How Do Artists Depict Abraxas God In Contemporary Art?

I still get a little thrill whenever I come across an old gemstone or talisman stamped with that strange, squat name — Abraxas. The figure itself, historically shown with a rooster's head, a human torso, serpentine legs and a whip-and-shield motif, feels like someone sketched a whole myth into a single image. In modern occult circles that compact weirdness is read as a kind of visual shorthand for totality: Abraxas unites animal instinct, human consciousness, and chthonic force. Its Greek-letter numeric value adding up to 365 is often pointed to as symbolic of a full year or the circle of time, which makes it an attractive emblem for people thinking about cycles, fate, or a cosmology that refuses tidy binaries. People in occult communities treat Abraxas in several overlapping ways. Some lean into Jungian readings — citing ideas from 'The Red Book' — where Abraxas functions as an archetype that contains both light and dark, forcing integration rather than scapegoating. Others approach it pragmatically: as a working name in ritual, a sigil for shadow-work, or a talisman that represents liberation from strict moral dualities. I've seen it on necklaces, on sketchbook covers, and as a tattoo on friends who wanted a constant reminder to reconcile their contradictions. For me, the modern symbolism is less about worship and more about invitation: an invitation to hold complexity, to accept the ugly and the luminous as parts of one map, and to remember that synthesis can be magnetic, dissonant, and strangely comforting all at once.

I still get a little thrill thinking about how messy and creative ancient belief could be. If you ask what rituals are historically tied to worship of Abraxas, you’re mostly looking at a mix of Gnostic devotional practice, folk magic, and protective superstition rather than a neat priestly cult with standardized liturgy. Scholars tie Abraxas most directly to the Basilidian school of second-century Alexandria, where he figures in cosmological systems as a high, sometimes ambiguous, divine figure. That theoretical backdrop shows up in material culture: engraved gemstones (often called Abraxas stones) bearing the peculiar hybrid figure — rooster’s head, human torso, serpentine legs, whip and shield — and surrounded by names or letters. Those gems weren’t just art; they functioned as amulets people wore or buried to protect the wearer or guide the soul after death. Magic and naming mattered a lot. The name ’Abraxas’ itself was treated numerologically (its letters added up to 365 in Greek numerals), so ancient ritual acts often emphasize cosmic cycles, the solar year, or protection over time. In practice that translated into charms, inscriptions, and short invocation formulas found in magical handbooks and papyri: calling the name, wearing or carrying a carved gem, and sometimes reciting syllables or permutations of the name to invoke power or ward off demons. There’s also evidence that Abraxas imagery and names were placed with the dead to secure a safer afterlife journey, similar to how other pagans used amulets in graves. Beyond the stone amulets and papyrus spells, there are hints of more developed, secretive rites among some Gnostic groups — initiation-like recitations, secret names revealed to the faithful, and symbolic meals — but the documentation is sparse and often polemical (early Christian writers sometimes lump Abraxas worship into “pagan” or “demonic” categories). If you want to see the artifacts yourself, check museum collections that display engraved gems or consult editions of the ’Greek Magical Papyri’; holding pictures of those little stones gives you a real sense of why people treated this image as powerful and personal rather than merely decorative.

Whenever I catch myself digging through vinyl crates on a rainy afternoon, my fingers always stop at Santana's glowing cover art and that single, evocative word: 'Abraxas'. The 1970 album 'Abraxas' is the most famous musical work to wear the name outright — Carlos Santana and his band used the term as an umbrella for the record’s mystical, psychedelic Latin-rock vibe rather than as a literal retelling of Gnostic lore. The cover painting by Mati Klarwein only deepened that vibe for me; it felt like you were pulling a book of magic out of the sleeve every time you put the record on. Beyond Santana, the word ‘Abraxas’ shows up all over music as an emblem of mystery — metal bands, experimental electronic producers, and underground psychedelic acts have used it as a track or album title because it instantly signals something occult or ambivalent about good and evil. If you lean toward classical or ambient music, you’ll also find composers who explore Gnostic themes (unity, duality, transcendence) even if they don’t explicitly name their pieces 'Abraxas'. Personally, I like tracing the idea: put on 'Abraxas' for its warmth and groove, then follow with a dark, ritualistic industrial or neoclassical piece and feel the conversation between light and shadow. It’s a neat way to hear how one mythic word ripples through decades of music, and it always makes my listening sessions feel a little more like a late-night exploration.

