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MACE
MACHINES
MACROCOSM—MICROCOSM
MAIZE
MAKARA
MAN
MANDALA
MANDORLA
MANDRAGORA
MAN-EATING MONSTER
MANICORA
MARRIAGE
MARS
MASK
MATRON
MATTER
MAYA
MEADOW
MELUSINA
MENHIR
MEPHISTOPHELES
MERCURY
METALS
METAMORPHOSIS
MINARET
Mace
A determinative sign in the Egyptian system of hieroglyphs, governing the ideas of the creative Word and achievement . It is related to the oar, the sceptre, the staff and the club, all of them symbolic instruments of one morphological family. In Egypt the oar was also linked with the idea of creating. As a weapon, the mace denotes a crushing blow or utter destruction and not simply victory over the adversary; it is therefore used as the insignia denoting the annihilation of the subjective, assertive tendency in Man, and also of the monsters symbolizing this tendency, for the same reason it is the attribute of Hercules .
Machines
The symbolism of machines is founded upon the shape of their components and the rhythm and direction of their movement. Broadly speaking, this symbolism finds its inspiration in the obvious analogy with the physiological functions of ingestion, digestion and reproduction.
Macrocosm—Microcosm
This relationship is symbolic of the situation in the universe of man as the 'measure of all things'. The basis of this relationship—which has occupied the minds of thinkers and mystics of all kinds in all ages—is the symbolism of man himself, particularly as the 'universal man' together with his 'correspondences' with the Zodiac, the planets and the Elements. As Origen observed: 'Understand that you are another world in miniature and the you are the sun, the moon and also the stars' .
Maize
One of the eight 'common emblems' of China, maize is symbolic of prosperity and is widely used in ornamental art . Almost all cereals have a common meaning in that they are spermatic images. Peruvians represent fertility by means of the figure of a woman made out of stalks of maize which they call 'the mother of the maize' .
Makara
An Indian mythic monster, part-fish and part-crocodile. It is also to be found in the ornamental art of the Indonesians.
Man
figuur:
Man comes to see himself as a symbol in so far as he is conscious of his being. Hallstatt art, in Austria, shows fine examples of animal-heads with human figures appearing above them. In India, in New Guinea, in the West as well, the bull's or ox's head with a human form drawn between the horns is a very common motif. Since the bull is a symbol for the father-heaven, man comes to be seen as both his and the earth's son , also, as a third possibility, the son of the sun and the moon .
The implications of Origen's remark: 'Understand that you are another world in miniature and that in you are the sun, the moon and also the stars', are to be found in all symbolic traditions. In Moslem esoteric thought, man is the symbol of universal existence , an idea which has found its way into contemporary philosophy in the definition of man as sthe messenger of being'; however, in symbolic theory, man is not defined by function alone that of appropriating the consciousness of the cosmos, but rather by analogy, whereby he is seen as an image of the universe.
This analogical relationship is sometimes expressed explicitly, as in some of the more ancient sections of the Upanishads—the Brihadaranyaka and the Chandogya for instance—where the analogy between the human organism and the macrocosmos is drawn step by step by means of correspondences with the organs of the body and the senses . so, for example. the components of the nervous system are derived from fiery substance, and blood from watery substance . These oriental concepts first appear in the West during the Romanesque period: Honorius of Autun, in his Elucidarium 2th century states that the flesh and the bones of man are derived from the earth, blood from water, his breath from air, and body-heat from fire. Each part of the body relates to a corresponding part of the universe: the head corresponds to the heavens, the breath to air, the belly to the sea, the lower extremities to earth.
