Throughout the history of human civilization, people have sought to know good and evil. Even in ancient times, sages noticed an inextricable connection between these opposite phenomena of the physical and intangible worlds. One is impossible without the other, like darkness without light, life without death, disease without health, wealth without poverty, mind without stupidity, etc.
Amulets - an integral part of the life of various ethnic groups
Researchers, archaeologists and historians who studied ancient monuments have found that in ancient manuscripts and household items found in different parts of the earth, next to the image of everyday events, there are repeating signs, as if fixing fixed drawn plots or showing the reasons for the recorded phenomena. In some cases, these are bizarre icons, in others, living things with parts of bodies from different animals, and in the third, the animals themselves.
One part of the symbols looks static, while the other, on the contrary, seems to contain movement. Although most of them gave the impression of detachment and neutrality, researchers did not always and immediately succeed in unambiguously characterizing their essence and meaning: what is contained in them - good or evil, cause or effect? This concerned the yin-yang, uroboros, hamsa, colochort, ankh, molvinets, some symbolic animals, gods, etc.
It turns out that these signs are designed to balance the antagonistic forces, to create equality between them.
It is known that too much good begets evil and, on the contrary, an excess of evil opens up opportunities for the manifestation of kindness. The preponderance of both one and the other forces is fraught with great troubles. Since everything is interconnected in the world, and a person is small and defenseless, nonverbal magic of amulets comes to his aid.
The symbols of peace and good, aligning the mutual influence of opposing elements, neutralizing evil and attracting good, have long been customary to draw on the walls of houses and on utilitarian items. Amulets-charms, embodying the desired intention, were worn on the body, hoping in this way to protect themselves from misfortune or achieve the cherished goal.
Anchovy
This symbol of goodness and mercy is considered a talisman of Jews and Muslims, but it appeared long before the emergence of monotheistic religions. According to some sources, the symmetrical palm, hamsa, is the affiliation of pagan cults of ancient Mesopotamia, according to others - Egypt.
According to ancient Egyptian beliefs, hamsa fingers are the divine spouses Osiris and Isis. The central finger is their son Horus, and the two extremes personify the spirits of their ancestors.
According to all traditions, an open palm - hamsa, symbolizes childbirth, health and protection from the evil eye. It, like a universal amulet, is hung in cars, in apartments, attached to bracelets and chains.
Jewelry - pendants and earrings in the form of a symmetrical palm, made of gold and silver, adorned with precious stones, enamel and engraving.
Fatima's hand
In Islam, the hand of Fatima, or hamsa, personifies the five pillars of this religion - fasting during Ramadan, generosity to the poor, jihad, a pilgrimage to Mecca and ritual bathing.
The palm of Fatima is the national emblem of Algeria and is depicted on the national flag of the republic.
The history of the Muslim amulet is as follows:
Fatima was the daughter of the prophet Mohammed. According to legend, she could touch the sick with her hand. Once, when she was cooking dinner, her husband entered the house with her mistress, Fatima dropped a spoon in surprise and continued to stir the hot food with her bare hand. Grief, jealousy and despair deprived her of sensitivity. Since then, Muslim women have resorted to the help of the palm of Fatima when they need moral support and protection from various manifestations of evil.
Miriam's hand
According to Jewish tradition, hamsa personifies the Pentateuch of Moses (Torah, Tanah) - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, as well as five Hebrew letters and five senses, which means that a person must constantly strive with his eyesight, hearing, touch, smell and taste to the knowledge of God.
The hand of Miriam, or Yad Hamesh, is the hand of the sister of the divine Messengers - Aaron and Moses. On one side of the Jewish hamsa is the All-Seeing eye of the Creator, and on the other - the star of David or the words of Amida.
Chinese symbol of the balance of the forces of good and evil
The Chinese symbol of good and evil, yin-yang, is a black and white circle divided by a wavy line into two identical parts. Black and white, as it were, flows into one another, and, at the same time, originates in each other. Inside each part there is a small circle of the opposite color.
According to the inhabitants of China, the essence of the universe is encrypted in this figure, the nature of Tao is the constant mutual penetration of opposites and rebirth. The world is harmonious and a person must understand this.
Contemplation of the yin-yang symbol gives a sense of justice of the world order, the belief that a sad event is always followed by a joyful one, as night replaces day - this is inevitable. It is important only to relate to changing realities and not count on the possibility of eternal happiness and joy.
Yin-yang is not only a universal symbol of the harmony of the world. Sometimes loving boys and girls use it to express love and devotion. They buy a yin-yang amulet, divide it into halves and give it to each other. Yin is black and symbolizes a woman, and yang is white and symbolizes a man. The girl takes a white half, and the young man takes a black one. In this way, they commit themselves to be faithful to each other.
