The ankh
 

Hi everyone :)

Okay so my beliefs are very eclectic however the best way I can describe my path is , I am a magical practitioner, healer or spiritual (however my path has leaned towards a nature based path)

Any who I wear symbols on occasion from which I have researched, pentacle, evil eye beads, and now the Ankh.

I was gifted the Ankh and just wanted to clairify if I have the right interpretation of it.

So I actually bought the ankh with the intention of wearing it for protection. Then I looked into its meaning, and the one meaning that stuck with me is that it can represent the union between male and female energies

The loop is the "female energy" of the divine (or some say goddess) and the staff shape is the 'male energy'. (some say god) When they come together they create life. (hence the meaning of life)

In my path I believe in a creative force or energy (creator) and idk why but I see this being as being, male/femaLe. Have you ever taken a symbol and personalized it to your own beliefs in this way?

I know it represents the union between isis and osiris and many other meanings, however for me it just reminds me of the great mother/father aspects of the divine.

Thanks blessings.

Yeah. The union of the feminine and masculine is definitely one of the meanings.


The union of Ausar (Osiris) and Auset (Isis) is a representation of the great mother/father aspects in some respects.

~Naddread~

The Ankh represents eternal life in Ancient Egypt. The symbolic meaning of how it was "put together" is debated though. Some postulate that it's a symbolic depiction of the union of male and female energy but there haven't been any discoveries of actual sources that prove this theory. It's similar to the Isis Knot (another symbol which the meaning is unclear).

Every established belief/idea is a purely human and personal belief/idea. In some cases, lots of people believe the same belief/idea, but that doesn't make it exclusively right. Lots of people used to believe the world was flat, or that the moon could be reached with simple solid fuel rockets attached to a wooden chair.

Anyway, the male/female idea in creation is just a human thing. We know that MOST of the more complex animal species and SOME of the plant species have male and female versions. Years ago, when understanding of nature was not as good as it is now, it was deemed that there is always a male and a female involved in creation of new life. So, in lots of beliefs, especially the older (and ancient) beliefs, creation is all about the union of male and female.

This bipolar idea is not limited to creation. Since forever, it has been recognised that nature is the union of opposites. The male/female opposite appears everywhere, hence its prevalance in belief, but there's also the facts that you can't have life without death or death without life, if there was no light we could not know dark, a tiger making a kill is evil if you are the kill, or in the same herd as the kill, but it is good if you are the cub of the tiger etc etc. So in the older nature based belief systems, these unions of opposites are appear everywhere, and are often abstracted and simplified. So if there is something that represents male/female union to lots of people, but represents creation or something else without male/female relevance to to you, then that is fine.

Shiva and Shakti in unus mundus where one can not know the Dancer from the Dance.

Lovingspirit,having eclectic beliefs is a natural lore,and i would call it the path of Truth,since with time one realizes that the true wisdom transcends the limits of any beliefs and becomes pure knowledge.