Category Archives: Uncategorized

Reading The Red Book (18)

Posted on March 22, 2020 by Symbol Reader

“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

Posted on March 20, 2020 by Symbol Reader

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

Posted on March 15, 2020 by Symbol Reader

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

Posted on March 9, 2020 by Symbol Reader

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

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Symbol Reader

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)

Posted on February 28, 2020 by Symbol Reader

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

Posted on February 9, 2020 by Symbol Reader

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

Posted on February 6, 2020 by Symbol Reader

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 →

Posted in The Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, Uncategorized | Tagged cinema, classicism, feminism, film, Greta Gerwig, literature, Little Women, Louisa May Alcott, movie, narrative, narrator, patriarchy, postmodernism, review, storytelling, suffrage | 8 Comments

The Underworld in Finnish and Greek Myth

Posted on January 25, 2020 by Symbol Reader

I have been reading The Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert MacFarlane, which is a dazzling exploration of the author’s daring travels into the bowels of the earth. He devotes space to mining, caving, cave painting, Parisian catacombs, glaciers … Continue reading →

Posted in "The Underland" by Robert MacFarlane, Uncategorized | Tagged "The Dead", Acheron, Ancient Greece, archetypes, Cocytus, descent, five rivers of Hell, Greek myth, Greek mythology, Hades, Kalevala, katabasis, Lethe, myth, mythology, Phlegethon, Robert MacFarlane, Styx, symbolism, symbols, The Underland, the underworld, Tuonela | 8 Comments

Reading The Red Book (16)

Posted on January 19, 2020 by Symbol Reader

“In Paris, on a day that stayed morning until dusk, in a Paris like – in a Paris which – (save me, sacred folly of description!) in a garden by a stone cathedral (not built, no, rather played upon a … Continue reading →