Birds in Chinese tradition
If yin-yang is designed to harmonize the entire surrounding space and balance the opposite elements, then to achieve the desired goal in any particular area, the Chinese use special symbols of narrowly targeted action. Century-long observations of the habits of animals and birds have given the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire knowledge about their features and about what benefits can be derived from the symbols depicting these animals. According to the inhabitants of China, the bird is a symbol of goodness, love, material wealth and a successful career.
In almost every Chinese house, in its southwestern part, you can see ceramic sculptures of a pair of mandarin ducks in love. Chinese philosophy ascribes to them such properties as fidelity, love and tenderness, because they create couples for life.
On the table, located in the middle of the south wall, are placed figures of roosters. These courageous birds always protect their harems from offenders and watch that all the hens are full, satisfied and none of them get lost and fight off the pack. It is believed that the cock is the best assistant in matters of career development.
The southeast corner of the apartment is a zone that attracts material well-being to the house. Here you can find a figurine or an image of a phoenix fire bird.
In the Chinese house there is always a corner for other birds that bring good luck - owls (to protect from the bad influence of strangers), sparrows and pigeons (for peace and harmony between spouses), herons (for longevity), eagles (for willpower and determination), grouse (for respectability and self-confidence), swans (for purity of thoughts) and falcons (for courage and victory in competitions).
Birds, representing the forces of good and evil in Ancient Egypt
In ancient Egypt, the mythical birds Great Gogotun and Vienna were considered gods, and the killing of a falcon, kite or ibis was punishable by death.
The God of the Moon, wisdom and justice, He had the head of an ibis. This bird foreshadowed the future of the Egyptians. It was believed that it controls the spill of the Nile, and this is directly related to what the harvest of the fruits of the earth will be.
One of the three main Egyptian gods, Horus, who owned the ankh, the key that opens all the roads of fate, had the head of a falcon. This bird patronized the pharaohs and protected them.
The goddess Nehbet had wings and a tuft of kite. She gave power to the pharaohs and patronized the mining of precious metals. Ordinary people turned to Nekhbet for help. Her huge wings sheltered from any danger and dispersed the forces of evil.
Cat in the cult of the Egyptians
The Egyptians worshiped not only birds, but also animals. The cat in the Egyptian cult symbolized goodness, fun and fertility. This animal is a gift from the gods to humans. Her incarnation is the beautiful goddess Bastet with the head of a cat. Temples were built in her honor, and the city of Bubastis, dedicated to Bastet, was the first Egyptian city to which the Virgin Mary came with her Divine Son during their escape from King Herod.
If Bastet did not receive due reverence, then she turned into an evil Sekhmet with the head of a lioness.
Cats in Ancient Egypt served as protection for the wheat crop, which the Egyptians supplied to many countries of the world. These animals did not allow rodents to spoil grain stocks and destroy barns. The man who killed the cat was stoned to death. In the event of fire or flooding, cats were the first to be taken out of the house to a safe place.
Cats in ancient Egypt were buried with their owners in a common crypt. They were mummified or burned in special crematoriums. If the cat was dying, then its owners observed mourning for several days - men shaved their eyebrows, and women put on appropriate dresses. Bastet figurines, as symbols of goodness and material prosperity, still adorn the homes of modern Egyptians.
Ankh
In recent decades, ancient sacred symbols (in particular, the Egyptian sign of goodness, ankh) began to be actively used by young people to express the exclusivity of their subculture. So the Goths, emo, punks, hippies and others with pleasure carry amulets on their wrists and necks, copied from the pharaohs found in the tombs or peeped in the Slavic Vedas.
The Egyptian key to life, ankh, has no less profound content than the Chinese symbol of good and evil, yin-yang.
The ancient Egyptians believed that the short life of a person in the body shell is not only not finite, but not the most important. The main life takes place in the Duat, beyond the threshold of death. Only the deity who owns the ankh can open the door to the afterlife. This key is multi-valued. It symbolizes a man and a woman, sunrise and the movement of vital energy within the human body, as well as access to secret knowledge and protection from the forces of evil.
The first Christians of Egypt, the Copts, declared the ankh a symbol of their faith. Initially, the key to life belonged to Osiris. Christ became his recipient, and the ankh, along with other signs - two fish, alpha and omega, an anchor, a ship and others, until the beginning of the Crusades was firmly associated with Christianity.
Ankh is a symbol of good, wisdom and victory over evil. It is also the tree of life, where the ring is the crown and the highland, and the core is the trunk of the tree and the path of man.
