Masonic & Occult Symbols Illustrate

The eagle was Jupiter’s bird. Horus was an eagle. “In Sarmatian art, the eagle is the emblem of the thunderbolt and of warlike endeavour.” In the chapter on “Winged Symbols” we look at the symbolism of Saturn, an old man dying (the old year ending) and a baby bringing in the new year. This is related to the oroboros (which will be covered soon) and in The Mysteries of Osiris we find that this symbolism is also connected to the eagle: “When they [the heathen] desired to express the renewal, or beginning, of the year, they represented it in the form of a door-keeper. “It could easily be distinguished by the attributes of a key; a procedure that was copied, without credit, in another new age or a new year of an age, in the symbolism of Peter and his ‘key.’ At times they gave it two heads back to back, the one an old man, which marked the expiring year, and the other a young man, which denoted the new. In time, this became the double-headed Eagle of Symbolic Masonry....” [Emphasis in the original] “Thus arises the two-headed eagle (related to the Janus symbol) which is usually depicted in two colours of great mystical significance: red and white.” A Bridge to Light adds: “The double headed Eagle is symbolic of the past and future for in this Apartment the candidate sacrifices his own personal ambitions and desires on the altar of Truth.” In Freemasonry: Ancient Egypt and the Islamic Destiny we are told: “It is also believed that the double-headed eagle alludes to the nature of man. The head that looks to the East is symbolic of man’s spiritual vision, and the looking towards the West refers to his material vision. “The Masonic order attempts to initiate or teach man the material or human science and the spiritual sciences in imitation of the Ancient Egyptian Mystery Systems that taught man the ‘lesser’ and ‘greater’ mysteries.”