Key

Hellenic religion

• Key is associated with Underworld.

  Greek and later Mediterranean images give keys to figures who keep the dead. The key is a lock-tool borrowed by a geography of below.

  associated with · interpretive · culturally specific

• Hades is associated with Key.

  Later Mediterranean images give keys to keepers of the dead. The lock-tool is borrowed by a Greek geography of below.

  associated with · interpretive · culturally specific

Hermeticism

• Key is associated with Knowledge.

  Hermetic and later occult diction calls a teaching a key. That is a metaphor of access, not a physical lock at Hades’ gate.

  from Brian P. Copenhaver (translation) · Corpus Hermeticum, c. 2nd–3rd century CE (Greek treatises)

  associated with · partially sourced · culturally specific

• Key appears in Hermeticism.

  Hermetic diction of keys and unlocking is the treatises’ own metaphor of teaching.

  from Brian P. Copenhaver (translation) · Corpus Hermeticum, c. 2nd–3rd century CE (Greek treatises)

  appears in · partially sourced · culturally specific

• Key is associated with Divination.

  Modern card-reading sometimes treats a pictured key as access to a hidden matter. That is a recent pictorial habit, not Delphi.

  associated with · interpretive · modern interpretation

• Key is used in Medicine.

  Key used in Medicine. A tool that opens a lock. An organized craft of treating the sick. The Atlas keeps their meeting local, without dissolving either into a single meaning.

  from SHOE.BLUE · SHOE.BLUE, 2026

  used in · interpretive · modern interpretation

Eighteenth-century Europe

• Ankh resembles Key.

  Europeans later called the ankh a “key of life.” The hieroglyph is a looped cross; it is not a lock-key of Roman doors.

  from Antoine Court de Gébelin · Monde primitif, 1781 (tarot essay)

  resembles · sourced · modern interpretation