The bridge will reveal its deepest secrets only on the thirteenth at exactly thirteen o'clock. Why is this happening? Yes, because in astrology, astronumerology and esotericism, thirteen means approximately the same as a bridge: a transition, going beyond the boundaries of familiar existence.

Stolen time

To understand the hidden meaning of the supposedly Russian word “bridge,” let’s try to discern its true face through the layers of centuries and trace its genealogy. Any schoolchild knows that the main meaning of the word lies in the root. But often the original root is lost over time. The same happened with the bridge.

According to one version, in fact, “mo” and “st” are two separate roots that have been so replicated in various derivatives that today they are almost unrecognizable. The root “mo” came to Latin from more ancient languages ​​and was once an independent word, meaning time as a certain limiting, unstable, elusive quantity.

By the way, in modern English there is a colloquial word “mo”, short for moment (moment) - a short period of time. But much more often, “mo” is disguised more carefully. Let us recall, for example, the international words mobile, mobilization, car. All these concepts are somehow related to time frames. Thus, both a mobile phone and a car, each in its own way, reduce distances and save time. And even fashion is the great-great-great-granddaughter of the old “mo”. No wonder they say about her: “fleeting like time.”

Another concept associated with the limit of time goes back to the root “mo”: death - in other words, the limit of our temporary stay on earth. In the Russian version, only the letter “m” remained from “mo”; in the Latin “mort” the root “mo” was completely preserved. (If you noticed, in both Russian and Latin words there is a combination “rt”. It is not accidental: “r” and “t” are the root letters of the words “remains” (remains, flesh) and “terra” (earth).

In my opinion, we have dealt with “mo” enough to move on to the second root – “st”. Quite obviously, “st” is related to the words “stand”, “steady”, “frozen”. In Latin languages ​​this is stabilio - stability, stabilum - parking, inn, statua - statue, stirps - root, base, trunk. This includes such familiar Russian words as pavement, table, stubble, lay, stability, stem, camp, structure and many others.

So, let's make a preliminary conclusion: the bridge is a kind of structure standing guard over time. Let's remember this, but let's make another attempt at decoding. In English there is a word steal - theft, theft. In this case, the bridge is something that allows you to steal time. But it is precisely for this practical purpose that bridges are built.

In most cultures, a bridge symbolizes the transition from the world of the living to the world of the dead. Thus, Zoroastrians believe that the souls of the dead end up in front of the Bridge of Separation (Chinvat Parvata), after passing through which they will go to heaven. However, the bridge becomes very narrow if a sinner steps on it. According to Islam, the bridge leading to the kingdom of heaven is narrow, like the blade of a sword. Among the North American Indians it is a thin log.

Mo - great and terrible

According to statistics, about seventy percent of suicides decide to commit suicide on the bridge. How to explain this? After all, it is much safer to throw yourself down from a multi-story building - both the height is sufficient and there is solid ground under your feet instead of splashing water. Why tempt fate?

The fact is that on a subconscious level, all of us, even convinced atheists, perceive death as a transition to another state. What awaits a person beyond the fatal line: oblivion, the afterlife, another dimension - everyone understands in their own way. It is important for us that the bridge and death are of the same breed, for they grow from a single root: “mo”. The thought arises that “mo” is not just a combination of letters, but the name of a now forgotten ancient deity. This same Mo helps to put an end to temporary existence, serves as a kind of bridge to another life. Doesn't he remind you of anyone? Well, for example, the carrier Charon, who delivered the souls of the dead to Hades, transporting them by boat across the River Styx. It must be said that ancient roots always have several meanings, even if they are close in meaning. At the root of “mo” lies another concept: a mediator, a guide.

The ancient Romans considered the construction of bridges to be the destiny of initiates, and the most beautiful bridges were the result of an agreement between the architect and otherworldly forces.

The high priest in Ancient Rome was called Pontifex, which literally translates as “bridge builder.” Much later, in the middle of the 12th century, Saint Bernard wrote in his treatise “On the Rights and Duties of Bishops” that the Roman Pontiff, as follows from the etymology of the name, was a bridge between God and Man.

