Queen Elizabeth II 25th Anniversary Coronation First Day Cover, Bahamas postmarked on June 27, 1978.
Bahamas
The Bahamas consist of some 700 islands and 2000 cays spread over 760 miles of ocean southeast from Florida. The original Arawaks were wiped out by the Spanish, but settlement did not follow for another century, by Puritan adventurers and pirates. Reinforced by 3000 loyalists and their slaves during the American War of Independence, the economy expanded, reliant on cotton, pineapple and sisal crops; on supporting the South during the Civil War; and on supplying liquor during Prohibition. It now relies mainly on tourism.
16c β Royal Sceptre, Orb and St. Edward's Crown. This stamp features three central items of regalia (descriptions to be found on other pages), and draws attention to the cross-surmounted globe, a symbol common to all three. Cross and globe are universal symbols of great antiquity denoting male and female fertility.
The word 'cross' derives from 'aceros', meaning 'great Eros', and was associated with rain, the spirit and fertility. It is seen in mandalas (Tantric Hindu and Buddhist designs for meditating on one's relation to the universe and the cycle of life); as the positive + sign, and elsewhere symbolising the tree on which the fertility God was immolated before rebirth. This latter fertility connotation of the cross became inverted in the authoritarian Roman mind into the symbol of destruction by crucifixion, and hence became the emblem of spiritual rebirth of Christianity.
Authoritarian thought was later reflected in the increased verticality and the upward displacement of the cross stroke of the Latin Cross, representing the domination of the body by the spirit, rather than as of old where body and spirit were partners. Thus in the days of Gothic Perpendicularity, the orb of Richard II incorporated an elongated cross surmounting a long shaft, but the cross on the present orb, made for Charles II in the more worldly days of the Renaissance, has horizontal and vertical balance.
$1 - H.M. The Queen with Regalia. This well-known portrait of the Queen shows her with orb, sceptre, armills and coronation robes. She is wearing not St. Edward's Crown but the lighter Imperial State Crown.