The Red Crystal – a new Emblem of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement
The 29th International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent societies just has agreed to incorporated the emblem of the Red Crystal as a new symbol of protection for war victims and humanitarian workers. The new emblem won’t replace the old emblems, but can be used by countries who don’t want to use the other two symbols, which are supposed by certain people as having a religious connotation.
So the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement has accepted the Palestine Red Crescent Society and the Israeli Magen David Adom (Star of David) into their rangs, the latter can now include into the crystal their sign of the double triangle. Hopefully the belligerent parties all over the globe also accept the humanitarian message of rescue and help – often nowadays these are groups not respecting much of common values.
The message of the new emblem as a symbol of neutrality is interesting from the view of the wisdom teachings: a square stands for matter, standing on the top the rhombus is overcoming the heaviness of matter – if you look at it, it feels upward directed and lighter than the square – and a crystal also stands for matter purified. The cross is an ancient symbol of man fixed into matter, even from pre-Christian eras, like the Eastern Cosmic Man, the Purusha, fixed onto the cross of matter.
In the emblem we use with the Circle of Good Will and which you see on the top of the blog page – the upright square encircling a cross and encircled by a circle – the circle symbolises eternity, into which the material creation is manifested and hold – all the parts being integrated into a greater whole. May the message of synthesis and universality of good will also inspire the good will workers working under the signs of the red cross, red crescent and red crystal.
