More "Sacred Vessels" high ATOP Posts

There appear to be four coital motifs which meander in and out of popular and sacred culture - this oversimplification is somewhat new ground, so we are inventing language/names which will no doubt change as we blog along-

a] "trophy" - more or less equal parts male and female "attributes" which we see above, ie "shoe-in-post"; "Holy Grail"; "bell/ghanta",;

b] "holly wreath" - the vulvic circle made up of phallic parts, ie "crown of thorns"; "ring of keys"

c] "flowered rod" - the phallic wrapped with various female "attributes", probably our anathemic "asher'ah" object.

d] "axis mundi" - more a virtual "pole" around which dynamically turns the "feminine" aspect, ie female earth turning on its male axis or the ziggurat or "Tower of Babel" winding up vertically to the heavens

This post begins the first category- "trophy", then follow through the other three motifs.

From ARAS Online: "The ankh or crux ansata - the sign of life - has the form of a looped knotted cross. As a syllable, this hieroglyph is the root of no less than twenty four words. Of these, Brugsch (cited by Giedion) lists fourteen which retain the original sense of the root: to have existence, to renew existence, to will into existence. Other meanings include those of 'eye' and 'ear' which divert in meaning to that of opening. Winthius (cited by Giedion) observes that the picture of an opening or an eye is recognized by some ethnologists as a picture of the vulva."

"Giedion believes that the Egyptian sign of life may be related to the prehistoric fertility symbols of vulva and phallus, the upper part corresponding to the Aurignacian symbol for the vulva, combined with an abstraction of the phallus, yielding in combination a symbol of androgyny, of the eternal renewal of procreation, of the magic power inherent in the union of male and female."

"In early Christian times, the ankh was modified by Egyptian Christians into the Coptic cross."

credit: ARAS Online [online archive] Record No. 2Ac.008, New York: The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism; available from www.aras.org; accessed 15 June 2006.

Citations mentioned by ARAS:
The Eternal Present: The Beginnings Of Art.
S.Giedion, Pantheon Books. Bollingen Series XXXX\V 6.1, 1962. pp.120,231,233.

The Eternal Present: The Beginnings of Architecture
Giedion, S. Pantheon Books, 1964., pp.89-93.

More about the related popular images of Christmas stocking /candy cane and wine glass - or do you already see where we are headed??