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Eros and Psyche (1)

Posted on November 5, 2013 by Symbol Reader

Eros and Psyche by blackeri

Plato perceived love as the desire and pursuit of the whole, as he wrote in Symposium. The tale of Eros and Psyche is a story of the soul’s desire for wholeness. It has been haunting me for years both in my conscious and unconscious (dream) life. Nothing can spoil the tale for me; its beauty is eternal, its mystery unfathomable. I would like to devote some place to that story on my blog, and I know one post will do it little justice, as it is so complex and carries so much symbolic weight.

The first thing that needs to be said is that the story of Eros and Psyche cannot be found in any Greek mythology if you decided to look it up. It is actually a part of a Latin novel The Golden Ass written by Apuleius in 2^nd century AD. Apuleius recounts a story that is much, much older, dating back to at least 4 century BC and which was very important to ancient Greeks, especially those involved in sacred mysteries.

The names of the main protagonists surely stir imagination: Eros (love, desire, sexual passion) and Psyche (soul, life, breath of life, also – a butterfly). Let us look at the origins of the main hero and heroine. Eros plays a decisive role in the Orphic myth of creation, as described by Robert Graves in Greek Myths:

“Some say that all gods and all living creatures originated in the stream of Oceanus which girdles the world, and that Tethys was the mother of all his children.

But the Orphics say that black-winged Night, a goddess of whom even Zeus stands in awe, was courted by the Wind and laid a silver egg in the womb of Darkness; and that Eros … was hatched from this egg and set the Universe in motion. Eros was double-sexed and golden-winged and, having four heads, sometimes roared like a bull or a lion, sometimes hissed like a serpent or bleated like a ram. Night … lived in a cave with him, displaying herself in triad: Night, Order and Justice. Before this cave sat inescapable mother Rhea, playing on a brazen drum, and compelling man’s attention to the oracles of the goddess. (Eros) created earth, sky, sun, and moon, but the triple-goddess ruled the universe, until her sceptre passed to Uranus.”

The Primordial Eros, surrounded by the circle of Zodiac

The Orphics were a religious group in ancient Greece, revering the mythical poet Orpheus, who was said to have invented the Mysteries of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and ecstasy. The Mysteries were very much connected to the Underworld with an enormous reverence that the Orphics dedicated to the goddess Persephone, consort of Hades.

In his story of Eros and Psyche, Apuleius follows the mainstream myth and presents Eros as the son of Aphrodite. At the beginning Eros is nothing like the powerful Orphic deity. Rather, he is enmeshed with his mother and meekly fulfills all her orders. In the course of the story, both Eros and Psyche wake to their inner power and both get in touch with their inner, essential divinity. In the end Eros, the winged god, marries Psyche (butterfly), who has transformed and got her own wings as a result of her long, arduous and trying process of individuation. Two books have shaped my understanding of the myth: Amor and Psyche by Erich Neumann and Elisabeth Eowyn Nelson’s Psyche’s Knife: Archetypal Explorations of Love and Power. Neumann asserts that the myth portrays the psychic development of the feminine, while Nelson is chiefly preoccupied with the rich symbolism of the knife that appears very early in the story.

It is worth starting our exploration of the myth with Psyche’s early life. I think Nelson tells the story beautifully, so I am going to use her wording:

“In western Greece there once lived a king and queen who had three daughters. The eldest two were beautiful but the youngest, Psyche, was so incomparably lovely that no words could describe her. … the people… began to view her as a fresh incarnation of the goddess of love herself, Aphrodite … As word of her loveliness spread far and wide, travelers flocked to the kingdom to worship Psyche as the new goddess. In their eagerness, the people neglected the altars of Aphrodite.

When the true Aphrodite realized that the honors due to her were being granted to a mortal, she was outraged and vowed revenge. … Aphrodite begged Eros to fly one of his arrows and make Psyche fall in love with a vile and disgusting creature. …

Time passed, and Psyche’s older sisters eventually married noble husbands. But though Psyche grew more beautiful with each succeeding year, no man dared approach her. She was worshipped by all – and she remained untouched and alone. The king her father … consulted the oracle. To his horror he was told to dress Psyche in funeral robes to meet her spouse, for she was fated to marry a monstrous, terrifying bridegroom. On the designated day, the king and queen and all the people mournfully conducted Psyche to a high cliff, chained her to the rocks, and left the young woman to face her destiny.

Pierre-Paul Prud’hon: Psyche Abducted by the Zephyrs

Psyche waited and trembled, then felt the gentle breath of the West Wind. It … lifted her up and carried her down to a lush, green valley. When she awoke, she saw a forest with a fountain in the center and a magnificent palace… Psyche timidly walked inside and found that the rooms were filled with radiant, golden light. Then a voice welcomed her, saying, “All that you see here about you is yours. We shall attend to your every need.” Psyche looked for the speaker but saw no one. Then a different voice offered Psyche a refreshing bath, while still another invited the young woman to a banquet fit for a queen.”

