Symbols across cultures
Shapes that many peoples made their own, the tree of life, the labyrinth, the crescent moon, the spiral and the cosmic egg, and what each one meant where.
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Also in: Ancient symbols
- Tree of lifeA tree whose fruit gives life without end. In Genesis it grows in the middle of the Garden of Eden beside the tree of knowledge; Jews call the Torah a tree of life, Kabbalists draw the ten sefirot as one, and Norse myth has its own world tree.
- LabyrinthA single path that winds back and forth to a centre and out again. In Greek myth it was the building Daedalus made at Knossos to hold the Minotaur; medieval churches laid it in their floors, and the Chartres labyrinth of about 1205 to 1215 is still walked.
- Crescent moonThe moon as a thin curve of light, just after the new moon or just before it. It was the emblem of the moon god in ancient Mesopotamia, lies under the Virgin Mary’s feet in Christian art, is worn in Shiva’s hair, and is widely taken as a sign of Islam, though Islam has no official symbol.
- SpiralA line that winds outward from a centre. It is among the oldest carved signs: spirals cover the entrance stone of Newgrange in Ireland, built about 3200 BC, ancestral Pueblo people in the American Southwest carved spirals that sunlight marks at the solstices, and in Māori art the koru spiral is a symbol of creation.
- Cosmic eggThe idea that the world began as an egg: its shell split into sky and earth, or the first god hatched from it. It is told in the Upanishads and the Puranas, in Orphic poetry, in ancient Egypt, in the Finnish Kalevala and in one Chinese account of Pangu.
- Goddesses of loveNo single goddess of love belongs to every culture. Greek Aphrodite, Mesopotamian Inanna (Ishtar), Egyptian Hathor, Norse Freyja and Aztec Xochiquetzal each held love among their powers, and several of them war as well; in India love belongs to a god, Kama.
- Moon gods and goddessesThe moon is a goddess in some traditions and a god in many others. Selene in Greece and Chang’e in China are goddesses; the Mesopotamian Nanna (Sin), the Egyptian Khonsu and Thoth, the Norse Máni, the Japanese Tsukuyomi and the Hindu Soma are gods.
- Gods of fireGods of fire include Agni in Hindu tradition, the hearth goddesses Hestia and Vesta in Greece and Rome, the smith god Hephaestus and Rome’s Vulcan, Xiuhtecuhtli, the old fire god of the Aztecs, and Kagutsuchi in Japan. Each tradition gave fire a different face: the sacrifice, the hearth, the forge, the calendar.
- Gods of deathGods of death include Hades and Thanatos in Greece, Anubis and Osiris in Egypt, Yama in India (and, as Emma-ō, in Japanese Buddhism), Mictlantecuhtli among the Aztecs, the skeletal god A of the Maya codices, and Nergal in Mesopotamia. Some are death itself; more are kings of the dead.
- Goddesses of deathGoddesses of death include Hel in Norse myth, Ereshkigal, queen of the Mesopotamian underworld, Persephone in Greece, Mictecacihuatl among the Aztecs and Izanami in Japan. Most rule the land of the dead; Izanami threatens to kill a thousand people a day.
- Goddesses of warGoddesses of war include Athena in Greece, Inanna (Ishtar) in Mesopotamia, the lioness Sekhmet in Egypt, Durga in Hindu tradition and the Morrígan in Irish myth. Each fought in her own way: Athena with strategy, Sekhmet with the sun’s fire, Durga against a demon no god could kill.
- Sun godsSun gods include Helios in Greece, Ra in Egypt, Shamash in Mesopotamia, Surya in India and Tonatiuh among the Aztecs. The sun is not always male: Japan’s Amaterasu and the Norse Sól are sun goddesses.
- Sea godsSea gods include Poseidon in Greece (Neptune in Rome), Njord and Ægir in Norse myth, Tiamat, the salt sea of Babylonian creation, Varuna in later Hindu tradition, Watatsumi in Japan and the dragon kings of the Chinese seas.
- Thunder godsThunder gods include Zeus in Greece, Thor in Norse myth, Indra in the Vedas, Adad (Iškur) in Mesopotamia and Lei Gong in China. In Mesoamerica the storm belonged to the rain gods, Tlaloc of the Aztecs and Chaac of the Maya.
- Fertility and harvest goddessesGoddesses of fertility and harvest include Demeter in Greece, Chicomecoatl, the Aztec maize goddess, Pachamama, the Andean Earth Mother, Renenutet in Egypt and Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of abundance. Japan’s rice deity Inari is shown as a man or a woman.
- Dragons across culturesA dragon is a great serpent, often with legs, wings or fire, and its meaning splits by region. In Europe and the ancient Near East it is chaos or evil, killed by a god or hero; in China and Japan it is a helpful power of water and rain, and the emblem of emperors.
