSS, appears to combine five parts, two arms, two legs and head and body, the latter sheltering the heart. It is also a symbol of the universe, its two axes, vertical and horizontal, passing through the same centre; of order and perfection; and lastly, of the will of God, which can only desire order and perfection.
It also stands for the phenomenal world in its entirety - the five senses and the forms of matter amenable to sense-perception.
Pythagorean pentagonal harmony has left its mark upon the architecture of medieval cathedrals. Hermetic symbolism set the five pointed STAR and the five-petalled FLOWER in the centre of a cross comprising the four ELEMENTS. This is the quintessence or ether. Five bears the same relation to SIX as the microcosm to the macrocosm, the individual to Universal Man.
In China, too, five was the number of the centre. It was to be found in the middle hut of Lo-chu. In the beginning the ideogram wu (five) was no more than the cross comprising of FOUR elements plus the centre. At a later stage two parallel lines were added - Heaven and Earth - between which yin and yang produce the five active elements. Ancient writers also maintained that 'under Heaven, the universal laws are five in number'. There were five colours, five flavours, five musical tones, five metals, five internal organs, five planets, five cardinal points, five spatial regions and, or course, five senses as well. Five is the number of Earth being the sum of four cardinal regions and of the centre, the phenomenal world. But five is also the sum of two and three. Earth and Heaven in their own natures, of the marriage of yin and yang, of T'ien and T'i. Five is also the basic number of secret societies. It is the marriage symbolized by the five colours of the rainbow. Five is also the number of the heart.
In Hindu symbolism five, once again, is the conjunction of two (the female number) with three (the male number). It is the principle of life, the number of Shiva the Transformer. The star-shaped PENTAGON - another symbol of Shiva - was regarded as an ordinary pentagon ringed by five triangles of fiery rays which were LINGAMS. Shive who, as Lord of the Universe is also master of the five regions, is sometimes depicted with five faces and, in Cambodia especially, was worshipped in the shape of five LINGAMS. Notwithstanding, his fifth face, which looks upwards, was identified with the AXIS and generally remained featureless.
The Japanese Buddhist Shingon sect also distinguishes five cardinal points (four points of the compass and the centre), five elements (Earth, Water, Fire, wind and space), five colours and the five qualities of knowledge which the supreme Buddha possessed and which the devotee of Shingon esotericism must try to acquire progressively to reach the level of enlightenment. Five, in this context, proves to be the number of integrated perfection.
The provinces of Ireland numbered five, the four traditional provinces of Ulad (Ulster), Connacht (Connaught), Lagin (Leinster), Mumu (Munster) and a fifth central province Midhe (Meath) comprising portions of land taken from the four other provinces. The Middle Irish word for 'province' is coiced, literally 'a fifth'. Five is also the number of the deities at the heart of the Celtic pantheon, that is a supreme, multi-skilled deity Lug ('the shining one') which Romanization assimilated to Mercury, and four other deities, all of whose aspects he transcended - the Dagda ('the good god') assimilated to Jupiter; Ogma (the champion) and Nuada (the king), to Mars; Dian Cécht (the physician) and Mac Og (the young man), to Apollo; and Brigit (the shining mother of the gods, of the arts and crafts and of Gobniu, the blacksmith), to Minerva. This arrangement is confirmed by Caesar who, in his De bello gallico, lists Mercury, Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, and Minerva. However, the Roman names for gods given by the Roman author do not designate deities as such, but rather their functions, and this explains the twofold assimilation in some cases. Five would thus be the symbol of totality - the totality of the land of Ireland and of the Celtic pantheon, but a totality obtained by the centre which gathers in and integrates the other four and in which these four parts take a share.
Throughout the bulk of medieval Irish literature, fifty of its threefold multiplication, one hundred and fifty (tri coicait, literally 'three fifties') is a conventional number meaning or symbolizing infinity. Numeration seldom extends beyond it, but the Celtic system of numeration is archaic and clumsy even in current forms of the languages.
In Central America five was a sacred number and during the agrarian period was the symbolic number of the maize-god. In both Maya manuscripts and Maya sculpture he is often depicted as an open HAND. According to Girard the sacralization of the number five was linked to the process of maize-cultivation, the first shoots appearing five days after the seed is planted. Following their initiatory death, the maize-god Twins were brought to life again by the waters of the river into which their ashes had been cast five days before (Popol-Vuh). The myth describes how they first appeared in the shape of FISH, afterwards as half men, half fish, before becoming shining solar youths. The Maya hieroglyphic for five generally takes the form of land, but may sometimes be encountered in the shape of a fish. The modern descendants of the Maya, the Chorti, still associate five with maize and fish. In the later stages of their legend, the Twins separated as the Sun-god and the Moon-god. It was the Moon-god who retained five for his symbolic number, hence the similarity with the fish, a lunar symbol.
The Chorti, too, set the period of childhood as one of five years, on the analogy of human growth with that of maize. The maize-god is the patron of children who have not attained the age of reason, that is to say, those who are under five years of age.
The Maya believed that God drew up the dead person by a ROPE, which was his or her soul, five days after death, just as the maize-seed ends its gestation period and sprouts from the soil, drawn up by God, five days after sowing. The maize-shoot, too, is called 'rope' or 'soul'.
According to Mexican tradition, Quetzalcoatl remained four days in the Underworld before rebirth on the fifth day (GIRP). The Maya solar hieroglyphic comprises five circles, the maize-god being a solar god as well.
Five was also the Maya symbol of perfection (THOH) and the fifth day belonged to their Earth-gods. Thompson most emphatically adds that it was also the day of the serpent which sent the rain.
The succession of four Suns in Aztec tradition stands for the creation of a world which, with the fourth Sun, was immanent but not yet manifest. Only the appearance of the fifth Sun, the sign of the present age, completed the manifestation. As we have seen, each of these Suns - and ages - corresponded to one of the four cardinal points. The fifth Sun corresponds to the centre or middle of the CROSS which they form. The dawning of that centre is the awakening of consciousness. five is therefore the number which symbolizes human-world-consciousness. The Aztecs assigned the central Sun to the god Xiuhtecuhtli, lord of FIRE, sometimes represented by a butterfly (SOUM).
The Aztec god Five (young maize) was lord of the dance and of music. This Apollonian function associated him with love, Spring, dawn and all sports. The same god, called 'the Singer', was the Huitchol morning star.
Returning to the interpretation given to the number five by the Ancient Mexicans, we find Soustelle (SOUC) clearly showing the ambivalent nature of this number. Five, he remarks, is the number of the present world - preceded by four abortive creations - and of the centre of the cross formed by the four cardinal points. Hence it symbolizes fire, but in both senses of the world. On the one hand there is solar fire, so that the number is linked to LIGHT, the day and the triumph of life. On the other, there is the chthonian, earthy, underground fire, linking five with darkness and the journey of the 'Black Sun' through the Underworld. In his successive metamorphoses, the hero Quetzalcoatl twice embodied the idea of sacrificial rebirth, identified on the one hand by the Sun and on the other by the planet VENUS, which both vanish into the west, the realm of darkness, to reappear - reborn - with the dawn in the east. In his role of 'Lord of the House of the Dawn', reborn in the shape of Venus, the morning star, Quetzalcoatl is depicted in Mexican manuscripts as a personage bearing on his face the figure five in the form of dots disposed in a quincunx. Hence, as Soustelle explains, five has an esoteric significance 'among the priestly and warrior castes, as sacrifice, or rather as self-sacrifice and resurrection'. As a solar hieroglyphic, it embodies the notion of the triumph of the Sun and of life, but underpinning this are those sacrifices of warriors whose blood fed the Sun, making possible its daily return and hence making life itself possible. Similarly the centre of the world, represented by the number five, is also the hieroglyphic for the earthquake, the Last Judgment and the end of the world, when evil spirits will descend upon the centre from the four quarters of the Earth to annihilate the human race. The centre of the world is thus the central crossroads and, like all CROSSROADS, is a place for the production of terrifying apparitions.
It should be remembered that it was at crossroads, five times a year, that women who died in childbirth appeared, women who, like the warriors killed in battle or in sacrifice, were the deified companions of the Sun in his daily course, oddly reminiscent, as will be seen, of Dogon notions of the number. Lastly, and again underlining the unlucky aspect of the symbol, it should be remembered that five, being the middle of the 'dark' series (9) is in opposition to SEVEN, the middle of the 'bright' series (13). The fifth lord of darkness, Mictlantecuhtli, Lord of Death, is in opposition to the smiling goddess, Chicomecoatly, seventh of the THIRTEEN deities of light. On his back he wears a solar sign, but it is the Sun of the dead - the Black Sun - which journeys underground during the night. Thus, Soustelle concludes, to the Mexicans the number five symbolized 'the passing by death from one life to another and the indissoluble marriage of dark with the bright side of the universe.'
Father Francisco de Avila's valuable account (AVIH) demonstrates the major role played by the number five in the beliefs of the Ancient Peruvians. 'All things providing nourishment sprouted five days after sowing' and the dead would come to life again five days after death, which was the reason why their bodies were exposed rather than interred. 'On the fifth day their spirits could be seen emerging in the shape of a little fly.' A flood which lasted five days and an eclipse of the Sun which plunged the world into darkness for another five days both occur in myths relating to the end of earlier ages. 'Then the mountain peaks crashed together and mortars and grinding-stones started to crush humans.' The god Paryacaca, lord of the waters and the lightening, was born from five eggs in the shape of five kites. He is one in five. He makes the rain fall from five different places at once and darts the lightening from the five quarters of the sky.
The notion of five successive races of human beings, our own being the fifth, recurs in Hesiod's Works and Days. This cosmological poet believed the Earth to have been inhabited successively by men of the Golden Age, men of the Silver Age, demi-gods and men of the Bonze Age - they perished in the Trojan War - before the arrival of our own generation, the men of the Iron Age. In the Golden Age, men were 'pure spirits dwelling on earth...guardians of mortal men...givers of wealth'. Their successors in the Silver Age were guilty of the unbounded folly or refusing to render worship to the Immortals and were buried by Zeus. 'But when earth had covered this generation also, they are called blessed spirits of the underworld by men, and, though they are of second order, yet honour attends them also'. The men of the Bronze Age were guilty, too, not of the Satanic pride of their predecessors, but of the excess of their own terrifying strength. 'These were destroyed by their own hands and passed to the dark house of chill Hades, and left no name'. As for the divine race of demi-gods, they dwell 'untouched by sorrow in the islands of the blessed along the shore of deep-swirling' Ocean, that is to say, far off in the west near the Garden of the Gods guarded by the Hesperides. this makes greek tradition oddly akin to the Aztec tradition of five Suns or five ages.
The Dogon and Bambara of Mali think of ONE as being unique, not as a symbol of completion and perfection, but as a synonymous with the unnatural, since it is the number of primal CHAOS, while two is the number of cosmic order. Hence five, made up by the association of four, the female symbol, with one, is itself a symbol of the unfulfilled, of uncleanness, discord, instability and of unfinished creation. from this, it follows that five is most generally regarded as a lucky symbol, since the Bambara in fact speak of a fifth world - to come - which will be a perfect world, not springing, like the present world, from the association of one and four, but of three and two (DIEB).
St Hildegard of Bingen evolved a complex theory of the number five as a symbol of man. 'Man's height from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet may be divided into five equal parts. Again, his breadth from the finger-tips of each hand when they are outstretched, may also be divided into five equal parts. Reckoning five equal measurements both of length and breadth, man can be depicted within a perfect SQUARE' (DAVS). Five squares lengthwise and five squares breadthwise, intersecting at the chest, make a cross within the world or the world is his cross.
Aside from the five equal parts both lengthwise and breadthwise, man possesses:
five senses and five extremities (head, hands and feet). Plutarch uses this number to designate the succession of species. A similar notion may be found in Genesis where it is written that the fishes and the fowls of the air were created on the fifth day...Even numbers signify the womb, for they are female, while odd numbers are male, The association of the one with the other is androgynous...Thus PENTAGRAMS are emblems of the MICROCOSM and of the HERMAPHRODITE. In Medieval miniatures microcosm man is often depicted with legs and arms outstretched, the better to display the five points of the pentagram. (DAVS)
Five therefore controls human bodily structure.
Five is a lucky number and favorite of Muslims. They have the pentagram of the five senses and of marriage. Five is the number of the hours of prayer and the types of goods upon which the tithes are payable; there are five elements in the hajj (pilgrimage) (and five days at Arafat), five types of fasting, five motives for ablution, five dispensations for Friday; there is a fifth of treasure or booty, five generations for a tribal feud, five camels for the diya and five takbir or formulae of prayer: God is Great! There were five witnesses to the Mubãhala (treaty) and five keys to the koranic mystery (Koran 6: 59; 31: 34). There are also five fingers in 'the Hand of Fatima' (MASA).
To counteract the evil, the five fingers of the right hand are stretched out while you utter the spell: 'Five in your eye!' or 'Five on your eye!' In Fez you say 'Five and fifteen' to avoid the danger caused by excessively admiring something or somebody. The number five has thus become a charm in itself. Thursday, the fifth day of the week, is under the sign of effective protection.
Five, Allendy states (ALLN), 'is the number of physical and objective being. Both psychoanalysis and Maya tradition are at one here, as are Eastern traditions, in making five the sign of manifested life. As an odd number it expresses an action rather than a state. The Quinary is the number of created being and individuality.' In this sense, it is noteworthy that man's shape may be drawn in a pentagram of which the centre is his genitals. This pentagram is the original Chinese ideogram jen, meaning 'man'. If a man lies with arms and legs outstretched, his genitals being the centre, the upper part of his body equals the lower part. Each of those parts provides a radius for a circle drawn from that centre. Once again, five symbolizes manifestation of man in the full maturity of his physical and spiritual development.