The five senses were given analogies in accordance with a system which came to Europe, perhaps, from the Hebrews and the Greeks . Thus, Hildegard of Bingen, living in the same period, states that man is disposed according to the number five: he is of five equal parts in height and five in girth; he has five senses and five members, echoed in the hand as five vingers. Hence the pentagram is a sign of the microcosmos. AgrippaX of Nettesheim represented this graphically, after Valeriano, who drew the analogy between the five-pointed star and the five wounds of Christ. There is a relationship, too, between the organic laws of Man and the Cistercian temple . Fabre d'Olivet, following the Cabala, maintains that another number closely associated with the human being is nine—the triple ternary. He divides human potentialities into three planes: those of the body, of the soul or life and of the spirit. Each of these planes is characterized by three modes: the active, the passive and the neutral . In the Far East, also, speculation about the symbolism of man began very early.
The same kind of triple ternary organization is to be seen in the ancient teachings of the Taoists . It is also interesting to note that there is a relationship between the human being and the essential or archetypal animals the turtle, the phoenix, the dragon and the unicorn who appear to bear the same relation to man—who is central—as the tetramorphs do to the Pantokrator. Now, between man as a concrete individual and the universe there is a medial term—a mesocosmos. And this mesocosmos is the 'Universal Man', the King Wang in Far Eastern tradition, and the Adam Kadmon of the Cabala. He symbolizes the whole pattern of the world of manifestation, that is, the complete range of possibilities open to mankind. In a way, the concept corresponds to Jung's 'collective unconscious'. According to Guenon, Leibniz—perhaps influenced by Raymond Lull conceded that every 'individual substance' must contain within itself an integral reproduction of the universe, even if only as an image, just as the seed contains the totality of the being into which it will develop . In Indian symbolism, Vaishvanara, or the 'Universal Man', is divided into seven principal sections:
The superior, luminous spheres as a whole, or the supreme states of being; the sun and the moon—or rather, the principles to which they pertain—as expressed in the right and the left eye respectively; the fire-principle—the mouth; the directions of space—the ears; S the atmosphere—the lungs; the intermediary zone between earth and heaven—the stomach; the earth—the natural functions or the lower part of the body. The heart is not mentioned, because, being the 'centre' or dwelling-place of Brahma, it is regarded as being beyond the 'wheel' of things . Now, this concept of the 'Universal Man' implies hermaphroditism, though never specifically. For the concrete, existential human being, in so far as he is either a man or a woman, represents the dissected 'human' whole, not only in the physical sense but also spiritually. Thus, to quote the Upanishads: 'He was, in truth, as big as a man and a woman embracing. He divided this atman into two parts; from them sprang husband and wife.' In Western iconography one sometimes finds images which would seem to be echoes of this concept . A human couple, by their very nature, must always symbolize the urge to unite what is in fact discrete. Figures which are shown embracing one another, or joining hands, or growing out of roots which bind them together, and so on, symbolize 'conjunction', that is, coincidentia oppositorum.
There is a Hindu image representing the 'joining of the unjoinable' analogous to the marriage of fire and water by the interlinking of Man and Woman, which may be taken to symbolize the joining of all opposites: good and bad, high and low, cold and hot, wet and dry, and so on . In alchemy, Man and Wornan symbolize sulphur and mercury the metal. In psychology, level-symbolism is often brought to bear upon the members of the body, so that the right side corresponds to the conscious level and the left to the unconscious. The shapes of the parts of the body, depending upon whether they are positive or negative—whether they are protuberances or cavities—should be seen not only as sex-symbols but also in the light of the symbolism of levels. The head is almost universally regarded as a symbol of virility . The attitudes which the body may take up are of great symbolic importance, because they are both the instrument and the expression of the human tendency towards ascendence and evolution. A position with the arms wide open pertains to the symbolism of the cross. And a posture in the form of the letter 'X' refers to the union of the two wodds, a symbol which is related to the hour-glass, the 'X' and all other symbols of intersection .
