Outflow Surrounded by a Circle Marks Flow to the Interior

Dr. Steven B Halls | December 2025

This material was originally posted to Facebook on 2025-12-09 - view original post.

Outflow surrounded by a circle could mean flow to the interior. This might help with decoding a 2D matrix of symbols like image B. On image B, the leaf seems like a valid outflow upward symbol, but the duck head going upward (after exiting the horizontal part of the body) is also an outflow symbol. This was baffling. On image C there are palmettes, but the middle one has no covering by a line. What is the different meaning of those palmettes? Image D has those spade shaped pearls as outflow symbols on the outer edge, and some directed inward and surrounded by a line. Image E also has outflows of two kinds, the palmette kind is covered by a circular line.

An outflow symbol surrounded by a circle may mean the flow goes to the interior. A leaf and an upward duck head are both outflows, palmettes without a covering line differ from those with one, and spade shaped pearls appear as outflows on the outer edge or directed inward surrounded by a line. Khmer flux tubes colorized in green show flows entering the lumen, so a covered flow symbol may mark flow inward to the interior of a torus or tube barrier membrane.

Image A of khmer flux tubes was a great hint. Green marks flows going into the interior of the lumen of those tubes. So for now, I'm using the hints provided by A and D, and proposing that when a flow symbol is covered by a line, it marks the flow as going inward, to the interior of a torus or tube's barrier membrane. That's just a proposal I'm working with for now, and if some of my audience is getting curious to look at other 2D matrices of symbols, this might help. Several recent posts showed examples and some URLS of collections. Before now, I had a previous theory, I never posted it, I never liked it, and now I've abandoned it. I wonder how long this new one will last.

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