I get a little giddy every time I spot an old occult sigil on the spine of a comic and think, “Oh, they’re using Abraxas here.” To me, the appeal is that Abraxas is a deliciously slippery concept: part god, part symbol of contradiction, part ancient logo you can put on a cult robe. Comics love slippery. So creators tend to bend Abraxas into whatever the story needs — a cosmic destructor, a whispered cult deity in back-alley horror, or a philosophical force that forces characters to face duality and meaninglessness. Visually, artists will go wild: serpents, crowns, sun-and-darkness motifs, and layered sigils that read like someone tried to draw Jung’s dream diary on a cocktail napkin. I’ve seen Abraxas used as a literal antagonist in sprawling space-opera arcs, and equally as a metaphor in smaller, moodier books. In the big-budget superhero universes, Abraxas often becomes a plot engine that explains apocalypse-level stakes without bogging the story down in theology: smash the symbol, stop the ritual, defeat the avatar. In indie and occult-leaning titles — think the vibe of 'Promethea' or magical corners of 'Doctor Strange' — the god gets more nuance: a mirror to human fear, a mirror to collective guilt. Writers sprinkle in Gnostic fragments, Jungian phrasing, and a beat of mystic dread so readers who like digging get a payoff. What’s charming to me is how approachable the reinterpretation becomes. A comic can turn a dense, ancient idea into something tactile: a cracked idol, a devoted cultist at a diner, a god who drinks coffee and regrets the heat death of the universe. Those human details are what suck me in — the myth becomes messy and cozy and terrifying all at once, and I end up flipping pages to see which version the writer chooses next.

I get asked about Abraxas a lot when chatting in book groups, because the name sounds epic and occult-y, but the truth is a bit anticlimactic: there aren’t many mainstream novels that put Abraxas squarely in the role of a traditional, central antagonist. Most of the famous literary appearances treat Abraxas as a symbol, an idea, or a mythic reference rather than a moustache-twirling villain you can fight in chapter twelve. Take Hermann Hesse’s 'Demian' — that’s the classic touchstone. Abraxas shows up as a symbol of a unified god who contains both light and dark; it’s philosophical and spiritual, not a conventional antagonist. Thomas Pynchon’s 'Gravity's Rainbow' throws in Abraxas and other Gnostic imagery as part of its dense tapestry; again, it’s more about worldview and chaos than a single antagonistic deity you can point to. If you want fiction where Abraxas feels sinister, look toward occult thrillers, indie horror, and some conspiracy-heavy novels where writers borrow the name to evoke something ancient and dangerous, but often those are by lesser-known or self-published authors rather than canonical literary works. If you’re hunting for a proper novel antagonist named Abraxas, my practical tip is to search niche horror/urban fantasy catalogs, indie e-book stores, and communities on Goodreads or Reddit dedicated to occult fiction. Also scan anthologies and pulp horror from the late 20th century; occultists and genre writers loved plucking names from Gnostic and magical lore. Personally, I find the symbolic uses in 'Demian' and the layered references in 'Gravity's Rainbow' more interesting than turning Abraxas into a one-note bad guy — but if you want full-on demonic-lord novels, there are indie finds out there that play exactly that card.