At night, under cover of darkness, a stranger appeared in her bedroom and made love to her, and so it continued until Psyche’s sisters came to visit and planted a grain of doubt in Psyche’s heart. Perhaps she indeed married a monster? The truth was that the god Eros had disobeyed his mother, and having pricked himself with his own arrow, fell in love with Psyche, and wanted her for himself. He was not ready yet to disobey his mother openly.

What strikes me about the beginning of the story is Psyche’s loneliness and isolation: both as her parents’ daughter and then as the “wife.” She is a soul on the verge of her destiny: wrapped in the safe cocoon of the collective unconscious. She has not been born yet: she has not left the safe womb of the goddess. She is not in love with a person, but more with the archetype or the idea of love. She rests in the state of sweet inertia. She is not an agent, rather a passive participant in her own life. She appears to be gentle, loving, and of a very pure heart and intentions. She is all about Love, but without Judgement. According to Neumann, she is indeed imprisoned by the monster: the maternal uoroboros and the undifferentiated, unconscious state connected with it. She loves a man, but he has no face.

The story starts with the paradise-like unity, harmony and a seeming completion, but soon doubt and conflict sneak in, for such is a way of the development of consciousness. Psyche must embark on her own journey, she must extricate herself from the suffocating bond she has found herself in.

Eros and Psyche: Part 2

Eros and Psyche: Part 3

Posted in Eros and Psyche | Tagged Amor, Aphrodite, Apuleius, Erich Neumann, Eros, Greek myth, Greek mythology, Jungian psychology, psyche, Psyche’s Knife, The Golden Ass | 36 Comments

Where All Saints and Sinners Rest

Posted on November 1, 2013 by Symbol Reader

“The snow rounded over and built up each smooth and even elevation, with its cross of stone or metal, its small monument adorned with medallions and inscriptions. No soul was to be seen or heard, the quiet remoteness and peace of the spot seemed deep and unbroken in more than one sense. A little stone angel or cupid, finger on lip, a cap of snow askew on its head, stood among the bushes, and might have passed for the genius of the place — the genius of a silence so definite that it was less a negation than a refutation of speech.”

Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain (Hans Castorp visits the Davos cemetery)

I have always loved cemeteries. The atmosphere of graveyards really suits me, soothes me, calms me and elevates my soul. Walking through a cemetery feels like touching the veil between Here and There. Funerary art captured my imagination already when I was very little and when I visited the graves of our dead loved ones on 1 November in Poland. And when I was a teenager trying to educate myself about the history of art, the first sculpture that left me breathless was “The Night” by Michaelangelo, which adorns the sarcophagus of Giuliano de Lorenzo de’Medici in Florence.

Michaelangelo, Night

We are not attuned to mortality as we used to be in the old times. It is not customary to decorate our graves and tombstones with skeletons, skulls, hourglasses, scythes or other memento mori signs any more. We do not wish to be reminded of the inevitable end. Not so long ago death was an inextricable part of life with short life expectancy and high infant mortality rate. Nowadays public displaying of corpses is a less and less common practice. The ashes are euphemistically referred to as “cremated remains.”

I adore the subtle imagery that can be encountered at cemeteries: the weeping willows, cypress trees, clasped hands, draped urns, angels, gates, open or closed books, broken columns, broken flower stems, not to mention all kinds of pagan symbols that very much appeal to me. I do not draw a distinction, though, between pagan and Christian, for the simple reason that to me they form a continuum, having sprung from the same archetypal source. I have recently purchased a book that has whetted my appetite for funerary imagery but sadly has not satisfied it fully. Here it is:

It focuses predominantly on the Christian imagery, and works well as a lexicon, having one decisive flaw of lexicons, though: it does not delve deep into the subject matter and does not show any connections between the subsequent entries. Having said that, I did enjoy the book, especially the beautiful images and photographs that were all taken by the author himself. I also appreciated his irony and sense of humour, as is evident in the following three passages:

“It appears as if the designer of the uniquely funerary Pizzati mausoleum ordered one of everything from a mausoleum supply catalog: blind windows, an angel, a draped urn, an alpha/omega emblem, medieval turrets, garlands, stars, and a cross. All envelop the remains of Salvatore Pizzati, who is spending eternity inside his mausoleum with his favorite rocking chair.”

“The range of modern architecture extends from tilt-up concrete buildings, to massive glass, steel, and stone structures that look like they belong on a Star Wars set. In the cemetery some of these structures are very utilitarian looking while others seem to be ready to blast off from Earth.”

“John Matthews (1808-1870) was known as the “soda fountain king” for his popularization of the soda fountain. … On his catafalque are the faces of his daughters… and his wife… Prostrate and almost melting into his sarcophagus, Matthews looks up at reliefs carved into the column capitals that depict events in his life – leaving England for America, pondering the idea of soda water, and finally being crowned for his achievements.”