Mandala
figuur:
This is a Hindu term for a circle. It is a kind of yantra instrument, means or emblem, in the form of a ritual geometric diagram, sometimes corresponding to a specific, divine attribute or to some form of enchantment mantra which is thus given visual expression . Cammann suggests that mandalas were first brought to Tibet from India by the great guru Padma Sambhava in the 8th century A.D. They are to be found all over the Orient, and always as a means towards contemplation and concentration—as an aid in inducing certain mental states and in encouraging the spirit to move forward along its path of evolution from the biological to the geometric, from the realm of Corporeal forms to the spiritual. According to Heinrich Zimmer, mamdalas are not only painted or drawn, but are also actually built in three dimensions for some festivals. One of the members of the Lamaist convent of Bhutia Busty, Lingdam Gomchen, described the mandala to Carl Gustav Jung as 'a mental image which may be built up in the imagination only by a trained lama'. He maintained that sno one mandala is the same as another': all are different because each is a projected image of the psychic condition of its author, or in other words, an expression of the modification brought by this psychic content to the traditional idea of the mandala. Thus, the mandala is a synthesis of a traditional structure plus free interpretation. Its basic components are geometric figures, counterbalanced and concentric. Hence it has been said that 'the mandala is always a squaring of the circle'.
There are some works—the Shri-Chakra-Sambhara-Tantra is one— which prescribe rules for the better imagining of this image. Coinciding in essence with the mandala are such figures as the Wheel of the Universe, the Mexican 'Great Calendar Stone', the lotus flower, the mythic flower of gold, the rose, and so on. In a purely psychological sense it is feasible to identify the mandala with all figures composed of various elements enclosed in a square or a circle—for instance, the horoscope, the labyrinth, the zodiacal circle, figures representing 'The Year' and also the clock. Ground plans of circular, square or octagonal buildings are also mandalas. As for the three-dimensional form, there are temples built after the pattern of the mandala with its essential counterbalancing of elements, its geometric form and significant number of component elements. The stupa in India is the most characteristic of these temples.
Again, according to Cammann, there are some Chinese shields and mirror-backs which are mandalas. In short, the mandala is, above all, an image and a synthesis of the dualistic aspects of differentiation and unification, of variety and unity, the external and the internal, the diffuse and the concentrated . It excludes disorder and all related symbolisms, because, by its very nature, it must surmount disorder. It is, then, the visual, plastic expression of the struggle to achieve order—even within diversity—and of the longing to be reunited with the pristine, non-spatial and nontemporal 'Centre', as it is conceived in all symbolic traditions. However, since the preoccupation with ornamentation—that is, with unconscious symbolism—is in effect a concern for ordering a certain area—that is, for bringing order into chaos—it follows that this struggle has two aspects: firstly, the possibility that some would-be mandalas are the product of the simple aesthetic or utilitarian desire for order, and secondly, the consideration that the mandala proper takes its inspiration from the mystic longing for supreme integration.
In Jung's view, mandalas and all concomitant images—prior, parallel or consequent—of the kind mentioned above, are derived from dreams and visions corresponding to the most basic of religious symbols known to mankind—symbols which are known to have existed as far back as the Palaeolithic Age as is proved, for example, by the Rhodesian rock engravings. Many cultural, artistic or allegorical works, and many of the images used in numismatics, must have sprung from this same primordial interest in the psychic or inner structure with its external counterpart to which so many rites pertaining to the founding of cities and temples, to the divisions of heavens, to orientation and the space-time relationship, bear eloquent testimony. The juxtaposition of the circle, the triangle and the square numerically the equivalents of the numbers one and ten; three; and four and seven plays a fundamental role in the most 'classic' and authentic of oriental mandalas.