***
I will add more thoughts and numbers later. I am currently compiling a list of all the objects on the show that may be symbolic and what they mean according to my dictionary.

[Chance Gardener]

Deleted to promote harmony.




I like to watch

[Archimedes44]

On the other hand, 815 might have absolutely no meaning as far as the plot is concerned. It could be something along the lines of the Xfiles recurring 10.16 which was the birthdate of the producer's wife.

arch

[OhioSteve1]

It is signifigant. The flight number was 815. The safety deposit box number was 815. The copier was model 815. Some viewers say that Kate's model airplane has number 815 on it. The writers are presenting a mystery and giving us clues systematically.

[NeillT006]

Future:

Although your angle on this is not one I have much embraced, I am surprised that you have not focused more on the tarot cards. If I am not mistaken, there have been at least two tarot references so far, the guy Claire went to see in Australia and Locke in her dream.

As I understand it, one of the standard cards in the tarot deck is the hanging man.

Seems to me we have had our share of hanging men, Charlie and Sayid specifically. And you might count Jack dangling over the cliff, and even the pilot draped over the tree.

I'm no card reader, but isn't the hanging man full of portent, a moment suspended between two worlds?

Your deal.

Neill

[futureidol]

I did not forget about the Tarot deck. It just takes me a while to type this stuff out (I am not just copying and pasting here). I still have a list of animals, natural elements, objects, etc. to type out. I am completely enthralled with all of the card and board games referenced on the show. Tarot is very compelling to me and could open a lot of doors as far as the symbolism on the show is concerned. Because you requested it I am writing out everything in The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols on Tarot that I can find.

Tarot The Tarot is undoubtedly the most ancient pack of cards and sets a world of symbols working. Nor can there be any doubt that it served over the centuries as a secret channel through which occult teaching was handed down. Where it originated is hard or impossible to say, and the widest variety of theories have been advanced from the eighteenth century onwards, when Court de Gébelin became obsessed with explaining it. Whether deriving ultimately from China, India or Egypt, and whether or not it was the invention of Thoth-Hermes Trismegistus, of the Gypsies, the alchemists of the Kabbalists, or even of 'the wisest of wise', the Tarot does, in fact, display an iconography which is clearly medieval and mixed with Christian symbols.

Colours and numbers
The Marseilles Tarot - upon which all detailed descriptions in this Dictionary are used - is the Tarot in its most traditional form of a pack of seventy-eight cards, the fifty-six minor arcana and the twenty-two major arcana. The first point to observe is that TWENTY-TWO is the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet and that, according to the Kabbalah, they represent the universe. In the Tarot, this number comprises twenty-one numbered cards, plus the Fool. TWENTY-ONE, as THREE times SEVEN, is the number of human perfection (and it should be remembered that the twenty-first major arcanum is the World). The Fool, the extra card, as an African sage would say, is speech which gives this perfection its soul. What should be remembered particularly about the fifty-six minor arcana is that they form four groups, one might call them columns, each of fourteen cards which correspond to the four suits of the conventional pack, deriving as it does from the Tarot. It should, however, be stressed most importantly that seventy-eight, the total number of cards in the Tarot, is also the sum and hence, in the language of occultists who devised the Tarot, 'the hidden meaning of the first twelve numbers'. This Book, outwardly no more than a pack of cards, therefore holds the added substance of the number which provides the framework of all thought and of the universe itself.
All these cards are brightly coloured and, before we study their individual meanings, we shall briefly recapitulate the symbolism of the dominant colours of the Tarot - pink ochre (flesh), blue, red and yellow.
Pink ochre always denotes what is human or related to humanity (faces, bodies and buildings);
the nocturnal, passive and lunar colour BLUE is the colour of secrecy, emotion, the anima and, above all, of female properties;
RED is the male colour of inner strength, potential energy, manifestation of the animus, blood and the spirit;
lastly, YELLOW, despite its ambivalence, is simultaneously the colour of Earth and of the Sun, of all the richness and honey and harvest and of mental enlightenment in all the purity of incorruptible gold.

Minor arcana
The minor arcana are divided into four suits - Rods, Cups, Swords and Shekels - each of fourteen cards comprising King, Queen, Knight, Jack and ten other cards numbered from ace to ten. (The Knight has disappeared from the conventional pack and Rods have become Diamonds; Cups, Hearts; Swords, Spades; and Shekels, Clubs.) These four suits symbolize the four elements or four basic components of life.
The Rod is 'the Fire of activity, the essential point of departure' for all development; but it is also 'the magic wand, the sceptre of male domination, the Father'.
The Cup is 'celestial fecundating Water, the life of the psyche linking created beings to the godhead'; but it is also the 'seer's chalice, female receptivity, the Mother'.
The Sword is 'Air, the spirit which penetrates and gives matter form by creating that agglomeration which will become the human being'; it is also 'the magician's sword, the weapon shaped like a cross and thus recalling the fecund marriage of the male and female principles; additionally the sword symbolizes a penetrative action like that of the Word or that of the Son'. It is also interesting to see how Jung confirms this - 'the word "spade" derives from the Italian spada, which means "sword" or "spear". Such weapons often symbolize the penetrating, "cutting" function of the intellect'.
Lastly, the Shekel is Earth - 'the descent below ground which is the start of every initiation (hence the importance of the cavern) and which gives the individual the support of the world in which he or she is set' - or else 'the five-sided disk, the sign of the supportive power of the will, which concentrates spiritual activity, the synthesis which returns the threefold to oneness, Trinity or Tri-Unity'.
A detailed study might be made of the symbolism of these fifty-six cards, but this would deflect us from our purpose. It should simply be observed that they are closely linked to the major arcana and we shall find them in the first of these, the Juggler, who grasps a Rod to ensure his control over the Earth (Shekel) and over himself, while on the table stands the Cup and the Sword (miniaturized as a dagger) which symbolize the two paths, through heart or through spirit, which the individual must take in quest or initiation.

The major arcana: paths to initiation
The major arcana are paths to initiation, their stopping-places interpreted in countless different ways. They have been represented as the 'quintessence in occultism' and as lofty stages set far above the anonymous masses. They are described in detail in this dictionary under their respective names.

I (1): the Juggler
II (2): the Female Pope
III (3): the Empress
IV (4): the Emperor
V (5): the Pope
VI (6): the Lovers
VII (7): the Chariot
VIII ( 8 ) : Justice
IX (9): the Hermit
X (10): the Wheel of Fortune
XI (11): Necessity
XII (12): the Hanging Man
XIII (13): nameless arcanum (Death)
XIV (14): Temperance
XV (15): the Devil
XVI (16): the Tower
XVII (17): the Star
XVIII ( 18 ) : the Moon
XIX (19): the Sun
XX (20): Judgement
XXI (21): The World
Unnumbered: the Fool

Groups of three and groups of seven
Omitting the Fool, which is unnumbered, there are twenty-one arcana which may be divided either into seven groups of three or into three groups of seven. Within each group of three 'the lowest number is active and the highest number is emphatically passive, while the middle number is intermediary, active in relation to the highest, passive to the lowest. The lowest corresponds to the spirit, the middle to the soul and the highest to the flesh'. The seven groups of three comprise: the Juggler (I), the Female Pope (II) and the Empress (III); the Emperor (IV), the Pope (V) and the Lovers (VI); the Chariot (VII), Justice (VIII) and the Hermit (IX); and so on. The same separate aspects of spirit, soul and flesh are to be found in the three groups of seven: from Juggler (I) to Chariot (VII) the properties of the spirit; from Justice (VIII) to Temperance (XIV) those of the soul; and from the Devil (XV) to the World (XXI), those of the flesh.
The same card may thus be interpreted as spirit and soul, or as soul and flesh, according to its place in the chosen grouping and according to the level of analysis. For example, the Empress is flesh in the first group of three and spirit in the first group of seven. Relationships alter within the different groups. All keys of interpretation open up different aspects of the same card and none possesses fixed and absolute meaning. It is a perpetually mobile system of relationships demanding the greatest subtlety of interpretation.
Even within each group of seven 'the first three arcana oppose the second three and it is only the seventh which makes a unity of the whole', thus validating the synthesizing significance of the Chariot (VII), Temperance (XIV) and the World (XXI) - the predominance of the will in the world of the spirit (VII), of balance in that of the soul (XIV) and ceaseless movement in the world of flesh (XXI).

