About 15 years ago I got a tattoo which has a spiral representing my journey. I think of it as the concept of “spiraling” into my best self.
Spiraling from the outer ego-the outside world- into the inner soul- cosmic awareness and enlightenment-. The spiral represents evolution and growth of the spirit. It is a symbol of change and development.
Symbol of change, as all things in this world must change over time. Nothing can live and be stagnant. Everyday we have a new chance, a new choice, to change ourselves and bring more light into the world.
The word ‘spiral’ springs from ancient roots inextricably bound up with ideas of creation, life-giving and aspiration — from the Latin spiralis or spira, and the Greek speira, meaning a spire or coil, or a conical or pyramidal structure, as well as from the Latin spirare, meaning ‘to breathe,’ as in expire and inspire.
The spiral motif is a link to nature, representing the ever changing seasons. It represents the cycle of life; birth, growth, death, and re-incarnation.
Spirals have a sacred quality and have been used in religious and sacred architecture since the beginning of humans.
Spirals are an ancient symbol used for thousands of years in every part of the world.
Spirals have been found painted and engraved on cave walls of Upper Paleolithic times and on standing stones of the Neolithic. Single spiral symbols have been found in Stone-Age Europe and in most places in the world.
So, what does the spiral symbol mean?
Historically, it may have signified the sun or a way to reach the spirit world. Or it could represent life itself or eternity. It may have also been a calendrical device to divide the year into seasons and solstices.
Many suggest the spirals symbolize rebirth or as a symbol of a mother goddess and are interpreted as symbolic wombs.
In terms of modern spirituality, the spiral is said to represent the path leading from outer consciousness to the inner soul. It marks the evolution of mankind from the physical to the spiritual realms.
In Tantric yoga, kundalini-the Sanscrit word for ‘spiral’ and which also suggests “serpent power” -rises through the body through a series of seven energy centres, or chakras, the aim being to activate this spiritual and psychic energy by using various yogic techniques, and raise it from the lowest to the highest chakra. Kundalini is often depicted as a coiled serpent.
The Spiral is nature’s most preferred pattern of growth and most efficacious deployer of its energy — life-inducing, life-protecting and life-supporting. Ultimately, the implication is that the spiral form is integral to strength and growth and indeed, it may be that all curves of growth are based on it. It is a powerful example of how nature tends to repeat the use of a successful design over and over again on every level of its creative handiwork.
There are countless examples of the spiral curve in the animal kingdom: the tusks of elephants and warthogs, the teeth of beavers and rodents, claws of cats, beaks of birds, horns of sheep, and the flight of birds. It is also found in the volutes of waves, the swirls of weather systems, and the shoots of plants, as well as in many aspects of human anatomy: the fibers in the ventricles of the heart run in spiral lines so that the muscular constriction by which the blood is forced onward, and the circulation kept up, is like the twist of a screw; in the ‘labyrinth’ of the inner ear, and coiled in the shape of a snail shell, is the cochlea.
Spirals permeate many natural formations both organic and inorganic, conscious and non conscious. Such as in pine cone, shells, DNA double helix, draining water, weather patterns like hurricaines, galaxies, snail shells, algae, animal horns, cabbage, hair growth, fingerprints
The spiral is the perfect example of ‘as above, so below, as within, so without’, weaving its magic from vanishingly small to unimaginably huge levels of existence. To me, the spiral is the ‘way’ of the universe, the link between microcosm and macrocosm, between science and spirituality. It’s a uniting symbol right across nature and human culture, appearing as the sign of the eternal, creative and organizing principle at work in the universe, as well as the pattern of our spiritual development — a key to the riddle of existence and the inner essence of reality.
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