V sign

Universally looked on now as an insult or an offensive way of signalling to little old ladies like me who have pulled out in front of you at roundabouts, the V sign is an old sign with a profound meaning.

As Churchill used to use it, it is simply a V for victory.

But turned round the other way - the way which these days is deemed offensive, - and it actually means 'I wish you the twin horns', which is, in some senses, the same as hoping you become a sort of god in touch permanently with the spiritual world - the Sun and the Moon.

Of course if you had a hankering for the Stars, the sign might be looked on as a rather feeble greeting and somewhat below your expectations, but it is hardly an insult. 

I have little idea how it degraded in meaning, but it may have been at the time that the shamanic cultures and the moral based religions were in battle for supremacy.  Perhaps as the Inquisition burnt yet another so called witch at the stake they gave her the V sign as a sort of 'see where your twin horns get you now' sort of insult  - and so it has continued.

Observations

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• 101 Zen stones - Fingers
• Böcklin, Arnold - Faun whistling to a Blackbird 1875
• Crowley, Aleister - Book of Lies - Dust Devils
• Da Vinci, Leonardo - Beautiful men - Salvator Mundi
• Grant Gronewald - HTML flowers - Bright threadz
• Grant Gronewald - HTML flowers - Hospital is where we put people nobody likes
• Levy-Dhurmer - Le Silence
• Nuremberg Chronicle - Cyclops
• Nuremberg Chronicle - Dog head
• Nuremberg Chronicle - Janus
• Nuremberg Chronicle - Plato
• Nuremberg Chronicle - The Androgyne
• Organisation of Pictish society – Roles - The Hierophant
• Pauli, Wolfgang - Dream, 1st October 1954
• Spencer, Stanley - Symbolism 18 - Eggs, nest and birds
• The Marriage of Philology and Mercury - Maid 5
• Tikal - Mayan - Museum jar
• Zosimos of Panopolis - The Mushaf as-suwar - 5th Book of Magnesia picture 6