The title of the book is quite brilliant as well: nowhere else as in the cemetery do we think so much and try to guess who the people were whose graves we see; what were their life stories? The story behind the famous Merello Volta monument at Greenwood-Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York, showing a woman in her wedding dress dying on the steps has remained largely unexplained although there has been some evidence uncovered that she was a rich girl murdered by one of her family’s servants.

Cemeteries can not only be likened to books of symbols but also to encyclopedias of architectural styles. Obviously, the style that is most closely associated with cemeteries is the Gothic one. The following quote got me thinking:

The cracks, joints, and attachments are a magnet for ivy, nesting animals, and moisture. It is rare indeed to see a Gothic structure more than a few decades old that doesn’t have some sort of ongoing structural maintenance problems.

The Gothic Revival Dexter Memorial at Spring Grove Cemetery (via Wikipedia)

Perhaps Gothic tombs are living emblems of the transience of time, of the inevitable crumbling of all structures that we falsely hope to have erected for eternity. Overpopulation should make us ponder whether the days of the triumph of form over function in the funerary art are not inevitably over. Enter the age of cyber cemeteries. But will they inspire the same reverence as the “real” ones?

Grave of James Joyce, Zurich, Switzerland

William Holland’s tomb at Kensal Green Cemetery, in London, England: the sarcophagus is supported by eight griffins and richly decorated with flora and fauna, torches and other decorations

John Ruskin’s grave, chiseled into the cross is the story of his life in a series of images

Posted in Cemeteries | Tagged All Saints Day, Cemeteries, cemetery, Douglas Keister, funerary art, graveyards, Stories in Stone, symbolism, symbols | 21 Comments

Distant Music

Posted on October 31, 2013 by Symbol Reader

“He asked himself what is a woman standing on the stairs in the shadow, listening to distant music, a symbol of. If he were a painter he would paint her in that attitude. Her blue felt hat would show off the bronze of her hair against the darkness and the dark panels of her skirt would show off the light ones. Distant Music he would call the picture if he were a painter.”

James Joyce, “The Dead”

Posted in Quotations | Tagged "The Dead", anima, James Joyce | 6 Comments

Hekate: the Goddess of the Crossroads

Posted on October 27, 2013 by Symbol Reader

1. “Saffron-cloaked goddess of the Heavens,

The Underworld and the Sea

Unconquerable Queen, Beast-roarer,

Dishevelled one of compelling countenance

Keyholding Mistress of the Whole World”

Orphic Hymn to Hekate

2. “Hail, many-named Mother of the Gods,

Whose children are fair

Hail, mighty Hekate of the Threshold”

“Hekate goddess of midnight,

Discoverer of the future which yet sleeps in the bosom of chaos,

Mysterious Hekate! Appear. “

Immortalita, Gunderode

3. “I come, a virgin of varied forms, wandering through the heavens, bull-faced, three-headed, ruthless, with golden arrows; chaste Phoebe bringing light to mortals, Eileithyia; bearing the three synthemata (sacred signs) of a triple nature. In the Aether I appear in fiery forms and in the air I sit in a silver chariot.”

Chaldean Oracles

If I were ever to start a cult of a goddess I would choose Hekate as an object of worship. She is, next to Artemis, the one I am most drawn to in the entire Greek pantheon. Let me point out that she is in fact much older than all the gods of the Greek pantheon. Her origins are lost in the dark recesses of time. She may be as old and primordial as the time and the earth.

She may be the goddess most recognizable by those uninterested in Greek myth. In the mainstream culture she has been the recipient of many anti-feminine projections: she is the evil witch brewing her concoctions in the dark, a hag accompanied by whining and howling dogs, frequenting cemeteries and consorting with the dead. Even Alister Crowley had no love for her: “Hecate, a thing altogether of hell, barren, hideous and malicious, the queen of death and evil witchcraft.” Well, he was wrong or overly fixated on the dark aspect of the goddess.

But once we go beyond the popular representations, Hekate will emerge as a much more complex deity, and her three faces will show her multi-faceted nature. Let’s consider her possible origins and her parental lineage. She goes as far back as the ancient Neolithic Mother Goddess. She was conflated with the Anatolian mother goddess Kybele, with whom she shares a repertoire of attributes, namely dogs, keys (symbolic of her being the guardian of deep mysteries and a goddess standing at the gates of transition), lions, serpents, torches and caves. With time her power lessened and she was relegated to the fringes of the mainstream patriarchal culture. But in the pre-Hellenic Greece she might have been the most prominent and all-powerful goddess.

Her parents were Perses, the Titan God of Destruction and Asteria, Titan goddess of astrology and prophetic dreams. Asteria’s sister was Leto, mother of Apollo and Artemis, which makes them cousins of Hekate. Her lineage is very interesting because it explains why she was simultaneously revered as a goddess representing the cosmic order and a goddess of death and destruction of all outdated forms.

