Symbols - What does heaven look like
Sword
If you look at the various descriptions for the Hero, including the Hero’s Quest , and the Hero’s symbolic badges, the sword in its wider sense is an attribute of the hero and a ‘weapon’ symbolically speaking in the task they have been given in the Great Work. Something useful that will help the person complete the task they have been given. What it is, depends on the task.
BUT there is also a much much more explicit meaning to the use of the sword.
The 'short sword' and the 'long sword ' are code words for the penis and the spine. The terms are used in Sexual stimulation to denote the need to practise with the short sword in order to build up enough energy that one has a spiritual experience – kundalini energy up the long sword and enlightenment.
It can be very very obscure………………
Samuel Taylor Coleridge – The Complete Poems
From Song
Though veiled in spires of myrtle wreath
Love is a sword that cuts its sheath
And through the clefts, itself has made
We spy the flashes of the Blade
In myth and legend the maker of the finest swords is the ‘smith’ - a symbolic reference to those who are able to help with spiritual experience. It was always considered to be of very special workmanship, the sword itself was sometimes more invincible than the man.
But it also a bit more. Cirlot has some added extra useful comments to make about a sword……
A Dictionary of Symbols – J E Cirlot
The sword is in essence composed of a blade and a guard; it is therefore a symbol of ‘conjunction’, [and the ] cross…… it is [also] an instrument proper to the knight, who is the defender of the forces of light against the forces of darkness. But the fact is that in rites at the dawning of history and in folklore even today, the sword plays a similar spiritual role, with the magic power to fight off the dark powers …..
…. In alchemy, the sword is a symbol for purifying fire. The golden sword – Chrysaor in Greek mythology – is a symbol for supreme spiritualization.
The sword, because of its implication of ‘physical extermination’ is a symbol of spiritual evolution.
In effect, the sword takes on the symbolism of the Cross - the cross here is not a Christian symbol but a far more generic symbol. It is also a symbol of the last stage on the spiritual path, a stage he calls ‘conjunction’, which is the merging of your Conscious with the Higher spirit and the obliteration of the Personality as a consequence – annihilation – see Types of spiritual experience.
Observations
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- Beowulf - The Hero's Sword
- Beowulf - Burial at Sea
- Beowulf - The Fight with the Underground Monster
- Blake, William - The Great Red Dragon and the Beast from the Sea
- Bruno, Giordano – A general account of bonding - On lightning, thunderbolts and pubic hair
- Buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit 15th century
- Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz - The Third Day
- County Meath - Tara - Lia Fáil
- Crowley - 01 The Magician [or Magus]
- Crowley - 11 Adjustment
- Crowley, Aleister - Book of Lies - The Wound of Amfortas
- Dante - Purgatorio - Canto 03 & 04
- Dante - Purgatorio - Canto 09
- Dante - Purgatorio - Canto 28
- Dürer, Albrecht - Religious works - Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
- Dürer, Albrecht - Symbolism - The flag wavers
- General Horng Yih - Song Shaw Shing
- Gershom Scholem – On the Kabbalah and its symbolism - The Red Heifer
- Giuoco delle Minchiate Fiorentine and Visconti-Sforza - 7 - The Chariot
- Gomchen of Lachen
- Grant Gronewald - HTML flowers - Chance meeting 'hind the shrubs
- Grant Gronewald - HTML flowers - Touchingly touching things
- Guru Granth - The Sword
- Hypnerotomachia Poliphili - Beheading
- Hypnerotomachia Poliphili - Scales
- Hypnerotomachia Poliphili - Trees and Tree maidens
- Ibn El-Arabi - The Tarjuman al-Ashwaq - A ringdove wailed and a sad lover complained
- Ikkyu - Night talk in a Dream chamber
- In the nick of time
- Intelligences - ELEMENTS Nergal and Ereshkigal
- J Isaak Hollandus - Hand der Philosophen 1667, Vienna edition 1746
- Japanese Shinto print
- Karnataka and South India - 07 Gangaikonda Cholapuram temple
- Khafajah - Clay plaque from Khafajah
- Khusrau, Amir - Ghazal 129 [extract]
- Khusrau, Amir - Ghazal 74
- Lal Shahbaz Qalandar - The juice of the grape
- M A Czaplicka - Siberian shamanism - Symbolism
- Malevich, Kazimir - Soldier
- Master Naong - Song of the Pure Land
- Millais, John Everett - The Black Brunswicker
- Mircea Eliade - Australian aboriginal Bunjil
- Muller's false prophesies
- Mutus Liber 06
- Myōe – The dream of Vairocana and the queen
- Nizami – Makhzanol Asrar (The Treasury of Mysteries) – from On the honour and dignity of this book 02
- Nizami – Makhzanol Asrar (The Treasury of Mysteries) – from The Second Seclusion 02
- Omar Khayyam - The Rubaiyat - Leaden Metal into Gold
- Organisation of Pictish society – Roles - Knight - The Whitham Shield
- Poetic Edda - Grimnir's sayings [Extract]
- Pythagoras - Iamblichus's Life - Symbol system
- Quakers - George Fox - Now was I come up in spirit
- Revelations 01:13
- Revelations 06 : 1-8
- Rider-Waite - 01 The Magician
- Rider-Waite - 10 Wheel of Fortune
- Rubens - Judith with the head of Holofernes
- Saint Teresa of Avila - Pierced by an angel
- Samuel - The Water Drawing Ceremony
- Schuré - The Great Initiates – 01 Reconstruction of an Initiation ceremony
- Sen no Rikyu - from 101 Zen stones - and the assassin
- Socrates - Plato Euthydemus - Vault among swords, and turn upon a wheel
- Song of Solomon 3
- Sting - Shape of my Heart
- Surdas - Lord heed not my faults
- Symbolism - Korean mystic shamanism – Costume: Swords
- Taq Bostan 02
- Tarantella
- Tarot - 10 Minor Arcana - 03 The Knights
- Tennyson, Alfred Lord - Morte d'Arthur - Excalibur is returned to the lake
- The Book of Family Traditions on the Art of War - The Quiescent Sword
- The Book of Taliesin - Marwnat Vthyr Pen[dragon] - Llyfr Taliesin XLVIII
- The Book of Taliesin - The Battle Of the Trees - 07
- The Knights Templar - Royston Cave
- The Marriage of Philology and Mercury - Maid 2
- The Monument of Sir Humfrey de Littlebury at All Saints, Holbeach
- The Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine - Key 02
- The Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine - Key 11
- Through the Looking Glass - Ch 04 - 3 The Fight
- Through the Looking Glass - Ch 08 - 2 The White Knight and the beehive
- Vatican - Swiss Guard
- Von Stuck, Franz - 1889 Angel with the Flaming Sword
- Von Stuck, Franz - 1897 The Expulsion from Paradise & The Lost Paradise
- Von Stuck, Franz - 1927 Judith and Holofernes
- War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness – 05 Disposition and weapons of the front formations
- Washington, George - A vision and a prophecy
- West & Southern France, Italy - The trial of witches
- Wirth, Oswald – 01 The Magician
- Zohar - III 202a - Tree of Life
- Zoroastrian - Symbols and concepts - Belts
- Zosimos of Panopolis - The Vision of Zosimos - 06
- Zosimos of Panopolis - The Vision of Zosimos - 08