Even though the mandala always alludes to the concept of the Centre—never actually depicting it visually but suggesting it by means of the concentricity of the figures—at the same time it exemplifies the obstacles in the way of achieving and assimilating the Centre. In this way, the mandala fulfils its function as an aid to man in his efforts to regroup all that is dispersed around a single axis—the Jungian Selbst. It is of interest to note that the same problem occupied the alchemists, except that a very different aspect of being was under investigation. Jung suggests that the mandala represents an autonomous psychic fact, or 'a kind of nucleus about whose intimate structure and ultimate meaning we have no direct knowledge' . Mircea Eliade, speaking as an historian of religions and not as a psychologist, sees the mandala chiefly as an objective symbol, an imago mundi rather than a projection of the mind, without, however, discrediting the latter interpretation. The structure of a temple—the Borobudur temple for instance—in the form of a mandala has as its aim the creation of a monumental image of life and the 'distortion' of the world to make it a suitable vehicle for the expression of the concept of supreme order which man—the neophyte or initiate—might then enter as he would enter into his own spirit.
The same is true of the great mandalas traced on the ground with coloured threads or coloured dust. Here, rather than serving the purposes of contemplation, they have a ritual function in which a man may move gradually towards the inner area, identifying himself with each stage and each zone as he goes. This rite is analogous to that of entering into the labyrinth denoting the quest for the Centre , and the psychological and spiritual implications are self-evident. There are some mandalas which counterbalance not enclosed figures but numbers arranged in geometric discontinuity for instance: four points, then five, then three, and are then identified with the Cardinal Points, the Elements, colours, and so on, the significance of the mandala being wonderfully enriched by these additional symbolisms.
Mirrors of the Han dynasty depict the numbers four and eight balancing each other and disposed round the centre in five zones which correspond to the five Elements that is, the four material Elements plus the spirit or quintessence. In the West, alchemy made quite frequent use of figures having a definite affinity with the mandala, composed of counterpoised circles, triangles and squares. According to Heinrich Khunrath, the triangle within the square produces the circle. There are, as Jung has pointed out, 'distorted' mandalas different in form from the above and based upon the numbers six, eight and twelve; but they are comparatively rare. In all mandalas in which numbers are the predominant element, it is number-symbolism which can best plumb its meaning. The interpretation should be such that the superior or the principal elements are always those nearest the centre. Thus, the circle within the square is a more developed structure than the square within the circle. And the same relationship to the square holds good for the triangle; the struggle between the number three and the number four seems to represent that between the central elements of the spirit corresponding to three and the peripheral components, that is, the Cardinal Points as the image of ordered externality corresponding to four. The outer circle, on the other hand, always fulfils the unifying function of overriding the contradictions and the irregularities of angles and sides by
means of its implicit movement.
The characteristics of the Shri Yantra, one of the finest mandala-instruments, have been explained
by Luc Benoist. It is composed around a central point which is the metaphysical and irradiating point of primordial energy; however,
this energy is not manifest and therefore the central point does not actually appear in the drawing, but has to be visualized. Surrounding
it is a complex pattern of nine triangles—an image of the transcendent worlds; four of these triangles have the apex pointing upwards andX l
the other five downwards. The intermediate—or subtle—world is suggested by a triple aureole surrounding the triangles. An eight-W
petalled lotus signifying regeneration, together with others of sixteen petals, and a triple circle, complete this symbolic representation of
the spiritual world. The fact that it exists within the material world is suggested by a triple-lined serrated surround, signifying orientation
in space .
Mandorla
Although the geometric symbol of the earth is the square or the cube and the symbol of heaven is the circle, two
circles are sometimes used to symbolize the Upper and the Lower worlds, that is, heaven and earth.
The union of the two worlds, or
the zone of intersection and interpenetration the world of appearances, is represented by the mandorla, an almond-shaped figure
formed by two intersecting circles. In order that, for the purposes of iconography, the mandorla might be drawn vertically, the two
circles have come to be regarded as the left matter and the right spirit.
The zone of existence symbolized by the mandorla, like the
twin-peaked Mountain of Mars, embraces the opposing poles of all dualism . Hence it is a symbol also of the perpetual sacrifice that
regenerates creative force through the dual streams of ascent and descent appearance and disappearance, life and death, evolutionl
and involution. Morphologically, it is cognate with the spindle of the Magna Mater and with the magical spinners of thread .