Image via http://hrefngast.deviantart.com/art/Hecate-209240765

As a triple goddess she ruled the three phases of the moon (subsequently just the dark moon phase), she saw the past, the present and the future and presided over the sea, the earth (also the underworld) and the sky. An ancient ritual involved leaving food for her at the crossroads where three paths met. Why three? The Greek word for crossroads meant “the intersection of three roads,” while three roads denoted “leading everywhere, in all possible directions.” The ritual was performed when someone needed to take an important decision or before a trip: Hecate was helpful at this juncture as goddess of prophecy and vision. Her association with travel shows her deep connection with Hermes. They were frequently paired: their statues were often placed together at the gates of Greek cities. Hekate was regarded as a gate-warder in ancient Greece: her statues stood before palaces, temple and private homes. She was a guardian of the threshold much like the three-headed Cerberus, often associated with her, was a guardian of Hades. The three-way crossroads were also liminal. Yakov Rabinovich (see sources below) makes an interesting point reminding us that the Egyptian glyph for “city” shows a crossroads. He continues: “This may help explain the weird feeling associated with a desolate crossroads far from any town — it’s like a city center without a city, roads converging on nowhere, or perhaps on the invisible?”

Image via http://www.hecate.awebspider.com/history.htm

Hekate was further connected with Hermes through her role in the Eleusinian Mysteries. It is said that the mysteries most probably helped the initiates to improve their chances of having a good afterlife. During the mysteries the abduction of Persephone by Hades was reenacted. In the myth, Hekate saw the abduction from her cave and offered comfort and guidance to grieving Demeter. In the mysteries, she acted as a guide to Persephone in both her ascent and descent to and from the underworld. Hekate lit Persephone’s way with two torches while Hermes acted as psychopompos – guide of the souls.

Hekate, Hermes and Persephone

Like Hermes, Hekate was a mediator: between the Titans (and chthonic deities) and the Olympians, between the upper- and underworld. She was a patroness of transition offering quick understanding that can literally open new doors for us. One of her attributes was a dagger that cuts through illusion and dispels darkness. Her torches are connected with one of her epithets – Phosphoros (bringing light).

The dark face of Hekate should not obscure her light and benevolent aspect. Two prominent ancient sources portray Hecate as the goddess of light: Hesiod’s Theogony and The Chaldean Oracles.

Hesiod wrote this of Hekate in Theogony: “And she conceived and bare Hekate whom Zeus the son of Kronos honoured above all. He gave her splendid gifts, to have a share of the earth and the unfruitful sea. She received honour also in starry heaven, and is honoured exceedingly by the deathless gods.” There were numerous coins excavated showing Zeus holding Hekate as a personification of the order of the universe that even the gods were subject to.

The Chaldean Oracles (2^nd century AD) have not survived in their entirety: what we have are Hellenistic commentaries on a very ancient, prophetic poem. It is said to have originated in the ancient Chaldea (Babylonia). In the oracles Hekate is portrayed as the chief goddess, a cosmic force, the vital life force, the World Soul and the Saviour. She is not lunar but solar and fiery. The serpents she is holding are the fiery, upward-spiraling Kundalini energy. The text connects her with Apollo: they even shared the epithet Hekatos, meaning “the far reaching one,” “the one operating from afar,” or “the far-darting one.” Both Apollo and Hekate were thus associated with the gift of prophecy and a far-reaching vision. The prophecies also described Hekate as the one that bestows the gifts of prophecy through sleep and dream symbolism. Further, the oracles show Hekate as the one who separates the purely intellectual fire of the Father from the material fire from which everything was created: she mediates between the higher and the lower realms.

Hekate seems to be an important goddess right now when the whole humanity is on the threshold of the paradigm shift. All great deities demanded sacrifice: the very name Hekate is a relative to the word “hecatomb” (a sacrifice of a 100). Interestingly, the asteroid Hekate got its name precisely because it was a hundredth discovered asteroid. This asteroid is conjunct my Ascendant, which may explain why I consider this goddess to be an important guide to me. Let’s hope she will be a benevolent and merciful guide in all our transitions. She was a guardian of midwives, hailing from the Egypian goddess Hequet who breathed life into the body at birth and who assisted at the birth of the Sun every morning: let’s hope she assists us in the birth of the new times.

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Posted in Hekate | Tagged archetypes, crossroads, Demeter, Eleusynian Mysteries, goddess, Greek myth, Greek mythology, Hades, Hecate, Hekate, Hesiod, liminality, Persephone, psychopompos, The Chaldean Oracles, Theogony | 62 Comments

The Veiled Speech of the Symbol

Posted on October 23, 2013 by Symbol Reader

My new purchase:

And a few quotes from the Introduction that stirred my imagination:

“A symbol does not signify; it evokes and focuses, assembles and concentrates, in an analogically versatile manner, a multiplicity of meanings that cannot be reduced to one or many single meanings. … a symbol depends on the mythical and ritual context associated with it.

