The Omnifarium - Books/TheBookOfSigns.html

The Book of Signs

Category: Books
Fri, 08 Jul 2005, 18:30

Dover Publications is well known for affordable reprints of some marvellous old books. The Book of Signs (by Rudolf Koch) is an example of a Dover book that's a terrific source of clip art suitable for web sites, since Dover explicitly allows the use of a certain number of illustrations from the book without permission. This note serves to provide the requested credit.

The following describes the meanings of the symbols used in this blog:

	Notes in the Books section get this profound symbol. The The Book of Signs describes it thusly: "An oriental symbol of the soul's pilgrimage through life: the soul climbs up through the four belts of the world, or elements, to its purification, and wins through from darkness into light."
	The Bowling section gets the triquetrum, which conveys the sense of rolling. The circle is divided into three sections, representing the three throws per frame you are allowed in five-pin bowling.
	Politics gets this unlikely choice, which represents friendship between people. Many Canadians may remember this symbol. A ring of eight of these symbols was used as a logo for Expo 67, the world's fair held in Montréal.
	Religion is represented by this ancient pagan symbol representing the sun. Later, it was appropriated by Christians as a Chrismon, or monogram of Christ.
	Three straight horizontal lines represent "passive intellect". Three straight vertical lines represent "active intellect". Three wavy horizontal lines mean "intellect in action". Three lines arranged in a triangle symbolize "creative intellect". Finally, when the lines cut through each other, order dissolves. The symbol used for Sudoku is called "disordered intellect", suggesting an activity for those who might just have too much time on their hands. (Hmmm, that could well apply to blogging too!)
	The symbol used for the Television section is a holding mark called "the manure heap".
	For Toronto I use this symbol called simply "the city". Inverted, it indicates the destruction of the city.
	Finally, the symbol for the Trains section is, appropriately, an old chemical symbol for iron. The arrow represents forward motion and the two parallel lines represent the two iron rails. Thus, this medieval symbol foresees the use of iron in the railroad industry a thousand years in advance!

Hans

path: /Books | permanent link to this entry