As I showed last week, we are not bound to strict reproduction of Biblical symbolism. Nevertheless, we must not take that truth as carte blanche to ignore historical and Biblical uses of a symbol in our own use. We must respect, understand, and account for the history of a symbol when we use it, for numerous reasons, practicality not the least of them. We cannot forget where a symbol comes from even as we turn it to a different course. Our use of symbolism must respect the past even where it forges its own path, with an eye also to inherent symbolism.

Our symbolism must keep a weather eye open for history. Two reasons can be adduced for this caution. The first, clarity, has two heads: to be clear that we say what we intend and to be sure we do not say what is unintended. Symbols are thick concepts, full of ideas and associations by their very nature, and most symbols will have historical use, connections, and associations. When we use such symbols, therefore, we must remember those associations. Sometimes we will use them; sometimes we can safely disregard; sometimes we must take care to communicate their irrelevance to the reader.

Imagine, for instance, that I were to use the symbol of an inverted cross, discussed in last week’s footnotes. In my story, I intend to use this as a symbol of humility, though not blatantly. It will show up at various times in reinforcement of that theme in the story. If I fail to account for the more familiar to moderns use of the inverted cross as a symbol of the occult, I’m going to have some issues.

In such a case, I could end up communicating a near opposite of my intent, particularly in the early part of the book where the reader had yet to be fully acclimated to the symbol by repeated use and the elucidation of context. The reader might see this inverted cross, fail to remember the not-obscure but not universally known legend of the apostle Peter’s death, and receive meaning I did not intend while simultaneously missing the meaning I did intend. Worse, if I fail to consider this potential, I make certain that such mistakes are my fault, not the reader’s.¹ I must take care to say what I mean and not say what I don’t men.

Clarity, though, is not the only concern we have. A well written chair-assembly manual is quite clear, even containing some literal visual symbolism, but we’re not here because we want to write good instruction manuals. We’re here because we want to create beauty and art. This facet of symbolism is where respect for history turns from a necessity to an asset. History, Biblical and otherwise, can lend vast amounts of meaning and depth to symbolism. Through an understanding of a symbol’s history, we can call upon literal centuries of accreted association with less words than I took to explain the possibility here. With an understanding of history, a dragon is no longer a large, grotesque lizard but a guardian, a danger, a tempter, a guide, a savior, a judgement, a thousand other possibilities, all yours to draw forth.

Symbolism allows us to fit very complex ideas into very small packages, and by using history we only enhance this ability. The simplest use, of course, is just borrowing the symbolism. At a surface level, we can just run with ‘dragons are symbols of evil and of Satan’ or with ‘ritual cleansing is a symbol of initiation’. This can work, but it’s honestly boring. I’ve borrowed the historical symbol, all right, but I’ve only borrowed the first glance, haven’t added anything to the symbol, haven’t delved into its possibilities. Sometimes it’s enough, but we can go farther.

Consider the symbolism of baptism. Baptism is a cleansing, first and foremost, symbolizing the regeneration granted by His Spirit (John 3:__). That’s not all it is, though. As a part of this symbolism, baptism also stand for death and resurrection: to be buried beneath the water (physically or symbolically, by sprinkling) is death, and the cessation of the water is resurrection. It connects thus to cleansing from sin- death is the wages for sin, yet by God’s grace we are cleaned in His death, so that we can rise with Him in His resurrection (Rom. 6:1-5). Baptism thus has an immense symbolic depth (I’ve not even touched its relationship to circumcision).

The symbol of ‘cleansing’, of which baptism is a species, has thus an immense depth to plumb. After all, besides baptism we have the cleansing rituals of the Old Testament, the various pagan rituals, table manners in history, and so many other bits which all relate to the symbolism of washing. Even Christ’s command to ‘shake the dust of that city off of your feet’ (__) draws upon the symbolism of washing, of removing filth. If we persist past the first blush, a vista of tools opens up to us in writing. We can use the symbol of washing not merely for its surface meaning but with awareness and use of its connection with death, resurrection, purity, and initiation. All these paths become open to us, even before we consider changing the symbol from its traditional use.

