Symbols - What does heaven look like
Beheading

Beheading can occasionally be experienced during the more gruesome rebirth spiritual experiences – see Types of Spiritual experience – however symbolically it has a different meaning.
As we saw in the overview description of ‘How to get to heaven’, if we use the approach that requires gradual subjection and suppression of functions in order to subjugate the Will and hence the personality, there is the need to minimise any threats, opportunities, obligations and desires.
One of the major sources of all of these is the body itself. Via the nervous system and the autonomic system sensations are constantly being received that simply serve to distract. They stimulate the Will into action and once it is racing along being fired up by the huge meal we have just eaten or the vague stirrings of a relaxed willy, the urgent callings of a full bladder and the petulant messages from sore feet, not only are we unlikely to get any form of spiritual experience at all, but we are very unlikely to ever be able to replace the personality with the Higher spirit [if that is our goal].
If, however, you have managed to master the art of subduing all the sensations that are coming from the body so that they no longer bother you, you have symbolically been ‘beheaded’ – managed to divorce yourself from your body.
The plate, the story of John the Baptist and numerous other myths that involve beheading are allegories.
The use of ‘Beheading’ ironically goes with the symbol of the Helmet. The Sword is often symbolically one of the useful by-products of Beheading and certainly symbolically goes with it.
We have gained the expression ‘Losing your head’ not from the frequency of executions in medieval England, but from the after effects of a visionary beheading.
So Lewis Carroll’s queen was a helpful soul when she tried to help everybody by giving the order ‘Off with his head’. But then Lewis Carroll knew a thing or two in this area.
Alice in Wonderland “Off with her head”
Observations
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- A A Popov - The initiation of an Avam-Samoyed shaman
- Alice in Wonderland - Ch 06 - 2 Duchess and Cook
- Alice in Wonderland - Ch 08 - 1 The Cards and the Rose Tree
- Alice in Wonderland - Ch 08 - 2 The Croquet match
- Alice in Wonderland - Ch 09 - 1 The Mock Turtle's story
- Ancestors, the - Art - Beheading
- Ancient Egyptian - Osiris and its symbolism
- Ancient Egyptian - The symbolism of the four sons of Horus
- Aurora consurgens - 06 An allegory of Beheading
- BBC - The growth of St Oswald's healing cult
- Blithe spirit - Judgement Day
- Burne-Jones, Edward - The Baleful Head
- Caravaggio - Judith beheading Holofernes
- Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz - The Third Day
- Chichen Itza - Mayan - The Great Ball Court
- Chod
- Disembodied heads
- Egyptian Book of the Dead - Spell 098
- Egyptian Book of the Dead - Spell 153
- Ernst, Max - Approaching Puberty 1921
- Grant Gronewald - HTML flowers - Please don't go - floating tears
- Haven't Cried like that for Years Toad Venom by UmbrellaTools EROWID
- Hypnerotomachia Poliphili - Beheading
- Kahuna - Caves and rebirth in North Borneo
- Kahuna - Rebirth in Sarawak and Borneo
- Kali and yoga
- Khusrau, Amir - Ghazal 1186
- Khusrau, Amir - Ghazal 129 [extract]
- Klimt - Judith and Holofernes
- Levy-Dhurmer - Salome
- Lowry, L S - Ann
- Mayan - Popol Vuh - 12 Ball games
- Mayan - Xbalanque
- Metamorphosis San Pedro by Anopseudonym
- Michael Harner - The Jivaro and Conibo
- Michelangelo - 1508 Sistine Chapel - 10 The Four Pendentives 3
- Mircea Eliade - Describes a Tibetan Tantric rite
- Mircea Eliade - Describes Arunta rebirth
- Mircea Eliade - On caves and rebirth
- Mircea Eliade - The initiation rites of the Aranda (Arunta) of Central Australia
- Mircea Eliade - Tibetan Buddhism - Rebirth
- Myths and legends - Mug Ruith
- Nizami – Makhzanol Asrar (The Treasury of Mysteries) – from On the honour and dignity of this book 02
- Nuremberg Chronicle - Beheading
- Nuremberg Chronicle - Blemyhas
- Nuremberg Chronicle - Judith
- Oranges and lemons
- Paul Devereux - Shuar [Jivan] Indians of Ecuador
- Redon, Odilon - Les Noirs 2
- Redon, Odilon - Les Noirs 5 and Closed Eyes
- Redon, Odilon - Mystic series 5
- Redon, Odilon - the Floating heads series
- Rops, Felicien - l'initiation sentimentale
- Rops, Felicien - The Supreme Vice
- Rubens - Judith with the head of Holofernes
- Sebastian Horsley - Trip of a lifetime
- Six little mice
- Soustelle - Aztecs and Mexica - Rebirth misunderstood
- Soustelle - Aztecs and Mexica - The Making of a High Priestess
- Spencer, Stanley - Symbolism 04 - Scarecrow Cookham 1934
- Symbolism - Korean mystic shamanism - Beheading
- Symbolism - Korean mystic shamanism – Costume: Swords
- The Book of Taliesin - Marwnat Vthyr Pen[dragon] - Llyfr Taliesin XLVIII
- The Monument of Sir Humfrey de Littlebury at All Saints, Holbeach
- Through the Looking Glass - Ch 04 - 3 The Fight
- Through the Looking Glass - Ch 06 - 2 Names and ages
- Tibetan Book of the Dead - Rebirth in a Dream
- Tikal - Mayan - North Acropolis Tomb
- Von Stuck, Franz - 1906 Salome
- Von Stuck, Franz - 1927 Judith and Holofernes
- W.Y. Evans-Wentz - The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries - The Celtic Otherworld and the Sidhe
- Waterhouse, John William - Nymphs Finding the Head of Orpheus
- Wirth, Oswald – 13 Death
- Xam bushmen - Creation myth
- Ynglinga saga - 04 Chapter Four
- Yoga Sutras of Patanjali - Book III - Sutras 01 to 55
- Zosimos of Panipolis - And S Trismosin - Ritual dismemberment
- Zosimos of Panopolis - The Mushaf as-suwar - 11th Book about the other composition
- Zosimos of Panopolis - The Mushaf as-suwar - 2nd Book of Names
- Zosimos of Panopolis - The Vision of Zosimos - 03
- Zosimos of Panopolis - The Vision of Zosimos - 08