Symbol Dictionary H
Hair: Hair is believed to house the soul and is a tool for the deities in many traditions. Barbara Walker in her book, The Woman’s Encyclopedia Of Myths And Secrets (1983) relates, “As shown by its importance in witch-charms and in the mutual exchange of talismans between lovers, hair was usually viewed as a repository of at least a part of the soul.” Tradition holds that Hair is used as a talisman of protection, an offering to the Goddess, a tool of the Goddess to control the weather/cosmos, Tantric Sages believed they can control the weather by binding or unbinding hair, an analogy for death (to be in the shadow of the Queen of Shades hair is to be near death), as well as a mythic tool of resurrection in many Goddess myths (such as Isis resurrecting Osiris), Egyptians place locks of a widow’s hair in her husbands tomb as protection in the afterlife. Many Goddesses are portrayed with a significance placed on the hair, as wild or with snakes (such as Medusa). Pagan Priestesses/Witches believe that they can control the spirit world with their loosened hair and this led St. Paul to greatly fear these spirits, and created the rule that a women’s hair must be covered in church. This also led to the practice of shaving the heads of nuns and Jewish wives to render them harmless. However, women were not to take the initiative in cutting of their own hair, as this was punishable by death as Joan of Arc discovered. Gypsies used hair in love potions and it was a custom of the Medieval Age for lovers to exchange hair locks as a sign of love and for a future spell if a lover is spurned. Walker explains, “Whoever possessed another’s hair had power over his soul.” Hair is also associated with the sun gods such as Apollo, as representing their “rays” and vitality.
Halloween: This modern holiday has its roots deep in spiritual tradition and is about honoring the spirits/ancestors on a day when the veils between the worlds are believed to be thinnest. Barbara Walker in her book, The Woman’s Encyclopedia Of Myths And Secrets (1983) explains “The pagan idea used to be that crucial joints between the seasons opened cracks in the fabric of space-time, allowing contact between the ghost world and the mortal one.” Christianity named it All Souls’ day after All Hallows’ Eve (November 1st) and based it on the Celtic fest for the dead, Samhain. The Lord of Death (also called the Grim Reaper) was known as Samana and inspirited the festival’s title. Irish called it Vigil of Saman and considered it holy. The game of dunking for apples is based on a divination tool believed to reveal the future on this night, with the tank of apples representing the Cauldron of Regeneration. See Cauldron.
Halo: Also called Nimbus. The Halo is the Christian symbol of an apotheosis, deification, or canonization. A Halo is a ring of light around a figure’s head, such as Jesus or Mary. This symbol was taken from the Eleusinian Mysteries in which the Haloa savior-god (called Dionysus, Triptolemus, or Iasus) was honored at the Festival of the Threshing-Floor. According to Barbara Walker in her book, The Woman’s Encyclopedia Of Myths And Secrets (1983), “He [Haloa] represented the grain. At his birth, he was laid in a manger. He was sacrificed, buried, and resurrected: the sequence representing harvest, re-planting, and new growth. His flesh and blood were consumed by his worshippers in the form of bread and wine.” In Tantric tradition it became the “thousand-petaled lotus of light,” called the nimbus or cloud of light around the heads of enlightened sages. The Halo was also an Egyptian symbol for the daily-reborn sun god. Rowena and Rupert Shepherd in their book 1000 Symbols: What Shapes Mean In Art And Myth (2002), explain, “Related to the Ancient Egyptian sun-disc, haloes were first depicted around deities associated with the sun, such as the Zoroastrian god Ahura Mazda.” Roman sun deities such as Apollo and Mithras have sun-ray crowns that represent the same thing.
Hammer: From Man, Myth And Magic: The Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Mythology, Religion And The Unknown (1995), edited by Richard Cavendish, “The hammer is one of the earliest symbols to be drawn from technology and in the Soviet Union symbolizes the power of the working people: the combined motif of hammer and sickle represents the alliance of the industrial working class and the peasantry.” See Blade.
Hare: See Animals.
Head-Dress: Hats outside of being practical have meaning for the society, so that, like clothes, they “can identify deities, social groups or individuals,” according to Rowena and Rupert Shepherd in their book 1000 Symbols: What Shapes Mean In Art And Myth (2002). In Man, Myth And Magic: The Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Mythology, Religion And The Unknown (1995), edited by Richard Cavendish gives the example that a “Horned head-dresses are frequently meant to give the wearer the strength and virility of powerful horned animals like the bull.” Head-dresses symbolize power and strength especially for soldiers, priests, and other persons of power. See Crown.