When it comes to changing a symbol, we cannot ignore history. We are not bound by history, though, and here’s where permutation comes in. We can change the symbol, but if we are aware of the history, we can change it in a way that still draws upon that history for greater richness. The symbol of the bronze serpent did precisely this with the symbolism of the serpent in Genesis; the bronze serpent took the central idea of the original serpent, of a dangerous tempter, and recapitulated it from a different but not unrelated perspective: as the first serpent was a bringer of destruction, as the serpents which then literally plagued Israel were bringers of destruction, the bronze serpent was a means and sign of the destruction of that danger, that temptation (Num. 21). In its New Testament usage, the same theme of a symbol altered but with respect for its prototype reappears: Christ, figured by the bronze serpent, destroys the Genesis serpent, the bringer of destruction.

Thus, we can build off of historic symbols even as we alter them, use them in apparently unprecedented ways. By using the history, moreover, we achieve a greater richness and depth in our symbolism, a theological complexity that only enhances the stories we write- even if only the truly careful reader understands in full.

Sometimes, though, the symbol is only so tractable. In my paper on baptism, here, I discussed different types of symbols. Among these I noted that some symbols are inherent symbols. Inherent symbols represent what they symbolize not only because they are assigned that role but because the human mind recognizes an innate resemblance or parallel. In Scripture, for instance, the symbol of ‘drinking’ is intuitively understandable. To drink something, in Scripture, is at a base level to make it a part of one’s life or self. To drink judgement is to have one’s existence pervaded by judgement; to drink blessing is to be utterly permeated with that blessing. The basis of this symbol is clear, and while we can move a distance away from it, we cannot hope to fully disentangle from it, because this is merely a recapitulation of what drinking does on the physical level. To invert the problem, if we attempt to make ‘drinking’ symbolize divestiture of that which is drunk, we will fail; the symbol just doesn’t work.²

Some symbols, too, are closer to synecdoche or metonymy than metaphor, rendering them hard to fully disentangle, though far from impossible, and even harder to use in direct contrast to their common use. The use of gold as a symbol for wealth or power, for instance, rests upon the common role of gold as wealth, of wealth as a form of power. While we can use gold for other symbolic purposes, even divorce it from that particular symbolic use, to make gold represent poverty, weakness, and the like will require not only symbolic work but worldbuilding to make the world backup the symbol without obvious distortion.³

The end-goal of our work with symbolism is to tell the truth with beauty. In pursuit of this goal, we must be careful. Simply forgetting or disregarding historic use of the symbol can lead to unintentional distortions of the truth. If I write a story of good dragons with an absolute blindness of their symbolic role in popular, historic, and Biblical contexts, I may easily end up communicating a call for pro-Satanic sympathies.⁴ In order to avoid this, I must take care for the history of the draconic symbol. Yet this is no burden; it is rather an opportunity.

God bless.

Footnotes

1 – Some reader will misunderstand some parts of your story. Given enough time and enough readers, key portions will be missed. This alone is not proof of a problem on your end; it’s just a fact of human interaction: some people aren’t going to understand. If your intended audience understands to a sufficient level, you’ve done your job.

2 – Never say never, etc., but if you manage it I’ll wholeheartedly commend your skill as an author.

3 – If, for instance, gold as a metal is not really valued, as I have heard was the case in portions of South America pre-Spain, its practical uselessness might make it usable as a symbol of poverty or weakness. Note that the worldbuilding has to back up the symbolic change because the symbol is rooted in a near-inherent relationship, a relationship built into our standard view of the world (our mindset’s worldbuilding).

4 – To be clear, I don’t endorse pro-Satanic sympathies. He’s evil. Stories heroizing the devil or devils have a problem not because they use symbolism wrongly but because they contain an implicit call to sympathize or agree with the Deceiver. Such a call is a damning lie, and thus it is doubly condemned. On another level too it’s cliched, given how common it is nowadays to make the devils the good guys and the angels the bad guys (evil people prefer villains to heroes, as we see in modern writing, where the ostensible hero often acts more the villain than the ostensible villain, in certain respects).