In the Middle Ages, ankhs were hanging over a bed of a woman in childbirth so that childbirth would be safe and a new person would come into the world, endowed with good health and a happy fate.
Ouroboros
The Chinese symbol of good and evil, yin-yang, is a late transformation of the ancient Middle Eastern uroboros, similar in meaning and significance.
Ouroboros is a snake curled into a ring and biting its tail or spewing itself. This is one of the ancient signs, containing a lot of meanings, including the cyclical nature of everything in nature and the constant circular movement of the forces of the universe. The head of the snake represents the inner world of man, and the tail - the surrounding reality. The essence of the symbol is that man, like all nature, creates themselves and is in constant close interconnection. Everything lasts, nothing ends, all processes are unchanged and similar to each other.
According to one source, the ouroboros, as a symbol of good and evil and their eternal cycle, as a model of the real world, was invented and painted by a student of the famous scientist Maria Jewish during the time of the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra. According to other sources, he was known from 1600 BC. e. and also from Egyptian burials.
Warboros is the most accurate and famous symbol of good and evil, death and rebirth, eternity and infinity, the universe and stars, heaven and hell, earth and water.
Pre-Christian symbols of good and evil in Russia. Colochort
The idea of good and evil, of the cyclical and inconstancy of the material world among the ancient Slavs did not differ too much from what we know about other peoples. Even the main symbol of goodness in Russia, the colohort, is a circle, from the center of which there are eight oppositely directed rays, personifying balancing each other's movements - salting and salting. This echoes the Chinese symbol of good and evil, as well as the Ouroboros.
Colohort symbolizes the sun and the eternal cycle of natural phenomena. He was also associated with the god Yarilu, who was born, flourished and died every year at the same time. Yarila gave the Russians a rich harvest of the fruits of the earth, victory in military affairs, harmony and love in families.
Yarila, embodied in colohort, as a Slavic symbol of good and evil, also had power over the spirits of his ancestors, over life and death.
Molvinets
Molvinets is a Slavic symbol of goodness, a gift from the god Rod, an analogue of hamsa and ankh. It looks like a colochort, but does not contain movement. This amulet in its execution looks static, since it consists of two crossed and intertwined closed broken lines resembling the number 8. Molvinets is a powerful amulet from the evil eye, evil thoughts, illnesses and unhappiness.
The molvinets gives the gift of speech and conviction, and also protects from evil rumors and gossip. It is most suitable for lawyers, writers, journalists, politicians and managers of various ranks, although it helps representatives of other professions.
Birds in Russian tradition
“Birds are the freest and happiest creatures on earth, ” was the opinion of our ancestors, the Slavs. Birds are not tied to one place; they have the ability to travel around the world. For them are open and sky-high, divine open spaces. It is no accident that the symbol of good in fairy tales is the white swan. Often the main character, in trouble, found protection and shelter under the wings of this beautiful bird.
A pair of swans is faithful to each other throughout their lives, and how they take care of their chicks deserves a separate story, because both spouses hatch eggs in turn. Together, they get food for the chicks, together, and fight off enemies.
The rooster is another character occupying an honorable place in the pantheon of Slavic birds, bringing good and peace. With a loud cry, the rooster disperses the forces of evil. After the third crowing, the impure force leaves the audible range of this sound. An economic and attentive cock sets up his owners to a responsible attitude to household chores.
Modern science has proven that the sounds of poultry voices have a calming effect on the nervous system and relieve accumulated stress.
Symbols of good and evil in the Christian tradition
The original Christian symbolism was directly related to the Middle East. The ancient attributes of goodness, equality between people, eternal life after physical death, and others were actively used by Christians, but were not invented by them. This statement does not apply only to the cross on which Jesus was crucified. The crucifixion was approved as an official symbol of the victory of good over evil only after Queen Elena, the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine 1, excavated in Jerusalem in 326 and found miraculous sacred relics related to the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, and with them Life-giving Cross.
Prior to this, the emblems of Christians were more than two dozen different objects, including plants, animals, etc. The ship was associated with Noah's ark and reminded Christians of the need to be able to wait, endure and believe in salvation. The anchor hinted at the strength and sustainability of the new teaching.
In the symbolism of the early Christians, birds occupied a large place. So, the dove meant the holy spirit and purity of intentions (it is still used in this meaning), the rooster symbolized the birth to a new life after the baptismal ritual in the name of the Holy Spirit, the peacock personified the immortality and incorruptibility of the holy relics, since the meat of this bird does not decompose into the earth, and the phoenix is the resurrection from the dead.
