Delta

link
The spray-painting below, of what appears to be the Greek letter Delta, exists near the intersection of Thompsonville and Joyland roads in the Town of Thompson (outside Monticello), NY, and at other locations on the same and nearby roads.

I assume the markings have specific meanings to highway workers or engineers, but that symbolism is lost on me. Without such knowledge, I only see (incorrectly, no doubt; but still see) the ancient perspective of a down-pointing equilateral triangle as symbolic of the goddess Demeter, mother of Persephone.

What appears to be a nail positioned at the center point (see photo at bottom), clenching what looks like a bit of cloth, paper, or perhaps ribbon, is also intriguing. Tarot commentator P.D. Ouspensky notes, "The triangle is God (the Trinity) or the world of ideas, or the noumenal world. The point is man's soul. The square is the visible, physical or phenomenal world. Potentially, the point is equal to the square, which means that all the visible world is contained in man's consciousness, is created in man's soul. And the soul itself is a point having no dimension in the world of the spirit, symbolized by the triangle."

At the upper right is an image from The Symbolism of Freemasonry by Albert G. Mackey (1882) and shows the Hebrew letter 'yod' at the center of the triangle, which Mackey says represents divine name or "God point", also called by some the "nothing point".

Mackey writes: "From the sacredness with which the name was venerated, it was seldom, if ever, written in full, and, consequently, a great many symbols, or hieroglyphics, were invented to express it. One of these was the letter י or Yod, equivalent nearly to the English I, or J, or Y, which was the initial of the word, and it was often inscribed within an equilateral triangle, the triangle itself being a symbol of Deity."

Back to the earlier, feminine theme:

"The Delta or triangle, female-genital sign, the letter known as a vulva, in Celtic – duir, in Sanskrit dwr, and in Hebrew delath. Demeter’s trinity is symbolized by the triangle-door-yoni.) Her personality traits included persistence, bounty, and maternal interests. Sanctuary was the Eleusinian Fields. Eleusis meant “advent.” Lovers included Zeus, Poseidon, Lasion and children were Persephone (Kore), Philomelus (the inventor of the chariot a gift to his father Poseidon), Parius, Ploutus, Arion and Despona. Her symbols included stalks of grain, snakes torch and crown. She was worshiped into the Middle ages by pagans in Greece. Early Christian were opposed to Eleusinian rite because of the sexuality involved despite the regeneration and forgiveness of sin." 1

Honoring Demeter, it's said, the culmination of the Eleusinian mystery drama was the sacrifice of "an ear of corn [Hebrew: 'shibboleth'] reaped in silence." More to the point, both the explicit imagery and the overt incarnate meaning in which the eternal mystery of maternal Demeter; mother of the dying-and-reborn Persephone 2, is rooted, are visible in the 1866 painting by the French realist Gustave Courbet, L'Origine due Monde ("The Origin of the World"), in which symbolic Word is quite literally made flesh. (See this commentary on John 1:14 for a Christian explanation of the same essential premise in masculine and entirely defeminized form, Jesus.)

Along these same lines, here is the introduction to an excellent essay entitled Demeter: The Imported Grain: 3

Let us begin with some background information.

Greek meter is "mother." De is the delta, or triangle, a female -genital sign known as "the letter of the vulva" in the Greek sacred alphabet, as in India it was the Yoni Yantra, or yantra of the vulva. Corresponding letters—Sanskrit "dwr," Celtic "duir," Hebrew "daleth" — meant the Door of birth, death, or the sexual paradise. Thus, Demeter was what Asia called "the Doorway of the Mysterious Feminine . . . the root from which Heaven and Earth sprang." In Mycenae, one of Demeter's earliest cult centers, "tholos" tombs with their triangular doorways, short vaginal passages, and round domes, represented the womb of the Goddess from which rebirth might come. Doorways generally were sacred to women. In Sumeria they were painted red, representing the female "blood of life." In Egypt, doorways were smeared with real blood for religious ceremonies, a custom copied by the Jews for their Passover rites.

The triangle-door-yoni symbolized Demeter's trinity. Like all the oldest forms of the basic Asiatic Goddess she appeared as Virgin, Mother, and Crone, or Creator, Preserver, Destroyer, like Kali-Cunti who was the same yoni-mother. Demeter's Virgin form was Kore, the Maiden, sometimes called her "daughter," as in the classical myth of the abduction of Kore, which divided the two aspects of the Goddess into two separate individuals. Demeter's Mother form had many names and titles, such as Despoena, "the Mistress"; Daeira, "the Goddess"; the Barley-Mother; the Wise One of Earth and Sea; or Pluto, "Abundance." This last name was transferred to the male underworld god said to have taken the Maiden into the earth-womb during the dark season when fields lay fallow. But this was a late, artificial myth. The original Pluto was female, and her "riches" were poured out on the world from her breasts.

An inverted Delta (a Nabla), as pictured below and also to the right, can be both a mathematical symbol and representative of a harp. Whether the photo below is actually of a Delta or a Nabla is a matter of perspective.

The pink triangle also has another, more modern, meaning in the gay community, reclaimed from its use by the Nazis who used it to mark the sleeves of homosexuals in the same way that a yellow Star of David (which is actually two equilateral triangles superimposed) was used to mark Jews.

I took this photo on Thompsonville Road in the Town of Thompson, near Monticello, in late November 2007. See Road Signs for more.

1. 1. The Greek/Roman Pantheon, "Paraphrased from books read and notes taken by Cameron Ulisix Booth," by Tartan Guy, August 18, 2007. See also The Ur-pattern of the gyno-/gono- triangle sign by Andreas Goppold.
2. 2. See Homer's Hymn to Demeter, translated by Hugh G.Evelyn-White (1914), Loeb Classical Library
3. 3. On the website Paganizing Faith of Yeshua: Comparison of the nation's Sungods with the 'Jesus Story' of the New Testatment, Why are they the same stories? by Pastor Craig Lyons, M.Div., of Garland, Texas