Ichthys is the Greek word for fish, and it was one of the most important early Christian symbols. As a result, the pelican became a symbol of Christ’s passion, poring out his blood for the forgiveness of sins, as well as the Eucharist. Medieval Europeans believed that pelicans were particularly attentive to their young, even to the point of wounding itself and letting its young drink its blood when no food was available. Early Christians adopted the symbol to represent their belief in eternal life in heaven with God, and was often depicted with the Tree of Life. The Ancient Greeks believed that the flesh of peacocks didn’t decompose after death, and so peacocks became a symbol of immortality. The rho had the numerical value of 100, which itself could either be a reference to the Greek word for help (which also had the numerical value of 100), or as a reference to Abraham (himself taken as a symbol of the Messiah) because Abraham procreated Isaac when he was 100 years old. The tau could symbolize the cross on its own. The letters also sometimes had a deeper meaning. The Staurogram, or Tau-Rho, is a Greek tau (T) combined with a Greek rho (P), and was used in the early church as an abbreviation for the Greek word for cross. Maybe you’ve seen some of these before and not fully understood them, and maybe some of them you didn’t know about. Do you we need to bring some of these back? So many meanings can be packed into a single, simple mark or object. Ancient Christians had a deep appreciation for the power of a symbol.
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