Mandragora
or Mandrake A plant which was supposed to have various magic properties, a belief arising out of the likeness of
its roots to the human form. Mandragora was also the name of the ghost of a devil, who appeared as a tiny black man, beardless and with unkempt hair . For the primitive mind, the mandrake represented the soul in its negative and its minimal aspects.
Man-Eating Monster
A monster, dragon or sea-serpent with a human being in its jaws, symbolizes the danger of being devoured by the destructive forces of the unconscious, a fate to which only the most noble of man's faculties, such as his reason or his morals, are susceptible. In mediaeval iconography, this monster's head is an allegory of the gates of hell.
Manicora
A fabulous being which figures in Romanesque decoration, a quadruped covered in scales and with the head of a woman wearing a kind of Phrygian cap. Its significance may be compared with that of the siren; scales always allude to the ocean —to the primordial, Lower Waters.
Marriage
In alchemy, a symbol of 'Conjunction', represented symbolically also by the union of sulphur and mercury—of the King and the Queen. Jung has shown that there is a parallel between this alchemic significance and the intimate union or inner conciliation —within the process of individuation—of the unconscious, feminine side of man with his spirit.
Mars
The primitive and astrobiological conception of creation is that it can take place only through 'primordial sacrifice'; similarly, what has been created can only be preserved through sacrifice and war. The image of Janus, or the twin-peaked mountain of Mars, are symbols of inversion, that is, of the intercommunication between the Upper, non-formed World of future potentialities, and the Lower World of materialized forms. Schneider insists upon this principle as characteristic of the primordial order, commenting that 'its rigid law demands a death for each life, sublimates the criminal instinct to serve good and humanitarian ends, and fuses love and hate in the interests of the renewal of life. In order to preserve the order of existence, the gods struggled with the giants and monsters who from the beginning of creation sought to devour the sun'—the Logos . Mars is the perennial incarnation of this necessity for the shedding of blood, apparent in all orders of the cosmos. Hence, early cults of Mars embraced vegetation: it was to Mars that the Roman farmer appealed for the prosperity of his harvest . His attributes are weapons, and specially the sword.
Mask
All transformations are invested with something at once of profound mystery and of the shameful, since anything that is so modified as to become 'something else' while still remaining the thing that it was, must inevitably be productive of ambiguity and equivocation.
Therefore, metamorphoses must be hidden from view —and hence the need for the mask. Secrecy tends towards transfiguration: it helps what-one-is to become what-one-would-like-tobe; and this is what constitutes its magic character, present in both the Greek theatrical mask and in the religious masks of Africa or Oceania.
The mask is equivalent to the chrysalis. Frazer has noted some very peculiar types of masks used in the initiation ceremonies of some Oceanian peoples: the youths keep their eyes closed and cover their faces with a mask of paste or fuller's earth, and pretend not to hear the orders shouted out by their elders. But they gradually recover, and on the following day they wash themselves clean of the crust which had covered their faces as well as their bodies; and their initiation is then complete . Apart from this—the most essential—symbolic meaning, the mask also constitutes an image bearing another symbolic meaning which derives directly from it. The mask, simply as a face, comes to express the solar and energetic aspects of the life-process. According to Zimmer, Shiva created a lion-headed, slender-bodied monster, expressive of insatiable appetite. And when this creature demands of his creator a victim to devour, the god tells him to eat of his own body, which the monster does so that it is reduced to a mere mask itself . There is a Chinese symbol, T'ao T'ieh—the 'mask of the ogre'—which may well be similar in origin .
Matron
A form of personification very common in all symbolic images bearing upon the feminine principle; she appears not as spirit but as mother-protector: the Night, the Earth, the Church or the Synagogue, for example. Cities too are very often personified as matrons wearing a mural crown. Their attributes and features
add the finishing touches to the symbolic content of the image . Psychologically speaking, the matron seems to express the domineering side of the mother.
