These questions are often heard from buyers, and some of them quite categorically assert that “the correct cross is only with the Crucifixion”, or, on the contrary, that “in no case can you depict the Crucifixion on the cross,” etc.
In fact, for more than two thousand years of history, the Orthodox Church knew a variety of crosses. And with the Crucifixion, and without it, and in general without any image. Also, by the way, can be said about the form. The crosses were both four-pointed, and equilateral, and eight, and seven, and six-pointed, in the form of a quatrefoil, a quadrifolia, a circle, a swastika, a trident, anchors, monograms of Christ, etc.
For Orthodoxy, form is only a visible expression of content. And the symbolic content of the pectoral cross is a four-part world, all ends of the earth and sky, united in God. The image of God is most often represented by Christ Himself, it does not matter – Crucifixion, or an icon, the main thing – not dead, but alive (see. The difference between the Orthodox cross from the Catholic). But it can also be through a symbol: a cross, a circle, a trefoil, the Tree of Life, letters.
