"The deepest core of life is poetry and symbol." - Dane Rudhyar
Like Symbol Reader on Facebook
-
-
Recent Posts
Categories
Archives
Meta
Author Archives: Symbol Reader
Symbolism of the Door
“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” V. Woolf, A Room of One’s Own My favourite master of symbolism, J.E. Cirlot … Continue reading
Posted in The Door, Uncategorized
Tagged ancient Egypt, archetypes, Bachelard, door, doors, doorway, false door, Poetics of Space, religion, safety, security, shelter, symbolism, symbols, the new, threshold, torii
7 Comments
Egyptian Pyramids as a Symbol of Rebirth
“Ancient Egypt was an agrarian society, and the Egyptians’ view of the world was determined in part by agricultural life along the Nile. Each year, spring rains in the Ethiopian highlands fed the source of the Nile and eventually raised … Continue reading
Posted in Osiris, Quotations, Uncategorized
Tagged ancient Egypt, benben, death, Duat, Egyptian mythology, Nefertum, Nut, Osiris, pyramids, rebirth, seed, the Nile, the sun
7 Comments
Reading The Red Book (18)
“The stars whisper your deepest mysteries to you, and the soft valleys of the earth rescue you in a motherly womb.” C. G. Jung, Liber Novus We have reached chapter V of Liber Secundus, which is the second part of … Continue reading
Posted in The Red Book by C.G. Jung, Uncategorized
Tagged alchemy, ancient Egypt, anima mundi, archetypes, C.G. Jung, Christianity, darkness, depth psychology, Egyptian mythology, Helios, khepri, Liber Novus, light, paganism, Philosophical Tree, scarab, shadow, sun, symbolism, symbols, The Red Book, tree, world soul
5 Comments
Jung on the Light of the Darkness
The following passage from Jung’s Alchemical Studies (volume 13 of CW, par. 197) struck me today: “They [alchemists, seekers after truth] discover that in the very darkness of nature a light is hidden, a little spark without which the … Continue reading
Posted in Quotations, Uncategorized
Tagged alchemy, archetypes, C.G. Jung, Democritus, depth psychology, disease, healing, light of nature, lumen naturae, nature, paganism, Paracelsus, symbols, transformation
8 Comments
The Danaids, the Lernaean Hydra and Heracles
According to the Greek myth, the Danaids, fifty daughters of Danaus, were forced to marry fifty sons of Aegyptus, a ruler of Egypt. Forty-nine of them killed their husbands on the wedding night. The forty-nine heads of the men were … Continue reading
Posted in The Danaids and Hydra, Uncategorized
Tagged archetype, archetypes, arrow, Bachofen, Chiron, Danaides, Danaids, Greek mythology, Hercules, Hydra, Lernean Hydra, magic, matriarchy, patriarchy, priestess, Robert Graves, symbolism, symbols, twelve labours, wounded healer
6 Comments
The Feminine and the Masculine Revisited
I have always believed that the concepts of anima and animus need to be updated for our times. According to Jung, the anima is the image of the woman in a man’s psyche, while the animus is the image of … Continue reading
Posted in Male and Female, Uncategorized
Tagged analytical psychology, anima, animus, archetypes, C.G. Jung, depth psychology, female, feminine, initiation, male, masculine, opposites, psyche, symbols, the Self
21 Comments
Ancient Roots of the Symbol
The book Birth of the Symbol: Ancient Readers at the Limits of Their Texts by Peter T. Struck, published in 2004 by Princeton University Press, traces the ancient origins of the concept of a symbol. The author has this to … Continue reading
Posted in The Symbol, Uncategorized
Tagged Ancient Greece, archetypes, C.G. Jung, Chaldean Oracles, Divine, enigma, gods, Iamblichus, interpretation, meaning, Nous, Peter Struck, Plato, Porphyry, Proclus, Pythagoras, sunthemata, symbol, symbolism, symbolon, synchronicity, theurgy
2 Comments
Reading The Red Book (17)
Chapter IV of Liber Secundus is called “The Anchorite. Dies 1” and relates the first day of Jung’s encounter with a hermit monk, who lives in the Libyan desert. While reading The Red Book I was particularly struck by all … Continue reading
Posted in The Red Book by C.G. Jung, Uncategorized
Tagged Alexandria, analytical psychology, anchorite, archetypes, C.G. Jung, darkness, depth psychology, Heraclitus, hermit, Jesus, Jung, Liber Novus, logos, night, Philo of Alexandria, silence, symbols, The Red Book, words
9 Comments
Hermes in the Forest of Symbols
I. “…Hermesian reading is an open, in-depth reading, one that lays bare the metalanguages for us, that is to say, the structures of signs and correspondences that only symbolism and myth make it possible to conserve and transmit. To read, … Continue reading
Posted in Hermes, Uncategorized
Tagged Adocentyn, alchemy, archetypes, Argus, Botticelli, C.G. Jung, caduceus, Carl Jung, Corpus Hermeticum, crossroads, dead, esotericism, Faivre, God, Greek myth, Greek mythology, guide, herma, hermaion, Hermes, Hermes Trismegistus, Hermetica, hermeticism, Hermopolis, magic, Marcilio Ficino, Mercury, messenger, myth, mythology, peacock, Picatrix, Primavera, psychopompos, Soul, symbolism, symbols, Thoth, Zeus
6 Comments
Little Women 2019: A Short Review
Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, experienced both enchantment and wretched poverty in her early years. Her father was an intellectual and member of the Transcendentalist movement, which meant that little Louisa met Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo … Continue reading
symbolreader 