I34 SOME SYMBOLIC WEAPONS
of power, either sacerdotal or royal as the case may be, that is, spiritual or temporal, for they show the power as an emanation or delegation from the very source of light which in fact power is when it is legitimate.
It would be easy to give many examples, from very diverse sources, of horns used as symbols of power. Some examples are to be found in the Bible, especially in the Apocalypse. [14] We will mention one other, taken from the Arab tradition which designates Alexander by the name al-Iskandar dhu l-qarnayn, that is, 'of the two horns', [15] which is most frequently interpreted in the sense of a double power extending over both the East and the West. [16] This interpretation is perfectly correct, though we must not exclude another fact which, if anything, completes it: Alexander, having been declared the son of Ammon by the oracle of that god, took as his emblem the horns of the ram which was Ammon's chief attribute; [17] and it was this divine origin, moreover, that legitimised him as successor of the ancient sovereigns of Egypt to whom the same origin was attributed. It is even said that he had himself represented thus on his coinage, which in the eyes of the Greeks identified him rather with Dionysus, whose memory he also evoked by his conquests, especially that of India; and Dionysus was the son of Zeus whom the Greeks likened to Ammon. It is possible that Alexander himself was privy to this idea; but Dionysus was, nevertheless, commonly represented with horns, not of the ram but of the bull, which from the point of view of symbolism is a rather important difference. [18]
It should be noted that there are in fact two main forms of horns in symbolism, those of the ram, which are 'solar', and those of the bull which, on the contrary, are 'lunar', and which recall moreover the form of the crescent itself. [19] In this connection, reference might also be made to the two zodiacal signs of the Ram and the Bull; but this would give rise above all to questions concerning the predominance of one form over the other in different traditions, which would lead to 'cyclic' considerations that we could not dream of entering into.
To bring this outline to an end, we will draw attention to one more correspondence which in certain respects is to be found between the animal weapons that horns are and what might be called vegetable weapons, that is, thorns. In this connection, it must be noted that many of the plants that have an important symbolic significance are thorny. [20] Here also, thorns, like other pointed objects, evoke the idea of a summit or of an elevation; and in certain cases at least they can be taken to represent luminous rays. [21] We see, therefore, that the symbolism is always perfectly coherent as indeed it must be, by the very fact that far from being the result of some more or less artificial convention it is, on the contrary, based on the essential nature of things.