Tag Archives: art

Prague: A Threshold

Posted on March 12, 2023 by Symbol Reader

You may have heard of two magical triangles, one of black, the other of white magic. The origins of that legend are impossible to fathom. The white magic triangle is said to include Lyon, Prague and Turin, while the black … Continue reading →

Posted in Prague | Tagged alchemy, Alphonse Mucha, archetypes, art, Art Nouveau, astrology, Black Madonna, C.G. Jung, Cancer, city, Don Giovanni, Edward Kelley, goddess, Il Commendatore, Jaroslaw Rona, John Dee, Kafka, Kepler, literature, magic, magic triangle, Mother, mystery, Prague, Rudolf II, Secession, Soul, symbolism, symbols, Tycho Brahe | 7 Comments

Painting the Sun

Posted on July 4, 2022 by Symbol Reader

I. “Turner’s favourite colour was yellow. He spent hours studying its myriad iterations, using more yellow pigments than any other … … Turner admired yellow’s optical power. Bright and warm, it jumps out at us from a distance and forces … Continue reading →

Posted in Painting | Tagged archetypes, art, colour, insoluminant, light, lightness, luminance, luminosity, Monet, sun, symbolism, symbols, Turner | 7 Comments

The Spellbinding Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao

Posted on May 7, 2022 by Symbol Reader

“The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, looked like something out of an alien hallucination—a swirling collage of warped metallic forms that appeared to have been propped up against one another in an almost random way. Stretching into the distance, the … Continue reading →

Posted in Guggenheim, Bilbao, Museum | Tagged archetypes, architecture, art, Bilbao, Frank O. Gehry, Guggenheim, modern art, Museum, symbolism, symbols | 2 Comments

Frida Kahlo’s Symbolism of Life

Posted on February 5, 2022 by Symbol Reader

Frida Kahlo stands today for much more than art; she is a symbol and an icon of feminism, a heroine of the disability rights movement, anti-racism movements and LGBT communities. Her boundless creativity drew no lines between life and art; … Continue reading →

Posted in Ambition, frida kahlo | Tagged accident, archetypes, art, Casa Azul, death, Diego Rivera, ex-votos, fashion, feminism, fertility, frida kahlo, healthabortion, infertility, jewellery, life, miscarriage, pain, painting, religion, retablos, suffering, symbolism, symbols, Tehuana | 11 Comments

Master Arnold Böcklin

Posted on March 13, 2021 by Symbol Reader

Arnold Böcklin (born in 1827) was a Swiss symbolist painter, whose work The Plague (1898) has recently emerged as the emblem of our moment in time. It seems that through his symbolist lens he managed to capture the timeless terror … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged archetypes, Arnold Böcklin, art, death, Dodona, Mermaids at Play, oracle, painting, symbolism, symbolist art, symbols, The Isle of the Dead, The Plague, The Sacred Grove, Zeus | 8 Comments

Symbolist Art: The Mysteriarch (The One Who Presides over Mysteries)

Posted on November 1, 2020 by Symbol Reader

In volume V of Collected Works (Symbols of Transformation, par. 299) Jung quotes a passage from Goethe’s Faust, in which he hero must descend to the realm of the Mothers: “MEPHISTOPHELES: This lofty mystery I must now unfold.Goddesses throned in … Continue reading →

Posted in Mysteriarch | Tagged archetypes, art, C.G. Jung, Faust, George James Frampton, Goethe, mothers, Mysteriarch, psyche, sculpture, symbolism, symbolist art, symbols, unconscious, Underworld | 8 Comments

Hamnet and Tutankhamun

Posted on October 13, 2020 by Symbol Reader

Shakespeare’s life is a great mystery but we do know that he had a son, Hamnet, who died at the age 11, possibly from the plague. Four years after his son’s death, Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, maybe his greatest masterpiece. In … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged afterlife, ancient Egypt, archetypes, art, burial, death, fiction, grave, Hamnet, Howard Carter, literature, Maggie O'Farrell, mask, Osiris, Shakespeare, symbolism, symbols, tomb, truth, Tutankhamun, Tutankhamun's mask | 4 Comments

The Black Madonna of Hergiswald

Posted on August 7, 2020 by Symbol Reader

One of the most stunning Black Madonna chapels in Switzerland is located near Lucerne on a hill with a view of the mountains and Lake Lucerne. It was built in the seventeenth century after a Capuchin Friar Ludwig von Wyl … Continue reading →

Posted in Black Madonna, Uncategorized | Tagged archetypes, art, Baroque, Black Madonna, chapel, emblems, Hergiswald, Mary, pilgrimage, Switzerland, symbolism, symbols | 11 Comments

Michelangelo’s Immortality

Posted on July 29, 2020 by Symbol Reader

“Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like … Continue reading →

Posted in Michelangelo, Uncategorized | Tagged archetypes, architecture, art, biography, dome, Florentine Pieta, Freud, Mary Magdalene, Michelangelo, Moses, Pan, Rome, sculpture, St Peter's, symbolism, symbols, the unconscious | 9 Comments

The Salon de la Rose † Croix

Posted on May 8, 2020 by Symbol Reader

I. “A call to arms for the worship of beauty, the Salon de la Rose + Croix (R + C) was founded in Paris by … Joséphin Péladan. … The Salon aimed to transcend the mudane and material for a … Continue reading →