By the way, have you noticed that in many films the bridge becomes a key point in the development of the plot? These include disaster films, like “The Cassandra Bridge,” and adventure films, like the epic about Indiana Jones, and mystical films, where a bridge allows the heroes to get into another dimension or era. Thus, the famous Brooklyn Bridge helped the heroes of several films travel through time. Of course, this is not accidental. Between Heaven and Earth (where, in fact, bridges pass) under the auspices of the elements - earth, air, metal or wood (depending on what the bridge is made of), water (usually bridges hang over water) conditions are created for a certain corridor, allowing for a special, mystical transition.

So, it turns out that the bridge is a sacred place. Here you can experience time: go back to the past, look into the future, or do both - after all, the past, present and future exist simultaneously.

Transition "13"

Why did I suggest climbing the bridge on the thirteenth at thirteen o’clock? Because in astrology, astronumerology and esotericism, thirteen means approximately the same as a bridge: a transition, going beyond the boundaries of familiar existence. There is a thirteenth sign in the Zodiac - Ophiuchus, which opens the gate from the so-called Lower Zodiac to the Upper, allowing a person to break out of the Samsara wheel and move on to a new round of development.

Superstitious people believe that thirteen has sinister properties. But the reason for this is not the real “faults” of the “damn dozen”, but the fear of the unknown. After all, everything that lies beyond our understanding seems dangerous. It’s not for nothing that death itself is associated with this number: we don’t know what awaits on the other side when we make our last transition, and we’re afraid.

To get rid of the fear of turning points, people came up with holidays corresponding to certain transition points. In particular, changing time cycles (farewell to winter, welcoming the sun, new year, and so on). When you feast, dance, sing songs, you somehow cannot be afraid. In addition, in the midst of fun, you may not notice the very moment of transition - and all the terrible things will be left behind. Echoes of ancient rituals have survived to this day. Of course, not everyone celebrates Maslenitsa or the summer solstice. But on New Year's Eve, almost everyone raises glasses of champagne as the chimes strike. It is at this moment that Santa Claus (a descendant of our old friend Mo) comes to us to open the gates to a new time.

The number thirteen also guides the transition from one era to another. By the way, more bridges are built in times like these than usual. Let us recall, for example, St. Petersburg, built on water and crossed by dozens of bridges. This city was founded at the stage of “construction” of new Rus'.

Hermes and his team

Thirteen is also astrologically associated with the sign of Gemini, which is ruled by Mercury (13 = 1 + 3 = 4, and four is the number of Mercury). By the way, in the Sumerian tablets this planet is called Mommo (Mo again!). If you look at the star map, it becomes obvious that it is Mercury that builds a bridge between the Sun and the other planets of our system, since its orbit is located closest to the daylight star.

As you know, Gemini and Mercury itself are in charge of connections, contacts, and negotiations. They are great at building bridges between people, organizations, and countries. We must remember the mythological Hermes (in the Roman tradition - Mercury) - a god in winged sandals, bringing people messages from the Upper spheres (for example, from the Gods of Olympus), and the great Hermes Trismegistus - the teacher of all initiates, who revealed divine knowledge to people. The main bridge that a person can overcome in earthly life, thanks to spiritual development and with the support of Hermes Trismegistus, is the bridge between his own consciousness and subconscious, which opens up the inexhaustible riches of the spirit.

Finally, I want to say about the faithful subjects of the great Mo - the guides. In every era there are people called upon to guide humanity into a new time, to help overcome the gates of Mo. Among them are ministers of art who reveal a different vision of the world, psychologists and esotericists who help build a bridge to their own soul, great rulers who lead their people to the next round of evolution. Among such people there are stalkers, like the hero of the Strugatskys’ story “Roadside Picnic,” and simple train conductors. But they are all equally important for us, because without them, sometimes it’s scary to step on a small bridge.

The bridge represents the communication between Heaven and Earth, the unification of man and deity. This is an image of connection between different points of sacred space. A bridge has always meant a transition from one state to another, a change or a desire for change.

Earth and Heaven were once connected by a bridge (or tree, or vine), thanks to which people easily communicated with the gods, since death did not exist. Since then, communication between Earth and Heaven has been interrupted; one can only cross the bridge as a “spirit”, that is, to do this one must die or enter a state of ecstasy. This transition is difficult, it is fraught with many dangerous obstacles, and not all souls are able to overcome it.

