Observations placeholder
Cirlot on crowns
Identifier
007519
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
J E Cirlot – A Dictionary of Symbols
The crown does not merely surmount the top of the body and of the human being as a whole but rises above it and therefore symbolises, in the broadest and deepest sense, the very idea of pre-eminence. That is why a superlatively successful achievement is spoken of as a ‘crowning achievement’. Hence the crown is the visible sign of success, whose significance reaches beyond the act to the person who performed it.
The metal crown, the diadem and the crown of rays of light are symbols of ‘light’ and of spiritual enlightenment…. The light received is not equal in intensity but graded, as it were, in hierarchies, corresponding to the grades of nobility ranging from the king down…