12 Historical Symbols and Their True Meanings

We recognize symbols around us every day — on buildings, in books, on jewelry and in movies. But ever thought for a moment about where these symbols come from? Many of the marks and designs we know by heart today have roots that date back thousands of years, with some original meanings that might just surprise you.

Symbols have always been how we as humans communicate big ideas with little images. Long before people could read and write, they left similar evidence—marking territory, telling tales, expressing religious beliefs and even transmitting wisdom from one generation to the next — with symbols. Today we will be looking at twelve interesting symbols which have influenced the course of human history, and what they actually meant to the people who devised them.

The Swastika: A Symbol of Good or Evil?

Well before the 20th century horror, the swastika was one of history’s most benign symbols. The design with four bent arms coalescing at a center dates back to ancient times and is called a swastika. It has been in existence for over 5,000 years and can be found on all the continents, as well as that of the Native Americans.

The term “swastika” originated in Sanskrit, a sacred, ancient Indian language that also gave birth to Hinduism and yoga. In the 3,000-year-old language of India’s Vedas (some of the oldest known writings), swastika means “well-being,” spreading good vibrations and warding off evil. To Hindus, Buddhists and Jains, the swastika symbolized good fortune, success and the flow of life. It adorned the pottery of the ancient Greeks. Native American tribes wove it into blankets. It was cut in wood by Viking cultures.

On Coca-Cola products and Boy Scout badges, American military uniforms, and even tankers for the Jewish war effort — there was that symbol of good fortune. The symbol was found rotated in two directions, clockwise and counterclockwise, both of which had positive connotations in several cultures.

Unfortunately, its meaning was brutally hijacked when the Nazi party adopted an angled version of it (one that twisted clockwise) as their symbol in the 1920s. Today, the symbol is still used in its original religious sense in many cultures — it’s still seen across India and much of Asia — but the meaning of the swastika will forever be altered for Western countries.

The Ankh – Key of Life in Middle Kingdom Egypt

Imagine a cross with an elongated loop above the horizontal, and you’re gazing upon the ankh — ancient Egypt’s most potent symbol. To the Egyptians it was known as the “key of life” or the “key of the Nile,” and signified nothing less than eternal life.

This sign was ubiquitous in ancient Egypt. The gods and goddesses of the ancient Egyptians, who took it as a symbol of life, carried the ankh in tomb paintings and other art even when granting someone one breath of life. Ankh amulets were also put in Egyptian tombs, to guide the dead into the afterlife.

The form was significant in its own right, the loop being interpreted as the sun rising above the horizon while the cross shows a heaven-and-earth union. According to some historians, the ankh symbolizes also the union of male and female that resulted in new life.

Priests in Ancient Egypt held ankhs during ceremonies, and even everyday people had themselves adorned with ankhs as jewelry for protection and luck. The sign was so potent that early Christians in Egypt appropriated it as one style of their cross, what today we know as the Coptic cross.

The Eye of Horus: One Look and You’re Protected

If you’ve perhaps spotted a piece of jewelry with an intricate eye design, it’s very possible that what you were actually looking at was the Eye of Horus, another Egyptian symbol with an intriguing origin story. This was no ordinary eye — it held a tale of violence, healing and divine protection.

In Egyptian mythology, Horus was a solar deity born with a falcon head. He became locked in battle with his uncle Set and lost one of his eyes, the left eye. The god Thoth restored it by magic to be even better than ever. This recovered eye was a sign of curing, safeguard and completeness.

Boats were painted with the Eye of Horus by ancient Egyptians to protect them during their journeys. They placed it around their necks, as jewelry, to protect themselves from sickness and evil. Physicians called on it to cure, and mathematicians employed parts of the symbol to represent fractions in their work.

That design is itself distinctive: an eye with a long curving line below it, evoking a falcon’s facial markings. Each section of the symbol served a specific sense and provided protection. Sailors, travelers, expectant mothers and children all desired the protection of the Eye of Horus.

