Truth did not come into the world naked, but it came in types and images. The world will not receive truth in any other way.
The Gospel of Philip, The Nag Hammadi Library
Johfra Bosschart, Hermes Trismegistos
I was lucky once to co-teach about symbols at a workshop dedicated to The Lord of the Rings. The workshop started with watching the film together. I asked the participants to look for symbols in the movie. I was quite surprised when it turned out that they had found only one or two, mostly signs and not symbols at that. The task was a tricky one because the list of symbols in The Lord of the Rings is in fact endless. The participants were quite surprised that we can look at a tree as a potent symbol, that a horse carries deep, unfathomable meaning, and getting closer to the symbolism of the ring might actually take weeks.
I’ve decided to embark on a project and write about the absolutely stunning Zodiac paintings by Johfra Bosschart, a Dutch symbolist painter. I find these paintings simply stunning and by far the best depictions of Zodiac signs ever created. I have got my hands on a very rare copy of Johfra Astrology, which has been out of print for many years, and I am going to let it guide me in my journey of discovery. Hank Harrison was very lucky to see the original paintings and not the reproductions that the rest of us have to content ourselves with. This is how he describes the unique experience of viewing them:
Seeing them was a mystical experience. Hardly any damaging sunlight could reach the paintings and in order to view them one was forced to press a button with a timer, to light a special flood lamp which exactly duplicated ideal sunlight.
I inquired as to why this viewing gallery was set up this way and I was told that for this series, Johfra and Diana mixed their own paints from scratch using alchemical formulae passed down from Rembrandt and Vermeer. When I challenged that statement I was shown a very old hand written journal signed (and once owned) by Rembrandt. I was also shown the kilns Diana used for baking the stones and the crushers she used for pulverizing the stones into colored powders. To my surprise two of the blue tones were achieved by crushing turquoise and lapis lazuli, while one of the reds was achieved by crushing red ochre. Gold and Silver and antimony were also used in extremely small degrees.
This experience of looking at the paintings briefly, catching a glimpse of them, was like an elusive, fleeting moment of vision. It was, like staring at the sun, extremely dangerous. It is much safer to look at its reflections rather than look at it directly. By the same token, perhaps it is safer to look at the reproductions of Bosschart’s paintings rather than the original paintings. They are still quite powerful and make ideal objects of meditation.
I actually started exploring the world of archetypes and symbols compelled by a dream I had 12 years ago. In this dream, I was looking at the Sun during a solar eclipse. I noticed suddenly that the Sun had turned into the planet Saturn, which appeared to be made of gold. There was a circular rainbow around Saturn. The whole image was moving, Saturn was spinning and sparkling and so were its golden rings. I have always regarded this dream as incredibly important and up to this day I have not managed to interpret it fully. As Jung wrote, it is the most difficult to interpret one’s own dreams.
Johfra Bosschart shared his understanding of symbols in the preface to the book that I mentioned at the beginning. His words are very close to my heart. Here’s a couple of inspiring quotes:
The deepest truths can only be approached through myths and symbols.
The Truth can only be hinted at and, even then, can only be recognized by those who already know it. Yet this recognition lies dormant within us all.
A truly universal archetypal symbol works deep down, it touches the unconscious essence of the individual who thereby recognizes it from inside. It moves him totally. It strengthens him, changes him.
A symbol, to those who meditate upon it and who can lose themselves in it, is like a door that opens out on to a fresh vista of consciousness.
It is extremely hard to convey a visionary experience with words unless one writes a poem. During an illness, C. G. Jung once dreamed that he was in a valley of diamonds and managed to put some of them in his pockets. He understood the diamonds to refer to what he had to say about the nature of the psyche. But how to translate the dream vision into the everyday, ordinary language? There’s the rub. When I look at these paintings I feel at a loss for words but words I must use to describe them.
I have always lived by stories. I wither without them. Myths, legends, fairy tales, novels, short stories, poems, plays, films, all kinds of narratives: they are my daily sustenance. My mind can only be opened and activated by storytellers. I discovered that a long time ago. Scientific publications or various psychological textbooks that I had to read at university inevitably caused severe drowsiness. But when I discovered the ripping yarns spun by C.G. Jung I knew that I had finally found an author who knows that the deepest truths about the human psyche cannot be neatly presented by means of graphs, tables or bullet points. The mysterious story of being human cannot be told with ordinary words.
