Well, The Cross was an ancient Roman torture to my understanding and soon became a symbol which all christians wore....What if jesus was hung on the gallows... would we have Gallow necklaces with a guy swinging from the rope?! Now that would be interesting.

Or an electric chair necklace?

Well, forget about the funny (hilarious actually) point you made. Now let's talk serious:

If the cross has survived many centuries as a symbol, it either was meaningful from the beginning, or acquired aggregated meanings through the ages, or both.

To me as a kabbalist (I'm not one, just by sympathy) it means exactly the pictorial aspect it carries:

A vertical line, the Hebrew letter Va'v, crossed and broken, that is, interfered with, by some satan (satan in Hebrew: "that which crosses", "an interference", "an accusator").

Va'v, the vertical line is the flow of life, an extra mark of holiness and perfect harmony in the chaining down of the worlds, and the main letter of the Y-H-V-H "tetragrammaton". It figures the flow of creative emanation from the absolute, into the worlds levels. Harmony and nurturing of all levels.

That Va'v is -God forbid- crossed, interfered with by that symbol which clearly puts a shaft into the holy chariot's wheels.

BTW, the word diabolic comes from greek dia-bolein, "throw across", "double-cross", "interfere".

So, the cross needs no further explanation. Instead of a symbol (sym-bolein) it could be named a "dia-bol", some expression of cosmic adversity.

Well, one could argue that the satanic aspect refers to the bad treatment a divine messenger received. So the door is not completely closed to free-will. One can still find a way out. Religion is not limited by itself, but by its practitioners, so there are good christians anyway to whom the meaning of such and such detail is not of primary importance, and who just do the right things, show love and not intolerance, etc...

BTW, western tradition designed what is called the "rose-cross", some colourful cross with petals and various arrangements of mystical number designs, that figure some kabalistic keys. The merit being, that the symbol of death, torture and frozen lifeflow, can be inverted into a bearer of life (provided the use made of it, is compatible with the lifeflow depicted).

[This message has been edited by UrbnTbone (edited 07-20-2003).]

Thank you that was very resourceful actually and I learned something from this forum.

quote:Originally posted by Hammer&Sickle:

Thank you that was very resourceful actually and I learned something from this forum. Thank you. Here is some GD rosecross http://altreligion.about.com/library/graphics/symbols/rosecrosslamen.jpg (http://altreligion.about.com/library/graphics/symbols/rosecrosslamen.jpg)