At its core, the symbolism of the “narrow gate” and the “dangerous bridge” is associated with seemingly hopeless situations: you need to get to “where night meets day,” or find a door in the wall, enter Heaven through a passage that opens only for a moment , walk between two constantly colliding rocks or between the jaws of a monster. All these mythological images express the need to overcome contradictions, to eliminate the polarity characteristic of the human being.

In Iranian mythology, Chinvat is a bridge over a water barrier separating the kingdoms of the living and the dead. In Zoroastrianism, Zarathushtra becomes the manager of destinies, escorting the souls of the righteous across the bridge. In the later tradition, Chinvat is a “bridge of judgment” performed over the souls of the dead by Mithra, Rashnu and Sraosha. Under the foot of a sinner, Chinvat becomes narrow, “like a razor blade,” and to the righteous it seems as wide as “nine spears or twenty-seven arrows.”

In ancient Chinese symbolism, the bridge connecting to the other world was very narrow, and sinners fell from it into a dirty stream. The bridge in the shape of a tree trunk was supposed to be crossed by the pilgrim Xuanjiang, who brought Buddhist teachings from India to China. King Mu of the Chu dynasty, in search of immortality, traveling to the Queen of the West, Sin-wan-mu, crossed the river on a bridge made of fish and turtles.

In the Japanese tradition, the deities Izanaki and Izanami, standing on the rainbow bridge, create the earth. They lower a jasper spear into the sea, and as a result, the first eight islands are formed from the flowing salty drops.

In Scandinavian mythology, the rainbow bridge Bifrost is guarded by a guard who, before the end of the world, blows a horn, calling the gods to the last battle.

Among the Finns, the hero of Kalevala Väinämöinen, going to the other world, must cross a bridge of swords and knives.

The Greeks associated the bridge with the image of Iris - the goddess of the rainbow, the messenger of the gods. The rainbow and the Milky Way were considered bridges between heaven and earth.

In Christianity, in the vision of the Apostle Paul, a “narrow as a hair” bridge appears, connecting our world with Paradise. Similarly, in Christian traditions, sinners who fail to cross the bridge fall into Hell, since “Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to life, and few are those who find it” (Matt. 5:14).

Medieval knightly legends speak of a bridge - “a smooth sword sparkling in the sun”, over which Lancelot must pass to the place of Guinevere’s imprisonment, and the passage across it is “full of torment and suffering.” Crossing the sword bridge is symbolically associated with initiation, which is confirmed by the fact that the lions lying in wait on the other side disappear when the test is passed.

The ancestors of the Slavs believed that spring came to people along the viburnum-solar bridge, when God the Creator opened the heavenly gates. The sun moves across the sky bridge. Angels descend from heaven across the rainbow bridge to collect water for rain. The bridge is also a wedding symbol. According to it, a young man and a girl move into a new period of their life.

In folk tales we find a viburnum, hair or "hell" bridge. At the beginning of the bridge, the hero is greeted by Baba Yaga, and at the end - by a snake. Often the hero is given a difficult task - to build a wonderful bridge overnight, one half of which is silver, the other half is gold.

Like the rainbow and the ladder, it is the embodiment of the connection between two worlds; to some extent it comes close to the images of the path (as a symbol of transition, reaching the “other shore”) and the crossroads (as a dangerous place where a person is in wait for an evil spirit). A vertical bridge, as a rule, was considered to lead to heaven (or to the underworld). For the ancient Jews, the bridge (like the rainbow) acted as a sign of the Covenant concluded by the Creator with His people; in China, the bridge symbolized the union of heaven and earth. The Greeks associated it with the image of Iris, the messenger of the gods. Among the Vikings, the gods descended to the land of people Midgard along the bridge - the Bifrost rainbow
In many traditions, the bridge is associated with ideas about the transition to the afterlife. In Russian folklore, the Kalinov Bridge plays this role. A wonderful bridge to the underworld, guarded by dogs, is found in Iranian mythology. This is the bridge of retribution, where the fate of the dead is decided: if in their lives good outweighed evil, then the widening bridge leads them to heaven, but if evil became the basis of their deeds, then the bridge narrows, and the deceased falls into the icy, fetid abyss of hell. The Islamic tradition describes a bridge leading to heaven, which is located over hell; by the will of Allah, the souls of the dead cross it or fall into the underworld.
In Finnish mythology, a rope bridge or a thread bridge leads across the river separating the lands of the dead from the lands of the living.
For different peoples, the bridge acts as a metaphor for the connecting link between the incomprehensible and the comprehensible. In Christianity, the image of a bridge is associated with the idea of ​​the function of the Pope. The Latin pontifex means literally "bridge builder"; In the religion of the ancient Romans, the high priest was called pontiff. Thus, the Pope-Pontiff is a priest who bridges two separate worlds; Bernard of Clairvaux noted that the Pope serves as a bridge between God and man. For this reason, the rainbow is traditionally considered the symbol of the pontificate.