- SerpentThe serpent means opposite things across cultures: evil and death, and also life, renewal and cosmic order. The Norse world serpent Jörmungandr circles the earth, the nāga Shesha carries Vishnu on the cosmic ocean, the Ouroboros eats its own tail, and the snake on Asclepius’s staff still stands for medicine.
- Sun symbolsThe commonest sun symbol is a disc: plain, with rays, with wings, or carried on a chariot. The winged sun disc of Egypt and Assyria, the Babylonian sun god’s four-pointed star in a disc, the gold disc of the Trundholm Sun Chariot and the chariot wheels of the Sun Temple at Konark each belong to a named tradition.
- Axis mundiAxis mundi, Latin for “axis of the world”, is the scholars’ name for the line said to join heaven, earth and the underworld at the centre of the world: a mountain such as Meru, a tree such as Yggdrasil, a pillar, a ladder or a temple.
About symbols across cultures
Some gods and shapes turn up in many places: a goddess of love, a king of the dead, the sun crossing the sky, a dragon, a tree at the centre of the world. These pages take nineteen of them and give each tradition its own line and its own source. They do not assume a shared meaning behind the likeness. The tree of life stands in the Garden of Eden in Genesis, becomes the Torah in Jewish worship and the ten sefirot in Kabbalah, and lends its name to Darwin’s picture of evolution. The Labyrinth runs from the Minotaur’s prison at Knossos to the floor of Chartres Cathedral and the Man in the Maze on the seal of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community in Arizona. The crescent moon was the crown of the Mesopotamian moon god and lies under the Virgin Mary’s feet; whether it is a symbol of Islam is a question Muslim scholars answer for themselves. The Spiral is carved at Newgrange, built about 3200 BC, and on the rock of Chaco Canyon, where sunlight marks it at the solstices. The cosmic egg is the world’s beginning in the Upanishads, in Orphic poetry and in the Finnish Kalevala.
Gods of love, war, death and the sun
The goddesses of love page sets Aphrodite beside Inanna, Hathor, Freyja and Xochiquetzal, and finds that several of them went to war: the Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses project calls Inanna “equally fond of making war as she is of making love”. The goddesses of war page has Athena, Sekhmet, Durga and the Morrígan. Most gods of death are kings of the dead, as Hades, Osiris and Yama are, and the goddesses of death their queens: Ereshkigal, Persephone, Hel. The moon is not always female; Jean Rhys Bram, writing in the Encyclopedia of Religion (1987), notes that it is “personified as a male or female divinity”, and the moon gods and goddesses page has both. In Norse myth the moon is a boy and the sun his sister. The gods of fire, sea gods, thunder gods and fertility and harvest goddesses follow the same pattern, one tradition at a time.
Dragons, serpents, the sun and the centre of the world
Cristiano Grottanelli, in the Encyclopedia of Religion, divides the Old World’s dragons into two traditions: in the west of Eurasia, chaotic beings killed by gods or heroes; in East Asia, “powerful and helpful beings”. Dragons across cultures follows both. The Serpent page starts from Manfred Lurker’s observation that snakes are thought of as evil and a cause of death and also as bearers of “beneficial and even divine powers”. Sun symbols gathers the winged disc, the Babylonian sun god’s star in a disc and the Trundholm Sun Chariot, which the National Museum of Denmark dates to about 1400 BC. Axis mundi, in Lawrence E. Sullivan’s definition “the ‘hub’ or ‘axis’ of the universe”, takes in Mount Meru, Yggdrasil and the Maya world tree.
Why each culture gets its own line
Comparing symbols has a long and uneven history. In 1774 Jacob Bryant read the eggs of ancient mythology as one emblem of Noah’s ark; a century and a half later Donald Mackenzie warned that the egg myth called primitive might belong to a much later stage than writers on “the workings of the human mind” supposed. Even within one culture the record varies: Jane Ellen Harrison found the world-egg in Orphic poetry but not in Homer, and Hesiod tells of Chaos, Night and Eros without it. The same caution applies to the newer comparisons. Grottanelli calls G. Elliot Smith’s The Evolution of the Dragon (1919), which traced the dragon to Egypt, “outdated”, and Britannica’s article on Mircea Eliade, on whose books the Encyclopedia’s axis mundi entry draws, records that critics have called his scholarship “subjective and unscientific”. These pages report what each tradition, museum or scholar says, and where two of them disagree they name both.
Where else to look
Some cross-cultural shapes have their own pages elsewhere on the site: the Norse world tree Yggdrasil, the triskele of three spirals, and the star and crescent. The gods themselves have single-culture pages too: Greek gods, Egyptian gods, Norse gods, Aztec symbols, Maya symbols and gods, Mesopotamian symbols and gods and Hindu symbols.
