Dictionary of Symbolism: Culture Icons and the Meanings Behind Them

479 Pages·1992·223.93 MB·english

by  Hans Biedermann

DICTIONARY
OF
SYMBOLISM
Hans Biedermann
Translated by James Hulbert
e
FactsOnFlle
New York· Oxford
Dictionary of Symbolism
Original Copyright © 1989 by Hans Biedermann
Translation Copyright © 1992 by Facts On File, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cata[oging-in-Publication Data
Biedermann, Hans, 1930-1990
[Knaurs Lexikon der Symbole. Englishl
Dictionary of symbolism 1 Hans Biedermann: translated by James
Hulbert.
p. cm.
Translation of: Knaurs Lexikon der Symbole.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8160-2593-2 (alk. paper)
1. Signs and symbols-Dictionaries. I. Title.
AZI08.B5313 1992
302.23~c20 91-44933
A British CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library.
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Contents
Preface vii
Dictionary 1
Bibliography 397
Pictorial Index 401
General Index 437

Preface
When we talk about symbols and symbolism, we usually reveal one of two very
different attitudes toward them. To some the subject is utterly antiquated, the
sort of thing to which no sensible person should give a second thought in this
day and age. Others go to the opposite extreme: they believe that symbolism
is the key to understanding the intellectual world. Symbols, they claim, enable
people to bring the incomprehensible into the realm of the tangible, where
they can deal with it.
Symbols and metaphors extend into the realm of everyday language and
figures of speech. They also permeate images from the world of advertising, as
well as political slogans and emblems, the parables of our religions, the icons
and writing of foreign and prehistoric cultures, legal customs and artworks,
poetry and historical figures--wherever a "signifier" communicates anything
beyond its own superficial exterior. The wedding ring, the cross, the national
flag, the colors of a traffic light, the red rose, the black of mourning, the
candles on a dinner table-countless objects, gestures, images, and figures of
speech are linked to complex ideas and traditions. The increasing abstractness
and mechanization of our intellectual world seems to be drying up what was
once an almost limitless flow of symbols. Of course, the language of computers
cannot dispense with symbols. And yet older intellectual systems and intuitive
structures were rich in images in a way that their newer counterparts are not.
The new "order" is a constructed one that is not spontaneously appealing; it
is something that we have to learn. The purpose of this book is to acquaint
the reader with the symbols that have been most significant throughout the
history of civilization.
It hardly needs to be said that a single volume cannot provide an exhaustive
account of the topic. Although I have spent years writing and lecturing about
this and related matters, I find it very difficult to delimit the subject matter.
Almost anything can be called a symbol and demand an entry in these pages.
I confined myself to the most significant symbols and used an admittedly sub
jective selection process most noticeable when it comes to symbolic figures
(historical or legendary persons). Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, and E. T. are also
symbolic figures--but I focused my attention on those who had left deeper
impressions in our cultural life. It is clear that we all have our own mythologies
and raise certain (real and mythical) persons to the level of symbols. It is likely
to be in these areas that individual readers will find gaps in this dictionary.
In other respects, however, this volume seeks to be as inclusive as possible,
primarily through the material that goes beyond "Eurocentric" concerns. Other
cultures have extraordinary symbolic traditions, and they are included here to
suggest the universality of many of these images and their meanings. There are
many discussions of the psychological basis for various symbolic associations,
as well as material from disciplines that are not always included in discussions
of symbolic traditions. The articles and illustrations in this volume are in
tended to stimulate the reader to explore areas of special interest.
viii Preface
For years now, readers with serious interest In the study of symbols and
symbolism have been able to choose from a great number of basic and special
ized works on the topic. All of these works, however, have adopted a partic
ular perspective, emphasizing one aspect or another of these great traditions.
Until now there has been no single work offering an overview of symbolism in
Europe, Asia, Africa, and the New World, from earliest times until the pre
sent; no introduction, in words and pictures, to this fascinating topic. I have
tried to portray the history of symbols not simply as an accumulation of ab
struse thought processes and associations but as a way to ask questions about
how artists and thinkers of earlier times worked in the ways they did. A person
viewing the various forms of older symbolic thought from a purely rational,
scientific standpoint will wonder how such apparently strange notions ever
came into being. Our cool reason and our scientific way of thinking have long
functioned differently from the authors of the early Christian text Physi%gus,
the medieval bestiaries, or the emblem books of the baroque period. They do
not seek rational definition and documentation but a deeper, more "human"
meaning for the world that God formed for his creatures.
A highly developed civilization will offer written documentation of an entire
world of images, often wondrous and strange. In dealing with images of less
developed cultures, we must resort to a process of interpretation and analogy,
but there, too, our conclusions have a certain degree of authority.
Jungian psychology, which posits a universal store of archetypes, serves as a
tool for "reading" symbolic thought and can itself profit from the rich and
varied material of cultural history. Archaeology, anthropology, heraldry, my
thology, folklore, and the history of religion together provide a wealth of sym
bolic tradition that expands our knowledge of what is constant and what is
variable in the ways that people think.
Those who are familiar with work in the area of symbols and symbolism
know all too well that entire volumes could be (and in some cases have been)
written about the interpretations offered in anyone of these articles. Within
the limits of this project, however, it is possible to offer only the "essential"
