SYMBOLISM IS THE ART OF COMMUNICATING WITH SEMIOTICS,[WORD SYMBOLS], ARCHITECTURE, PAINTINGS, STATUES, MONUMENTS, JEWELRY, THEATRE, LITERATURE, POEMS, AND MUSIC, ETC. THE MEANING IS KNOWN TO THE MEMBERS OF THE ORGANIZATIONS WHICH CREATED THEM. EMBLEMS, CRESTS, COATS OF ARMS, FLAGS, ETC.HAVE A SPECIAL MESSAGE TO THOSE WHO KNOW THIER REAL MEANING.

UNDER CHANGE, PLEASE RETURN SOON

Fra Giovanni's Salutation to a Friend
I am your friend and my love for you goes deep. There is nothing I can give you which you have not got, but there is much, very much that, while I cannot give it, you can take.

No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today. Take heaven!
No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant. Take peace!

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness could we but see - and to see we have only to look. I beseech you to look!

Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by the covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love, by wisdom, with power.

Welcome it, grasp it, touch the angel's hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, believe me, that angel's hand is there, the gift is there, and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Our joys, too, be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty - beneath its covering - that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven.

Courage, then, to claim it, that is all. But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are all pilgrims together, wending through unknown country, home.

And so, at this time, I greet you. Not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you now and forever, the day breaks, and the shadows flee away.

Group of World Religions
Artist Augustus Knapp

Redrawn from Lenoirs La Franche-Maconnerie.
At the left of the plate stands Mohammed holding aloft pages from the Koran, his left foot upon an image which he has overthrown. Behind Mohammed the Celestial Bull--signifying the constellation of Taurus--opens the Egg of the Year with his horns. At the lower right is a bas-relief of the Persian Sun God, Mithras, in an attitude signifying the conquest of the sun over the Celestial Bull as the ancient vernal equinox. In the center stands the High Priest of Israel, his right arm encircling the base of the seven-branched candlestick--the Mosaic symbol of the Planetary Governors of the world. To his right is the statue of the golden calf and to his left the robed figures of the Greek mystics bearing a tripod in which burns the sacrificial fire. Behind the bull Apis, crowned with the lunar globe, and Father Nile, bearing the horn of plenty and pouring the waters of life from his urn, loom the Pyramids--the great Egyptian temples of initiation. In the clouds at the left is the seated figure of Jupiter Ammon, brandishing a flaming thunderbolt and horned to signify that he partakes of the attributes of the zodiacal ram. In the heavens appears the mystery of the Apocalypse. The four creatures of Ezekiels vision surround an altar upon which is the Book of Seven Seals and the Lamb of God. At the upper left is the band of the Zodiac. The constellations of Taurus, Aries, and Pisces represent the stellar influences which--according to the ancients--descending upon the earth, are responsible for the establishment of the religious and philosophical institutions herein set forth.