To penetrate the world of symbols is to try to perceive harmonic vibrations and, in a way, to divine a music of the universe.

This requires not only intuition but also an innate sense of analogy, a gift that can be developed through exercise but that cannot be acquired. There is a “symbolic ear” just as there is a “musical ear,” and it is partially independent from an individual’s degree of cultural development. The symbolic ear of the Australian Aborigine, for example, is incomparably more developed that that of the modern “civilized” person.

The sealed book of the universe dos not allow itself to be read aloud. Nature flees from the violation of evidence: She confides her mysteries only in murmurs, in half-light. Her landscapes reveal their depths only at dawn and dusk, through vapors and mist. Knowing is not understanding; it is only savoring what we have glimpsed along the way. Reality does not require us to reduce the symbol to the limits of our thought. Instead, it invites us to immerse ourselves in the absence of its limits. Thus, the veiled speech of the symbol can protect us from the worst error: the discovery of a definitive and ultimate meaning of things and beings – for no one is more in error than he who knows all the answers… except, perhaps, he who knows only one answer.”

The book seems so promising.

Posted in The Symbol | Tagged René Alleau, symbolism symbology, symbols, The Primal Force in Symbol: Understanding the Language of Higher Consciousness | 35 Comments

Musings on Great Symbols: Money

Posted on October 22, 2013 by Symbol Reader

Margin Call, an independent movie about the initial stages of the financial crisis of 2008, took me by surprise. It was hard to believe I could actually enjoy a film set at a Wall Street investment bank. The film is, at least to me, nothing short of fabulous and very rich in symbolism to boot. The abstract world of finances, where money is just numbers, is juxtaposed with the real world of dirt and death (the most poignant scene being the one in which the main character is digging a grave for his dog). What actually happens in the white-collar world of high finance is cruel axing of unnecessary employees: a true murder committed in white gloves; the chopping block is placed in an clinically clean, ultra-modern office. The cynical tirade of Jeremy Irons’ business tycoon character rang very true: “It’s just money; it’s made up. Pieces of paper with pictures on it so we don’t have to kill each other just to get something to eat. … And there have always been and there always will be the same percentage of winners and losers. Happy foxes and sad sacks. Fat cats and starving dogs in this world.”

The movie made me ponder on the symbolism of money. Recently I have read a powerful piece by James Hillman on the meaning of the bull symbol in his book Animal Presences. In it, he mentions Bernard Laum’s theory, which I find very appealing, and which claims that the origin of money goes back to religious sacrifice. Hillman speaks of “the ceremonial dismemberment of the bull as the origin of bits of money. The spit on which the animal was roasted (obelos) became the coin (obolos) as the piece of bull meat stuck to the spit.” This theory appeals to me for a few reasons, the first being astrological. The sign Taurus, the Bull, rules money in the Zodiac, while the second house of the horoscope, ruled by Taurus, is the house of wealth and resources. Hillman draws further conclusions:

“…that money brings panic, confusion, ecstasies, joys and madness, especially when we try to hold its flow with rational accounting. Balance sheets, transparency, cavernous vaults with massive steel doors try to keep the life in the money under control, as do the other measures in which we pen the bull: bonds, securities, safes, obligations, fixed assets. Nevertheless, money is a wild ride because it is truly blood money, perhaps never severed from the bull…”

Now it is perhaps easier to understand why we speak of the Bull Market. At its symbolic root, money is not rational and, like the bull, it relates to passion and desire. Financial markets are subject to the tidal periodic rises and falls just like the Moon and just like our emotions.

To ancient Romans, money was also associated with the sphere of sacrum and sacrifice. Their chief goddess – Juno Moneta – presided over the Roman mint, which was a part of her Capitoline temple. She was believed to have blessed the coins herself. Her epithet is at the root of our word “money” but it also meant “the warner” and “the admonisher.” In his essay “Money and the City,” (Parabola Magazine, February, 1991) David Applebaum asserts that Juno Moneta warns us that money is just a mind-invented means of measure (the words “money,” “mind” and “measure” have the same etymological root) – it has no value in itself.

There is a profound mystery in that money would simultaneously evoke two conflicting responses: on the one hand, we think of greed, corruption, the golden “ring of power” (Wagner’s and Tolkien’s); but on the other a golden coin brings alchemical gold to mind and the highest possible psychological value – the indestructible Light of Individuated Self. The very first coins minted in Lydia were golden and featured the lion (the animal associated with gold and the Sun):

Sri Aurobindo wrote this about money (citing after the same issue of Parabola magazine):

“Money is a sign of universal force, and this force in its manifestation on earth works on the vital and physical planes and is indispensable to the fullness of outer life.
In its origin and its true action it belongs to the Divine. But like other powers of the Divine it is delegated here and in the ignorance of the lower Nature can be usurped for the uses of the ego…The seekers or keepers of wealth are more often possessed rather than its possessors. … Regard wealth simply as a power to be won back for the Mother and placed at her service. All wealth belongs to the Divine and those who hold it as trustees, not possessors. It is with them today, tomorrow it may be elsewhere.”

