Armour and weapons

Weaponry in all its aspects and history is a source of potent symbolism. The ancient weapons still appear in imagery: staff, spear, club, axe, and projectile, whether hurled stone, slingshot or later, bow-flung arrows or poison darts. To these five may be added a weapon of fire: torches first then fiery projectiles. Water also was a weapon. Enemies' water supplies were cut-off, or their walls were undermined by diverting rivers. As 'armour', the watery moat served its purpose for millenia. The Middle Ages saw a further development in body armour, parts of which were used in the symbolic art of heraldry. The modern ages introduced explosives: bullets, bombs, hand grenades, mortars and rockets and their various delivery systems. These have all entered into the stream of symbolic imagery among which the nuclear mushroom-cloud is possibly the most terrifying.

Weapons and armour symbolize offence and defence; destruction and protection. The meanings may refer also to the deepest levels of the dynamic psyche, where struggle (psychomachia), is also characteristic among those on paths of personal development.