quincunx

The crossed bones reference the four directions of the Aztec calendar meeting together at the heart of the world, called the quincunx; that’s the knob.

“The Quincunx of Heaven runs low, and ’tis time to close the five ports of knowledge,” he writes in his conclusion to “The Garden of Cyrus,” his essay on the geometric patterns of plantations in the ancient and modern world.

Also, my Mars is “quincunx to natal Sun,” so I should “excavate and examine the person you really are” and also “take a break from social media if you can.”

As an amateur scientist and product of the early Enlightenment, Browne kept a menagerie of exotic animals in his home, and he traced the ubiquity of the geometric pattern known as the quincunx through plants, insects and crystals.

An engraving of the quincunx, or piece of five unciæ, is given, bearing on one side a cross, a V, and five pellets; and on the other a cross only.