01
Define the kind of peace
Inner calm, ceasefire, justice, reconciliation, and social harmony are not interchangeable goals.
Peace Symbols
25 symbols to explore
Meaning & historical contextBrowse peace symbols
25 symbols, with primary meanings first.
About peace symbols
Peace symbols can represent the end of conflict, reconciliation, spiritual calm, lawful order, or harmonious relationship. A symbol associated with one peace movement, treaty, religion, or political moment should not automatically be treated as timeless or neutral.
Historical context
Peace has been visualised through personifications, branches, clasped hands, broken weapons, balanced groups, calm landscapes, sacred figures, and inscriptions. Some signs celebrate victory or imposed order rather than mutual reconciliation, so the surrounding history matters.
Modern peace emblems have their own designers, campaigns, and political lives. The Vault separates those documented modern histories from older religious and allegorical imagery.
A note on interpretation
Symbolic meanings are not universal definitions. They change with period, place, material, belief, and use. Sanctum Hex separates documented historical context from later convention and modern personal interpretation.
Explore the Journal →Choose with context
How to choose a symbol for peace.
Start with the exact idea, then narrow it through history, tradition, and intended use.
02
Read the political history
Modern campaign symbols and national emblems may carry positions beyond a general wish for peace.
03
Look for relationship
Joined, balanced, exchanged, or restored forms can express peace as an active process between people.
Follow the context
Explore the worlds around peace.
These routes are generated from the structured metadata shared by the matching symbols.
Traditions
Eras
Objects
Uses
Styles
Emotions
Related meanings
Curated sets
Collections with related symbols.
Collection overlap is shown against the symbols on this meaning page.
7 matching symbols
Elemental Symbols Collection
Elemental Symbols gathers 25 symbols shaped around fire, water, air, earth, combined elemental glyphs, and simple elemental sigil forms, with each mark chosen for clarity, historical resonance, and a strong editorial silhouette.
4 matching symbols
Medieval Pilgrim Protective Symbols (1100-1600) Collection
Medieval Pilgrim Protective Symbols (1100-1600) gathers 25 symbols shaped around pilgrim badges, journey signs, devotional monograms, protective emblems, shrine souvenirs, manuscript motifs, and symbols of faith, endurance, healing, identity, and safe return, with each mark chosen for clarity, historical resonance, and a strong editorial silhouette.
4 matching symbols
Sanctum Hex Style Sacred Geometry Collection
Sanctum Hex Style Sacred Geometry gathers 25 symbols shaped around hex-based geometry, interlocking forms, measured circles, sigil-like grids, and clean sacred-geometry constructions, with each mark chosen for clarity, historical resonance, and a strong editorial silhouette.
3 matching symbols
Witchcraft Collection
Witchcraft gathers 25 symbols shaped around folk magic, lunar ritual, protective signwork, and the symbolic language of domestic and ceremonial witchcraft, with each mark chosen for clarity, historical resonance, and a strong editorial silhouette.
2 matching symbols
Norse Symbols & Runes
A researched set spanning early Germanic Elder Futhark runes, Viking-age Norse motifs, medieval mythology, and later Icelandic magical staves. Each symbol distinguishes documented historical evidence from modern meanings such as guidance, protection, strength, memory, resilience, and renewal.
2 matching symbols
Pictish Symbol Stones Documented Marks Of Early Medieval Scotland C 300–900 Collection
Pictish Symbol Stones Documented Marks Of Early Medieval Scotland C 300–900 gathers 25 symbols shaped around documented Pictish composite signs, geometric marks, object motifs, and animal forms tied to named early medieval carved stones in Scotland, with each mark chosen for clarity, historical resonance, and a strong editorial silhouette.
1 matching symbol
Alchemical Symbols Collection
Alchemical Symbols gathers 25 symbols shaped around alchemy, transmutation, planetary correspondences, and the symbolic language of matter, with each mark chosen for clarity, historical resonance, and a strong editorial silhouette.
1 matching symbol
Botanical Silhouettes — Flowers, Leaves & Plants in Simplified Nineteenth-Century Style
Botanical Silhouettes brings together 25 flowers, leaves and plants rendered as bold, simplified botanical emblems. Inspired by nineteenth-century botanical illustration and decorative arts, the collection focuses on recognisable plant forms translated into clean silhouettes suitable for engraving, cutting and print. Many of these plants also appear in historical traditions of botanical symbolism. Where a historical symbolic association is documented, individual entries should distinguish period evidence from later or modern interpretations.
1 matching symbol
Memento Mori Mortality Symbols Collection
Memento Mori Mortality Symbols gathers 25 symbols shaped around hourglasses, candles, skull-adjacent marks, decay and renewal motifs, time symbols, and mortality emblems, with each mark chosen for clarity, historical resonance, and a strong editorial silhouette.
Research trail
Sources behind the matching entries.
These references support the individual symbol histories on this page. They are not presented as evidence for one universal meaning.
Hunter’s Hill, Thornton Standing Stone
Hunter’s Hill, Thornton Standing Stone
Historic Environment Scotland / Trove
Early Medieval Sculpture in its International Context: The Pictish Symbol Tradition of Early Medieval Scotland
Gordon Noble and Martin Goldberg, “Early Medieval Sculpture in its International Context: The Pictish Symbol Tradition of Early Medieval Scotland,” in Early Medieval Sculpture in Stone, ed. Sarah Semple and Jane Hawkes (Boydell & Brewer, 2025), 51–62.
University of Aberdeen Research Portal / Boydell & Brewer
The Rune Poem
The Rune Poem. Old English Poetry Project.
Rutgers University–Camden
Runes – write as a Viking
Runes – write as a Viking. Viking Ship Museum, Roskilde.
Viking Ship Museum, Roskilde
Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book 1
Aristotle. Metaphysics, Book 1, 984a. Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University.
Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University
Low level clouds
Low level clouds. Met Office.
Met Office
What Are Witches' Marks?
What Are Witches' Marks? Historic England.
Historic England
A spiritual revolution? Wicca and religious change in the 1960s
A spiritual revolution? Wicca and religious change in the 1960s. Open University, 22 October 2020.
The Open University
Euclid's Elements, Book IV
Euclid's Elements, Book IV, edited by David E. Joyce. Clark University.
Clark University
Islamic Art and Geometric Design
Islamic Art and Geometric Design, Activities for Learning. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Owen Jones and the Grammar of Ornament
Owen Jones and the Grammar of Ornament. Victoria and Albert Museum.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Raasay House, Raasay
Raasay House, Raasay
Historic Environment Scotland / Trove