Once upon a time, Heaven and Earth were one. But one day, legends say, between them, separating them forever, abysses and waters lay. And yet there remained a path connecting the earthly world and the heavenly world, the symbols of which were the two shores. This path is narrow and dangerous, but the only possible one is along the bridge. Like the world tree, the ladder, the cosmic axis, the bridge connects different states of being. The shore from which the bridge begins is our world, the other shore is the primordial world, the world of true reality, the region of immortality.

The bridge is a symbol of the transition from the world of the living to another world. After death, Scandinavian myths say, all souls will cross this bridge. For some, the road lies in the abode of Hel, in the underworld; for some - along the rainbow to the land of the gods, Asgard, to Valhalla. But the living can also cross this bridge: many great heroes of ancient legends crossed it in search of immortality.

The hero of the Finnish epic “Kalevala” Väinemöinen, in order to get to the other world, had to cross a bridge of swords and knives. The legendary Chinese King Mu, traveling to the Queen of the West, moved from one bank of the river to the other across a bridge made of fish and turtles. On the way, mythological heroes always faced obstacles, trials, and meetings with the guardians of the thresholds - the borders to another world. That is why the custom arose of charging a fee for crossing the bridge, decorating the entrance to this special space with arches, talking about trials using signs, emblems, sculpture - such a tradition existed in Ancient Rome, and in China, in Europe and in America. On the “Kalinov Bridge” Russian heroes entered into single combat with a snake. Under the hair-thin bridge, monsters were waiting for a traveler who had lost his balance. Lancelot walked along the bridge - the blade of a sword, experiencing torment and suffering - to the place of Guinevere's imprisonment.

Many old bridges in Europe are still called “devil’s” - their grandeur and complexity of these structures were so amazing in the Middle Ages that legends appeared that the devil helped people build them. Among them, for example, is the Devil's Bridge over the River Reis (Switzerland), the Valentre Bridge in Cahors (France), even the Charles Bridge over the Vltava in Prague. According to legend, it was washed away twice by the wayward Vltava. And so, when the architect Parler began to build the bridge for the third time, the devil appeared to him and promised to make the bridge stand for centuries, but demanded as payment a living soul who would be the first to cross the bridge. Parler agreed, the work was completed, the festive ceremony began. Suddenly a child ran out onto the bridge, but the architect threw a rooster in front of him, which the devil got. The builders of other bridges “paid” him in the same way.

The meaning of the dangerous transition is to restore the connection between Heaven and Earth. In trials, heroes gain wisdom, realizing the great unity behind the opposites of the manifested world (this is why a paradoxical symbol often appears in legends and myths, suggesting overcoming the limitations of the rational mind: the eye of a needle, a path of hair, a passage between millstones, etc.) . Returning from their journey, the heroes restore true and fair laws on earth, returning the lost integrity to the world, and to people - hope and the meaning of life. The supreme rulers and priests of Rome bore the title “Pontiff,” that is, “bridge builder.”

Walking across a bridge is like walking through Time. The river of days, the river of time flows without stopping, taking with it everything and everyone. And only those standing on the bridge find themselves in the eternal present, looking at the reflections in the stream.

The river of time carries away loved ones, and yet lovers meet on bridges or walk under a rainbow, holding hands, knowing that meetings on earth are only a continuation of meetings on starry bridges.

Today, few ancient bridges remain. Sometimes they were destroyed by time, sometimes by the elements, most often by people themselves, without repairing or renewing them in time. Now they talk more about walls that divide rather than bridges. And yet, probably, each of us has ever stood still, looking at a bridge illuminated by the lights of lanterns. Maybe this memory will help the soul live in a world where more and more walls appear.