The first storytellers told their stories by the fire. If you agree that the most successful storytellers are able to create images in the reader’s/listener’s mind, the symbolic meaning of sitting by the fire while opening your hearts to stories becomes apparent. Fire is a symbol of our spirit, our inner light. Keeping the fire burning means keeping the Spirit alive. The fire is like the Sun in an astrological chart: the raw impulse of life, which vivifies us into existence. As Steven Forrest wrote, the Sun plays a hyperintense beam of self-awareness over us. Fire gives us vision, it connects us directly with the spiritual source, which is the realm of perennial images (archetypes). Imagination is a matter of fire. Looking into fire is a transcendent experience.
Fire is also a transformative agent. It can be destructive if it gets out of hand. A powerful story can burn through our egos and show us much wider vistas of consciousness. Stories told by the fire have always been told to guide people in the life of the spirit and to teach them about the deepest mysteries of life. Sure, amusement was also a part of it, but not the main purpose.
The first and original stories were myths. How did myths develop? In Myths of the Ancient Greeks, Richard P. Martin says that it is important to realize that the Greek word muthos originally referred to an act of speaking and it could be translated as “word” or “story”. In Homeric epics muthos meant words which demanded action or commanded respect. This information struck me because I remembered that Jung also emphasized that if archetypes speak to us they do it in a commanding, lofty tone with a powerful voice that cannot be ignored. The muthos kind of speech referred to a distant past, the grand exploits that could not be questioned or disproved. They were set in stone as examples to follow. Similarly, archetypes have remained unchanged since the beginning of time. Cultural symbols may come and go but their archetypal background remains constant.
What drew me to astrology in the first place was precisely this possibility of finding a story or a set of stories that would describe an individual life. A list of psychological traits is a dead entity, anyone and everyone could relate to it, but if an individual finds his or her story he can literally feel fire lighting up in his soul. In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, C.G. Jung described trauma as an untold story:
In many cases in psychiatry, the patient who comes to us has a story that is not told, and which as a rule no one knows of. To my mind, therapy only really begins after the investigation of that wholly personal story. It is the patient’s secret, the rock against which he is shattered.
I think the gift of Jungian therapy is being able to see how our personal stories, real events that happen in our lives, are related to the archetypal realm of myth. There are two ways of finding our own mythical story. The first is through listening to stories, reading books or watching films, the other through astrology. These two ways are not mutually exclusive. Watching planets in transit to our chart tells us which myths are knocking on our doors right now, analyzing the birth chart gives an insight into the archetypal blueprint of our soul.
The Internet makes it easier to share our personal stories. Our tribe has got quite larger since the ancient times. In his book The Storytelling Animal, Jonathan Gottschall say that humans have always been addicted to the witchy power of Neverland. Some grown-ups grow out of stories. I never did.
You might have seen this photo already. It took the Internet by storm and it was taken this winter in the city where I was born, Krakow in Poland. The author’s name is Marcin Ryczek.
When I saw it I immediately thought of coincidentia oppositorum, the union of opposites. Looking at it you feel a revelation of the oneness of things. It is a perfect image of wholeness. We are sensitive to such images because they show the hidden truth of our heart. All is One.
I stumbled upon Painted Script – The Art Work of James Tunney on FB today. Absolutely stunning, I think.
I am always amazed that whenever my natal Neptune is activated by a transit, however minor it is, I am suddenly surrounded by Jung’s quotes and I feel drawn to reading and rereading his books.
C.G. Jung, the twinkle in his eye courtesy of his Ascendant in Aquarius
About that quote… Religion is the domain of the ninth house of the Zodiac, which squares the twelfth house of spirituality. Therefore it is very hard to be a member of a cult or organized religion and be deeply spiritual at the same time. In our times, people claim back their spirituality. The most important criterion of spirituality is direct experience of the divine (the twelfth-house matter) rather than faith that is not based on experience.
