Emergent symbols

Dynamic Exploration of Value Configurations: Interrelating traditional cultural symbols through animation (Part #7)

---

[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All | PDF] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx ]

---

Later versions of the animations, as indicated in Table 1, also explore the possibility of allowing other fundamental symbols to emerge successively during the course of the animation. This has been done by using the geometry of the star framework to frame the construction of such symbols, possibly with slight distortion of conventional proportions. The 8 symbols currently constructed schematically in this way are:

• a cross, namely the Latin or Christian cross or crux ordinaria
• an ankh (looped tau cross or ansated cross), namely the Ancient Egyptian symbol of life and fertility, included here in a form that relates more specifically to the Coptic cross and the Coptic ankh (used by Gnostic Christians)
• a Sun cross (Sunwheel, solar cross or Odin's cross), notably used throughout Native American culture to represent the Medicine Wheel of life
• Lorraine Cross as commonly used in heraldry, included here in a form that relates to the Patriarchal cross.
• vesica piscis, also termed mandorla
• star pentagram, namely as used by a range of belief systems, most notably Islam
• dorje or vajra, of significance to Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism, but especially to Tibetan Buddhism
• a square and compass, of fundamental symbolic significance to freemasonry .

For the purpose of the animation experiment, it has been assumed that each of these 8 can be associated with a single trigram of the BaGua system -- in this case the upper trigram of the hexagrams successively displayed -- as previously explored (Animation of Classical BaGua Arrangements, 2008). To the extent that each of the 8 such trigrams is indicative of a "house" in the larger system of 64 hexagrams, it might be asked whether such symbols can be fruitfully clustered into "houses" in a larger periodic table of ways of knowing as discussed elsewhere (Tuning a Periodic Table of Religions, Epistemologies and Spirituality-- including the sciences and other belief systems, 2007).

---

[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All | PDF] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx ]