The dog licked me this morning. He doesn't generally; he's very good about not licking, but this morning he seemed to be saying sleepily, "Yes, I like you a lot, I'm glad you came over and petted me." Regardless of the sentiment involved, I washed afterward. With extra soap. Because I know where that tongue has been.

I read a blog entry this morning that seemed to be a result of a discussion in chat, which I missed, regarding symbolism in one's writing. (I don't agree that multiple threads of conversation and tired people illustrate the limitations of chat so much as human limitations, because I have had in-the-flesh conversations go much the same way, but that is another issue.) This is the second entry (by two different people) that I remember reading about this chat, and it struck me as interesting that both people seem to be saying that the chat, instead of exploring how to develop original symobology, defaulted (my word) to discussing existing symbology in our culture(s).

It is, I am sure, easier to rely on existing systems of belief and symbology: to have your character finger a cross or a peace sign; to have your characters speak of the infinite or of gods while lying under the stars; to present a rich man through his flash car, his Rolex, his Armani suit. To have the fortune telling card for death show a skeletal figure with a scythe. To consider red the color of life or death. A bird indicates a soul or spirit. The boar is strength.

But if you are writing a world of your own devising and you don't want people to flash on Arthurian-style green man legends (the infamous gored in the thigh image) or assume your cross-bearers are Christian, what to do?

My thoughts: ask yourself why those are meaningful. Then ask yourself what, in your world, had such effect that it would stick in people's minds, that they would want to carry a reminder? Is their x of two polished jade sticks a reminder of a fire in which someone was burned?

Jumay touched the jade kindling on his belt as the procession passed, torches weaving enigmatic signs of smoke and fire in the air. The man beside him muttered rapidly, his hands shaking os the jade sticks clinked together. "Soul-keeper burned," he said, over and over, and Jumay's throat tightened so he could barely speak the words himself.

Then burn it into your readers' minds by having that jade kindling in as many places as a cross would be; have it sworn by, worn, attached to buildings, defaced by unbelievers. Let the character react as people do to the defacing and use of their hallowed symbol. Let it go ignored, be mentioned in passing, automatic and irreverent moments occurring so gently that readers understand it had meaning once but no longer. There's a simple replacement technique: replace a symbol with its associated belief from one culture with another symbol and its associated belief.

Don't forget the rest of what goes with the symbol, though: who makes the jade kindling? What do poor people use instead, or does the color of the jade matter? Is there a sect that believes differently and can be told by how they won't use open flames? Is there a place where people go to talk about soul-keeper, and who it was, and why it burned? Extend the symbol into their lives the way a cross reaches into lives: church, tithing, standards of dress, ethics, art.

I have a culture that considers the color blue the color of death. The sky doesn't bother them; death is a companion they prefer to keep its distance, and the sky seems very far away. But blue things---made things such blue clothing or blue glass are unusual. Not generally accepted. One might keep a blue item if someone special died and one has a reason to keep the memory alive: a need for revenge, for instance, or the search for a lost family member. To give someone a blue stone is beyond rude. Yet in this culture is a subculture, a clan that holds blue to be the color of freedom. They aren't death-cultists; they will acknowledge that death can be a kind of freedom, but something happened to a few of their ancestors that gave him a knowledge the other clans are denied, and in defiance of those who wanted these clan leaders to keep silent, they chose to make a banner of what they knew.

And in my tale, a girl who was taught that blue is the color of death takes the color blue as her badge, because of death, because of friendship, and because she has learned what was forbidden. It's a gesture of rebellion, of grief for those she lost, a promise to someone who is still alive. So I have to spend a bit of energy on building those underlying attitudes toward a color into every character that might need to react to it. Without making that the biggest issue in the story, because it isn't. It's only a symbol, and it has to be subtle or it will be too much. And now I've typed too much, so I'll be back later.