Rivers as flow symbols in artistic symbolism

A river in symbolism. I try not to feel frustrated when people say "It's just a river", or it's "the sacred river" of a certain country". I remember clearly being in that stage of thinking. Spoiler: It's a flow symbol. Something is flowing.

My first exposure was a tarot card class, where a certain card had a river, and the teacher gave a cockamamie explanation. I had no better knowledge back then, but at least I left the class and started collecting rivers on pInterest. https://ca.pinterest.com/stevenbhalls/river/

I couldn't decode this until years later, after realizing that although a torus has an upward vertical flow in the center from South to North, there is also a downward etheric flow at the top-center.

Image H has a bird showing an upward flow direction, image L has a downward bird flow direction. Confusing to figure out, but both make sense in symbolism. The rest of this post has symbolic flow, and it's still very hard to guess the flow direction.

Water is a symbol, and it can refer to energy of any density, ours, or heavens, or even from source/God.

I once encountered a symbologist on facebook who is stuck in literal thinking. He puts literal river names onto symbolic wavy lines and has an appreciative audience giving likes. I made this post to show that a lot of artists, not just me, are aware that the river is a flow symbol.