You're building a bridge
For everyone who builds walls
So that we cannot distinguish
Where is the light, where are the shadows.
And when your bridge rises
Into the desert of the sky
I'll see how everything is
Who grew out of the walls
They will climb onto your bridge...

B. Grebenshchikov

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The symbolic connection of an object or some kind of activity with an unconscious fantasy is discovered as a result of accumulated experience. Moreover, assumptions on this matter are constantly modified, and often completely revised, under the influence of information from different fields of knowledge, including from all branches of individual and mass psychology. However, the interpretation of dreams and the analysis of neuroses remain the most reliable ways of establishing each type of symbolism, with the help of which the motivation and genesis of such mental states can be clearly recognized. I believe that only by means of psychoanalysis can the essence of symbolism be flawlessly established. Symbolic interpretations in other areas (mythology, folklore, etc.) always carry a touch of the superficial, partial; the impression remains that interpretations can be understood in different ways. It is this lack of depth that distinguishes a superficial allegory from a symbol woven in flesh and blood.

Bridges play an important role in dreams, especially when the patient does not load the vision of the bridge with historical material. The nature of the diseases with which I dealt with made it possible in many cases to establish the sexual-symbolic meaning of the bridge as a male member, a powerful member of the father, in whose gigantism the infantile understanding of the parental couple is contained. This bridge spans a large, dangerous body of water from which all life flows. Throughout your life, it excites the imagination, and as an adult, you return to it periodically, although represented by one part of the body. A patient who sees himself in a dream approaching dangerous waters on a flimsy raft suffers from sexual impotence and weakness of the genital organs; he needs to protect himself from the dangerous proximity of a woman. It is curious that the symbolic meaning of the bridge is not only confirmed by my practice, but also by one of the folk tales, as well as by an obscene drawing by a French artist; in both cases it is a giant male member blocking a wide river, and in the fairy tale it is so powerful that a heavy team of horses rides along it.

My understanding of this symbol was deepened by an encounter with a patient who was afraid of bridges and had difficulty ejaculating. Along with some data on the possibility of the patient developing a fear of death and castration, the analysis showed the following stunning fact from the life of a nine-year-old boy: his mother (midwife) wanted her infinitely beloved son to be next to her on the night when she gave birth to a girl. The boy in his crib may not have seen, but he heard (according to the assistants’ comments) the entire process of childbirth. He was seized by a terrible fear, a precursor to subsequent ones, and the gaps between life and non-life became the source of hysteria of fear in a special form of fear of the bridge. The opposite bank of the Danube meant “otherworldliness” for him, i.e. life before birth (cf. Rank: folk-psychological motives in “The Tale of Lohengrin”). Never in his subsequent life did he walk across the bridge - only in a carriage and accompanied by a strong personality that impressed him. When, during the course of treatment, I persuaded him to walk across the bridge, he convulsively held on to me, all his muscles were tense, his breathing was intermittent. The same thing happened on the way back, but when we passed the middle of the bridge and he saw “our” shore (i.e. life), the convulsive phenomena disappeared, he became cheerful, became talkative, and the fear disappeared. We could now understand the patient's fear of approaching the female genitals and the inability to give himself completely to the woman, which meant the imagined danger of death in the depths of the waters unless a stronger personality helped.

I believe that the two interpretations - the bridge connecting parents, and the bridge laid between life and death - completely complement each other. After all, the father’s penis is really the bridge along which the unborn goes into life. The deep meaning of this identity becomes an actual symbol. It is obvious that the bridge-symbol in the case of neurotic fear serves as a purely mental representation of “connection”, “connection”, “coupling” (“bridge word”, according to Freud). In other words, it is a mental or logical (i.e. “autosymbolic”) “functional” phenomenon, in Zilberer’s interpretation.

We saw in our example that the phenomenon of fear is based on material ideas about the process of birth. And I have the right to believe that any functional phenomena have a material basis. It may be true that with the narcissistic consolidation of the “I-memory” system, direct associations with the memory of the object recede into the background and the appearance of pure autosymbolism awakens. On the other hand, it is possible that there is no “material” mental phenomenon without, however faintly, an admixture of traces of memory. Let us finally emphasize that each symbol has a physiological basis, i.e. somehow expresses the whole body, its organ or their functions.

