Creation & Cosmos — 46 entries | Encyclopedia of Mystery

Symbol · Symbols of the Religions

Yin-Yang

Taijitu

The ancient Chinese concept of dualism, showing how seemingly opposite forces are interconnected and balance each other.

What it meansThe dots are the doctrine. Each half carries a seed of its opposite, so neither is ever pure and neither can win — and the dividing line is a curve, not a straight edge, because the two are always in the act of becoming each other rather than meeting at a border.

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Symbol · Science & Alchemy

The Cross

The Intersection of Divine Grace and Human Suffering

An instrument of execution turned, in Christian reading, into the sign that love meets suffering.

What it meansA vertical meeting a horizontal: the divine axis crossing the human, with the intersection at the point of suffering. The Christian reading is that the instrument is not transcended but kept — the sign of the faith is the thing that killed its founder, left legible.

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Tarot · Major Arcana

The Magician

Manifestation, Power, Creation

Skill and will turned on the world — the same power that manifests can also manipulate.

What it meansOne hand to heaven, one to earth: the figure is a conduit, not a source. The four suit emblems lie ready on his table and the lemniscate floats above his head, so the power is borrowed and unlimited at once — which is why the same gesture reads as creation or as conjuring.

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