enriched, in many cases, by little-known primary data. This dictionary is ad
dressed to the general reader who seeks to know more about how images have
been experienced and how their meanings have been extended. Certain con
cepts treated here might be thought of as strictly religious or theological in
nature. And yet "heaven," for example, is also an image that goes back to the
archetypal duality of "above and below"; it is not an exclusively theological
concept, and it is entirely appropriate to discuss it here in its symbolic as well
as religious dimension.
Many traditional symbols are ambiguous: they cannot be explained as having
a single, constant meaning. Not every dragon in every culture is an evil en
emy; the heart does not always stand for love. Indeed, real symbols, at differ
ent stages, are sources of very different, but always relevant, "information."
Sometimes we can also discover why a certain symbol has come to have a
certain meaning, why it is related in this particular way to Homo sapiens
whose interpretations have always been egocentric and anthropomorphic, or,
more precisely, "theomorphic": people have long seen in the events and im-
Preface ix
ages that surround them a chance to understand their place in a divine plan.
A present-day observer who does not appreciate the joy that symbols gave our
ancestors would completely miss the purpose served by symbolic thinking.
Such intellectual enslavement has provided us with inhumane products of
every sort, including "the atom bomb, and we are starting to grow distrustful.
Once again we leaf through the dream book of humanity, look for codes whose
significance we have lost-for guides to help us flee the playing fields of the
society of production. Our problem is that the ways of life in which religion
flourished have become anachronistic for us, along with the rituals of nomads,
knights, farmers, and artisans, as they continue to exist in the Third World
and, strangely enough, in our own Christian churches" (Adolf Hall, 1982).
This dictionary is itself a "dream book" of codes and images that people of
earlier times experienced at times intuitively, at times rationally. Quoting
Manfred Lurker, "The meaning of the symbol does not lie in the symbol itself
but points to something else outside it. According to Goethe, true symbolism
is found wherever 'the particular represents the general, not as a dream or
shadow, but as a living, momentary revelation of the inexplicable.' For the
religious person the symbol is a concrete phenomenon in which the idea of
the divine and the absolute becomes immanent, in such a way as to be more
clearly expressed than in words. . . . In the story of salvation, the symbol
expresses the unbroken link between Creator and creature. . . . When the
individual images are revealed from out of the fullness of the divine original,
then they are literally sym-bolon, a 'throwing together' of time and eternity .
. . . The symbol is at once concealment and revelation" (1987). Admittedly,
Goethe was referring to religious symbolism. The present volume also treats
images and signs that are formed in the imagination, and abstractions that
claim no connection with spirituality. Moreover, when studying other cultures
it is difficult to distinguish between experience, myth, and the speculations of
priests and scholars. Sources often make it impossible to penetrate deeply enough
into ancient and exotic intellectual traditions.
A final word about the previously mentioned polemic against all symbolism.
Certain symbols have deadly consequences. The Aztec civilization is not the
only one to have had ritual symbols like "sacrificial blood, heart, sun" that led
to the destruction of human beings. In modem times other symbols, like "flag,
Fuhrer, blood and soil," have exacted their terrible price. Yet, symbols are
among the most valuable possessions of the human race. They have made
possible some of the greatest products of civilization: cathedrals, pyramids,
temples, symphonies, sculptures, paintings, religious practices, festivals, dances.
The symbols that are rooted in personality have the power to take on lives of
their own and, in a curious reversal, influence their creators. It is the respon
sibility of those of us who are aware of this to discuss symbols that are truly
valuable.
"The 'hidden persuaders' of modem advertising," writes Gerhart Wehr (1972).
"know how to use the power of images. They know how to subject the A ver
age Joe to an even greater loss of freedom-by manipulating symbols that lead
the unsuspecting fellow to spin fantasies." Usually discussing symbols is a be
nign activity, one that points the way to the intellectual treasures of the past
x Preface
and revitalizes them. But unscrupulous use of this coded world can trap people
and tum them into robots.
A few remarks of a more practical nature: It was not possible to document
each detail in these articles. The documentation in each case would have been
longer than the article itself. At the end of this volume the reader will find a
list of important source materials, especially those in English and those that
are cited in abbreviated form in the individual articles. In this bibliography I
have also stressed books that offer general discussions of issues; only in rare
cases did I include highly specialized studies.
A project like this one would .have been impossible if standard works rich
in primary materials had not been reissued in the last few decades. Let me
mention here only the contributions of the Akademische Druck- und Verlags
anstalt (Graz, Austria), whose reprints of the works of Cartari, Hohberg, and
Boschius, along with facsimile editions of early codices, were indispensable for
this volume.
Finally, not merely as a matter of duty but in all sincerity, let me express
my gratitude to those who assisted me in the preparation of this volume, es
pecially in obtaining often elusive primary materials: first of all, my wife, Si
bylle, who also was responsible for the illustrations; the late Annette Zieger,
Braunschweig; Liselotte Kerkermeier, Freiburg-im-Breisgau; Dr. Friedrich Wai
dacher, Graz; Edith Temmel, Graz; Erich Ackermann, Bruchenbriicken; Rec
tor Josef Fink, Graz; Ralph Tegtmeier, M.A., Bonn; Gerhard Riemann, Pen
tenried; Dr. Leonhard Eschenbach, Vienna; Ingeborg Schwarz-Winklhofer, Graz;
Kurt Edelsbrunner, Graz; Octavio Alvarez, Enfield, New Hampshire; Dr. Karl
A. Wipf, Frauenfeld, Switzerland ... and many friends and acquaintances.
If this book stimulates the reader to reflection, they share the credit.
HANS BIEDERMANN
DICTIONARY
OF
SYMBOLISM