The Pentagram: Five Points of Ancient Wisdom

Draw a five-pointed star inside of a circle, and you get a pentagram — one of the most maligned and misunderstood symbols in human history. Today, it is widely associated with darker themes, but its original meaning was very different.

The Greeks also used the pentagram as a symbol of mathematical perfection and to represent wheat, which was considered to be an important ingredient in their diet for maintaining health. The Pythagoreans and their philosophy used it to symbolize the five elements that, in their opinion, composed the universe: earth, air, fire, water and spirit. The unbroken line used to create the star represented how these elements worked together in infinite circles.

The pentagram was adopted by early Christians as a symbol for the five wounds of Jesus. It was also a symbol that medieval knights wore for truth and protection. Indeed, the famous Sir Gawain did have a pentagram displayed upon his shield, with each point symbolizing one of the five knightly virtues.

Drawn with one point upward, the pentagram symbolized the human being—head at top, and arms and legs reaching out from each side. This demonstrated the spiritual overruling the material. The circle around it signified protection and infinity.

The pentagram didn’t take on new significance in Western culture until the 19th century, when a number of groups adapted an inverted version for a variety of purposes. But for thousands of years before that, it was primarily a symbol of balance, protection and the interconnectedness of all things.

Yin and Yang: The Dance of Opposites

One of the most recognizable icons in the world is the yin-yang—that circle, divided into a black-swirly side and a white-swirly side, each with a dot of color on the other. This ancient Chinese image nicely encapsulates a complex philosophical idea in one simple graphic.

Yin and yang is the opposite, yet complementary force in the universe. Yin (the dark side) symbolizes the female, darkness, cold and passivity, as well as the moon. Yang (the white side) symbolizes masculine light, heat, activity and the sun.

But here is the genius part: The symbol reveals that these opposites are not at war with each other, they’re dancing with each other. The arc between them suggests how one seamlessly leads into the other. Summer gradually becomes winter. Day fades into night. Each side has a dot of the other color, demonstrating that nothing is only one thing. There’s always an inkling of light in the darkest darkness. In the brightest day there is a little shadow.

This ideograph appeared in Taoist thought more than 3000 years ago. It preached that it was balance, not dominance of one side over the other, that brings harmony to the universe. When yin and yang are in harmonious balance within your life, Chinese philosophers say, you enjoy health and peace. When they are out of kilter, bad things happen.

The symbol is found in Chinese medicine, martial arts, artwork and philosophy. It serves to remind humans that opposites are definers of each other—you cannot have hot without cold, up without down, or good without evil.

The Caduceus vs. The Rod of Asclepius: A Medical Mishap

If you’ve ever been to a hospital, you have most likely seen a logo with a snake (or two snakes) winding itself around a pole. But there’s a case of mistaken identity going on here, and it has been going on for more than a century.

The Rod of Asclepius has only one snake winding around it. Asclepius was the Greek god of medicine and healing. His emblem symbolized the art of medicine and healthcare. The snake was a reinvention of the same theme, as snakes molt their old skin and signify rebirth and recovery.

The Caduceus is comprised of two snakes entwined around a winged staff. This was the realm of Hermes (Mercury to the Romans), god of messengers but also the guide of souls to the underworld and patron deity of merchants and travelers. It was about commerce, negotiation and communication — not medicine.

So how did the mix-up happen? The U.S. Army Medical Corps accidentally adopted the caduceus as their symbol in the early 1900s, somehow thinking it was more ornate and impressive looking. Other organizations followed, and both symbols now symbolize medicine in America, though officially only one should.

But many medical institutions and global health organizations continue to employ the correct logo: the one-snake Rod of Asclepius. But not so in the U.S., where you’ll find both, giving us another of history’s most prolific symbolic mistakes.

The Ouroboros: The Snake That Eats Its Tail

Picture a snake or dragon coiled into a circle, consuming its own tail. This is the ouroboros, a symbol that has cropped up independently across cultures — in ancient Egypt and Norse mythology, among Aztecs.