Sources
- Tree of Life (Jewish Encyclopedia), Emil G. Hirsch and George A. Barton, “Tree of Life”, The Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 12 (1906), JewishEncyclopedia.com (Kopelman Foundation), Biblical data; critical view
- Etz Chayim: The Tree of Life in the Bible and Beyond, Menachem Posner, Chabad.org (Internet Archive copy, 30 December 2025), Chabad.org, sections “Etz Chayim Songs”, “Torah Dowels”, note 3
- Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scholem, 3rd revised edition (Schocken, 1961), Internet Archive, pp. 75, 212–215, 231–232, 254, 330
- On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin, first edition (1859), Project Gutenberg, Chapter IV
- Le Labyrinthe de Chartres, enfin dévoilé ?, Gilles Fresson, Rectorat de la cathédrale de Chartres, Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres, sections Datation; Technique et tracé; Mythologie grecque; Le codex de Munich; Péché et rédemption; Un seul chemin; Centre; Pratiques de plein-air; Grands labyrinthes; Danse de Pâques; Pèlerinages ?; Interprétations contemporaines
- Great Seal, Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, The SRPMIC Great Seal; “The Man in the Maze” as told by Dorothy Lewis
- The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, Morris Jastrow, Jr. (Ginn, 1898), Project Gutenberg, Chapters V and XI
- Legends of the Madonna as Represented in the Fine Arts, Anna Jameson, Project Gutenberg, Introduction (attributes); The Immaculate Conception
- Al-Afkar #36: Are crescent and star the symbols of Islam?, Mohammad Izzhar Faizzy Osman, 11 January 2019, Federal Territories Mufti’s Office (Pejabat Mufti Wilayah Persekutuan), Malaysia (archived copy, Internet Archive)
- The Winter solstice at Newgrange, National Museum of Ireland, article
- Fajada Butte Solstice Marker, Chaco Culture National Historical Park brochure (2022), National Park Service and Western National Parks Association (via NPS History), brochure text
- The Thirteen Principal Upanishads (Hume translation), Robert Ernest Hume, 1921, Oxford University Press, Introduction, quoting Chandogya Upanishad 3.19
- Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, Jane Ellen Harrison (Cambridge University Press, 1903), Project Gutenberg, Chapter XII, “The World-Egg”
- Kalevala: The Epic Poem of Finland, Translated by John Martin Crawford, Project Gutenberg, Rune I, Birth of Wainamoinen
- A New System, or, An Analysis of Ancient Mythology, Volume II, Jacob Bryant, 1774, Internet Archive, p. 323
- Myths of China and Japan, Donald A. Mackenzie (Gresham, 1923), Project Gutenberg, Chapters II and XIX
- Inana/Ištar (goddess) (Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses), Yağmur Heffron, “Inana/Ištar (goddess)”, Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses, Oracc and the UK Higher Education Academy (2019), Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses (Oracc, University of Pennsylvania Museum), character
- Moon (Encyclopedia of Religion), Jean Rhys Bram (1987), “Moon”, Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd edition, ed. Lindsay Jones (Macmillan Reference USA, 2005), on Encyclopedia.com, Encyclopedia of Religion (Macmillan Reference USA), via Encyclopedia.com, introduction
- The Younger Edda (Anderson translation), Snorri Sturluson, trans. Rasmus B. Anderson, 1880, Project Gutenberg, Gylfaginning, ch. 11
- Hades (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Hades”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 1 October 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
- Dragons (Encyclopedia of Religion), Cristiano Grottanelli (1987), “Dragons”, Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd edition, ed. Lindsay Jones (Macmillan Reference USA, 2005), on Encyclopedia.com, Encyclopedia of Religion (Macmillan Reference USA), via Encyclopedia.com, introduction; bibliography
- Snakes (Encyclopedia of Religion), Manfred Lurker (1987), “Snakes”, Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd edition, ed. Lindsay Jones (Macmillan Reference USA, 2005), on Encyclopedia.com, Encyclopedia of Religion (Macmillan Reference USA), via Encyclopedia.com, introduction
- The Sun Chariot (National Museum of Denmark), “The Sun Chariot”, National Museum of Denmark, Danish prehistory: the Bronze Age, National Museum of Denmark, page text
- Axis Mundi (Encyclopedia of Religion), Lawrence E. Sullivan (1987), “Axis Mundi”, Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd edition, ed. Lindsay Jones (Macmillan Reference USA, 2005), on Encyclopedia.com, Encyclopedia of Religion (Macmillan Reference USA), via Encyclopedia.com, article
- Mircea Eliade (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Mircea Eliade”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 6 September 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research