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Heart: The Heart has long been a symbol of the soul and a person’s character. Many phrases used today date back to earlier associations; such as a person’s heart may be heavy, cold, hard, light, warm, or soft. A heart may be stolen, or filled with emotion. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, unless of course it is given back and the heart breaks. The Egyptians regarded the heart-soul (the Ab) as the most important of 7 souls given by the Hathors or 7 birth goddesses, as the one to be weighed against the Feather of Truth by Maat at the gates to the Underworld. |
The ab was considered the most important because it was the blood-soul, filled with the essence of the Goddess, and fostered the belief that menstrual blood came directly from the heart. Consequently, as the organ of creation, given by the Goddess and used for reproduction, the heart was also the prime offering to the Goddess as it was believed she needed something in return in order to continue creation. Barbara Walker in her book, The Woman’s Encyclopedia Of Myths And Secrets (1983) explains that “the primitive theory was that what a deity gave must be returned at least in part, to keep up the deity’s energy to give more.” The practice of removing hearts from mummies probably started as an offering to the Goddess. The Heart is also significant to Tantric Sages who believe that “within the heart” represented the center of the universe, or Chidambaram, where the rhythm of eternity is danced by Shiva. The heartbeat is said to be the basic tempo for poetry (iambic pentameter) and music.
Heart, Mother: The Mother-Heart of earlier times was similar to the Sacred Heart and described in the same terms “as ‘the temple in which dwells the life of the world,’ as a rose, a cup, a treasure, a spring, as a furnace of divine love... as a bridal chamber.” (Jung and von Franz quoted in Walker, 1983.)
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Heart, Sacred: The Sacred Heart, a moon within a heart, was adopted by Catholicism in the 17th century after St. Margaret Marie Alacoque had a vision of it, however this symbol was sported in stained-glass windows (Chapel of St. Thomas Aquilnas and Convent des Cordeliers in Paris) and cloister walls (Jacobin cloister) dating back to earlier centuries (Walker, 1983). Christianity added the thorned wreath and crown of Christ to the heart. |
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The principal teaching of Sufism is that of learning to become a pupil… The crescent in the heart represents that the heart, responsive to the light of God, is illuminated… It is the divine light, which is represented by the five-pointed star, and the star is reflected in the heart, which is responsive to the divine light. And the heart, which has by its response received the light of God is liberated, as the wings show. Therefore, this sentence will explain, in short, the meaning of the symbol: the heart, responsive to the light of God, is liberated.”
Hell: See Underworld.
Henna: Also known as red ochre. This herb when ground is a natural dye and used traditionally in India and Egypt, although others through history have also taken advantage of it, such as Greek worshipers of Hecate and Gypsies. Henna produces earth tones of red, considered the sacred color of the Goddess and used to stain hair, nails, and skin (especially the souls of the feet and hands). According to Barbara Walker in her book, The Woman’s Encyclopedia Of Myths And Secrets (1983), henna was used “to stain women’s palms and soles the sacred color of the Goddess, (because) henna was important in her sacrificial rites.” Itself a symbol for the Goddess, it can dye the skin in patterns that also have significance such as the Om symbol. During the Middle Ages, because of its association with the Goddess and female religion, Henna was associated with witchcraft and considered a heretical crime.
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Hexagram: Also called Magen David, Shield of David, Star of David, Solomon’s Seal, Sri Yantra, or Great Yantra. The Hexagram, two triangles, one right side up, one upside down superimposed upon each other is ancient in origins, important to Tantric Hinduism and Judaism, as well as others. It combines the most basic symbol of the feminine, the downward-pointing triangle (often referred to as the Yoni Yantra, cup, chalice, or Holy Grail and has obvious connections with the womb), with the symbol for the masculine, the upward-pointing triangle (often referred to as the primordial androgyne or blade, and has obvious connections with male sexual anatomy). From Man, Myth And Magic: The Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Mythology, Religion And The Unknown (1995), edited by Richard Cavendish, “The hexagram’s twin triangles, one pointing up and the other down, can be taken to embody the esoteric maxim ‘as above, so below’ and interpreted as a symbol of God and man, of the magic power of man as the potential macrocosm and master of all things.” |
The two triangles of the Hexagram also symbolize the fire and water, of alchemy and may represent the Philosophers’ Stone. Six is the numerological number of balance and harmony, much like the Cabala sixth sefirah, Tifereth, and the harmonizing sphere of the Tree of Life. Known as Solomon’s Seal and Magen David, this symbol was used by the Jewish Kings David and Solomon. Hundreds of years before it became a symbol of Jewish religion (it was first discussed in the 12th century and officially accepted in the 17th century), it was used on shields during warfare between Gentles and other Israelites (thus its other name Shield of David). From this use it became the symbol for God’s protection and guidance of the Jewish people (Chaimberlin).
