Adele Nozedar - The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Signs and Symbols - The Ultimate A–Z Guide from Alchemy to the Zodiac

SYMBOLIC MEANINGS: the Sun; power, authority; the intellect and intuition; goodness; light, life, truth, immortality; endurance; the Empire and fertility [China]; cowardice, treachery.

Yellow is one of the three primary colors and is related to the third chakra which lives in the region of the solar plexus. This is apt, since yellow, like red and orange, is one of the Sun colors. It could be argued that yellow is the most dazzling of the three, so the association makes good sense. The Ancient Egyptians had only six colors available in their pallet, and wherever yellow was used this indicated endurability and timelessness.

In China, yellow was the color of the Emperor. The average man in the street was forbidden from wearing it until relatively recently. It is also the color of fertility, since healthy soil in China is a yellow color. Because of this, all the hangings, sheets, and pillows of the bridal bed were dyed in vibrant shades of yellow as well as red.

However, there are some contradictions with yellow. In the UK and USA, to call someone “yellow” or to say that they have a “yellow streak” means that they are cowardly. There are several theories about why this should be. The one that seems to fit best is that Judas Iscariot wore yellow robes, and his own cowardly act was to betray Christ for thirty pieces of silver.

Jewish people were made to wear a yellow Star of David by the Nazi regime in the Second World War. Similarly, in 1215 the Lateran Council ordered Jews to wear a yellow circle to identify themselves. It was probably small comfort for these persecuted people that they believed yellow to be synonymous with beauty. In tenth-century France, the doors of criminals were painted yellow. Conversely, in the fourteenth century, the yellow chrysanthemum was worn by warriors as a symbol of courage.

Because leaves turn yellow and then to black with the onset of fall, in several places, including Ancient Egypt, yellow is a color of mourning. A yellow cross was painted on doors as a sign of the plague, possibly for the same reasons, and even today yellow marks off a quarantined area.

The Claddagh symbol features a heart held by a pair of hands. A crown usually surmounts the heart. These features represent love, friendship, and loyalty.

See Key.

See Freemasonry.

These days, the corn dolly generally gathers dust in gift shops, an innocuous souvenir for tourists in rural areas, particularly in the United Kingdom. However, its origins as a powerful magical symbol go back thousands of years to pre-Christian times. It may come as a surprise that the corn dolly hanging on the kitchen wall can trace its roots back to a particularly bloody ritual.

In any agrarian culture, the success of the crop is all-important and in Northern Europe the harvest produce was essential to survival during the winter period. It was the generally held belief that the spirit of the harvest—in this case, the versatile grain crop—resided in the plant, and once the plant was cut down then the spirit effectively became homeless. In order to provide a new home for this spirit, the farmers made a corn dolly from the very last stalks of the crop. The dolly would spend her time indoors over the winter, waiting to be ploughed back into the ground at the start of the new season. In places where the corn dolly custom was not established, the last few stalks of corn were violently beaten into the ground, thus driving the spirit back into the Earth.

The dolly was made into the shape of an old woman, representing the Crone aspect of the Harvest Goddess. She was drenched in water as a further propitiation to the Gods and to ensure that plenty of rain would feed the harvest to come. Different areas had different styles of corn dollies.

However, the custom of preserving the spirit of the harvest was not always carried out in such a genteel way. The Phrygians, who lived in central Asia Minor and worshipped the Mother of the Gods, Cybele, carried out a different sort of ceremony. Their “corn dolly” was formed from thickly plaited sheaves of corn formed into a tall column. Any stranger found in the vicinity was captured in the belief that his presence there would mean that the spirit of the harvest had possessed his body and caused him to wander into the area. The hapless stranger was then trapped within this cage of corn and then beheaded in the belief that the blood that fell upon the ground contained the valuable “soul” of the crop.

An amulet designed to protect the wearer, the cornicello features the effigy of the horn, is made of horn, or is horn-shaped. “Cornicello” comes from an Italian word meaning “little horn.”

Also called the Horn of Plenty, the cornucopia is often depicted in paintings and on friezes where it symbolizes the notion of boundless abundance, as flowers, fruits, sheaves of wheat, and other produce spill out of a hollow horn or a twisting basket woven in the shape of the horn. The origin of the cornucopia is found in the Greek myth of Amalthea. Amalthea fed the infant Zeus a drink of goat’s milk and was given the brimming goat’s horn as a reward. Sometimes the infant Zeus is depicted being fed the milk from the horn itself. The Cornucopia, as a symbol of a bounteous harvest, is also associated with Ceres, the Goddess of corn, and also with Fortuna, Goddess of good fortune.

The idea of a bottomless, bounteous container has similarities to the symbol of the cauldron.

See Egg.

This is a flat graphic symbol that represents the cosmos, and is often used as a meditative focus. The mandala is a cosmogram, as are the elaborate depictions of tortoises holding up the planet.

Cosmograms commonly feature the most basic shapes of the circle (representing the planet, and unity) and the square (the Earth and the directions).

More than any other shell, the cowrie has a marked resemblance to the female genitalia or yoni. Because of the ancient idea of the Doctrine of Signatures, the shell is therefore endowed with magical powers of fertility, good luck, and wealth. Originating from the Malaysian area, cowrie shells were used as currency for some time. Their use in decorative masks, headdresses, and other items was widespread, where it had the new addition of being a status symbol because of its use as small change.

The cowrie also represents another body part: the eye. Therefore, along with other objects from the natural world that have a similar appearance, the cowrie is considered to protect against evil.