Patterns & Metaphors
Armour and weapons
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Weaponry in all its aspects and history is a source of potent symbolism. The ancient weapons still appear in imagery: staff, spear, club, axe, and projectile, whether hurled stone, slingshot or later, bow-flung arrows or poison darts. To these five may be added a weapon of fire: torches first then fiery projectiles. Water also was a weapon. Enemies' water supplies were cut-off, or their walls were undermined by diverting rivers. As 'armour', the watery moat served its purpose for millenia. The Middle Ages saw a further development in body armour, parts of which were used in the symbolic art of heraldry. The modern ages introduced explosives: bullets, bombs, hand grenades, mortars and rockets and their various delivery systems. These have all entered into the stream of symbolic imagery among which the nuclear mushroom-cloud is possibly the most terrifying.
Metaphor:
Weapons and armour symbolize offence and defence; destruction and protection. The meanings may refer also to the deepest levels of the dynamic psyche, where struggle (psychomachia), is also characteristic among those on paths of personal development.<
