Symbols - What does heaven look like
Feet pointing backwards
In some descriptions of spirit beings the feet are pointing backwards and not forwards. This is symbolic and the imagery is intended to convey an attribute - as it is a spirit being it is in the ‘mirror world’ and thus ‘walks backwards’. In order to walk backward, logic goes it has to have its feet on the wrong way round.
Idyllen, Volkssagen, Legenden und Erzahlungen aus Der Schweitz – Professor J Rud Wyss 1813 [Source; Thomas Keightley]
I have never anywhere else heard of the goose feet in this myth; but that all is not right with the feet is evident from popular tradition. Some will even have it that their feet are regularly formed, but set on their legs the wrong way, so that the toes are behind and the heels before!
Observations
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- Alice in Wonderland - Ch 10 - 2 The voice of the lobster
- Chagall - Painter to the Moon
- Crowley - 04 The Emperor
- Crowley - 07 The Chariot
- Crowley - 12 The Hanged Man
- Degas - Ballerina and Woman with Umbrella
- Degas - In the dance studio
- Dickinson, Emily - The only ghost I ever saw
- Gentling the Bull – 06 Returning home on the back of the Bull
- Hodler, Ferdinand - Spring 1901
- Hogons of Dyon - The Shoemaker
- Myths and legends - The Fairy Mythology - The favour and kindness of the Dwarfs
- Nuremberg Chronicle - 'Back feet'
- Palenque - Mayan - Lady Zak Kuk
- Palenque - Mayan - The 'top knot' initiate
- Picts – Basic truths - Feet
- Saadi - The Gulistan of Sa‘di – 16 from The Morals of Dervishes
- Spencer, Stanley - Symbolism 19 - The Lovers (The Dustman)
- Traherne, Thomas - Shadows in the Water - Thus did I by the water’s brink
- Various examples - 4 The Emperor
- Yeats, W B - Selected poems - Images