Sri Aurobindo

You can read the whole discourse on the role of money here: http://intyoga.online.fr/mothr04.htm

Nowhere else is the corruption of the divine energy we humans are endowed with more visible than in our dealings with money. Possessed with money, we often forget where the true value lies. In Wagner’s opera The Ring of the Nibelungs, the curse of the ring is thus formulated (note how Tolkien borrowed this motif for his novel):

“Its gold granted unlimited power.

No man shall gain joy from it.

Anguish will consume whoever possesses it.

Everyone will lust after its power,

But no one shall have pleasure from it.

… The Lord of the Ring

Shall be the Ring’s slave.”

Nothing exposes the Shadow as expertly as money. The process of obtaining real gold from the ore (gold extraction) is carried out “against the resistance of the darksome and chaotic forces of nature” (Titus Burckhardt, “Making Real Gold,” Parabola Magazine). Impurities attach themselves easily to gold: it takes a lot of time and effort to extract the shining, pure and yellow gold from the dirty ore that once lay in the dark earth. Pluto, the Roman Lord of the Underworld, like many other chthonic deities, was associated with wealth. Charon, the ferryman of the Styx, demanded payment of one coin, which was put in the mouth of the dead as a Greek burial custom. The symbolism of money seems o touch real eschatological depths: whatever we say about it, we run the risk of merely scratching the surface, while the golden ore lies safe in the depths of the earth as unreachable as its symbolic counterpart – the Sun.

John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, Charon and Psyche

Posted in Money | Tagged Animal Presences, astrology, bull, Charon, financial crisis, James Hillman, Margin Call movie, money, obol, Pluto, Plutus, symbolism, symbols, Taurus, Wall Street, wealth | 24 Comments

Secret Life

Posted on October 18, 2013 by Symbol Reader

“…there is for every man some one scene, some one adventure, some one picture that is the image of his secret life, for wisdom first speaks in images, and … this one image, if he would but brood over it his life long, would lead his soul, disentangled from unmeaning circumstance and the ebb and flow of the world, into that far household where the undying gods await all whose souls have become simple as flame, whose bodies have become quiet as an agate lamp.”

W.B. Yeats, “The Philosophy of Shelley’s Poetry”

Posted in Quotations | Tagged archetypes, images, Soul, symbols, The Philosophy of Shelley’s Poetry, W.B. Yeats | 23 Comments

Measuring Immensity: Symbolism of Maps

Posted on October 16, 2013 by Symbol Reader

I decided to explore my neighbourhood a little last weekend, and I started my walk by entering into the heart of a dense and dark forest. I let myself wander and get lost, walking round in circles, not paying attention to which direction I was going. I did stick to footpaths, though, so I knew I would emerge somewhere into the civilized world, eventually. I had not taken my phone or a paper map, but somehow after a few hours of meandering I emerged into a road that turned out to be the one leading to my building. I experienced a similar sensation of being lost and loving it on a trip to Venice, when I was navigating the dense network of its countless streets, which twist and turn unexpectedly filling the explorer with a constant sense of bewilderment, exhilaration and sensual pleasure of permanent dizziness. The very shape of the map of Venice is meaningful and stirs imagination, as Tiziano Scarpa described beautifully in his book Venice is a Fish:

Venice is a fish. Just look at it on a map. It’s like a vast sole stretched out against the deep. … Venice has always existed as you see it today… It’s been sailing since the dawn of time; it’s put in at every port, it’s rubbed against every shore, quay and landing-stage: Middle Eastern pearls, transparent Phoenician sand, Greek seashells, Byzantine seaweed all accreted on its scales. But one day it felt all the weight of those scales, those fragments and splinters that had permanently accumulated on its skin… It decided to climb once and for all into one of the most northerly and sheltered inlets of the Mediterranean, and rest there.”

Map of Venice, The Vatican Museum, Hall of Maps

I strongly believe it can be refreshing not to know where one is going. “Perhaps, being lost, one should get loster,” as Saul Bellow once said. I listened to a lecture of James Hillman recently, in which he lamented over our modern tendency to lose touch with the earth and the ground. Our feet are getting lighter and lighter; we demand the quickest possible access, focusing on the destination and never on the journey. Also, Hillman said, we are obsessed with getting a bird’s eye view of our current location; this is why we love to climb hills, towers and other observation points. Listening to this, I was thinking of the philosopher’s Korzybski’s famous aphorism: “The map is not the territory.” Images are not reality, symbols are not what they symbolize. “This is not a pipe” is a painting by Renè Magritte. You cannot stuff this pipe:

I think that writers, artists, psychotherapists and all those whose daily lives revolve around concepts and symbols would be wise to regularly renew their contact with the earth instead of getting lost in the endless symbolic loop. I think it is wise to lose the map from time to time. This is quite hard for me because I have a passion for maps, especially old ones. For me they have a reality of their own, unconnected to the territory. Old maps are like exquisite paintings: their beauty exceeds their practical purpose.