The ouroboros symbolizes life, death, and rebirth. In eating its tail, the snake eats itself, kills itself and maintains itself—a never-ending loop with no clear starting point or stopping point. It was pressed into service by ancient philosophers to describe the cyclical order of the universe: seasons that come and go, empires that rise and fall, lives that bear fruit and are born anew.

Records from ancient Egypt as early as 1600 BCE depict the ouroboros in the shape of surrounding sun gods, illustrating the passage of the sun across the sky and its return each day. In medieval Europe, alchemists adopted it as a symbol of the oneness of all things and the cyclical quality of their work — making lead into gold and back again.

Greek philosophers associated it with infinity and wholeness. The symbol posed a deep question: can something make itself? Can the universe be self-sustaining? To this day they are still stumping scientists and philosophers.

In contemporary culture, the ouroboros is often taken to symbolize introspection, the eternal return or cyclicality, especially in the sense of something constantly re-creating itself. But, still, its ancient meaning persists: everything is connected in an unbreakable cycle.

The Triquetra: Three Points, Endless Meanings

The triquetra appears as three fish in a circle (as it is one of the oldest Christian fish symbols), or as fish locks, which look like kites. This Celtic sign has been interpreted differently in different cultures at various points of time.

The triquetra was a symbol of the triple goddess among ancient Celts: the maiden, the mother, and the crone – each woman lived through these stages. It also symbolized the three worlds: earth, sky, and water. The endless interlaced design reflected the interconnectedness of these three things, without a beginning or an end.

The cross symbol was subsequently incorporated into the chapel and became a part of its regular decorative motifs, added by Celtic converts to Christianity after their own kind were Christianized. The three spots continued, but the meaning changed to conform to the new religion. This is how symbols transform while retaining the essence of their structure.

A trinity knot is also found in the iconic Book of Kells, which is an illuminated manuscript made by the Celtic monks circa 800 CE. It was also used by Vikings and is found engraved on runestones across Scandinavia.

Today, you might know the triquetra from jewelry or tattoos, or the TV series “Charmed,” which used it as an emblem of three sisters’ power. But for thousands of years, it was considered the sacred power of three — a number that has inklings as representing completeness and stability in myths and religions across the globe.

The Hamsa: Hand of Protection

Raise your hand with your fingers spread, and you’re making the shape of the hamsa — a symbol ubiquitous across the Middle East and North Africa. For thousands of years, this palm-shaped protective amulet, an eye painted or inlaid at the center, has shielded wearers from evil.

The word “hamsa” is of Arabic origin and translates to the number “five” in both Arabic and Hebrew, representing the five fingers. Jews refer to it as the Hand of Miriam (Moses’s sister). Muslims know the symbol as the Hand of Fatima (after Muhammad’s daughter). This emblem transcends religious lines among Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities across the region.

The hamsa shields from the “evil eye” — a curse cast by a malevolent glare, usually about being jealous or envious. When a person wears a hamsa, they are forming the shape of protection and creating an aura in which bad energies reverberate back to the bad-intentioned one. The eye in the palm’s middle keenly scans for threats.

The hamsa symbol was also used by the Phoenicians over 3,000 years ago and they related it to their goddess named Tanit who offered protection from evil. From there, it traveled to the other Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures, where it took on different meanings in each place and religion, but often still retaining its protective function.

People dress in hamsa jewelry, put up hamsas in their homes and paint them on walls. The hand can face up (to keep away evil) or down (to invite blessings and good luck). Either way, standing with arms raised in this basic shape: for thousands of years, people have trusted it to keep them safe.

The Celtic Cross: Where Religion Meets Prehistory

A Celtic cross appears as a typical Christian cross with a circle connecting the four arms of it. This symbol is a wonderful example of how new religions adopted and adapted older symbols when they moved into new territories.

When Christian missionaries first came to Ireland and Scotland around the 5th century, they discovered that Celtic peoples revered nature and the sun. The circle — a potent Celtic symbol for the sun, lack of division, and eternity was sacred to these peoples anyway.