There are currently as many as eight planets in Water signs. Creativity, imagination and artistic expressions are falling on very fertile ground right now. Inspired by this blog: http://earthstonestation.wordpress.com/ I decided to write about water myself.
The title of the post comes from the Koran, but symbolically water is equated with fons et origo (Latin for source and origin) in all major religious and spiritual traditions. If you agree that all myths are nothing but the psyche’s depiction of itself and its own processes, then the same and very fundamental truth lies in all the water myths of the world. My beloved mythologies are Sumerian and Babylonian. In the Babylonian mythology, Tiamat, the primordial goddess of chaos and the ocean, mates with Abzu, the god of fresh water. A new generation of younger gods are born out of this union. Out of Tiamat’s body the vault of heaven and earth are created, but not in a peaceful way. Marduk, one of the angry young gods, fights with Tiamat, who appears in the form of a water dragon. First he tries to immobilize her with his net, then he drives e severe winds into her mouth after she has tried to swallow him and finally he shoot an arrow through her heart and proceeds to split her body, thus creating the sky and the earth.
The meaning of this myth is multifaceted and can be translated into Jungian psychological terms. Marduk, the solar hero, symbolizes human consciousness which has to differentiate itself from the collective unconscious, symbolized by the primordial ocean. Individuation is not a peaceful process because the hero has to defy the inertia of collective forces, symbolized by the water dragon. The new world is created with a fair amount of violence and pain. The process is similar to being born, as described by Stanislav Grof in his concept of birth matrices. During pregnancy the baby feels blissful unity with the mother, floating in the amniotic fluid. In the first stage of delivery the mother experiences contractions, and thus the whole world of the baby starts shaking causing fear and anxiety. It is similar to the experience of being swallowed by a giant monster or sucked into a whirlpool. The blissful paradise is lost, but there is no way out yet, which precipitates the feeling of being stuck or imprisoned. In the next stage the child can go through the dilation and thus the real battle starts, ultimately leading to the baby’s separation from the mother. From the point of view of the baby, the death-rebirth experience has just taken place. As Lao Tzu said, “New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.”
Let’s celebrate the element water this month. Last year I visited the Rhine Falls, which is the largest plain waterfall in Europe. It was after much precipitation and the amount of water was enormous. Looking at these restless, thundering masses of water I thought of astrological symbolism and the three water signs. At the top the river flows very slowly approaching the fall. It is gentle, peaceful, inviting you to go in and paddle. This is the gentle water of Cancer, suitable for mothers with babies. As the water approaches the fall, it gathers speed and gets more and more noisy. The thundery chaos and destruction that follow are Scorpionic in their expression (this sign is ruled by Pluto, the god of radical transformation). The roaring water releases vapour, which reflects light beautifully. That’s a Piscean image, the realm of dreams and imagination.
photo retrieved from http://www.flickriver.com/photos/pixav/4927945556/
I always regarded water as a remarkable element but when I read about Masaru Emoto’s experiments, I was even more amazed. The experimenters came to the conclusion that water was reacting to positive and negative words. What is more, human consciousness has an effect on the molecular structure of water. The water takes on the resonance of the energy that is directed at it.
Now is a good time to perform various kinds of water rituals, Neptunian visualizations and meditations, or simply go to a spa because the healing properties of water are particularly strong. Let’s experience rebirth and regeneration through water and get ready for the coming of spring. On 20 March the Sun will enter Aries, the first Fire Sign. The fiery Marduk will replace Tiamat, the Piscean water goddess. Until that moment we can bathe in her primordial waters peacefully, taking a rest and experiencing oneness with this amazing element.
retrieved from http://o-ze.com/zena-holloway/
The Idealist shared it on FB today.
©3-1-2013 by Donna Cunningham, MSW
Uranus is the trendsetter planet, and when it shifts signs, we see new developments in style, language, and innovation. Most of all, it shows what the public is excited about. I’m noticing a couple of ways that Uranus’s shift into Aries has already affected our language.
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A great painter does not content himself by affecting us with his masterpieces; ultimately, he succeeds in changing the landscape of our mind.
Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red
Orhan Pamuk is a Nobel winning Turkish novelist, whose Sun sign is in Gemini. The lower expression of the sign, its shadow, begets scatterbrained chatterboxes, but the more evolved Gemini souls possess an incredible gift for the language, a penetrating mind being able to see links and connections between the most distant subjects. Communication and verbal expression is their strength. My Name is Red is my favourite book by this author. What I find the most dazzling is the idea of giving voice to the most bizarre narrators. Each chapter is told from a point of view of a different character and these ‘characters’ include a corpse, a dog, a tree and the colour red. How very Gemini of the author to have given voices to these entities, isn’t it?
Comparing and contrasting ideas is Gemini’s forte as well. My Name is Red shows the deeper themes involved in the famous clash of civilizations. In the time of the Ottoman Empire the great miniaturists from the East “longed to return to Allah’s blackness by means of color. “ For them painting was the act of seeking out Allah’s memories and seeing the world as He saw he world. Therefore old masters perceived going blind as the ultimate achievement of mastery. Going blind meant being able to see as if with Allah’s eyes. For them individual style was a defect. Their masterpieces were all similar because they were supposed to depict the eternal piece of Allah’s vision. They lacked passion or individuality, though, and were one-dimensional. But at the same time they emanated spirituality, serenity and peace.
Astronomers study the moon and the stars in this Ottoman miniature dating from the 17th century.
The innocence of this paradise is marred by western influences, which begin to change the face of eastern art. The peaceful world of old masters turns out to be be a lie because they do not acknowledge their shadow. It turns out that even old masters are prone to violence. I think the book shows that everyone desires recognition and that ego always strives to achieve individuation. This is why ambition and violent competition are rampant among miniaturists, who want to be seen as exceptional and unique. Even the Sultan wants to have his portrait painted, which is perceived as blasphemy by orthodox reactionists. The colour red, an extremely potent symbol, enters the scene and announces: “I am so fortunate to be red! I’m fiery. I’m strong. I know men take notice of me and that I cannot be resisted.” It turns out that young masters have developed unique styles and they want to be recognized and adored for them.
Picasso, an artist with an undeniably strong ego
Orange Red Orange, Mark Rothko
Like the Bosphorus Bridge, which connects Europe and Asia, My Name is Red illustrates the interconnectedness between the East and the West. I hope that the two worlds can be brought closer by acknowledging each other shadows: the western contempt for spirituality and the eastern scorn of individuality. These two do not have to be mutually exclusive.
The word archetype comes from Greek and it denotes the first-moulded, original pattern. I see it as a divine mould, which gives birth to universally recognized symbols, images, myths and stories. We are attracted to them because we sense deep inside that they are not of this world, that they come from the divine source, from the primordial waters that were at the beginning of all creation. The fact is that the creation of all matter was possible only thanks to the existence of archetypes. Therefore archetypes shine through all matter, and even the most mundane everyday objects can be treated as sacred. Naturally, archetypes speak to us the most distinctly and the most powerfully when they are encountered through myths and symbols.
I have always loved etymology. I believe that if we can get to the roots of the word we will find out their true, archetypal meaning. The word myth means story or word in Greek. If we pair this word with logos (a principle of order and knowledge in the universe, sometimes translated as Word) we get mythology. Mythology is the most basic source for anyone who wants to learn about and experience archetypes. It is an exhaustive collection of all archetypes. At the beginning there were archetypes out of which all that is manifest was created. I believe that a symbol is the only way that an invisible archetype can communicate meaning. Symbols emanate power, the source of which are archetypes. Symbols are outward manifestations of archetypes and as such they exude otherworldly, divine power. As archetypal images they are full of mystery and seem unfathomable. Our minds are rooted in the universal sea of the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious is the realm of archetypes and it is the archetypes that create, nourish and sustain our individual minds.
How does astrology fit into all this? I believe that the signs of the Zodiac, the planets and the astrological houses are expression of the archetypal cosmic mind. They are symbols, which communicate the cosmic plan for our individual souls. If we learn to interpret that divine code and express it in our lives, we will gain access to a sustaining and nourishing Source of divine power.
"The deepest core of life is poetry and symbol." - Dane Rudhyar
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