Relationship with the Zodiac and the planets
This grouping in threes may be compared with the concept in astrology whereby the wheel of the ZODIAC in its three successive positions - birth (or start of evolution), zenith and fall (or involution) - stands for the four elements. The signs of Fire, Earth, Air and Water begin with Aries, Taurus, Gemini and Cancer, reach their zenith in Leo, Virgo, Libra and Scorpio and decline and fall in Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. When the Tarot is divided into groups of three, the cards on which the symbols of the Zodiac are clearly marked have a corresponding status. The Archer (Sagittarius) in the Lovers (VI) is in decline, the Scales (Libra) of Justice (VIII) and the Lion (Leo) of Strength (IX) are both at their zenith, while the Twins (Gemini) of the Sun (XIX) are at the beginning of their development.
However, the further one proceeds with the reconstruction of an astrological Tarot, the more sharply divided the authorities become. There are as many different correspondences between the arcana and the planets and the Zodiac as there are specialists in the study of the Tarot. Imagination has free rein in this field. For example, Oswald Wirth equates the Juggler with Mercury, while Fomalhaut regards it as the Sun. Terestchenko as Neptune and so on. Without claiming to have made a complete list, one can often discover at least a dozen different and often contradictory astrological correspondences for some cards. Faced by a chaotic mass of hypotheses, Volguine has suggested (L'Utilisation du Tarot en astrologie judiciaire, Paris, 1933) that the major arcana should be made to correspond to the astrological Houses, rather than to the planets and signs, since each division stands for a well-defined area. Thus the Juggler and Death are linked to the first House; the Female Pope and Temperance to the Second House and so on. The arcana of the Tarot may also be taken in pairs. In their pairing each displays more or less obvious similarity of opposites, the link between the cards and the astrological Houses providing the rationale for this pairing.

Kabbalistic interpretation
Kabbalists who have studied the Tarot have been stuck by several points. There are the same number of major arcana as there are letters in the Hebrew alphabet and this number is 'precisely the same as the twenty-two paths of wisdom, the channels between the ten SEFIROT, which link together these sublime metaphysical principles of the Jewish Kabbala'. Mystic attributes of God, the sefirot themselves evolved 'in the shape of groups of three, in each of which trinities two opposites are linked by an intermediate'. Moreover, they agree with the symbolic meaning of the cards -
the Crown of the sefirot matches the Juggler, First Cause from which all things proceed;
the Female Pope matches Wisdom;
the Empress, the Understanding;
the Emperor, Magnificence and Mercury;
the Pope, Fortitude or Judgement;
the Lovers, Beauty;
the Chariot, Victory;
Justice, Splendour;
the Hermit, the Foundation;
and the Wheel of Fortune, 'representing the whirlpool of involution', the Kingdom.
As there are correspondences between all the cards, this has provided the foundations for building a complete Kabbalistic symbolism for the Tarot since 'in the chain of being, everything is magically contained in everything'.

Anthropocentrism in the Tarot
Provided that one or two symbolic traces can be found to link the Tarot to such a teaching, alchemy, magic or even Freemasonry has been used to provide the key to its interpretation, and to these passing reference is made in the articles devoted to each of the major arcana. However, the Tarot remains predominantly anthropocentric and the figures which it comprises have psychological and cosmic meaning. They relate to humanity, the world around it and the individuals making it up, and even when human beings are not depicted, as in the Wheel of Fortune (X) and the Moon (XVIII), the animals depicted are caricatures of humans.
If the symbolism of the Tarot is now to be studied from this angle, the cards must be arranged either in a circle in which the Fool is placed between the Juggler and the World, or in two rows, the first from I to XI and the second in the opposite direction from XII to the Fool. It will be clearly seen that the vertical axis of the Tarot links arcana VI and XVIII, the Lovers and the Star, the one being the emotions and the other hope, as if these two properties were those around which all the rest revolved.

Pathway to the attainment of wisdom
The individual stands alone facing the world and seeking the path of wisdom by acquiring a dual mastery - that of the external world and that of the universe within. Such mastery is the product of a gradual initiation which itself makes a distinction between two paths, two methods or two main phases, predominantly active or passive, solar or lunar:

The first is based upon the principle of developing individual initiative and upon reason and will-power. It suits the wise person who always retains full self-control and relies only upon the resources of his or her personality, without recourse to the aid of outside influences. The other is completely different and takes a course entirely opposite to the first. Far from developing what is in the self and giving in proportion to the expansion of the innermost energies, the mystic sets his or her sights upon recieving to the uttermost extent of an especially developed receptivity.

Thus the rational and the mystical, like male and female, contrast and complement one another. Necessity (XI) and the Hanging Man (XII) are merely two aspects of the same symbol - the internal strength of Necessity and the completely internalized strength of the Hanging Man. In the same sense, too, the Juggler (I) in his quest for initiation encounters the Female Pope (II) who holds all the secrets of the universe, but to read her book requires the intellect of the Empress (III) and of the Emperor (IV). Initiation takes effect with the Pope (V) and the individual succeeds in raising him- or herself through the series of ordeals presented by the other cards, the first being the strain imposed by the Lovers (VI), lying at the centre of the first row of cards, since nothing can be achieved without emotional drive. Having made this choice, with all that it entails, the driver of the Chariot (VII) is in danger of overstepping his powers and becoming proud of his own strength, but Justice (VIII) is a remainder of the fundamental law of balance. Strong in his ideals, he sets out as the Hermit (IX) into the world, but the more the Hermit seeks the truth, the more he passes judgement and sets in motion the Wheel of Fortune (X) which allots to each his due according to inward state and longing for personal development, Necessity (XI) alone can halt the Wheel of Fortune. At the end of this first pathway the initiate has discovered the object of his or her quest - Necessity wears the same headdress as the Juggler, the ribbon wreathed in the symbol of infinity.

The mystical phase
With the Hanging Man (XII) at the beginning of the second row, the initiate enters an inverted world in which physical means have become ineffective. This is the passive, mystic pathway. The anonymous thirteenth arcanum, a red card, the colour of blood and of fire which destroys and burns away illusion, shows us that Death is far from being the end, but rather a beginning. However, we must not force the pace of the new life held out to us - the demands of Temperance (XIV) are the same as those of Justice (VIII) and it is only when one is aware of one's own limitations and has acquired an inner balance that one can face the Devil (XV). He is the symbol of the deadliest of temptations, those which hold out occult powers matching the manifest powers of God, but which weave as many strands linking us to the Lord of Hell. Unfortunately, whatever mankind builds is doomed to fall like the shattered Tower (XVI). Henceforth all that remains for the individual is the Star (XVII) of Venus, the dual star of hope and of love, the centre of the second row of cards and the foundation of the vertical axis of the Tarot. Just as the Moon is the stars' companion in the physical sky, so in the symbolic universe of the Tarot, the Moon (XVIII) follows the Star. She beard the properties of the past, the wealth of the unconscious, the imaginary realm from which dreams recharge their strength. Without the joint strength of Star and Moon, we should be unable to face the Sun's (XIX) bright light and heat. This is the arcanum of total enlightenment and under it the individual is for the first time no longer alone. Henceforth he or she will be judged in his or her fullness, as a person and by his or her deeds. In the sight of the angel of Judgement (XX), the child will symbolize the witness. The individual 'has succeeded in transmuting the phenomenal world into a psychic property, that is to say, in alchemical terms, that setting out from the materia prima of the Juggler he has finished with pure gold'.
Thus, while the first path of initiation ended with Necessity (XI), 'prerogative of the Juggler who has realized his plans', the second path, the path of the mystic, sets out from the Hanging Man (XII) and takes us to the Fool 'whose passivity here partakes of the sublime'. This is the individual who, having gained all that the world can offer, realizes that this possession is worthless and consequently returns to the unknown and unknowable which both precedes and follows our lives. Faced by this twofold barrier, all that we can do is to continue our search after having at last admitted in our minds and accepted in our physical pains that there is a natural difference between ourselves and God. The only possible relationship with him resides in hope, self-surrender and love. This is the ultimate lesson of the Tarot if conceived as a path of initiation.

Archetypes in the Tarot
The two paths which we have marked out are, however, open to other interpretations. Jung distinguishes the two aspects of the individual's struggle against others and against him- or herself. There is the solar path of extraversion and action, of practical and theoretical reflection upon rational motivation. And then there is the lunar path of introversion, of meditation and intuition in which motivations are all-embracingly dictated by the senses and the imagination. The Tarot also appears to contain a number of basic archetypes - the mother (the Female Pope, the Empress, Judgement); the horse (Chariot); the old man (Emperor, Pope, Hermit, Judgement); the wheel (Wheel of Fortune); Death; the Devil, the house or tower (Tower, Moon); the bird (Star, World); the virgin, the Spring, the star (Star); the Moon; the Sun: the twins (Devil, Sun); the wing (Lover, Temperance, Devil, Judgement, World); the flame (Tower)...
Whatever validity these different points of view may possess, we should never forget that the Tarot never submits to any one attempt to systematize it and it always retains something which escapes our grasp. Its fortunetelling aspects is just as evasive. We shall make no attempt to cover these other aspects in this article since their permutations are as endless as their explanations. Although they may be based upon the symbols which we have attempted to clarify, they demand training of the imagination gained only from long practice and a strong sense of skepticism.

***

I will delve into the specific symbolism of each card within the coming weeks.