Some smart missionary or other in the past combined Christianity’s cross with the pagan Celtic circle to make a sign that represented two worlds at once. The cross was for Christianity’s core tenet and the circle to represent Celtic spiritual roots. This made the new religion seem less alien and more appealing to Celtic converts.

The four arms of the cross also spoke to Celtic devotion to the number four: four seasons, four elements, four points on a compass. The infinite circular shape also demonstrated that God’s love was without beginning or end — a notion to which both Christians and Celts could relate.

They turned into the most important symbol of Celtic Christianity. Giant stone Celtic crosses are still found across Ireland, Scotland and Wales — some of them more than a millennium old. They are decorated with elaborate knotwork designs that combine Christian stories with Celtic artistic traditions.

Nowadays, Celtic crosses are used in everything from jewelry to gravestones as a symbol of Christian faith or Celtic heritage. They teach us how symbols can bring cultures together, or make room for new ideas in traditional communities.

The Dharma Wheel: Buddhism and the Path of the Middle Way

The most significant Buddhist symbol is the Dharma Wheel, or Dharmachakra. The eight spikes in this wheel also symbolize the teachings of Buddha and the path to enlightenment.

When the Prince Siddhartha became the Buddha (the awakened one) some 2,500 years ago, he delivered his first sermon in a city of deer. This sermon, known as “Turning the Wheel of Dharma,” laid out the essence of Buddhist teaching. It was the wheel, and that became this emblem of transferring Buddhist wisdom.

The eight spokes symbolize the Noble Eightfold Path — Buddhism’s path to end suffering: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and concentration. Each spoke is vital; take one away and the wheel doesn’t turn.

The circular shape of the wheel represents samsara – the cycle of birth, death and rebirth that Buddhists hope to escape. The hub is discipline, the spokes are wisdom and the rim is concentration. These are the three factors which lead to awakening.

The Dharma Wheel graces temples, flags and religious texts across Asia. The Indian flag is emblazoned with one known as the Ashoka Chakra, after an ancient emperor who brought Buddhism to his empire. Here you see this wheel and what you’ve got is the complete philosophy reduced down into a simple, elegant design.

The Vesica Piscis: The Most Important Pattern In The Universe?

Draw a pair of circles the same size so they intersect, with the border of each circle running through the center of the other. The almond-shaped space in which they overlap is known as the vesica piscis, Latin for “fish bladder.” This strange name conceals its great significance in sacred geometry, architecture and religious art.

To ancient mathematicians, the vesica piscis gave proof positive of a number of geometric concepts. The proportions of the shape were connected to the square root of three, a number that’s found in nature. It was the first image that one could make by drawing a single circle, and hence it represented the appearance of form out of unity.

Christians also kept the vesica piscis as a Christian symbol for Christ, because it looked like fish (which was one of the early secret symbols that Christians used so they wouldn’t be identified during persecutions). It also served to symbolize the intersection of heaven (one circle) and earth (the other circle) as Christ existed on both planes.

Vesica piscis proportions are created by the multiplication of basic proportions using square roots, something medieval architects used to construct cathedral windows, doors and even entire floor plans. Gothic arches follow its curves. This is the shape of many halos in religious paintings. It is seen in Chartres Cathedral, Notre Dame and many other sacred buildings.

Nature harbors the vesica piscis, too: in cell division, flower petals and the human eye. The ancients recognized these designs and believed them to be divine in origin. Today, artists and architects employ its proportions for their work, intuiting that the form is inherently pleasing to our eyes.

Table Comparing Symbol Origins and Meanings

Why These Symbols Still Matter Today

You may ask why we should care about symbols that were invented thousands of years ago. Besides, we’re a modern society with smartphones and space travel and A.I. What can we learn from ancient symbols?

The answer is, of course, everything about human nature and shared human experience.

