Symbols - What does heaven look like
Collars and ruffs
Like the Dish and Plate, the collar and the Elizabethan ruff are all symbols of beheading.
The symbolism can mean that the person has managed to master their bodily sensations, as the Elizabethans claimed to have done and Elizabeth I the ‘virgin queen’, and/or that by doing so they had achieved spiritual experiences and were thus in touch with their Higher spirit. It thus becomes by extension a symbol of ‘enlightenment’ – see Types of spiritual experience.
The Puritans’ wide collar was just a more simplified ruff.
Very few people seem aware these days of the origins of the collar they wear every day on their shirt. After all, why have a collar on a shirt – what purpose does it serve? This is the origin. It also provided a useful holder for a necktie – simply a belt moved up – another symbol – this time representing spiritual obedience…. Or a bit more.
This wonderful painting of Elizabeth I is full of symbolism and incorporates not only the ruff, but the halo and pearls. Her white face and curly [curls] red hair also have their own symbolic meaning. |
Observations
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- Black bars hovering over her like a cage
- Celtic - Spoils of Annwn - 05
- Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz - The Third Day
- Dürer, Albrecht - Symbolism - Melencolia
- Grant Gronewald - HTML flowers - Please don't go - floating tears
- Grant Gronewald - HTML flowers - We take of our hands to heal
- Jean Noblet - 00 [and Jean Dodal, Nicolas Conver] The Fool
- Khnopff, Fernand - The Cigarette
- Knight, Dame Laura – Circus – 01
- Knight, Dame Laura – Circus – 02
- Knight, Dame Laura – Circus – 03
- Lowry, L S - Ann
- M A Czaplicka - Siberian magic
- Magritte, Rene - Son of Man
- Mayan - False pregnancy in a man
- Millais, John Everett - the Huguenot
- Mucha, Alphonse - Zodiac
- Redon, Odilon - Les Noirs 1
- Rembrandt - Portrait of a Woman
- Renoir - Clowns and Pierrots
- Rubens - Marchesa Brigida Spinola Doria
- Schuré - The Great Initiates – Egypt as the axis of the Mysteries
- Schuré - The Great Initiates – Hermes-Thoth
- Schuré - The Great Initiates – Isis and Osiris
- Schuré - The Great Initiates – The roles
- Spencer, Stanley - Symbolism 11 - Buttoning the collar 1935
- Through the Looking Glass - Ch 04 - 1 Tweedledum and Tweedledee
- Vatican - Swiss Guard
- Waterhouse, John William - The Magic Circle
- Yeats, W B - Collected poems - Would I could cast a sail on the water