Emblem and Symbol

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Confusing Words Series · 6 pages

The claim on which the file rests is that there is no purely mythical element in any of the ancient religious texts, and that what has to be recovered before interpretation can begin is the mode of thought in which each was originally written. Five such modes are distinguished. The symbolical is the archaic mode; the emblematical a later though still very ancient one; the parabolical is allegory; the hieroglyphical follows; and the logogrammatical is called the most difficult of all, since every letter, as in Chinese, represents a whole word — which is how almost every proper name in the Vedas, the Book of the Dead and to a degree the Bible is composed.

So the two words of the title are not synonyms but successive stages, and the practical consequence is that reading an emblem as though it were a symbol, or either as though it were literal, produces the misunderstandings the file is written against. The epigraph from Hermes Trismegistus states the fear in its own terms — that a day will come when the sacred hieroglyphics become mere idols, when the world mistakes the emblems of science for gods and accuses Egypt of having worshipped monsters, while those who calumniate her worship death instead of life and folly in place of wisdom.

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