They endured because they speak to universal human desires. We search for protection still (hamsa, Eye of Horus). We continue to meditate on the cycles of life (ouroboros, yin-yang). We continue to look for meaning and spiritual balance in our lives (pentagram, Dharma Wheel). We still attempt to connect different beliefs and customs (Celtic cross, triquetra).

Symbols also educate us about cultural ties. When the same character shows up in Egypt, China and Mexico, in each instance independently, it implies that you have humans everywhere who are looking at the world in a certain way. We all look to the sky, observe cycles and sniff out existence.

Also, researching old symbols prevent us from jumping to conclusions. The swastika reminds us how drastically meanings can shift depending on context. The caduceus shows that even for a century, experts can be wrong. These lessons of nuance and critical thinking can be transferred to everything in life.

Last, symbols tie us to our forebears. When you wear an ankh or triquetra or some such, you’re connecting to people who lived millennia before in the same hopes and fears as your own. That linkage through time is such a powerful, humbling thing.

For more information about the fascinating world of ancient symbols and their meanings, visit the Encyclopedia Britannica’s section on symbolism.

Lessons From the Evolution of Symbolism

Symbols almost never mean precisely the same thing forever. They mutate, adapt and sometimes are completely transformed as cultures meet and transform themselves. Important lessons about human society can be learned from this evolution.

Lesson 1: Context is everything. To one culture a symbol signifies protection, to another culture that same symbol means something else entirely. The swastika is also still a holy, positive symbol in India, although it embodies the memory of horror or hatred across Europe. Neither definition is the more “true”—both are true in their own contexts.

Lesson 2: Symbols can serve as bridges. The Celtic cross is an example of how new concepts can pay tribute to old traditions. When missionaries put crosses together with circles, they were making something that allowed people to unite instead of being forced to entirely leave behind their old life.

Lesson 3: Mistakes become tradition. Medical institutions ascribed no intention of the caduceus’ being a medical symbol, but now countless numbers of people know it as such. And, as the meaning of a symbol begins to shift due to its momentum, an incorrect meaning spread through common use can prove “correct” just as well.

Lesson 4: Corruption can happen. Symbol evolution is not always upwards. The swastika’s Nazi corruption is an example of how influential groups can appropriate symbols and pervert their meanings in tragic ways. That’s a reminder to be conscious of how we produce and understand symbols.

Lesson 5: Old wisdom is still applicable. The yin-yang’s statement about balance, the ouroboros’s intuition of cyclical processes, the Dharma Wheel’s advice on how to live good lives — these are not dusty old concepts. They are eternal truths squished into memorable shapes.

How to Think About Symbols You Find

Since now you know these twelve experience symbols, you can think about any symbol in similar patterns. Here are questions to ask:

• Where did this symbol originate? Understanding origins provides crucial context.
• What did it mean to the people who made them? The most original meaning is very different from the current meaning.
• What is the meaning of this word as it has been used over time? Most symbols also change over time, spreading out and aging.
• Is it something that means different things to people in different cultures? Context determines meaning.
• Why has this symbol survived? Symbols that endure touch something deep in human experience.
• Who is using this symbol today and why? Current usage is a guide to contemporary meanings and values.

These questions turn you from a consumer of symbols into an investor in them, someone who has deeper thoughts and feelings about the images and icons that fill your world.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Can symbols be multi-valent at once?

A: Absolutely! And as with most archetypal symbols, there’s often more than one overlay of meaning to consider. The triquetra, for instance, can symbolize all at once the triple goddess as well as the Christian trinity and three planes of existence. The same symbol means different things to different people depending upon their culture, religion and personal experience.

Q: How can the same symbols be repeated within cultures that never interacted with each other?

A: It’s because people have similar experiences no matter where they are. All witness the sun and the moon, birth and death, and natural cycles. When ancient Egyptians and ancient Aztecs separately imagined ouroboros-like symbols, they were addressing the same observations about life’s cycles.

Q: Is it offensive to wear symbols from cultures that are not your own?