[drabauer]

Just a thanks for the most info on the Tarot yet.

this thread will be indexed under Numbers and Symbols:

Numerology in Lost (http://www.swedishpoet.com/lostnumbers.html)

Signs, Symbols and Portents in Lost (http://www.swedishpoet.com/lostdetails.html)

[futureidol]

Animals

Boar The symbolism of the boar is of great antiquity. It is found throughout most of the Indo-European world and, in some aspects, beyond it as well. The myth is part of the HYPERBOREAN tradition in which the boar represents spiritual authority. This may arise because, like the druid and the Brahman, the boar retires to a solitary life in the forest, or because it has the faculty of uprooting the TRUFFLE, that mysterious fungus which according to ancient legends was produced by lightning, or, lastly, because the boar feeds upon acorns, fruit of the sacred tree, the OAK. The BEAR stands in opposition to the boar as a symbol of temporal power. In Gaul and in Greece, the boar was hunted and killed, emblem of the spiritual hounded down by the temporal.
In China, too, the boar was the emblem of the Miao, the bear of the Hia. The Miao belong to a very ancient version of Chinese folklore. The boar is taken, or driven, away, by a warrior, Yi the Archer, Herakles (Hercules) takes the Erymanthian boar; Meleager, helped by Theseus and Atalanta, hunts the Calydonian boar. Here, quite clearly, is a species of cyclical symbolism, one reign giving place to another, one kalpa to the next. Hindus classify the present cycle as that of the 'White Boar'.
The boar is endowed with 'Hyperborean', and hence with primordial, characteristics. It represents the avatar (incarnation) in which Vishnu raised the Earth to the surface of the waters and set it in order. Vishnu, again, takes the shape of a boar (Varãha) rooting in the earth to find the foot of the column of fire, which is no less than Shiva's lingam, while hamsa-Brahmã seeks its tip in the sky. Thus the Earth was generally seen as the attribute of Varãha (Vishnu), under whose hand or protection it could well be regarded as a primative Holy Land.
Another aspect is apparent in Japan where the wild pig or boar, Inonshishi, is the last of the animals in the Zodiac. Emblematic of courage and even of rashness, a boar is used as their steed by the war-kami (deities). Small statues of boars stand outside Shintõ shrines dedicated to Wakenokiyomaro. The war-god himself, Usa-hachiman, is sometimes depicted on a boar.
Although the boar is set at the hub of the Buddhist Wheel of Existance, it is in the shape of a black animal, the symbol of ignorance and of the passions. It is sometimes called a PIG and it is under this designation that its negative symbolism should be regarded for, just as the boar is the symbol of all that is noble, so the pig is the symbol of all that is base. The wild pig symbolizes unrestrained debauchery and brutality.
The 'Diamond sow' plays an important part in the Vajrayãna. It is an attribute of that Vajra varahi (Dordje Phagmo) which manifests a female aspect of the Awakening. She is frequently depicted coloured scarlet and with a tiny sow's head, like a growth, over her right ear. This deity is associated with the cycle of Hevajra, whose co-adjutator she may be, as well as with that of Samvara, and should be likened to a realization of EMPTINESS and to the delicate central channel (sushumma) into which respirations are collected in order to liberate Joy.
The boar was a common motif on Gaulish battle standards, especially on those carved on the triumphal arch at Orange (France) and upon Gaulish coins. There are many examples of boars in votive bronzes or relief carvings in stone. Nevertheless the animal has nothing to do with the warrior caste except as the symbol of the priestly caste to which it stood in opposition. Like the druid, the boar was closely connected with the forest, feeding on acorns, while the wild sow, symbolically surrounded by her nine piglets, rooted in the ground at the foot of the apple, the tree of immortality. Since the Celts' herds of pigs lived more or less in the wild, the pig and the wild boar were often undifferentiated, and since the boar was the animal dedicated to Lug, pork was the sacrificial food at the festival of Samain (1 November). A number of legends tell of the feasts in the Otherworld at which there is a magic pig, always perfectly cooked and never growing less. Mercury is given the surname, Moccus, ('pig') in a Gallo-Roman inscription from Langres (France). The Twrch Trwyth (Irish: triath, 'king') with which Arthur did battle symbolizes the power of the priesthood in conflict with that of the king at a time of spirital decline. Lug's father, Cian, changed himself into a 'druidic pig' to escape his persuers. However, he died in his human shape.
Nowhere in Irish literature, not even when under Christian influence, is the boar anything but a symbol of good. Here the Celtic world stands in sharp contrast with the tendency of the rest of Christendom. Here the boar symbolizes the Devil - whether one equates it with swinish lust and guttony or with its rashness (comparable with the storm of passion), or again with the devastation which it causes by its headlong rush through crops, orchards and vineyards. By the association of ideas, however, one is reminded of the instance when Dürer replaces the ox and ass of the Christmas crib with a lion and a boar.

Bear Throughout the Celtic world the bear was the emblem or symbol of the warrior caste. The common Celtic word for 'bear', artos (Irish, art; Welsh, arth; Breton, arzh) is echoed in the name of the mythical Kingg Arthur (artoris), or in the Irish male name Mathgen (matugenos, 'son of a bear'). It stands in neat opposition to the BOAR, the symbol of the priestly caste. In the Welsh tale of Culhwch and Olwen, Arthur hunts the Twrch Trwyth and its litter. Now this creature was a white boar and their battle - which lasted nine days and nights - represents the struggle between 'Church' and 'State'. In the Irish tale, The Fate of the Children of Tuireann, the opposite is the case. Here, rather than a priestly boar ravaging the lands of a sovereign prince, members of the warrior caste murder Cian, father of the god Lug, disguised as a druidical boar. In Gaul (and at Bern, which still keeps its name 'Bear') there was even a goddess, Artio, who still more powerfully underlines the female character of the warrior caste. One may also observe that the Welsh called both the constellations with their polar symbolism, the GREAT BEAR and the Little Bear, Cerbyd Arthur, 'Arthur's Wain'.
Among the Celts, therefore, the bear competed - or associated - with the boar, as temporal power with spiritual authority. In India the same was true of the Kshatriya and the Brahman. this aspect - the bear being slightly yin relative to the boar's yang - would explain why the she-bear recurs so often. At the other end of the Earth, the bear is regarded as the ancestor of the Ainu. This ancient racial group, inhabiting northern Japan and the island of Hokkaido, believed that the bear was a mountain-god, the ruler of all. They celebrated the Feast of the Bear (Kaimui omante) in December. On that day the godhead came down to Earth and was welcomed by mankind, left them different gifts and returned at once to the realm of the gods.
Unlike the foregoing, in China the bear is a male symbol. It heralds the birth of boys and is an expression of yang. The bear is in harmony with his home, the mountain, and in conflict with the serpent (yin, the equivalent of water). Yu the Great, Regulator of the World, took the shape of a bear in the course of his duties. Again, this is not really a reversal of symbols, still less a relationship setting bear in conflict with she-bear, since the Chinese wang combines the two powers, while the duties of the cosmic architect correspond to those of the Kshatriya.
One might add that a bear is the steed of thr yogini Ritsamada. In Islamic esoteric tradition the bear is sometimes classed as a wretched, disgusting creature.
In Siberia and Alaska the bear is placed in the same category as the Moon, because it vanishes with Winter and returns with Spring. This also shows the animal's links with the annual cycle of vegetation, also controlled by the Moon.
The bear is, in any case, held to be the ancestor of the human race; 'for man, whose life is similar to that of the moon, must have been created out of the very substance or by the magic power of that orb of living reality'. In Canada the Algonquin Indians called the bear 'Grand-father'. This last belief appears to have inspired the widespread myth of bears carrying off women, who live a married life with their ravishers.
Among the Koryaks of north-eastern Siberia, the Gilyaks, Tlingits, Tongas and Haidas, a bear...is present in the initiation ceremonies, just as it played an important part in the ceremonies of Paleolithic times. The Pomo Indians of Northern California have their candidates initiated by the Grizzly Bear, which 'kills' them and 'makes a hole' in their backs with its claws.
In inscriptions from the archaic period in China, one dating from the Shang, the other from the Chou Dynasty, L.C. Hopkins believed he could make out a 'masked shaman dancing dressed in a bear's skin'.
In the caverns of Europe the myserious scent of the bear still lingers on. It is thus an emanation of gloom and darkness which in alchemy corresponds to the blackness of matter in its primary state. Darkness allied with the forbidden strengthens the bear's role as the mystagogue.
In Greek mythology, the bear was the companion of ARTEMIS, the goddess of the Moon and focus of bloodthirsty rites, and the goddess often manifested herself in the guise of a bear. This creature of the Moon incorporates one aspect of the dialectic attached to the lunar myth, potentially both aggressor and sufferer, priest and sacrificial victim. in this sense the bear stands in contrast with the HARE, typically representing the aggressive, cruel, sacrificing-priestly side of the myth. Hence the interpretation given by Jungian psychoanalysts.
Like all lunar manifestations of the divine, the bear's relationship is with the instincts. Given its strength, Jung considers it the symbol of the dangerous aspect of the unconcious.
In the underground temples (kiva) of the Pueblo Indians, there was a ritual hearth named 'the bear', the annual being associated with the powers of the underworld (H. Lehmann).
The Yakut, in Siberia, believed that the bear was omniscient, 'he remembers everything, and forgets nothing'. The Altaic Tatar believed that he hears 'through the mediation of the Earth', while the Soyot said 'the Earth is the bear's ear'. Most Siberian hunters had a taboo against mentioning the bear by name and instead called it 'the Old Fellow', 'Old Blacky', 'Lord of the Forest' and often addressed him as 'Grandfather'. Certain parts of its body, such as its paws, claws and teeth, were used magically as preservatives. Tungus, Chores and Tatars from Minusinsk nailed a bear's paw close to the door of the house or the entrance of their tent to ward off evil spirits. If they placed one in the cradle, the Yakut believed it would protect their babies. The Telyut believed that the genius of the doorway is dressed in a bear's skin. A bear's claws had therapeutic properties, the Chores believing that it cured enteritis in their herds, the Altaic Tatars that it cured headache. Lastly many Altaic peoples called the bear to witness their oaths; the Yakut made their attestations seated on a bear's skull, while the Tungus chewed his pelt as they said: 'May the bear gobble me up if I am guilty!'
All the hunting tribes of North America and Siberia, and the Lapps, imposed similar taboos, some very severe, upon their womenfolk at the time of the bear-hunt. Thus the Goldi did not even allow them to glance at a bear's head. The Lapps forbade them to step on a bear's tracks. As in the far north of Siberia, so around the Thomson River, the Indians never brought a bear's carcass into a tent or through a door of a house, 'because women use the entrance'. According to Uno Harva, all these traditions are evidence of the operation of magicval preservatives, since a woman ran the risk of attack by the animal's spirit, simply because she was a woman, and he quotes a Finnish song sung on the return from the bear-hunt: 'Take care, poor women, watch for your wombs and the tiny fruit inside them!'
Like all large carnivores, the bear shares the symbolism of the chthonian unconscious. A lunar creature and therefore nocturnal, it originates in the inner landscapes of the Earth Mother. It is therefore all too easy to understand why so many Altaic peoples regarded the bear as their ancestor. This gives point to Harva's observation that: 'Sternberg mentions the existence in the Amur Valley of several tribes which derive their ancestry from a tiger or a bear, because their ancestor dreamed he had sexual intercourse with one or other of these creatures.'
Until recently there were graveyards for bears in Siberia.
In alchemical terms, the bear corresponds to instincts and the the primary phases of development. It's colour is BLACK, the same as that of primary matter. Powerful, violent, dangerous, uncontrolled, like some primal force, the bear is traditionally the emblem of cruelty, blood-thirstiness and brutality. And yet there is another side to the symbol. The bear can to a degree be tamed: it can be made to dance and do tricks. it can be allured by honey, for which it is a glutton. What in constast the bear provides in its simpleminded clumsiness with the thistledown flightt of the bee whose nectar he drinks and that of the dancer whose steps he copies. All in all the bear symbolizes elemental forces, susceptible of evolutionary progress, but also liable to awesome regressions.

