Adele Nozedar - The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Signs and Symbols

The sweetness of honey is believed to confer gifts of learning and poetry. We’ll never know if the story that Pythagoras existed on honey alone is true, but the fact that the rumor exists is in accord with his God-like status. As well as being edible and fermentable, honey has healing and antiseptic qualities, and a dollop of honey smeared onto a wound will soon draw out any impurities and speed the healing process.

Honey is said to be an aphrodisiac and to encourage fertility and virility, wealth and abundance, and is a symbol of the Sun, partly because of the flowers from which it is made but also because of its color.

When the Children of Israel were struggling to survive in the wilderness, manna appeared, miraculously, overnight, and so they could eat. Precisely what manna was—or is—is debatable. Some believe it might be a kind of fungus, others believe that it might be sap or resin exuded from the tamarisk tree. The symbolic meaning of manna is of something provided freely by the Universe or by God and is the ultimate reminder that we have everything we need. Manna is also associated with the Bread of Life or the Eucharist.

Like honey, mead also carries the gift of immortality. The Celts believed it was the favored drink of the Gods in the Otherworld. Mead is a sacred drink in Africa, too, where it is believed that drinking the stuff will make you more knowledgeable. Worth a try! Mead is very simple to make—it’s simply honey mixed with water and allowed to ferment—and this process of fermentation is akin to a magical process in itself, which is akin to transmutation in alchemy.

Given that milk is the first food, it’s not surprising that it is associated with many stories of the Creation, and is a symbol of divinity. Amrita, or soma, the absolute nectar of life for Hindus and the equivalent of ambrosia, was created as a cosmic sea of milk was churned. The curds that were created by this epic stirring formed the Earth, the Universe, and the stars. Along with honey, there is an abundance of milk in the Promised Land, and Indian myths tell of a magical milk tree in Heaven. Because of its color and its association with the feminine, milk is a symbol of the Moon. The main food source for milk for us human beings (once we’re weaned) is the cow. The cow is sacred in India because during times of famine it made far more sense to keep the animal alive for its milk rather than slaughter and eat it purely for its meat, so all parts of the cow are accorded sacred status and are ruled over by one or other of the Gods or Goddesses.

In the hidden symbolic language of alchemy, the Philosopher’s Stone is sometimes called the Virgin’s Milk.

Nectar is often referred to as ambrosia, but has secrets of its own to tell. Flowers create it, and its scent attracts the bees, which then transform the nectar into honey. Seemingly insignificant, nectar is nevertheless a very magical ingredient, created from flowers, sunshine, and bees working together in a collective consciousness known as the “hive mind” in an environment which itself is constructed from one of the key shapes in sacred geometry, the hexagon.

Like the Greek Olympians, the Indian deities had a type of food, like ambrosia, that ensured their immortality. This was soma, or amrita. Whereas dire consequences befell any mortal that dared to partake of ambrosia, the Indian Gods were more generous with their soma, and any mortal that ate it was immediately given immortality and access to Heaven. The ancient Indian Vedic scriptures, the Ramayana, tell the story of Rama, an epic hero, the perfect man. Rama was born after his father was visited by an angel. This angel brought with him some magical food. Eating this soma meant that Rama’s father was able to sire offspring that were the human incarnations of the God, Vishnu.

The symbolic meanings of wine are generally attached to the red variety; it seems that a nice dry white or a sweet rosé carries no hidden mystery. Here are some things to think about next time you open a nice bottle of claret.

The red color means that wine is often linked to blood, particularly since the wine is the “blood” of the grape. Because it looks like blood, wine is often used in rituals where blood would otherwise be called for, and because ceremonial wine is often drunk from a shared chalice, it is seen, like bread, as a unifying principle. Wine is male, and bread is female. As a partner to bread in the ritual of the Eucharist, the consecrated wine is transformed into the blood of the Christ, a reminder of both sacrifice and immortal life, and it’s this transformative power that accords wine with much of its mystique. When the water is turned into wine in the story of the Marriage at Cana, what is really being shown here is the transformation of the mundane into the magical, the Earthly into the Heavenly. It is this magical process of fermentation at work that explains why wine is associated with Bacchus/Dionysus, and the intoxicating power of wine is symbolic of divine possession.

The phrase, “In vino veritas” links wine to the truth and is a reminder that those intoxicated by perhaps a little too much of that nice claret will be more likely to speak the truth than most, which can be good or bad, depending on the circumstances.

This is the globe surmounted by a cross, which is one of the Christian symbols of authority, and its symbolism is obvious. The orb represents the Earth, and the Cross, that major symbol of the faith, is Christ’s supremacy over it.

The Globus Cruciger is often depicted as an actual object but was also used purely as a symbol on Roman coins from the time when Christianity became the prominent religion, round about the fifth century AD. Prior to this, the lone orb had been used in the same way, to imply authority. The addition of the cross brought the well-known emblem into the Christian domain. In Britain, the Globus Cruciger appears as a physical object that is used during the coronation of the monarch. It is called the Orb and is part of the Royal Jewels.

Also called the Sigil of Baphomet or the Sabbatic Goat, this sinister-looking symbol features an inverted pentagram containing the head of a goat, the upward V of the star framing the horns. This symbol has become an icon of modern occultism, believed to be the very representation of the Devil himself, which was exacerbated when Anton La Vey adopted it in the 1960s for his Church of Satan.

Sometimes the symbol is encircled with a double ring, containing the Hebrew letters spelling “Leviathan,” the mythical sea monster that features in the Old Testament.

The ornately elaborate gateway into the Hindu temples, the Gopura carry the same significance as the Japanese Torii, marking a transition between the world of matter and the world of spirit.

Otherwise known as Lupus Mettalorum, in alchemy antimony is disguised as the gray wolf. This gray wolf is the penultimate stage in the making of the Philosopher’s Stone, so in terms of the spiritual and psychological development of man it symbolizes the condition that brings him very close to the enlightenment he seeks; however, both physically and metaphorically speaking, the final stage of making lead into gold is yet to come, so the gray wolf can symbolize either success or failure.