I believe that these remarks indicate essential general features of the formation of symbols. Since the dynamism of repression that arises in this case was previously described (see my essay “On the Ontogenesis of Symbols”), for a “metapsychological” understanding of the essence of symbols in the spirit of Freud, we only need knowledge of the distribution of psychophysical means in this play of forces and more accurate data about the onto- and phylogeny (cf. Jones’s “Theory of Symbolism”).

The mental material in the fear of the bridge also manifested itself in the patient in one conversion-hysterical symptom. When suddenly frightened, by the sight of blood, etc., he is prone to fainting. The roots of these phenomena, apparently, should be sought in the mother’s story that he was born half-dead and only with great difficulty was his breathing established. This was the initial trauma, the basis for the development of the subsequent one - presence during the birth process.

It is hardly worth special mentioning that a bridge in dreams may not have a symbolic meaning if it carries historical overtones.

Symbols of sacred science Guenon Rene

64. Bridge and Rainbow

64. Bridge and Rainbow

In connection with the symbolism of the bridge and its essentially “axial” meaning, we noted that the likening of this symbolism to the symbolism of the rainbow is not as widespread as is usually thought. Surely there are cases where such a comparison exists, and one of the purest is that found in the Scandinavian tradition, where the Bifrost bridge is openly likened to a rainbow. However, when the bridge is described as rising in one part, and lowering in the other as it passes, that is, as having the shape of an arch, it rather seems that very often these descriptions were made under the impression of a superficial rapprochement with the rainbow, and did not imply a true identity these two characters. However, this rapprochement is easily explained by the fact that the rainbow is usually considered as a symbol of the unity of heaven and earth; there is an obvious connection between that by which the connection is established between heaven and earth, and the sign of their union, but it does not necessarily result in likeness or identification. Let us immediately add that this very meaning of the rainbow, which is found in one form or another in most traditions, is a direct consequence of its close connection with rain, since the latter, as we explained earlier, personifies the descent of heavenly influences into the earthly world.

The most famous example in the West of this traditional meaning of the rainbow is, of course, the biblical text, where it is expressed quite clearly. It says literally: “I set my rainbow in the cloud, that it may be a sign of the (eternal) covenant between Me and the earth,” but it should be noted that this “sign of the covenant” is in no way presented here as making possible a transition from one world to another, a transition to which, however, there is not the slightest hint in this text. In other cases, the same meaning is expressed in very different forms: for example, among the Greeks, the rainbow was likened to the veil of Iris, and perhaps to Iris herself, in an era when “anthropomorphism” in symbolic images was not developed by them as much as this happened later. Here this meaning was already implied by the fact that Iris was the “messenger of the gods” and, therefore, played the role of an intermediary between heaven and earth; and it goes without saying that such a representation is in all respects far removed from the symbolism of the bridge. It seems that, in essence, the rainbow was likened to cosmic currents, through which the exchange of influences takes place between heaven and earth, much more than through the axis along which the connection between different states is carried out. And this, by the way, fits better with its curved form, because although, as we noted earlier, this form itself does not necessarily conflict with the idea of ​​​​verticality, it nevertheless remains true that this idea itself cannot be suggested by immediate visibility, as, on the contrary, is the case in the case of all axial symbols themselves.

It must be recognized that the symbolism of the rainbow is actually very complex and manifests itself in various aspects; but perhaps one of the most important among the latter, although at first it may seem strange and, in any case, one that most clearly relates to what we have just pointed out, is that which likens it to a snake and is found in a variety of traditions. It is noted that the Chinese character denoting a rainbow has the root “snake” - although such a similarity is not formally expressed throughout the Far Eastern tradition - incl. here one can rather see a memory of something very distant. It seems that such symbolism was somewhat known to the Greeks themselves, at least in the archaic period, for, according to Homer, the rainbow was depicted on the shield of Agamemnon in the form of three blue snakes, “a likeness of the arc of Iris and a memorial sign for people, which Zeus captured in the clouds. In any case, in some regions of Africa, and more specifically in Dahomey, the "heavenly serpent" is likened to a rainbow and at the same time he is considered as the owner of precious stones and treasures; however, it may seem that there is a certain confusion of two different aspects symbolism of the snake, because if the role of the owner or guardian of treasures is indeed quite often attributed, among other various creatures, to snakes or dragons, then the latter then have a character rather subterranean than celestial.But it is also possible that between these two apparently opposite aspects there is a relationship comparable to that which exists between the planets and the metals. On the other hand, it is at least curious to note that in this connection this “heavenly serpent” bears a very striking resemblance to the “green snake” of Goethe’s well-known symbolic tale, where the snake turns into a bridge and then scatters with precious stones; if this latter should also be considered to be related to the rainbow, then in this case one could find its identity with the bridge, which would be all the less surprising since Goethe, quite possibly, meant here a specifically Scandinavian tradition. Moreover, it must be said that the tale in question is very unclear, both as regards the origin of the various elements of symbolism that may have inspired Goethe, and in its very meaning. And all the interpretations that have been tried to give it are, in fact, less than satisfactory. We will not insist on this any further, but it seemed to us that it would be interesting to briefly mention in passing this somewhat unexpected rapprochement, for which the aforementioned fairy tale provided the occasion.