Hare/Rabbit In that tapestry which serves as the backcloth to deep dream-states and on which the archetypes of the world of symbols are depicted, it is essential to bear in mind the vast importance of animals connected with the Moon, if we are to understand the significance of those countless mysterious hares and rabbits, familiar and often awkward companions of the moonlight of the imagination. They haunt mythology, belief and folklore. They are all alike, even in their contradictions, just as all images of the Moon are alike and, like the Moon, hares and rabbits are linked to that oldest of deities, the Earth Mother, to the symbolism of water which makes fruitful and regenerates, of plants and of the constant renewal of life in all its shapes. This is the world of that great mystery of life renewed through death. The spirit, a creature of the day, comes into collision with it, prey to desire and fear at the sight of creatures which necessarily hold ambivalent meanings for the spirit.
Hares and rabbits are lunar creatures because they sleep during the day and come out to play at night; because, like the Moon, they are able to appear and vanish with the silence and speed of shadows; and lastly, because they are proverbially prolific.
Sometimes the Moon even becomes a hare, or at the very least the hare is regarded as a manifestation of the Moon's powers. The Aztecs believed that the marks on the Moon's face were caused by a rabbit which a god has hurled at it, the sexual significance of this image being readily apparent. In Europe, Asia and Africa, these marks are hares or rabbits, or even a Great Rabbit.
When not the Moon herself, the hare or rabbit is her accomplice or close relative. They cannot be her husband, since this would require that they be of an opposite nature, but they are her brothers or lovers and, in the instance, there is something incestuous about the relationship, a type of left-handed holiness. In the Aztec calendar, the years of the rabbit were governed by the planet Venus, in their cosmogony the elder brother of the Sun, who committed adultery with his sister-in-law, the Moon. As the Popol-Vuh shows, the Maya-Quiché believed that when the Moon goddess was in danger she was helped and saved by a hero-Rabbit. The Codex Borgia illustrates this belief by bringing together, in the same hieroglyphic, drawings of a rabbit and of a water-pot, representing the Moon. by saving the Moon, the Rabbit saved the principle of cyclical renewal of life which, on Earth, controls the continuity of plant, animal and human species.
Rabbits - or more frequently, hares - thus become culture-heroes, Demiurges or mythic ancestors. Such was Menebuch, the Great Hare, of the Algonquin Ojibwa and Sioux Winebago Indians. Possessing the secret of the elements of life - a quality accorded to this animal in Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics - it placed its knowledge at the service of mankind. Menebuch came down to earth in the guise of a hare and allowed his uncles and aunts, that is to say, the human race, to live as they do to this day. He taught them manual skills. He fought monsters from the depths of the waters. After the Flood, he made the Earth anew and, when he went away, he left it in the state in which it is today'. It is because he shares in the unknowable and the unattainable while still remaining mankind's familiar friend and neighbor on Earth, that the mythic hare or rabbit is an intercessor and go-between between this world and the transcendent realities of the Otherworld. Menebuch is the only link between mankind and the invisible Great Manitou, the all-powerful sky-god who, like Jehovah, embodies the archetypal Father-figure. Menebuch is, therefore, a Hero-Son, whom Gilbert Durand regards as being akin to Christ. 'Like some Indians, African and American Blacks regard the Moon as a hare, an animal both hero and martyr, symbolically akin to the Christian lamb, a gentle, inoffensive creature, emblem of the lunar Messiah, and of the son, in contrast with the conquering and solar warrior'. After the Algonquin has been converted to Christianity, they effectively transformed Menebuch into Jesus Christ. Radin sees this as an archetypal expression of the second stage in the concept of the Hero, succeeding the Trickster, closely related to the JUGGLER of the Tarot, whose motivation is purely instinctive or infantile. 'Menebuch,' Radin explains, 'the culture-hero, is a weak yet struggling figure, ready to sacrifice childishness for the sake of further development'.
Ancient Egyptian mythology corroborates this induction by clothing the great initiate, Osiris, in the shape of a hare, which was torn to pieces and thrown into the waters of the Nile to ensure the seasonal cycle of renewal. Today, the Shi'ite peasants of Anatolia explain the taboo on eating hare's flesh by saying that the creature is a reincarnation of Ali. They regard Ali as the true intercessor between Allah and all True Believers, for whom this saintly hero sacrificed his two sons. This would emphasize and explain the hermetic saying of the Bektãshi Dervishes: 'Muhammad is the chamber and Ali is the doorway.' One might also instance the appearance in India of the Sheshajãtaka, or Bodhisattva in the shape of a hare, which sacrificed itself by leaping into the flames.
The hare which, like the Moon, dies in order to be reborn, became thereby the Taoist's maker of the medicine of immortality and is depicted working under a FIG-TREE, pounding herbs in a MORTAR. Chinese smiths used hare's gall when smelting sword-blades. It was believed to impart strength and durability to the steel for the very same reasons which led to Burmese to regard the creature as the ancestor of the lunar dynasty.
The ambivalent symbolism of the hare is often to be seen in images and beliefs so deeply tinged by these two aspects of its symbol - the lucky and the unlucky, the left and the right - that it is hard to distinguish them. Thus, the Chinese said that the doe became pregnant by looking at the Moon, and Yang Chu wrote that 'girls nearly always behave like doe-rabbits gazing at the Moon'. Hence the Chinese belief that, if moonlight falls on a pregnant woman, her child will be born with a hare-lip. This touches upon the widespread and varied sexual significance which brings together hares, rabbits and the Moon. In Cambodia, when hares mated or gave birth it was supposed to bring fertilizing rainfall, but the Moon, being yin, was also its provider. Aztec farmers believed that what protected their harvests was not a rabbit-god, but four hundred rabbits, four hundred expressing the idea of the uncountable, or rather inexhaustible plenty. however, these familiar little rustic gods were also lords of idleness and drunkenness, two vices severely punished by Aztec law. The same ambivalence recurs in the significance attached by fortune-tellers to calendar years of the rabbit. These could be both lucky or unlucky since 'the rabbit hops from one side to the other'.
Whatever is linked to ideas of plenty, of rampant growth and of the proliferation of living things or material possessions, also carries with it the seeds of unchastity, wastefulness, lust and excess. Thus at any given moment in the history of civilizations, the spirit will rise in rebellion against symbols of elemental life, which it will attempt to control and to channel. In fact, the spirit fears that these forces, naturally active and positive in the infancy of mankind and of the world, may subsequently destroy the very things which they have created. In what may be termed 'the Age of Reason', people turn against animist worship. It is at this point that hares are placed under a taboo. Deuteronomy and Leviticus damn them as unclean and forbidden food. Nearer home, the Celts in Ireland and Brittany, according to Caesar, 'raised hares as pets, but never ate their flesh'. Similar taboos were to be found among Baltic peoples, throughout Asia and as far afield as China. Looking back to Menebuch and the Trickster, the hare may thus be conceived as symbolically associated with puberty, without the excuses of childhood but producing its first-fruits. In the bestiary of lunar creatures, MONKEYS and FOXES are nearest neighbors to rabbits and hares. All were the companions of HECATE, protector of children, but haunting crossroads and inventor of witchcraft.

