by Elisabeth Goldsmith
The Sacred Double Axe as a religious symbol of the sun is pre-eminently associated with the island of Crete. The Axe among the Egyptians was also a symbol of the sun, and called the “Clever one,” the “Cleaver of the way.” and belongs to the same class of symbols as the hammer, sword, cross. Why marking a track through a forest with an axe is still spoken of as “blazing a trail,” is an interesting speculation on the persistence of ancient customs and ideas.
The Egyptian hieroglyph of the sun-god Ra was a point within a circle. The life of Indian and Egyptian gods was in the egg. The “dot within the circle,” a symbol that goes back to remotest times may have typified the seed within the egg. This is the Orphic egg, symbol of ‘the universe whose yolk in the middle of a liquid surrounded by an encompassing vault, represented the globe of the sun floating in ether, and surrounded by the vault of heaven. A Point within a Circle is still used as the astronomical sign of the sun. In Egypt the Circle also symbolised the course of the sun about the universe.
Read the original article at: About
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