It is known that one of the main symbolic meanings of the snake correlates with the cosmic flows that we pointed out above, flows that, ultimately, are nothing more than a consequence and, as it were, an expression of the actions and reactions of forces emanating, respectively, from the sky and land. It is here that the only intelligible explanation of the likeness of the rainbow to a snake is contained, and such an explanation is completely consistent with the generally accepted character of the rainbow as a sign of the union of heaven and earth, a union which in reality is in some way manifested by these streams, because without it they could not arise. It should be added that the snake, when it has this meaning, is most often associated with axis symbols - such as a tree or a rod, which is easy to understand, because it is the direction of the axis that determines the direction of the cosmic flows. But, however, without any confusion of one with the other, as if we turn here to the corresponding symbolism in its strictest geometric form, the spiral drawn on the cylinder never coincides with the very axis of the latter. Between the symbol of the rainbow and the symbol of the bridge, such a connection would ultimately be one that could be considered the most normal; but, as a consequence, this connection led in some cases to a kind of fusion of the two symbols, which would be fully justified only when the duality of the differentiated currents was simultaneously considered as receiving resolution in the unity of the axial flow. However, one must also take into account that the images of the bridge are not identical - depending on whether it is likened to a rainbow or not; and in this connection one might wonder whether between a straight bridge and an arched bridge there is not, at least in principle, a difference of meaning in some sense corresponding to that which, as we have already remarked, exists between a vertical staircase and screw. The differences between the “axial” path, which directly leads a person to the initial state, and the rather “peripheral” path, implying separate passage through a number of hierarchical states, although in both cases the final goal will inevitably be the same.

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Image 10. Bridge “We crossed this bridge, and Silvio Manuel was waiting for us on the other side,” Rosa said barely audible. – I went last. As he devoured the others, I heard their screams. I wanted to run away, but this devil, Silvio Manuel, was on both sides of the bridge. There was a way to escape

From the book I peer into life. Book of Thoughts author Ilyin Ivan Alexandrovich

64. Rainbow A strong thunderstorm passes slowly. It’s just raining like buckets; the chaos of clouds is still swirling; the thunder still rolls angrily; the lightning still flashes, trembling; everyone is shocked and stunned. And suddenly she appears: airy, bold and jubilant. And everything looks up

From the book The Self-Aware Universe. How consciousness creates the material world by Amit Goswami

CHAPTER 1. THE Abyss and the Bridge I see a strange, torn caricature of a man beckoning me to him. What is he doing here? How can it exist in such a fragmented state? What should I call him? As if reading my thoughts, the distorted figure says: “What is the significance

From the book Love author Precht Richard David

Bridge into the Fog It is impossible to detect the petrified spirit of our ancestors in fossil remains. The only living witnesses and contemporaries of the evolutionary process of our species cannot tell us anything about it. They separated from us many millions of years ago, and since then they have walked along

From the book Quantum Mind [The line between physics and psychology] author Mindell Arnold

Two Worlds, One Bridge Over Water For thousands of years, shamans have combined physics and psychology, working simultaneously in the real world and the world of dreams. Today's scientific thinking separates these worlds from each other. Physicists call everyday reality classical

From the book The Meaning of Life author Trubetskoy Evgeniy Nikolaevich

IV. The Rainbow as a Resolution of the Antinomy of the Temporal and the Eternal Here the main difficulty (aporia) in understanding time and the temporal is revealed to us. Apparently, the very concept of transition, as a real event, is destroyed by those internal logical contradictions