Dog There cannot be a mythology which does not associate a dog, be it as Anubis, T'ien K'uan, CERBERUS, Xolotl or Garm, with death, Hell, the Underworld or with those invisible realms ruled by the deities of Earth or Moon. At first glance, therefore, the extremely complex symbolism of the dog seems linked to the threefold elements EARTH, WATER and MOON, with their recognized hidden and female significance, all connected with that basics of growth, sexuality and divination, as much in terms of the unconscious as of the subconscious.
Evidence of the primary mythic role played by the dog, that of psychopomp, is worldwide. Having been man's companion in the light of living day, the dog becomes his guide through the darkness of death. At every stage of Western cultural history the dog has featured among such powerful psychopomps as Anubis, Cerberus, Thoth, HECATE, or HERMES. But dogs are universal phenomena and make their appearance in every culture in different forms which serve only to enrich this primary symbolism.
The dog-headed deities, so common in Ancient Egyptian art, had the duty of 'imprisoning and destroying the enemies of light' and of standing guard at the GATES of holy places.
The Ancient Germans had a terrifying hound, Garm, which guarded the entrance to Niflheim, the realm of the dead, a land of frost and darkness.
The Ancient mexicans bred a special dog to accompany and guide the dead in the beyond. With the body was buried 'a lion-coloured dog - in other words a dog with fur the colour of the Sun - to accompany the dead person just as the dog-god, Xolotl, had accompanied the Sun during his journey under the Earth'. In other instances the dog would be sacrificed on its master's grave to help him to cross, at the end of his long journey, the nine rivers which barred access to 'the eternal house of the dead, Chocomemictlan, the Ninth Hell'.
Even today the Lacandon Indians of Guatemala set four figures of dogs, made from palm-leaves, at the four corners of their graves.
The THIRTEENTH and final constellation in the Ancient Mexican ZODIAC was the constellation of the Dog. It induces not only notions of death, of the end and of the Underworld, but also of initiation and of rebirth for, in the words of the French poet, Gérard de Nerval, 'the thirteenth comes full cycle and is first again.' And this example affords a clearer understanding of some details in the funeral rites of shamanistic peoples in Siberia on the opposite side of the world to Central America. Thus among the Goldi, a man was always buried with his dog, while, among a tribe of horseman, the dead man's HORSE was sacrificed and its flesh given to the dogs and birds which would guide the dead man to the realms of Heaven and Hell.
The dead, the old and the sick in Persia and Bactria were thrown to the dogs. In Bombay, Parsees would place a dog close to a dying person so that human and animal stared into one another's eyes. on the mythical bridge, Chinvat, where the souls of the dead are judged by the pure and impure gods, the dogs which guard the bridge beside the pure gods guide the righteous Paradise.
However, dogs, so familiar with the invisible, do more than merely guide the dead. They also act as intermediaries between the two worlds and as spokesmen for the living to question the dead and the Underworld deities of their land.
Thus the Bantu who live among the Kasai, a tributary of the Congo River, have been observed to use a method of divination by hypnosis. in it, the witch-doctor's 'customer', linked to the former by a thread, goes down into a pit in which, under hypnosis, he gains contact with the spirits thanks to the presence at his side of a dog and a HEN. In this region the appearance of a dog in dreams is a warning that the dreamer is the victim of sorcery. finally, and perhaps most strikingly, these same observers have recorded the following custom employed by the Bantu to solve the problem of the unexplained death of any villager. The chief hangs the dead person's dog on a tree, covering it with a LEOPARD's skin, doubtless with the aim of heightening its aggressive instincts. The flesh of the animal so sacrificed is shared among all the villagers, who are obliged to eat it all except for the head. The chief keeps the latter and, having smeared it with chalk (see WHITE) questions it in these words: 'You, dog, and you, leopard, look closely round! You dog, pick up the scent of the death which laid this man low! You see souls, you see sorcerers, make no mistake about the person who caused this man's death!'
When, some time later, one of the villagers who has eaten the dog's flesh falls ill, the dog will have pointed out the guilty party.
However, this very gift of second sight and the familiarity of dogs with death and the invisible powers of darkness may on the contrary rouse suspicions of the black arts. Evans-Pritchard has recorded an instance among the Azande of southern Sudan in which trial by ordeal fixed the responsibility for unexplained deaths upon the dogs suspected of them.
Here, too, there is a correspondence between African and Siberian custom. At Telyut funeral feasts, the dogs were given the dead man's share of the food after these words have been spoken: 'When you were alive, you yourself could eat: now that you are dead, your soul eats!'
Elsewhere Banyowski has described a shaman's robes made of tanned dogskin, showing the powers of divination attributed to this animal. The same belief recurs in West Africa, on the former Slave Coast. Bernard Maupoil has recorded how one of his informants from Porto Novo told him that to strengthen the powers of the ROSARY which he used in divination, he had buried it for several days in the belly of a dog sacrificed for that purpose.
To the Iroquois the dog was both messenger and intercessor and traditionally, at their New Year festivals, a white dog was sacrificed. 'This sacrifice formed the centre-piece of the festival. Effectively the dog was a messenger who hastened off to Heaven bearing the prayers of mankind'.
Although dogs descend to the Underworld, more often they are its guardians, while its rulers are dog-headed. Innumerable examples might be added to those which have been mentioned above. In Greek mythology, the goddess of darkness, Hecate, could sometimes take the shape of a mare or of a bitch. She haunted CROSSROADS, a pack of hell-hounds at her heels. Similarly, when the shamans of the Altai Mountains recounted their Orphic journeys, they told of their encounters with dogs at the gates of the home of the Lord of the Underworld. The tenth day of the Aztec soothsaying calendar was the day of the dog. Its patron was the god of the Underworld and it was in the tenth Heaven that the deities of darkness dwelt.
The association of dog, chthonian deities and human sacrifice comes out most clearly in a pre-Inca Peruvian myth recorded by Francisco de Avila in his chronicle compiled in the early years of the Spanish conquest. According to this myth, the beginning of 'new times' - probably corresponding with the mythical beginning of the agrarian cycle - were marked by the triumph of the sky-god decided that 'since he had fed on human flesh, from henceforth he should feed upon the flesh of dogs.' This is the reason, Father de Avila deduced, why the Yunca, who worshipped the defeated deity, still ate dogs' flesh to that day.
Like Hermes, the dog is a conductor of souls, and also possesses healing powers when the need arises. In Greek mythology, the dog is one of the attributes of Asclepios, the Roman Aesculapius, the hero and god of healing.
Lastly, with its knowledge of the visible and invisible sides of human life, the dog is often held up as a culture-hero, most often as the master or conqueror of fire, as well as being a mythic ancestor. This enhances its symbolism with a sexual significance.
Thus the Bambara liken the dog to the penis, which they euphemistically term 'the dog'. According to Zahan, this comes about through the comparison which they make between the 'anger' of the penis - its erection - when confronted by the vulva, and the dog's barking at the approach of strangers. It may also arise from 'inordinate male sexual appetite which can only be compared with the dog's greed for food'.
Mongolo-Turkic myths take note of women made pregnant by LIGHT. They often go on to say that after the latter had gone in to the woman it left her in the shape of a yellow dog. This relates to some extent with the Aztec 'lion-coloured dog', a patently solar emblem.
Dogs and wolves were, in any case, founders of a number of Mongol and Turkic dynasties, which tends to widen the scope of Amerindian myths and to corroborate them. Thus, the Alaskan Dene tribe believe that the human race sprang from secret sexual relations between a woman and a dog. Aztec tradition told how the dog-god, Xolotl, stole from the Underworld the BONES from which the gods were to create a fresh human race,
As a mythic ancestor, the dog was often to be seen in the spots on the face of the moon, and just like other lunar animals such as the HARE, the FOX, etc., was often considered a slightly rakish ancestor and hero. In Melanesia he was ancestor of one of the four social classes studied by Malinowski. The Roman she-wolf should be compared with the countless other members of the dog family which were culture-heroes, always linked with the institution of the agrarian cycle.
However, in these traditions the dog most frequently appears in the guise of the hero who discovered fire, the spark of fire often preceding or being confounded with the spark of life. This the Chiluk from the White Nile and all the tribes of the Upper Nile believe that the dog stole fire from the serpent, the rainbow, the sky-gods or the Great Spirit himself, and took it away to the tip of its tail. As the dog ran past the hearth, the tip of its tail caught alight and, yelping with pain, it set on fire the bush - from which men had only to take it. The Fali of northern Cameroon associate the god with the black monkey, the avatar (embodiment) of the BLACKSMITH who stole fire, while their neighbors, the Prodovko, believe that the dog brought mankind their two most precious possessions - fire and millet. Again, the Ibo, Ijo and other peoples of southeastern Nigeria believe that the dog stole fire from Heaven to give to mankind. In South America canis vertulus was not the conquerer of fire but its original owner. The TWIN heroes, taking the shapes of SNAIL and FISH, stole it from him. In North America the symbolic similarity between fire and the sexual act is inherent in other myths which show the dog as the hero who obtained fire. Thus to the Sia and the Navajo of New Mexico, the Karok, the Gallinomero, the Achomawi and the Maidu of California, the COYOTE, the great hero of the prairies, either discovers fire by friction, or else steals it and carries it off in his EARS, or else organizes a relay race, thanks to which mankind steals fire from the gods.
Myths from the Pacific region underline still more emphatically the sexual undertones always linked with the conquest of fire. In New Guinea, several tribes believe that the dog stole fire from its first owner, the RAT, and in this case it is chthonian fire. The Motu-Motu and the Ozokaiva from Papua New Guinea are convinced that the dog is lord of fire since it always sleeps close to the hearth and growls when you try to drive it away. However, a myth which Frazer recorded, this time in New Britain, demonstrates most strikingly the link between dog, fire and sexuality. It tells us how, long ago, a male secret society was the only group who knew how to make fire by rubbing two sticks together. A dog watched them and took his discovery to women in this fashion. He painted his TAIL in the colours of the men's society and began to run a log of wood on which a woman was sitting until it burst into flame. Thereupon the women began to cry and said to the dog: 'You have dishonoured me and now you must marry me.'
The Murut of North Borneo believe the dog to be both their mythic ancestor and a culture-hero. The eldest child of the incestuous union of a man and his sister, sole survivors of the FLOOD, the dog taught the new race of mankind all the new arts and crafts, among them that of making fire. Once again, this is an explanation of the beginnings of the agrarian cycle. Their neighbors, the Dyak, believe that in the aftermath of the flood, the dog showed the women the secret of fire by rubbing his tail against a creeper. Finally, according to a myth from the Caroline Islands, fire was given to the woman by the THUNDER-god who appeared to her in the shape of a dog. The last example clearly shows the oscillation of the symbol between sky and Underworld and takes us back to Central America. The Maya, as we have seen, believed that the dog guided the Sun on his journey underground and hence represented the Black Sun, while to the Aztecs, the dog was the synthesis and very symbol of fire.
In the Celtic world the dog, or hound, was associated with the warrior caste. In contrast with the Greco-Roman world, the hound was used as an object of laudatory comparison and metaphor. The name of their greatest hero, Cùchulainn, means 'Hound of Culann' and we know that all Celts, both insular and continental, trained dogs for war and hunting. To compare a hero with a hound was to do him honour and pat tribute to his valour in battle. There is a complete absence of the pejorative and there does not seem to have been a hell-hound like Cerberus. The maleficent hound is only found in folklore, probably under the influence of Christianity. In Brittany, the Black Dog of the Monts d'Arrée represents the damned. The chief taboo placed upon Cùchulainn was against eating the hound's flesh. The witches who doomed him to death, offered it to him and made him eat it when he was going out to battle.
Some aspects of the symbolism of the dog which have been described above - culture-hero, mythic ancestor, symbol of sexual potency (and hence everlastingness), seducer, lacking chastity, overflowing with vitality like nature in the Spring, or fruit of unlawful marriage - represent the bright side of the symbol. Equal attention should be paid to its dark side, and the most convincing illustration of this is implacable prejudice against the animal in Muslim society.
Islam has created in the dog the image of all that is utterly vile in creation. According to Shabistari, to be attached to things in this world is to become identified with the corpse-eater, the dog. The dog is the symbol of greed and of gluttony. Dogs and ANGELS cannot live together. However, Islamic tradition states that dogs have fifty-two characteristics, half of them holy and half of them evil. This dogs keep watch, are patient and do not bite their masters. On the other hand they bark at scribes, etc. Their faithfulness is praised: 'If a man has no brothers, the dogs are his brethren. The heart of a dog is like the heart of his master.'
Dogs are also regarded as unclean. Jinn often appears in the shape of black dogs. Dogs howling near a house presage death and their flesh is used as a preservative against barrenness, ill-luck, etc. In Tangier, a puppy's or a kitten's flesh is eaten as a preservative against witchcraft. Unlike other dogs, the greyhound is not regarded as unclean but, on the contrary, to be endowed with baraka. It protects its owner against the evil eye. Syrian Muslims believe that angels never enter a house in which there is a dog. According to tradition, the Prophet Muhammad proclaimed that any utensil from which a dog had drunk should be cleansed SEVEN times, the first time with earth. He is supposed to have prohibited the killing of all dogs except black dogs with two white patches above the eyes, such dogs being the evil one. Killing a dog makes the person unclean. It is also said that it is as bad as killing seven men, from the belief that dogs have seven lives. The name of the dog which watched over the Seven Sleepers in their cave is used in charms.
Muslims, nevertheless, distinguish between the 'unclean' run of ordinary dogs and the greyhound, its noble appearance making it a 'pure' creature. Dante's 'envoy', the veltro, was a greyhound, a dog depicted by Dürer and one identified with the harbinger of Christ's second coming. St Dominic's emblem is a dog spitting fire and members of the order which he founded are called Domini-can[e]s ('Hounds of the Lord') who with their voices protect the House of God or are heralds of his World. In the Far East the symbolism of the dog is fundamentally ambivalent: benign, because dogs are man's close companions and vigilant protectors of his home; malign, because they are closely related to wolves and jackals and regarded as contemptible, unclean beasts. These aspects are not confined to specific geographical limits but spread everywhere.
Very similar feelings are prevalent in Tibet, where dogs are emblems of sensual appetites and sexuality, but at the same time jealously as well. The Buddha taught that whoever lived like a dog, would become a dog when the body decayed after death.
In Japan dogs are generally regarded favorably and. as faithful companions, their figures protect children and assist women in childbirth. In China they are no less faithful companions of the Immortals even in their apotheosis. When the Great Venerable appeared on Mount T'ai She in the days of the Han emperor, Wu, he has a yellow dog on a leash. Han-tzu's dog turned red, like the Celestial Dog, sprouted wings and gained immortality. The alchemist Wei Po-yang ascended into Heaven with his dog. The dog is the ancestor and emblem of some tribes, and perhaps even of the Chinese themselves since P'an-ku may have been a dog.
The Celestial Dog (T'ien-k'uan) is storm and meteor; he provides the crash of thunder and the flash of lightening and is as red as fire. Although he is foe to the demon OWL, he is the herald of war. As protection against the owl, dogs are always made to bark by pinching their ears. According to some ancient traditions the Chinese also depicted CHAOS in the shape of a huge shaggy dog. It had eyes, but was blind; ears, but was deaf; and it was alive, despite lacking the FIVE internal organs.
Another typically Chinese symbol was that of the 'straw dogs'. Kaltenmark suggests that they may originally have been shamanistic, while Wieger describes them as acting 'as filters against spells' which were destroyed after use. The symbol employed by Chuang Tzu depends precisely one the ephemeral existance of an object which is cast aside, trampled under foot and burned after it has performed its office. He concludes that what has ceased to be useful must be destroyed incase it should become harmful. Lao-Tzu takes straw dogs as the symbols of the ephemeral nature of the things of this world which the sage renounces. According to Chuang Tzu, in Celestial Fate, 'Before being offered, straw dogs were kept in chests wrapped in linen. After being offered to the dead, they were burned, for, had they been kept for further use, each number of the dead man's family would have suffered from nightmares.'
Central Asia provides myths which might be described as intermediate, 'missing links' for understanding how the dog gradually came to be regarded as unclean, accursed and stained with the indelible mark of original sin.
Some Tatar tribes believed that, at the Creation, God entered man to the protection of the dog to guard him against the assault of the Evil One. However, the dog allowed the 'enemy' to bribe him and thereby became the 'He' responsible for the fall of man. The Yakut believed that it was images which God entrusted to the dog's protection. Having let the devil befoul them, the dog was punished by being given its present shape by God. The same theme is taken up, with variations, by peoples related to the Finns and living along the Volga. They all share this important detail: the dog was originally naked and was given its coat by the Evil One as a reward for its treachery. This treachery took the physical shape of fur, and the dog's activities as an intermediary gradually made it an unclean and untouchable animal. Worse still, it brought sickness to mankind and that inner foulness which, like the dog's fur, was born of the Devil's spittle. Thus the dog was responsible for death, the ultimate outcome of these disasters and of these befoulings and slaverings. The Buryat, for their part, say that God cursed the false dog in these terms: 'You shall always go hungry; you shall gnaw bones and eat scraps of man's food and he shall whip and beat you'.
At this nadir of its malign aspect the symbol of the dog coincides with that of the SCAPEGOAT.
Harva regards these Asiatic myths as being tinged with Iranian dualism and in this context reminds us that a dog, the creature of Ahura Mazda, played a dominant part in the ancient Persian religion by driving away evil spirits. Once again the symbol oscillates within the myth. As Jean-Paul Roux remarks, this duality, the property of the symbol of the dog in the thought of Asian peoples, for whom it was at one and the same time a guardian and benign spirit and the object of God's curse, makes it the preeminent example of the 'fallen angel'.
To sum up, the dog forms an ambiguous symbol and no civilization has ever decided on one or the other of its opposing aspects. However, in this context it is striking to remember that alchemists and 'philosophers' used the analogy of the dog devoured by the wolf for the purification of GOLD by ANTIMONY, the penultimate stage of the 'Great Work'. Now dog and wolf are none other than the two aspects of the symbol in question, which undoubtedly is resolved in this esoteric image as well as being given in deepest significance. Simultaneously dog and wolf, the sage - or saint - purifies himself by devouring himself; in other words, by an act of self-sacrifice he finally reaches the last stage of spiritual self-mastery.


