༒

(source)

They also had different meanings in different contexts: Linnaeus used ♂ (elsewhere meaning 'iron' or 'Mars') for both biennials (an arbitrary extension) and male plants, and ♀ (elsewhere meaning 'copper' or 'Venus') for female plants.

Some of these symbols are still used today: the symbols for 'male' and 'female' are widely understood, and new astronomical symbols have been created for Earth and the minor planets. However, in some German alchemical manuscripts, the practice of logographic writing combined with the practice (also found in many English manuscripts) of writing Latin in antiqua as vs. the usual blackletter combined to produce a triscriptal system, almost like Japanese:

read here two metonyms of the dead, 北邙 "Mount Běimáng (today called 邙山 Mount Máng)" and 松柏 "pine and cypress". in the highly codified imagery system of traditional sinosphere poetics, Běimáng symbolizes death of both humans and powers: it was once probably the largest burial site in Luòyáng and has buried a great many royals since the late Hàn times. the often collocated 松 (the pine tree) and 柏 (usually translated as "cypress", according to Kroll "esp. thuja or arborvitae"), of course, were both common graveyard trees, and the word 松柏 was often used as a euphemism for graves.

the morals of Ancient Song are not in any sense special: seekers of fortune and status (市朝客, those who busy themselves in the market and the Imperial Court) will die, and death will unhand from you your mortal fulfilment. but the poem rather unusually focuses on the barrier between Běimáng and the living: this Běimáng does not welcome those who are still alive. in curt and straightforward words it refuses cultivation of staples; the vacant lands are "saved for" the living only after they do not live anymore. this Běimáng, then, is not a place simply affiliated to death due to the dead in its passive containment, but a place that altogether rejects the living. we don't often see this characterization of Běimáng in poetry. Běimáng (or rather, the poetic projection of Běimáng), Shěn Qiānyùn says, is the underworld itself.

(stray thoughts and some notes on the text under the cut)