The unvarying essential meanings of around 1,000 symbols and symbolic themes commonly found in the art, literature and thought of all cultures through the ages are clarified.

Explains the meanings associated with objects, plants, animals, myths, religious symbols, and images in art.

A dictionary that explores the symbols which abound in literature, religion, national identity and are found at the heart of our dreams and sub-conscious. It includes entries that give its interpretations - sexual and spiritual, official and subversive, cultural and religious - to bring meaning and insight to the symbol.

This dictionary covers approximately 2500 graphic symbols used in the Western world. Each entry includes the sign's history, its meanings and the systems in which it is used, along with cross-references to other signs with the same meanings and structurally similar signs with different meanings.

Harvard Professor Robert Langton, visiting Paris, is called in when the curator of the Louvre is murdered. Alongside the body is a series of baffling ciphers. Langton and a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, are amazed to find a trail that leads to the works of Da Vinci - and beyond.

When a scientist is found brutally murdered, Harvard professor Robert Langdon is asked to identify the mysterious symbol seared onto the dead man's chest. Realising it must be the work of the Illuminati - an ancient secret brotherhood sworn against Catholicism - the race is on to prevent a tragedy.

This dictionary relates in a succinct, readable way the themes, sacred and secular, on which the repertoire of European art is based. It has been sold in thousands every year and has become a standard work on the subject.

Covering classical and other mythologies, biblical themes and the world of traditional symbols from cultures worldwide, this is a guide to more than 2000 major themes, figures and symbols that have been most commonly encountered from ancient times to the present day.

This guide to symbols is the first of its kind with a unique design to set us on the path of symbolism 1001 Symbols is a portable, pocket-sized guide to traditional symbolism, arranged by theme - as in a thesaurus. Following the symbols by subject allows us to compare all the symbols that different cultures have used to connote a particular quality, such as purity, love, deception or immunity. At

A directory of more than 800 esoteric symbols from around the world. It includes the symbols, signs and omens from many significant cultures and religions, including alchemy, Rosicrucianism, gnosticism, Voudoun and Ancient Egypt. There is a line drawing of each symbol.

A comprehensive directory of over 1000 symbols that places each symbol in its historical and cultural context. It offers an introductory alphabetical index followed by groupings of related symbols, every one with an extended definition of its history and its cross-cultural meanings.

A practical encyclopedic guide to magical and religious symbolism.

A guide describing more than 400 important Chinese symbols, explaining their esoteric meanings and connections. Their use and development in Chinese literature, customs and attitudes to life are traced lucidly and precisely.

Takes the readers on a mystery tour spanning an arc from the mediaeval cosmogram and images of Christian mysticism, through the world of alchemy to the art of the Romantic era. This work features hieroglyphs of cabbalists, Rosicrucians and freemasons, which are shown to be linked with the scientific illustrations in the fields of medicine.

Designed both for the initiated and for newcomers interested in gaining a better understanding of this fascinating but often misrepresented society.

Mircea Eliade--one of the most renowned expositors of the psychology of religion, mythology, and magic--shows that myth and symbol constitute a mode of thought that not only came before that of discursive and logical reasoning, but is still an essential function of human consciousness. He describes and analyzes some of the most powerful and ubiquitous symbols that have ruled the mythological ...

New edition of this essential reference book, containing many new and updated entries.

In this book, the author, a famed semiotician, looks at the symbols and subjects embedded in watermarks and printers' emblems from the Middle Ages to reveal their ancient origins and evolving significance.