When I dove headfirst into occult symbols while rewatching late-night cinema, I was surprised by how often 'Abraxas' — that messy, sun-serpent-chimera from Jung and Hesse's pages — pops up more as a vibe than a clear credit. Explicit, name-dropping uses of Abraxas in mainstream film are pretty rare, so what you usually spot are visual echoes: hybrid creatures, sun-worship motifs, or talismans that scream Gnostic ambiguity. Two films that keep getting mentioned in fan threads are 'The Ninth Gate' and 'The Holy Mountain'. In 'The Ninth Gate' the obsession with rare, blasphemous books and hidden engravings invites viewers to read in any ancient or composite god-figure, and some of the engravings feel very much in the Abraxas family — a ruler of opposites more than a tidy deity. 'The Holy Mountain' is practically a collage of alchemical and syncretic gods; Jodorowsky's images are so deliberately occult that it’s natural to map Abraxas-like ideas onto them. Beyond those, I look for films that riff on Jungian or Gnostic themes — 'The Matrix' and 'Fight Club' are two big-name examples where the duality and shadow-work Abraxas represents show up narratively if not in a direct inscription. 'The Last Temptation of Christ' and other Gnostic-leaning works also echo the same theological tension: the divine and demonic braided together rather than cleanly separated. If you want to spot this symbolism yourself, watch for composite iconography (half-animal, half-human figures), inscriptions with mixed alphabets, sun/serpent pairings, or characters who literally embody opposites. If you’re the kind of nerd who loves hunting tiny props, pause on shots of bookshelves, altars, or background statues — filmmakers who flirt with esoterica often tuck the good stuff there. I found my favorite tiny Abraxas-ish moment in a thrifted film still, a half-hidden plaque in a background set that made me go back three times. For deeper context, read 'Demian' and Jung’s essays on the figure; once you have those fields on your mental map, cinema starts to look like a treasure hunt rather than a coincidence.

I once stumbled across Jung's writing on Abraxas in the middle of a sleepless night, thumbing through 'The Red Book' with a mug gone cold beside me. What hooked me immediately was how he refuses to let Abraxas be boxed into 'good' or 'evil'—instead he treats it as a psychic fact, a symbol that embodies the whole messy spectrum of human experience. Jung draws on Gnostic usage where Abraxas is a word-name for a deity that transcends conventional gods and demons; for him, that figure becomes a way to talk about the psyche's capacity to hold opposites without denying either side. In psychological practice and theory Jung uses Abraxas to illustrate individuation—the process by which a person integrates fragmented parts of the self. Rather than a moralizing deity, Abraxas represents numinosity and ambivalence: creative and destructive forces together, a single image that forces us to reckon with our shadow as well as our light. Jung was fascinated by how such symbols appear in dreams, visions, and active imagination; he thought engaging with them could catalyze inner transformation. Reading his notes, I felt like he was nudging us to stop pretending moral binaries explain everything and to instead learn the language of images that reveal a deeper psychic reality.

I've spent a lot of time chasing the threads where ancient Gnostic imagery meets modern tarot, and Abraxas is one of my favorite crossroads. Historically, Abraxas shows up on Gnostic gems and amulets: a being with mixed animal-human features (often a rooster head, a human torso, and serpentine legs) and sometimes inscribed with the number 365. That number and the composite form were read as a symbol for totality — the whole cosmic cycle, the zodiac, the blending of opposites. Those are the same themes tarot leans on when it explores synthesis, fate, and integration. In practice, tarot traditions borrow Abraxas more as an archetypal motif than as a literal deity. Esoteric readers and deck-makers will reference Abraxas when they're trying to embody the union of light and shadow — cards like The World, The Devil, Death, or even The Magician get layered over that symbolism. 20th-century figures who revived interest in syncretic mystical imagery (and Jung explicitly in 'Seven Sermons to the Dead') helped popularize the idea that a single image can hold both creative and destructive forces; tarot artists absorbed that. Some indie decks actually include an Abraxas-inspired trump or an unnumbered card to represent the union of contradictions. When I read with decks that wear that influence, I often treat an Abraxas card as a node for shadow integration: place it at the center of a spread to indicate a theme of reconciliation or cosmic ambivalence. Others use Abraxas sigils as talismans alongside a tarot spread to lean into transformation. If you like the visual lineage, hunt down decks that openly acknowledge Gnostic gems and Jungian motifs — they make for readings that feel mythic and a little dangerous, in the best way.