The Star of David has other symbolic meanings as Rabbi Shraga Simmons, in his essay, Jewish Literacy, Key Concepts, Star Of David (2002), explains, “The six points of the Star of David symbolize God's rule over the universe in all six directions: north, south, east, west, up and down.” Barbara Walker, in her book The Woman’s Encyclopedia Of Myths And Secrets (1983) explains that before Judaism co-opted this symbol, it was known as the Yantra and was part of the Tantric Hindu Cabalistic sex-worship that Judaism incorporated and then later eliminated this symbol’s original meaning. Barbara Walker, in her book The Woman’s Encyclopedia Of Myths And Secrets (1983) explains “The original source of the Magen David was the Tantric ‘Great Yantra,’ which stood for union of the sexes: the downward-pointing triangle being female, the upward-pointing one male, the two signifying the eternal union of God and Goddess.” Walker goes on, “In the course of infinite time, the Goddess conceived a spark of life within her triangle, the bindu, which was eventually born and developed into a male, symbolized by the upward-pointing triangle... The sign of this union was the hexagram.” This Bindumati (Mother of the Bindu) was the Deity who personified the Great Yantra. In myth she is a divine harlot, ruling nature with magic and miracles. Walker asserts that “From the Tantric image of the sexual hexagram arose a Jewish system of sex worship connected with the medieval Cabala” and from this, arose the tradition of displaying the hexagram to represent this union. There is also significance in the two triangles that make up the complete symbol, “In Kabbalah, the two triangles represent the dichotomies inherent in man: good vs. evil, spiritual vs. physical, etc.” (Simmons, 2002). The creation story in Genesis, borrowed the hexagram to represent the 6th day (of the 7 to create the world) in which God made man. Unfortunately, this beautiful symbol was also used during the Holocaust to mark Jews from the rest of society by making them wear an armband with the Star of David printed on it.
Hieros Gamos: See Sacred Marriage.
Himalaya: See Paradise.
Hocus Pocus: This magical incantation comes from the middle ages when liturgical words were intoned as invocations and charms. In her book The Woman’s Encyclopedia Of Myths And Secrets (1983), Barbara Walker explains, “Hocus pocus is a corruption of hoc est corpus meum, ‘this is my body,’ from the sacrament of the Eucharist.”
Holly: See Tree.
Holy Wars: Holy Wars are wars that are justified by religion. People have been killing each other in the name of religion for thousands of years and continue today. The Woman’s Encyclopedia Of Myths And Secrets (1983), Barbara Walker said that the crusades were ‘Holy wars designed to wrest property away from the heathen or heretic enemies of orthodox Christianity.” Christian lords, clergy, and soldiers alike fought these wars and were promised not only the normal spoils but also “instant remission of sins and admission to heaven guaranteed no matter what crimes the crusader may have committed” (Walker, 1983). The crusades were a result of tension between the Holy Roman Empire and other powers of the Europe, particularly pagan Normans and Moslem Saracens who threatened to take control. Pope Urban II attempted to solve the problem by declaring the crusades in the 10th century. The Woman’s Encyclopedia Of Myths And Secrets (1983), Barbara Walker states that “For the next 400 years, Christian knights went forth to astonish the Saracens with their intellectual naïveté and their military sophistication, developed in a feudal society based on warfare,” claiming 8 to 10 million casualties.
Honey: A natural preservative (along with salt), sweetener, and source of alcoholic fermentation, honey was significant to ancient cultures. In her book The Woman’s Encyclopedia Of Myths And Secrets (1983), Barbara Walker explains, “honey was widely regarded as a substance of resurrection-magic.” Honey was used by the people of Asia Minor to embalm the dead and placed them in fetal positions in preparation for rebirth in 3500 to 1750 B.C.E. Honey was the sacred essence to the goddess Pandora, the “All-Giver.” Honey has been associated with the Goddess as her “bee-balm,” invested with restoring life to the dead, a nickname of goddess Demeter is “the pure mother bee,” and goddess Aphrodite’s symbol was a golden honeycomb. The titles of high priestess or queens often means “bee” such as Melissa and Deborah. The honey-moon, traditionally from the wedding night spanning a lunar month (the same span of a full cycle of menstruation), indicates the close association of the honey with the goddess and rebirth. In Babylonia, honey is given to a bridegroom on his wedding day and it is speared on the threshold of newly married couples’ houses in Croatia. In Germany, beehives were decorated at a wedding. “Honey is a widespread symbol of fruitfulness in love and marriage, and has a long history even as an aphrodisiac” according to Man, Myth And Magic: The Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Mythology, Religion And The Unknown (1995), edited by Richard Cavendish. Norse mythology tells of a nectar of the gods that inspires wisdom, literacy, magic, and eternal life, which was a combination of honey and “wise blood” or menstrual blood. Walker (1983) asserts that blood, honey, and salt are the three substances “most often associated with resurrection or rebirth.” The Chinese, Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, and English word for honey-wine or mead all have a common root. Ancient Babylon had a honey God and honey represented the universe. Richard Cavendish further explains, “In the belief of more than one ancient people, honey is abundant in holy or divine place: in the book of Exodus, the God of Abraham promises the elders of Israel that he will bring them to a land flowing with milk and honey. In Jewish tradition, the Messiah feeds the pious in heaven with honey and Manna, and in a number of medieval mystical prayers, Christ himself is addressed as the honeycomb.” Honey is poured in offerings and libations. Russia, South Africa, Silesia, Switzerland all have customs involving honey.