***

TO BE CONTINUED

[Dolphinny447]

Well, futureidol...you've certainly made quite the efforts here...lots of reading! Thanks for the info...I am very interested in the numbers and symbols as well and there is definitely alot of it in the show - some could be just chance, but most I believe is deliberate (especially the numbers). Whether it all leads to the "answer" to all the mysteries on the Island, I am not so certain, however, I do believe they may lead us to various connectins to the ppl and the Island as a whole...a sum to all of it's parts, so to speak. With that said, we may never learn the actual meanings, afterall, was the number 47 ever revealed as to the real meaning in Alias? (not that I am aware of anyways)...but it sure keeps things interesting for those of us who like to decode, decipher and analyze :)

BTW...first post, but I have been lurking and watching the show since day one (sorry haven't jumped in yet, ppl seem to always beat me to whatever I wanted to say - lol).

[OneIrishRover]

futureidol,

um, what's wrong with cutting and pasting? wuddn't that be a good thing?

Jus' wonderin'

:p

[futureidol]

There's nothing wrong with it, and if there was a really good symbols dictionary online I certainly would do just that! But there isn't...

[sawyerhasbestlines]

Good job future idol!

Neil, and any other tarot dabblers,

The tarot is the story of the fool's journey. When he starts off, he is naive and steps out (off a cliff) into the great unknown. By the end of the story the fool is wise as he comes full circle.

I think the first character the fool encounters is the Magician. Once he's mastered this phase, he moves on to others.

If Locke is the magician (major arcana) that all the fools seem to encounter (Jack discovering water), (Boone with his sister's death vision), (Charlie's drug problem), (Sawyer and the Boar), etc. then that means they will proceed to other things; ie the Hangman. Neil, I agree with this on you. The hangman is all about having to make a choice. One gets paralized till they can make a decision. Charlie had amnesia a bit but then decided to kill Ethan, a very big choice.

Claire is identicle looking to The Empress on my tarot pack, representing "fertility, growth and SOMETHING NEW".

Black and white is a prominent symbol in the tarot. It's in the chariot card. The driver of the chariot has two strong horses pulling/driving him in different directions, one black, and one white. The driver requires a lot of strength to hold the tension between the two. I think have seen some of them wrestling with this already in various ways.

The High Priestess carries the b & w motif, as does Judgement.

The Sun is a card in the major arcana, and also one of the names of the characters.

My take on Danielle is she is like major arcana: The Moon, or Hecate. The moon goddess became one of the underworld (she lives underground) rulers who sent demons to torment men through their dreams. Hecate is associated with child birth. She also has the power to bestow or withold to mortals any desired gift. (perhaps Locke's ability to walk) Her companions in the underworld are The 3 Erinyes or The Furies (think of the bird/monster), the 3 Moiraye or Fates.

Cerberus is Hecate's animal and spirit form who lives at the crossroads, tombs, and scenes of crimes.

Anyone else want to join in on the tarot symbolism? I'm thinking of copying this over to Paralllel Myths thread.

[drabauer]

Yes, please do bring this to the Parallel Myths thread SHTBL!

I have just started an article on psychoanalysis of Greek God archetypes, and hope to contribute something there as well. Meanwhile, it really looks as though the tarot might serve as some sort of roadmap for the castaway's journeys.

Thanks futureidol and all!

[mspibb]

DRAB said:
I have just started an article on psychoanalysis of Greek God archetypes


LOL, OMG you're John Locke (before the crash that is). LMAO

[sawyerhasbestlines]

Drabauer,

Have you posted the article?

There is a tarot deck called "the mythic deck". It's sort of a combo Jungian/greek mythology deck. It's where I get my info and the deck I use more than others. I could go on an on with this.

[drabauer]

Sounds very cool, please do Sawyerhtbl! Real Life has gotten hectic, so it will be awhile before I can do anything about the article (I don't think it's available online). But I would love to hear about your mythological/Jungian tarot deck!

[sexy baby mama]

I love this discussion and the many issues it raises in relation to the show. A lot of people could laugh and say it's just a TV show (is it??), but the cool thing about works of art (including those made mostly for entertainment, like TV, have many differnt ways to look at it. Like a painting, each viewer gets different messages, and that's great.

A wonderful way to see another's viewpoint, spread knowledge, and learn new things! I've been wondering about the tarot, mystical/spiritual elements all along.

ETA: futureidol says this: Now dog and wolf are none other than the two aspects of the symbol in question, which undoubtedly is resolved in this esoteric image as well as being given in deepest significance. Simultaneously dog and wolf, the sage - or saint - purifies himself by devouring himself; in other words, by an act of self-sacrifice he finally reaches the last stage of spiritual self-mastery.

WOW! That is really significant in relation to the show, don't people think? Boone's act of sacrificing his love for Shannon, Sayid's sacrificing his lookin for Nadia, Jack's sacrificing his hurt against his father, and so on, and so on.

[Australopithecus]

Without having read the whole god damn dissertation about a simple TV show, all I have to contribute is this: 8, 1, and 5 are all Fibonacci numbers. Granted, they aren't in sequence, but still.

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc.

[sexy baby mama]

Did we ever get this thread archived anywhere in the index? Because it's so good, I'd hate to lose it.

[sawyerhasbestlines]

Lots of symbols last night, some continuing.

1. The main theme is the DEATH card, symbolized by Jin's handcuff and the white flowers.

2. Shackles on Jin's wrist.
That remainder handcuff is symbolized as bondage (not S&M) in the death card. The death card does not literally mean death. But it's more like the need to end a particular "era" in one's life, or chapter. Time to let things go and begin anew. It can be the letting go of an addiction that has grips on you, or in Jin's case: his controlling ties to his father-in-law, and the letting go of his shame for his own father.

3. White flower.
White in a lot of cultures is a mourning color, in the west, we can see it symbolized in the lily flower. Jin is always giving Sun little white flowers. I see them as "little deaths." Always trying to start something new, a marriage, position in life, etc.

STARTING OVER
Death is like winter, in that spring will follow, with new little plants and life. I predict after a small duration of time alone, Sun and Jin will find themselves, first as individuals, then together again rediscover themselves as a couple, much better than they ever were before. It will be their real marriage. They will lay to rest their baggage, and I predict, a baby will come.

[Australopithecus]

1 One is the symbol of homo eretus. Human beings are the only species to walk upright

Depending on your definition of "upright," that just isn't true. Not to mention that if humans are the only species to walk upright, why would "1" be the symbol of Homo Erectus? We are Homo Sapiens.

[jaklynrose]

all I have to contribute is this: 8, 1, and 5 are all Fibonacci numbers. Granted, they aren't in sequence, but still.

I had noticed this also. In the 3-term fibonacci sequence the Lucas equivalent of the 11th term is 815, but what the heck that could mean, I have no idea. We could probably take any number and find some mathematical sequence it's a part of. The Fibonacci numbers and Lucas numbers both do calculate the Golden Ratio (phi) so I guess it could represent nature in perfection, but I think its just a reach, finding something in nothing!

[LoStMyMiNd]

I started another thread on this and hopefully the mods will delete it or move it over here. But here is what I read last night in "Take A Walk On the Wild Side" by R. Gary Patterson.

This is regarding a lesson Jimi Hendrix gave his girlfriend in numerology. "The number 8, for various reasons is used for evil purposes. Then he wrote the number 15 in front of DEVIL and the sign =. In this case he claimed that 15 equals the devil."

Interesting isn't it?

