Tag Archives: cave

The Sibyls

Posted on February 10, 2024 by Symbol Reader

“But she stood … black like an ancient citadel … as the words, which unrestrained now multiplied in her against her will, screamed and flew around her in incessant circles, while those that had returned home set darkly beneath her … Continue reading →

Posted in The Sibyls | Tagged Aeneas, Aeneid, Apollo, archetypes, Black Madonna, black meteor, cave, Christianity, Cumae, Cybele, Delphi, Gaia, goddess, Great Mother, Greece, Hermes, Libyan Sibyl, Loreto, mythology, oracle, Pausanias, Pessinus, poetry, prophecy, Pythia, Sibylline Books, Sibyls, stone, symbolism, symbols, Tarquinius | 7 Comments

Hekate: World Soul, Cosmic Bridge and a Liminal Goddess

Posted on October 21, 2023 by Symbol Reader

“Ever since the ‘Timaeus’ it has been repeatedly stated that the soul is a sphere. As the anima mundi, the soul revolves with the world wheel, whose hub is the Pole. … The anima mundi is really the motor of … Continue reading →

Posted in Hekate | Tagged anima mundi, Apuleius, archetypes, boundaries, C.G. Jung, cave, Chaldean Oracles, cosmic harmony, daimones, dogs, goddess, Greek myth, Hekate, Helios, Hellenistic era, Hesiod, iynx, Karians, keyholder, keys, kourothropos, liminality, limits, magic, Moon, Olympians, Persephone, Plato, Plutarch, Porphyry, Sibyl, sun, sunthemata, symbola, symbolism, symbols, sympathy, Theogony, theurgy, Titans, torches, Underworld, world soul, Zeus | 3 Comments

Symbolism of the Cave

Posted on January 8, 2023 by Symbol Reader

A well-known passage from Plato’s Republic describes how a group of people, chained to the wall of a deep cavern, spend their entire lives looking at the shadows dancing on the cave wall in front of them. The captives are oblivious to … Continue reading →

Posted in cave | Tagged archetypes, C.G. Jung, cave, Cave of the Nymphs, death, Egypt, gnas, goddess, Hermes, incarnation, Plato, Porphyry, Power, rebirth, Soul, symbolism, symbols, tomb, transcendence, transformation, womb | 7 Comments

The House of the Black Madonna

Posted on September 26, 2021 by Symbol Reader

One of the most important Black Madonna shrines in Europe is The Basilica della Santa Casa (Basilica of the Holy House) in Loreto, Italy. Catholics believe that it enshrines the authentic house, where Mary lived, where she heard the Annunciation … Continue reading →

Posted in Black Madonna | Tagged alchemy, archetypes, black, Black Madonna, blackness, butterfly, cave, Dark goddess, death, feminine, fire, goddess, hearth, Hestia, kitchen, Loreto, Mary, medlar, Persephone, psyche, rebirth, sacred, Solothurn, Soul, symbolism, symbols, the underworld, tomb, vessel, womb | 10 Comments

The Nymphs

Posted on December 30, 2020 by Symbol Reader

I. To Nereids “O lovely-faced and pure nymphs,daughters of Nereus, lord of the deep,at the bottom of the seayou frolic and dance,fifty maidens revel in the waves, maidens riding on the backs of Tritons,delighting in animal shapes,bodies nurtured by the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Ancient Greece, Apollo, archetypes, beekeeping, Calypso, cave, Cave of the Nymphs, Chariklo, childbirth, Chiron, civilization, Crete, Daphnis, Delphi, Dionysos, divination, Dryads, fertility, Greek mythology, healing, Hera, Hermes, Ida, Ithaca, Maia, marriage, mountain, mythology, Naiades, Nereids, nostos, numpholeptos, nymphs, Oceanids, Odyssey, oracle, Pan, Pleiades, Porphyry, psyche, Soul, symbolism, symbols, Syrinx, water, Zeus | 3 Comments

Persephone, Lady of the Mysteries

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Symbol Reader

“Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.” William Blake, Proverbs of Hell Is one even allowed to talk about the gods of the underworld? For Rudolf Otto, a twentieth-century theologian, the holy or the numinous … Continue reading →

Posted in Persephone, Uncategorized | Tagged abaton, analytical psychology, archetypes, C.G. Jung, Cancer, Capricorn, Carl Jung, cave, dark moon, Demeter, Demetra George, Dionysos, dismemberment, Eleusinian Mysteries, Eleusis, grain, Greek mythology, mysteries, myth, mythology, Orpheus, Orphism, Persephone, Peter Kingsley, pomegranate, Porphyry, religion, sacred, solstitial gate, sphinx, symbolism, symbols, well, Zeus | 13 Comments

The Secrets of the Odyssey (10): Return to Ithaca through the Cave of the Nymphs

Posted on July 14, 2014 by Symbol Reader

Venus the Morning Star (Venus Phosphorus – Light-Bringer) “When on the East the sheer bright star arose that tells of coming Dawn, the ship made landfall and came up islandward in the dim of night. Phorkys, the old sea baron, … Continue reading →