Publisher's Synopsis
Finally available, a high quality book of the original classic edition of A Complete Guide to Heraldry. It was previously published by other bona fide publishers, and is now, after many years, back in print.
This is a new and freshly published edition of this culturally important work by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies, which is now, at last, again available to you.
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Enjoy this classic work today. These selected paragraphs distill the contents and give you a quick look inside A Complete Guide to Heraldry:
Look inside the book:
But doubtless the inclusion of such instances is due to an attempt, conscious or unconscious, on the part of the writers who have taken their stand on the side of great antiquity to so frame the definition of armory that it shall include everything heraldic, and due perhaps somewhat to the half unconscious {3}reasoning that these mythical animals, and more especially the peculiarly heraldic positions they are depicted in, which nowadays we only know as part of armory, and which exist nowhere else within our knowledge save within the charmed circle of heraldry, must be evidence of the great antiquity of that science or art, call it which you will. ...'The old Asiatic style, so highly figurative, seems, by what we find of {11}its remains in the prophetic language of the sacred writers, to have been evidently fashioned to the mode of the ancient hieroglyphics; for as in hieroglyphic writing the sun, moon, and stars were used to represent states and empires, kings, queens, and nobility-their eclipse and extinction, temporary disasters, or entire overthrow-fire and flood, desolation by war and famine; plants or animals, the qualities of particular persons, &c.; so, in like manner, the Holy Prophets call kings and empires by the names of the heavenly luminaries; their misfortunes and overthrow are represented by eclipses and extinction; stars falling from the firmament are employed to denote the destruction of the nobility; thunder and tempestuous winds, hostile invasions; lions, bears, leopards, goats, or high trees, leaders of armies, conquerors, and founders of empires; royal dignity is described by purple, or a crown; iniquity by spotted garments; a warrior by a sword or bow; a powerful man, by a gigantic stature; a judge by balance, weights, and measures-in a word, the prophetic style seems to be a speaking hieroglyphic.'