A: It really depends on what symbol and what you’re doing with it. Some, like the yin-yang or Celtic cross, are so widely shared as cultural symbols that most people do not consider it inappropriate to wear them. Others (sacred religious symbols and those from oppressed cultures in particular) should be considered more carefully. Where there is any doubt, the symbol’s meaning can be researched and it should be considered whether or not your usage honors or disrespects what it represents.

Q: What makes symbols powerful?

A: Symbols gain their power through shared belief and collective meaning. A pentagram is nothing but five lines arranged in the shape of a star— it’s the thousands of years of human belief, ritual and meaning we’ve attached to those lines that make the symbol mean anything. So when millions of people over the centuries agree that a symbol stands for something significant, that collective recognition generates genuine cultural power.

Q: Can new signs be just as significant as old ones?

A: Yes! Consider the peace symbol (1958), the recycling symbol (1970) or even emoji (1990s). These new symbols spread like wildfire worldwide overnight. But timeless symbols do endure, and have even greater depth and richness, the older they are, so staying power is one thing newfangled ones can’t claim.

Q: How do some symbols turn into negative things?

A: Almost always through conscious adoption by groups that use the symbol for evil purposes, like the Nazis did with the swastika. Now and then, negative associations unfold more slowly through pop culture or confusion. It was this slow adoption and proliferation of the pentagram among different groups over millennia which also contributed to its association with darker themes in Western society. These shifts demonstrate the ways in which symbol meanings can be distorted and oppressive.

Q: Do the same symbols signify in dreams as they do objectively in historical events?

A: Not necessarily. Private dream interpretation does tend to draw on your personal experiences and mind, whether or not you share the etiquette of times gone by as related via symbols. But some psychologists (most famously Carl Jung) did think that certain symbols draw on a “collective unconscious” shared by all humans, so historical and dream symbols might sometimes have overlapping import.

Q: How can I find out more about a symbol that I see?

A: Begin by finding the cultural source and literal meaning of the symbol. Seek out academic sources, museums and cultural organizations instead of only internet forums. Give the religious/commercial/decorative context you encountered this symbol in. Context is a rich source for decoding meaning and intention.

Conclusion: Symbols as Timeless Time Capsules

Each is a time capsule, containing ancient wisdom, ideas and ways of looking at the world. When you gaze at the Eye of Horus, you are looking at exactly what an Egyptian priest saw 3,000 years ago. When you connect the loops in a yin-yang sign, your finger draws the same lines Taoist philosophers pondered more than two millennia before there was anything approximating modern civilization.

These twelve symbols—the swastika, ankh, Eye of Horus, pentagram, yin-yang, Rod of Asclepius, caduceus, ouroboros (snake eating its own tail), triquetra (the three-point Celtic knot), hamsa (open hand of protection), Celtic cross (equal-armed cross with a circle dividing the arms and center) and Dharma Wheel—represent only the tiniest fraction of the symbolic language humans have made for themselves. And there are thousands more unfamiliar symbols, all of them with interesting stories and explanations.

But these 12 matter most because they teach us the most important things about symbols in general: that they change, that they cross cultures and have no fixed meanings before humans invest them with meaning, that they can be defaced or exalted and used for good or evil, but above all else that when a symbol does move people at a deep level it is doing so because somehow it has touched on something elemental to the human experience. They remind us that for all of our technological progress, we aren’t so different from our ancestors. Meaning, protection, balance and connection remain needs for us.

The next time you see one of these symbols — adorning a piece of jewelry, incorporated into architectural structure or public art, placed into a movie scene — you’ll know there’s more than decoration at play. You’re looking at humanity’s effort to capture complex concepts in simple shape, transmit wisdom across generations, make sense of a sometimes nonsensical world.

And these symbols have endured wars, empires, cultural revivals and the passing of millennia. Chances are, they will be with us for a long time to come — still instructing new readers about the people, drawing lines between their age and ours, reminding us of perennial issues that have interested humans across millennia and spacetime. That’s the miracle of symbols — not in their marks themselves, but in the unyielding human habit of trying to find meaning and make it known to others by way of images that shout louder than words ever could.