Symbol — Encyclopedia of Mystery, Myth & Metaphysics
Daily Discovery
Symbol · 1354
Star of David
Ancient Shape, Modern Emblem
The six-pointed hexagram (Magen David), symbol of Jewish identity, spiritual protection, and the union of heaven and earth.
What it meansTwo triangles interlocked, read in Kabbalah as the meeting of what descends and what ascends — heaven and earth, fire and water, held in one figure that belongs wholly to neither. Scholem's caution stands beside it: the shape carried no doctrine before the emblem did.
Book · North American Traditions○
God Is Red
Vine Deloria Jr.'s 1973 book arguing Native and Christian religion structure time and land in fundamentally incompatible ways.
SignificanceIt is the intellectual source most of this catalogue's own critique-entries about Native religion ultimately draw on — and the rare case, in a field dominated by outside researchers writing about Native traditions, of the critique coming from inside them.
Symbol · Esoteric Symbols
Caduceus
The Staff of Hermes
A winged staff entwined by two serpents, symbolizing commerce, communication, and the synthesis of opposites.
What it meansTwo serpents climbing in opposite directions around one axis and meeting at the top under wings. The esoteric reading takes the staff as the spine and the serpents as the two currents that must be balanced before anything rises — opposition resolved by structure rather than by victory.