Caverio map of the world (1505)

I always suspected that my love of maps was connected to both my love of books and my love of symbols. When looking at a map one gets the illusion of having control of the whole territory: time and distance do not matter anymore; our imagination can take us anywhere within seconds. Symbolic thinking means being able to see the connections that we had not noticed before: as a result a holistic view emerges and we are able to notice patterns and regularities. Maps are directly related to symbolization: psychologists often talk about mapping out the human psyche. They love to put labels on certain behaviours, which may be a dangerous practice if taken too far because it may lead to freezing a human life into concepts. Conceptual maps may explain and illuminate problems, but they do not automatically take them away.

An artistic rendering of an astrological chart, image via http://www.behance.net/gallery/Astrological-Birthchart-Paintings/2060922

I think astrological charts can also be compared to maps. A natal chart shows symbolically what an individual can become, what potential his or her psyche holds. Not all potentials manifest; sometimes we insist on living in one corner of the map and do not dare explore further. A natal chart is a blueprint for exploration. A good astrological reading is oriented towards our unfulfilled potential. We are not victims or prisoners of our past patterns and conditionings. A map of our personal symbols in the form of a natal chart can guide us towards the blank, unexplored areas of our psyche, the life unlived. Our own mental maps are so often limited and fragmentary. In medieval maps blank spaces were filled with phantasmagorical drawings – of dragons, sea serpents and other freakish creatures. They showed the inner truth of the psyche. The dragons may have disappeared from the public sphere but they are alive and well on the maps of our inner lives.

Image via http://www.livescience.com/39429-sea-monsters-gallery.html

This post is particularly inspired by a great book I have read recently called Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer, written by Peter Turchi. I loved it for many reasons, not least for its visual merits: beautiful maps featured all over the text. The author asserts at the beginning: “To ask for a map is to say, ‘Tell me a story.’”

Ancient maps were not created for practical purposes as we see them today; as a matter of fact, the earliest maps in many cultures were created and passed on orally. For Native Americans, for example, the stories were vitally connected to natural features of the earth, and for Australian Aboriginals, the land was traversed by songlines or Dreaming Tracks, thus described by another author, Bruce Chatwin in his novel The Songlines:

“…the labyrinth of invisible pathways which meander all over Australia and are known to Europeans as ‘Dreaming-tracks’ or ‘Songlines’; to the Aboriginals as the ‘Footprints of the Ancestors’ or the ‘Way of the Law’.”

Aboriginal Creation myths tell of the legendary totemic beings who wandered over the continent in the Dreamtime, singing out the name of everything that crossed their path – birds, animals, plants, rocks, waterholes – and thus singing the world into existence. The first maps were always gifts of imagination.

Aboriginal Art

I see symbolism as a gift of meaning and not something that would make me blind to my raw existence. I acknowledge that life is ultimately a voyage into the unknown and any meaningful order would always compete with chaos. I also acknowledge the warning of a short story “On Exactitude of Science,” in which Borges describes a one-to-one map as utterly useless:

…the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars…”

Nevertheless, my instinct and my whole being draws me more to symbols, archetypes, images than the so called hard reality. One is not supposed to fight the instinct: that would be an anti-life stance, wouldn’t it?

Posted in Maps | Tagged Aboriginal songlines, astrology, Borges, Korzybski, Map, Maps of the Imagination, Peter Turchi, songlines, symbolism, symbols, territory, Venice | 56 Comments

The Five most important lessons my art teacher shared with me . . .

Posted on October 13, 2013 by Symbol Reader

Please take your time to read this wonderful post. It is full of wisdom in regards to the process of creation, no matter which medium you use. Read it if you are looking to create value in your life.

StoryDoors

My First Painting

8″x10″ Oil on canvas board, 1954

Heads up – this is a 2100 word posting (longer than my average). My editor suggested breaking it into five short postings, but I couldn’t figure how to make the story flow so I put up the whole thing. I would appreciate any comments to the article, both about length and content, or if this type posting is worth your reading time.

1-Paint on purpose

She was old and frail and beautiful. She was fussy and gentle, regal and talented. Even though she was frail she was magnificently strong in being there. I was eleven years old and barely 5 feet tall and she was only an inch taller; she assured me she used to be tall and I would be one day (I’m still waiting). She was Mrs. R, my first and only real art instructor.