Matter
According to Evola, matter is equivalent to the moon, and form to the sun.
Maya
'The lesson may be read psychologically, as applying to ourselves, who are not gods but limited beings. The constant projection and externalization of our specific shakti vital energy is our "little universe", our restricted sphere and immediate environment, whatever concerns and affects us. We people and colour the indifferent, neutral screen with the movie-figures and dramas of the inward dream of our soul, and fall prey then to its dramatic events, delights, and calamities. The world, not as it is in itself but as we perceive it and react upon it, is the product of our own maya or delusion. It can be described as our own more or less blind lifeenergy, producing and projecting demonic or beneficient shapes and appearances. Thus we are the captives of our own Maya-Shakti and of the motion picture that it incessantly produces.... The Highest Being is the lord and master of Maya. All the rest of us . . . are the victims of our own individual Maya.... To liberate man from such a spell . . . is the principal aim of all the great Indian philosophies.'
Meadow
Bachelard has pointed out that the meadow, being nourished by the waters of a river, is in itself a subject of sadness and that, in the true meadow of the soul, only asphodels grow. The winds find no melodious trees in the meadow—only the silent waves of uniform grass. Bachelard also mentions Empedocles' description of 'the meadow of ill fortune' .
Melusina
A fairy occurring in legends, sometimes in the form of a siren. Jean d'Arras dealt specifically with this fabulous being in La Noble Hystoire de Luzignen 39. When a great disaster was about to befall she would give voice to a scream thrice repeated. 'Melusina it was who caused mysterious buildings to be set up in a single night by swarms of workers who would disappear without trace once the work had been completed. When she marries, all her children have some physical abnormality; in the same way, her magic buildings all have some defect, like those bridges of the devil which always have one stone missing' . Melusina seems to be the archetype of intuitive genius, in so far as intuition is prophetic, constructive and wondrous, and yet at the same time is infirm and malign.
Menhir
Like all stones, the menhir embraces the idea of lithophany. In particular, because it stands erect, it is symbolic of the masculine principle and vigilance. It is further related to the sacrificial stake and, in consequence, to the world-axis with all its related symbols: the cosmic tree, the steps, the cross, etc. . There are also phallic as well as protective implications, as Eliade has noted .
Mephistopheles
He represents the negative, infernal aspect of the psychic function which has broken away from the All to acquire independence and an individual character of its own .
Mercury
The planetary god and the metal bearing his name. In astronomy, he is the son of heaven and light; in mythology, he was engendered by Jupiter and Maia. In essence he is the messenger of heaven. His Greek name of Hermes signifies 'interpreter' or 'mediator'. Hence it is his task to conduct the souls of the dead to the Lower World. Like Hecate, he is often triform, that is, represented with three heads. He epitomizes the power of the spoken word— the emblem of the word; and for the Gnostics he was the logos spermatikos scattered about the universe, an idea which was taken up by the alchemists who equated Mercury with related concepts of fluency and transmutation . At the same time, he was seen as a god of roads that is, of potentialities . In astrology he is defined as 'intellectual energy'. The nervous system is controlled by him, for the nerves are messengers on the biological plane . Probably it was the alchemists, with their lofty speculations, who penetrated farthest into the archetypal structure of Mercury. In many cases they identified their transmutation-substance with the 'lively planet', that is, with the god whose metal is white and decidedly lunar.
However, since Mercury is the planet nearest to the sun related to gold, the resultant archetype has a double nature of a chthonian god and a celestial god—a hermaphrodite . Mercury the metal symbolizes the unconscious because of its fluid and dynamic character; it is essentially duplex for, in one way, it is an inferior being, a devil or monster, but in another sense it is the 'philosophers' child' . Hence, its unlimited capacity for transformation as in the case of all liquids came to be symbolic of the essential aim of the alchemist to transmute matter and spirit from the inferior to the superior, from the transitory to the stable.
