Mr. Beal, in the same number of the _Indian Antiquary_, which contains Mr. Thomas's remarks on the Svastika (March 1880), has shown that in Chinese [symbol] is the symbol for an enclosed space of earth, and that the simple cross + occurs as a sign for earth in certain ideographic groups.[177]
[177] Max Müller in Schliemann, _Ilios_, 1880, Eng. edn., p. 349.
The four-rayed cross, separate or inscribed within a circle, is a very common symbol of the sun in prehistoric Europe.
As different waves of culture drifted across Europe, as new religions permeated the mass of the people, the stream-borne symbols found physical and spiritual analogues among the indigenous symbolism, and union naturally took place. In some cases, at all events, the cross fertilisation, as I have termed it, resulted in a higher or more spiritual meaning animating the old symbols; thus the symbol of the Avenger, the crushing Hammer of God, became that of the God Redeemer of the world.
When symbols become merely the dry-bones of defunct religions they may retain a certain magical quality, but then they pass out of religion and enter the domain of magic, where in fulness of time they may be born anew and start a fresh career as the symbols of modern science.
Besides this natural approximation of analogous symbols and symbolism, there is a more conscious and complex amalgamation, a heteromorphism. As Count Goblet d'Alviella says,[178] "At other times the symbolic syncretism is intentional and premeditated; whether it be in the desire to unite for the sake of greater efficacy, the attributes of several divinities in a single figure, as is shown in certain pantheistic figures of Gnostic origin; or a wish to state, by the fusion of symbols, the unity of the gods and the identity of creeds, as in the mystic monogram wherein the Brahmaists of contemporary India have testified to their religious eclecticism by interweaving the _Om_ of the Hindus with the Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross.
"Sometimes, too, the sacerdotal interest must have tended towards accentuating the analogies rather than the dissimilarities of symbols, in order to assist the absorption or unification of the doctrines which they represented. Finally, we must take into consideration the popular tendency towards syncretism, which, when not held in check by a rigorous orthodoxy, acts upon symbols, as well as upon creeds, by introducing into the new form of worship the images consecrated by a long veneration. Or else it is the innovators themselves who take advantage of symbolism in order to disguise, through borrowing from antique forms, the newness of their doctrine and, if need be, to transform into allies the emblems or traditions which they are unable to boldly extirpate.