Born in the late…

View original post 2,091 more words

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, creative process, creativity, value | 7 Comments

Nike Who Hesitates

Posted on October 11, 2013 by Symbol Reader

Titanic Engineers’ Memorial, Southampton, featuring Goddess Nike

Nike of Warsaw, monument to Polish war heroes

I love poetry because in a few verses it is able to condense more meaning than a long essay and usually does so more beautifully. I think that the poems that we have read have their own secret lives in our souls. Yesterday I was haunted by a line of a poem that came out of nowhere. At first I did not remember who wrote that the goddess Nike is most beautiful when she hesitates. The line came to me in my native Polish, and I quickly realized it was a poem by Zbigniew Herbert, because myth and ancient history was always his favourite subject. The whole poem, which is amazing, goes like this:

NIKE WHO HESITATES (trans. by Marek Lugowski)

Most beautiful is Nike at the instant
when she hesitates
the right hand beautiful like a command
leans against the air
but her wings are aquiver

because she sees
a lone youth
he is walking a long rut
of a war wagon
along a gray road in a gray landscape
of rocks and an occasional juniper bush

this youth will soon die
just now the scale with his fate
falls suddenly
to the ground

Nike has a tremendous desire
to walk up
and kiss him in the forehead
but she is afraid
that he who has not known yet
the sweetness of fondling
upon knowing it
might run away like the others
at the time of battle
and so Nike hesitates
and finally resolves to
remain in a position
which she was taught by the sculptors
very much ashamed of this moment of feeling moved

she understands well
that tomorrow at dawn
they must find the boy
with his chest open
eyes closed
and a tart obol of fatherland
under the stiff tongue

We do not value hesitation in the West. Our Nike says “Just Do It.” We value swift action and achievement; a pause or discontinuation of action are viewed as signs of weakness. Hesitation (remember Hamlet?) only multiplies questions and problems and complications. On the one hand, we hesitate because of anxiety, but on the other hand, we often hesitate because we ponder on all the possible consequences of our actions. The best Western literature is built on hesitation. I have always cherished Rilke, who wrote this in one of the Letters to a Young Poet: “Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. …live in the question.” Hesitation, uncertainty and doubt can be fruitful.

Another issue that the poem raises for me is connected to the consequences of our actions. I am thinking of karma – the law of cause and effect. If you prefer you can substitute the word karma with fate, destiny or even Heimarmene (the Greek goddess of fate understood as the succession of cause and effect). I believe the linguistic labels matter little here: what matters in essence is that our lives are not our own because we are ruled by patterns that we were born into. I have already written on Fate (https://symbolreader.net/2013/06/05/fate-a-jungian-perspective/), as it is one of my pet subjects, but I feel like revisiting it today by quoting from Five Stages of Greek Religion by Gilbert Murray. The book is available for free on Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30250/30250-h/30250-h.htm). I first heard of Murray via Liz Greene and her Astrology of Fate. In the first half of the twentieth century, there was no other scholar who surpassed him in the knowledge of ancient Greece. I am partial to him for many reasons: first and foremost because he was humanist, a liberal and he even refused knighthood.

In the following passage he writes beautifully about Fate/Heimarmene:

It requires a certain amount of thoughtfulness to rise to the conception that nothing really happens without a cause. … Heimarmenê, in the striking simile of Zeno is like a fine thread running through the whole of existence—the world, we must remember, was to the Stoics a live thing—like that invisible thread of life which, in heredity, passes on from generation to generation of living species and keeps the type alive; it runs causing, causing for ever, both the infinitesimal and the infinite. It is the Reason of the World or the mind of Zeus, rather difficult to distinguish from the Pronoia or Providence which is the work of God and indeed the very essence of God. Thus it is not really an external and alien force. For the human soul itself is a fragment or effluence of the divine, and this Law of God is also the law of man’s own Phusis (Nature). As long as you act in accordance with your true self you are complying with that divine Pronoia, whose service is perfect freedom. Only when you are false to your own nature and become a rebel against the kingdom of God which is within you, are you dragged perforce behind the chariot-wheels.

The last sentences go beyond the scope of Herbert’s poem perhaps, but I could not help quoting them because to my mind they do explain a lot in regards to fate vs free will debate. The notion of heimarmene links with the goddess Nike because according to myth she always carried a bunch of woolen ties that she handed out to her chosen favourites. In a poem, a goddess she is, Nike resolves to assume her position and lay down the law. The boy’s fate had already been meted out to him. In ancient Greece, paradoxically, woolen strips were also tied to the horns of sacrificial animals. We may shrug our shoulders and say that the boy was caught in the wheels of collective karma. But we are no gods and we can choose to pity him. We can also choose to ponder on the value of individuation and consciousness as the only way to elude the grinding wheels of fate. We can ponder on “the momentary surfacing of a link in that invisible net which enfolds the world, which descends from heaven to earth, binding the two together and swaying in the breeze,” like the woolen tie handed out by the goddess Nike. (the quote comes from The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony by Roberto Calasso)