I rarely write explanations, rants and things of such nature, but recently I've had a long exchange of messages with the lovely Goritsa Svortsan on the Astrological Magic Group on Facebook.
Upon my publication of the Planetary seals of Benhensatrus (1), she pointed out that the seal of Mercury contains the symbol of Aries, so it must Mars, not Mercury, therefore it must be wrong:
The lower part of the seal indeed contains a character that includes the classical astrological glyph of Aries.
I believe this to be a non-issue, an accident and mere coincidence without any real impact, but since I`ve met many individuals that tend to differ, I will try to do my best to explain why I do not have the same logic.
1. Lack of graphical identity.
The presence of visual similarity of the part cannot justify the congruence in meaning of the whole.
The Symbol we are dealing with is this one, lets call it 1:
Visually, this is not the symbol associated today with Aries. A part of it, however, is, we ll call it 2:
Now, symbol 2 is a part of symbol one, but it cannot have the same significance. In our Latin alphabet, for instance, the letters B, D, E, F, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, R, T, X and Z all contain a line. The line is the sound I. Although B or T do have a graphical symbol resembling I, they do not represent the same thing, just because one part of the symbol means something to us. Furthermore, B contains an I, a P, and two D s, but it does not embody any of these sounds, but a whole other sound all of its own. A Smiley-face contains a circle and two dots, but we do not interpret it as O.. but rather, interpret the whole as a logogram.
The rule is: the simpler a sign is, the the higher the possibility of it being part of another symbol or another system, with very few chances to have overlapping meanings.
A few variants of the symbol might be these:
These six symbols are variants between our Symbol (1) and the Aries Sign (2). Many more visual combinations are possible, but I've generated only these as examples. None of them are identical in shape, so none of them might be identified with one another. They are just as similar in shape as the letters p, q, b and d, but just as different in potential of meaning. So they cannot overlap.
2. Lack of historical consistency.
That's not the seal of Aries.
It might also be the seal of Aries, but it`s not only that. And the seal of Aries might be that today, but it wasn't always. We might think that these astrological glyphs looked the same as today 100 years ago, and 500 years ago and 2000 years ago, but that is simply inaccurate.
All systems evolve, change and morph as they move through time and space. It`s true for alphabets, syllabaries, logographic scripts, musical notation, alchemical symbols, magical seals and astrological siglae as well. Just because we identify the two curves-on-a-stick as Aries, we cannot suppose that every two-curves-on-a-stick through history IS Aries Always, we have a long history behind it`s evolution.
Just for brevity`s sake, we`ll only study the case of the astrological seals of the planet Mercury and the sign Aries.
We`ll use the Dictionary of Occult, Hermetic and Alchemical Symbols by Fred Gettings as a resource. It might not be an exhaustive treatment of the matter, but it is quite comprehensive.
Gettings lists the following symbols for the sign of Aries, at pages 56-57 (click to enlarge):
As we might see, the more recent the occurence, the more familiar the seal gets. The older the occurrence, the more alien and remote it looks. Should any expert astrologer look at the sign listed as Agrippa 1510 or Astronomical 1400, they will not identify them as Aries unless they would have done tremendously wasteful studies of compared symbology (like yours truly). From the above list of 30 characters, less then half (13) characters are similar, with only 5 being a match. Now, there s an immense wealth of manuscripts, but this gives us a rough idea.
If we turn over to 170-171, we can consult the entry on Mercury (click to enlarge):
Now, even though the sign for Mercury as a planet and as a metal have been used interchangeably throughout history, just to make things harder, we will completely ignore the alchemical signs and just take into account the astrological signs.
Again, of 53 signs, less than half (24) are similar to what we know today to be the glyph of Mercury. If we look at the symbols gathered by Gessman, none of us might think that they are the Winged Sandal God.
If we are to go further with this mechanism, let`s see how a modern man could interpret different signs listed as Mercury in other ages:
Pluto: Bonatti 15c, Ragor 1474, Campanus 15c,
Venus: Rawlinson 15c
Dollar sign: Firmicus 1510
Neptune: Alchemy 1510, Gessman 1906,
Taurus: Gessman 1906, Blundeville 1594,
Aries: Scot 15c and apparently, the pentacle that arose this very discussion.
If we apply this exercise to the hundreds of magical symbols out there, or only on those hundreds presented just on my blog, you`ll find the examples are even more common.
Conclusions?
1. A sign is a symbol with a fixed and certain significance only when we know it`s system and from that environment we can deduce it`s meaning.
2.We cannot connect old symbols to our modern versions of them, but rather look at the sources and see if there are consistencies.
3. Just because it looks like a 69, doesn`t mean it means 69, it Cancer, so look out!
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