[Australopithecus]

Since when is Jimi Hendrix an authority on numerology?

[LoStMyMiNd]

Good question and glad you asked. Quoting further form this book,

"Hendrix's fascination with the occult continued with his release of Axis: Bold As Love. The axis is like the Christian cross or the voodoo peristyle - a link between the heaven and earth. If the axis of the earth were altered, everything would be different. Entirely new continents, new directions for north and south, and sea inundating shores that once laid peaceful.....

"Spiritual awareness is also evident in the study of numerology. Monika Dannemann writes about Hendrix's awareness of numerology and his belief in mysterious powers in her book The Inner World of Jimi Hendrix. He believed these powers are found everywhere but specifically in certain words, numbers and names and felt that there are deep mysteries hidden in some anciet words."

The change of axis sure does remind me of Lost. Almost too eerie

[lloydf]

I will add just a simple deduction from a post in another thread of mine.

8 accepted island lovers (stay)
5 rejected lsland haters (leave)
and 1 individual that will consistently bridge the gap between the 2 tribes, entities or sects. However you would like to think of them as. And Hurley is the One.

[sawyerhasbestlines]

bump for doc

tarot stuff above re: Jin-centric

[sawyerhasbestlines]

bumping for Drabauer's tarot search

[lacenaire]

How about exploring the interpretation by Dumezil of Indoeuropean myth about 3 levels in society?

Those who pray : Locke kills boar (The latin for priest is SACERDOS - the one who ritually sacrifices the holy pig). Only white males?? It seems natural for a priest to have a disciple. Many disciples turn to heretics (like Ethan?).

Those who fight: Only males??? Exception: Kate = Joan of Arch? Warrior Kings have thaumaturgic powers (healers).

THose who work: Lowest class. Michael says to Hurley he's tired of being treated like a 2nd class citizen (when tried to hunt the boar injured him). Yin fishes. Sun grows an orchard. Hurley fishes. Charlie fishes (though he wants to be a warrior).

[gertie]

How interesting, Lacenaire. Glad I don't live in that awful world.

How does killing a boar mean "one who prays". Why isn't Locke considered a worker, since eating food meant getting a boar dead, and he killed it for that reason? Isn't that a type of farming?

All the women have been proven fighters. And Sun, above all (above even Jack), has been proven to be a healer.

Being able to take care of oneself is how people get power. Workers are very successful. They know how to live.

thaumaturgic - what does this mean?

[lacenaire]

Locke isn't a worker cause he sacrifices sacred animals. He's a priest then, not a butcher. So far boars have proven to have some mystical phenomena around them. They cause the survivors to burn the corpses (after days !) , they can trigger memories...

All women are fighters? Just Kate and she's a special "case".

Thaumaturgic means "to work miracles". Kings on earth supposedly receive magic powers from CHrist as they are His defenders until he cames back at the end of times.

In ancient times doctors where also warriors. Achilles was the greater fighter of history and he was taught medicine by Quiron the centaur. Apollo (warrior god) was the inventor of medicine. Indoeuropean kings have also been known as "Shepherd Kings".

Sun doesn't practice the intelectual branch of healing just the popular one and she grows an orchard, that's why she belongs to the working class.

I'm just saying that when reconstructing a society some patterns are being applied. Indoeuropean patriarchy with its 3 class distinction being the model in my opinion.

I'm not saying it's good, just that I see it happening, ok?

[lacenaire]

A flaw detected in 1 object:

Sawyer's letter is almos 30 years old right?
My professional experience with commercial paper that old and preserved in normal conditions is that it should be all yellow due to oxidation. The ink must have start falling off making it almost illegible...

There's more inconsistencies (for real world logics not in a matrix - dream scenario that is):

Sayid should have died of a brain stroke after hours upside down
Charlie should have at least soiled himself after being hung
Claire should have had an early labour due to stress or an abortion due to extenuation
Locke was 1 row behind Jack and he must have passed through those narrow alleys without no one noticing he was on a wheel chair!!!!

[MeLikeyJack]

I tried to post this under the #8 thread in drabauer's numerology, but the page is unavailable. Can someone bring that back?

I just wanted to see if anyone else noticed the red #8 on the lamp table in the hotel room after Shannon and Boone hook up in "Hearts and Minds"? It was like one of those "no smoking" white plastic easels, but it had a red 8 on it instead. I wonder if there's other numbers in this episode hidden like that as well. Need to rewatch and look for that...

[drabauer]

Bumping to catch the finale's symbolic resonances . . .

[topperdog]

I get the feeling I need to rewatch the entire season again with certain things in mind now that the finale is over. I am guessing there are a lot of things missed in earlier episodes that may be more apparent when watching with a purpose.

[DalilahWalker]

Symbolism 4 8 15 16 23 42

4

Represent the union of the three Persons of the Saint Trinity in only one Being. In this sense the number 4 symbolizes the family, being considered as another image of the number 1.

Simple projection of the unit, it is the number of the organization and the perfect rhythm.

In the Greek mythology, it is the number of Jupiter, alive law, master of the protection and the justice, organizer of all that was created.

Symbol of the totality, it is considered by the initiates as the root of all things.

Number of the double duality, two plus two, and of the universal measure, according to the Pythagorean.

Represent the sense of the revelation, the stability, according to saint Jerome.

Saint Ambroise sees in 4 a luckless number.

Represented symbolically by the square or the cross.

For the Amerindians, this number is the perfection: the prayers are repeated four times, the dances have four tempo, and the warriors do four pauses before to rush on their enemies.

Symbolizes the Earth, or what is terrestrial, the totality of created and revealed, according to the Bible.

Symbolize the incarnation of the beings in the matter.

Symbol of the feminine or the woman, for anatomical reasons: the four lips on the body of the woman.

Number of the force, this symbol is often reproduced on arms.

Number of the balance.

In Japan, the four brings misfortune. They avoid to pronounce it because the same word means "the death".

8
Symbolism
Number of the perfection, the infinity. In mathematics the symbol of the infinity is represented by a 8 laid down.

Symbol of the cosmic Christ.

Number figuring the immutable eternity or the self-destruction. It represents also the final point of the manifestation.

In China, the 8 expresses the totality of the universe.

Number of the balance and of the cosmic order, according to the Egyptians.

Number expressing the matter, it is also the symbol of the incarnation in the matter which becomes itself creative and autonomous, governing its own laws.

The number eight corresponds to the New Testament, according to Ambroise.

It is the symbol of the new Life, the final Resurrection and the anticipated Resurrection that is the baptism.

According to Clement of Alexandria, the Christ places under the sign of 8 the one he made to be born again.

Represent the totality and the coherence of the creation in evolution. In China, it expresses the totality of the universe.

Represent the earth, not in its surface but in its volume, since 8 is the first cubic number.

The Pythagoreans have made the number 8 the symbol of the love and the friendship, the prudence and the thinking and they have called it the Great "Tetrachtys".

In Babylon, in Egypt and in Arabia, it was the number of the duplication devoted to the sun, from where the solar disc is decorated of a cross with eight arms.

The number 8 means the multiplicity, for the Japanese.

A favorable number, associated to the prosperity.

It is the number of the restful day, after the 7th day of the creation.

15
Represent the perfect three-dimensional expression - 3 X 5.

The Fathers of the Church frequently associate 15 to the two Testaments because it constitutes the sum of 7, the Sabbath, and 8, the Resurrection (the Sabbath representing the period covered by the Old Testament, and the Resurrection, the period covered by the New Testament).

According to R. Allendy, this number "represents the vital whirlwind 5, animating the cosmos 10, to father the world of the creatures to the image of the Archetype - 1 + 5 = 6. Odd and triangular number, 15 is a dynamic and creative agent; it represents the blooming of the life in the creation".

Represent the plenitude of the science, according to saint Jerome.

It is the spiritual ascension seal, according to Cornelius Agrippa.

For Eckartshausen, it is "the number of the spiritual resurrection, the number of the commandments and the generation".

J. Boehme calls it "the desire the divine love".

According to Creusot, it is the number of Satan, who is developing only in the man such a virus. He imposes subtly his wills, causing blind passions, ephemeral pleasures and degrading.

According to Guy Tarade, it is the number of the man, the human spirit, holy or satanic.


16
Symbolism
Indicate the achievement of the material power.

Being considered as the "final" number of the emanation, it represents the Incarnation completed, according to Abellio.

According to R. Allendy, it represents "the role of the Karma 6 in the cosmic unit 10. This role consists in creating a current of evolution (1 + 6 = 7) but towards two opposite directions, so that, by itself, 16 even number, is unable to choose." As a product of 2 x 8, it is the positive evolution leading to the karmic liberation, or the negative evolution leading to an increasingly tight sequence in the cycles of nature.

For J. Boehme, this number represents "the Abyss", or the hell, opposed to the nirvana.

According to Creusot, it symbolizes the construction and the destruction.

According to Guy Tarade, it is the number of Lucifer.

23
Represent "the principle of organization 3, acting on the differentiation of the world in spirit and matter 20, to allow precisely the incarnation of the spirit in the matter, 2 + 3 = 5", according to R. Allendy.

General
The Roman Catholic Church counts on the whole 23 dogmas: twelve are included in the symbol of the apostles and eleven have been defined by the Church. The last is that of the Assumption - 1950. The Virgin Mary, in her appearances in Amsterdam at the Netherlands, 1945 to 1984, prophesied however that a last "final dogma of Mary" would be adopted by the Catholic Church that would proclaim her "Co-Redeemer, Mediator and Advocate", which would summarize and explains the theology of Mary and "would crown" Our Lady. This last dogma, added to the 23 others to give 24, would summarize the whole of the doctrine of the Church.

The Cabalists affirm that, in the present times, a letter is missing in the Torah. This letter of the alphabet does not appear at all in our "eon" and also is not used in the Torah. The primitive divine alphabet and all the Torah also would base on a series of 23 letters, and not 22, which one is become invisible for us and will reappear only during a next terrestrial period. And it is only because this letter misses now everywhere that we read in the Torah the positive and negative precepts. Each negative aspect is in relation with this missing letter of the primitive alphabet.

At the moment of his assassination, Caesar was stabbed 23 times.

The circulation of the blood through all the human body takes 23 seconds.

The number of articulation in the human arm is 23.

The 23 axioms of the geometry of Euclid.

The 23 days of the "physical" cycle in the biorhythm.

The ovule and the spermatozoon are composed both of 23 chromosomes.

Anniversary of marriage: weddings of clock.

42
According to R. Allendy, this number represents "the antagonism in natural cycles. Here, the Spirit opposed to the matter, the good opposed to the evil, continue their fight in the oscillations of the world and result into the Karma - 4+2 = 6. It is the Karma or the Providence in the evolution - 42 = 6x7".

J. Boehme calls this number "the Sky, place of the divine desire".

Number representing a time of suffering and test, according to the Bible.

In Japan, the 42 is a sign wearing misfortune because it is told SHI-RI, that has for homonymous the death.