Horn of Plenty: See Cornucopia.
Horns: The significance of horns date as far back to cave drawings of the 5th century B.C.E. in their original representation as the Stag and Doe of fertility. Men wearing bull, stag, ram, or goat horns are prolific in primitive sacred art and later became the Horned Gods Actaeon the stag, Dionysus or Zeus the bull, Amen the ram, and Pan the goat who were unfortunately all combined later to produce the Christian devil. “The Horned God was representative of the life force of Nature” (Cabot, 1997). According to Barbara Walker, in her book The Woman’s Encyclopedia Of Myths And Secrets (1983), “horns were connected with the oldest Tantric belief concerning male vitality: that by suppression of ejaculation, mystic energy mounts up the spine to the head and flowers forth in wisdom and magic power, made visible by horns.” Mari-Asherah, the divine cow, took the form of a moon-bull, much like Shiva, the White Bull Nandi, the Blessed One. This symbol crosses cultures and has been used by the Aztecs, Mayans, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Celts in spiritual and religious forms. Notably, important Celtic festivals of fertility, such as the Spring Equinox festival of Beltane, utilize the archetypal energies of the Stag and Doe in a ritual of union, balance, and fertility and has survived into this century. According to Man, Myth And Magic: The Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Mythology, Religion And The Unknown (1995), edited by Richard Cavendish, “The outstanding courage and virility of the male horned animal led men to adopt the horn as the emblem of manhood; the gods themselves were frequently depicted as horned in ancient times… A challenge to man’s strength, horned creatures have been both feared and admired by him for millennia.” The Bible makes several allusions to horns in association with Yahweh being the horned one. See Devil.
Horse: See Animals.
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Horseshoe: The horseshoe is a symbol of the beginning of creation and cycle of life, as the Great Mother’s fertility. According to Barbara Walker, in her book The Woman’s Encyclopedia Of Myths And Secrets (1983), “Hindus, Arabs, and Celts regarded the yonic shape of the horseshoe as a symbol of the Goddess’s ‘Great Gate,’ thus it was always esteemed as a prophylactic door charm.” Druids and Hindus both built temples in the shape of a horseshoe, and Arabs created sacred architecture in its shape. The Greeks considered it the Word of Creation or Om, and used its sign as the last letter in their sacred Alphabet, Omega. |
Humours, Four: Developed by the Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates (469-399 B.C.E.), these four vapours of the body were believed by western physicians to regulate health, character and temperament. Medicine was prescribed to balance the four humours and restore equilibrium to the body and mind. The Four Humours, according to Rowena and Rupert Shepherd in their book 1000 Symbols: What Shapes Mean In Art And Myth (2002) are as follows:
Blood: (red in color) “hot and moist, associated with air and a sanguine temperament (amorous, happy, generous, and optimistic).”
Yellow Bile: “Hot and dry, associated with fire and choleric temperament (violate, gained three, and reasonable, vengeful).”
Phlegm: (green in color) “cold and moist, associated with water and a fanatic temperament (slow, dull and cowardly).”
Black Bile: “cold and dry, related to earth and associated with a melancholy temperament (gluttonous, lazy, sentimental, pensive and depressive).”
Huppah: The Hebrew Huppah is the marriage canopy traditionally held above a couple during a Jewish wedding. This was a symbol of permission to enter a women’s tent, left over from a time when women owned the property and tents, and she gives permission for her husband to dwell with her. In her book The Woman’s Encyclopedia Of Myths And Secrets (1983), Barbara Walker explains, “The tent and the land it occupied were symbolic of the woman herself. Before the development of patriarchal rules, she had complete control of her property.”
Husband:. Hus means “bonded” to the house. All over Europe and India, before the patriarchal rule of Islam and Christianity, there are customs and phrases that reflect this matriarchal control. In Greece a husband was called a “stranger” and not considered a part of the clan. In Arabia husbands did not gain prominence or record in a clan until they fathered children, at which time they gained the title abu, or “father of...” The wife owned the house and land and the husband worked the land for her, but the wife retained the harvest. In her book The Woman’s Encyclopedia Of Myths And Secrets (1983), Barbara Walker explains, “among Anglo-Saxon tribes, ‘husbandry’ meant farm work—as it still does—because a husband was usually bonded to work on his wife’s land... The old custom of providing work in compensation for marriage gave rise to the word bridegroom, literally ‘the bride’s servant.’”