Mercury was also credited with an unlimited aptitude for penetration . Its synonyms of Monstrum hermaphrodites and Rebis 'something double' reveal its close connexion with the Gemini myth Atma and Buddhi; its representation as a feminine figure and Anima mundi is more frequent and significant than its absorption by the masculine principle alone. In this connexion Rene Alleau recalls that the essential stages of the alchemic process were: prime matter, Mercury, Sulphur, Lapis. The first phase corresponds to indifferentiation; the second to the lunar and feminine principle; the third to the masculine and solar, the fourth to absolute synthesis which Jung identifies with the process of individuation. The attributes
of Mercury are the winged hat and sandals, the caduceus, the club, the turtle and the lyre which he invented and gave to Apollo .
Metals
In astrology they are called 'terrestrial' or 'subterranean planets', because of the analogous correspondences between the planets and the metals . For this reason astrologers consider that there are only seven metals influenced by the same number of spheres, which does not mean that mankind during the astrobiological period did not recognize more. As Piobb has pointed out, some engineers have noted that the seven planetary metals make up a series which is applicable to the system of the twelve polygons . But, apart from the theory of correspondences, the metals symbolize cosmic energy in solidified form and, in consequence, the libido; on this basis, Jung has asserted that the base metals are the desires and the lusts of the flesh. Extracting the quintessence from these metals, or transmuting them into higher metals, is equivalent to setting creative energy free from the fetters of the sense world , a process identical with what esoteric tradition and astrology regard as liberation from the 'planetary influences'.
The metals can be grouped within a progressive 'series' in which each metal displays its hierarchical superiority over the one preceding it, with gold as the culminating point of the progression. This is why, in certain rites, the neophyte is required to divest himself of his 'metals'—coins, keys, trinkets—because they are symbolic of his habits, prejudices and characteristics, etc. . we, for our part, however, are inclined to believe that in each particular pairing of planet with metal as Mars with iron there is an essential element of the ambitendent, in that its positive quality tends one way and its negative defect tends the other. Molten metal is an alchemic symbol expressing the coniunctio oppositorum the conjunction of fire and water, related to mercury, Mercury and Plato's primordial, androgynous being. And at the same time, the solid or 'closed' properties of matter emphasize its symbolism as a liberator—hence the connexion with Hermes the psychopomp mentioned under 'Mercury' above . The correspondences between the planets and the metals, from inferior to superior, are:
Saturn—lead,
Jupiter—tin,
Mars—iron,
Venus—copper,
Mercury —mercury,
Moon—silver,
Sun—gold.
Metamorphosis
The transformation of one being or of one species into another generally relates to the broad symbolism of Inversion, but also to the essential notion of the difference between primigenial, undifferentiated Oneness and the world of manifestation. Everything may be transformed into anything else, since nothing is really anything. Transmutation is quite another matter: it is metamorphosis in an ascending direction, carrying all appearances away from the moving rim of the Wheel of Transformations
along the radial path to the 'Unmoved mover'—the non-spatial and timeless Centre. 'The duplicity of Mercurius', writes Jung, 'his simultaneously metallic and pneumatic nature, is a parallel to the symbolization of an extremely spiritual idea like the Anthropos by a corporeal, indeed metallic substance gold. One can only conclude that the unconscious tends to regard spirit and matter not merely as equivalent but as actually identical, and this in flagrant contrast to the intellectual one-sidedness of consciousness, which would sometimes like to materialize matter and at other times to materialize spirit....'
Minaret
The minaret is a symbolic torch of spiritual illumination, since it embraces the symbols of the tower on account of its height and the belvedere or watch-tower signifying the consciousness. Hence it appears as a figure emblematic of the city of the Sun—or Camelot, where King Arthur held his court. The same symbolic sense is sometimes represented by a skyline with towers and pinnacles .