Tag Archives: love

Gender and the Cosmic Shift

Posted on April 18, 2021 by Symbol Reader

Natural History Museum of Bern, Switzerland is currently running an exhilarating, colourful exhibition called “Queer – Diversity is in our Nature.” The thesis of the curators seems to be that the animal kingdom is rich and diverse with numerous examples … Continue reading →

Posted in LGBTQ+ | Tagged androgyne, archetypes, Chaos, gender, gender bending, gender fluid, Greek myth, Hermaphroditus, identity, LGBT, love, Metamorphoses, nature, non-binary, Ovid, Plato, quantum entanglement, Salmacis, shifting identities, symbolism, symbols, Symposium | 7 Comments

Women’s Wisdom: Hildegard of Bingen

Posted on November 16, 2020 by Symbol Reader

Hildegard of Bingen, a twelfth-century German Benedictine abbess, was a mystic, a healer and an intellectual, whose achievements are hard to believe if we realize that she lived in the times, when women had very limited opportunities. In the so-called … Continue reading →

Posted in Hildegard of Bingen | Tagged alchemy, archetypes, Blue, canticles, Carl Jung, cosmic tree, egg, Gothic, green, High Middle Ages, Hildegard of Bingen, love, Middle Ages, mysticism, psyche, Soul, symbolism, symbols, universe, viriditas | 14 Comments

Stephen Mitchell on Love

Posted on August 18, 2016 by Symbol Reader

“…love is a fusion in the sun’s core. Love is a blurring of pronouns. Love is a subject and object. The difference between its presence and its absence is the difference between life and death.” Stephen Mitchell, “The Bone Clocks”

Posted in Quotations | Tagged love, quotes, Stephen Mitchell, The Bone Clocks | 2 Comments

Shakespeare and Goethe on Love: from Despair to Hope

Posted on February 14, 2016 by Symbol Reader

“She had a wildness in her eyes and into it I plunged.” Goethe, “Sorrows of Young Werther” In January 1778 Christel von Lassberg drowned herself in the river Ilm, the reason most probably being unrequited love. A copy of Goethe’s … Continue reading →

Posted in love, Uncategorized | Tagged bear, freezing, Goethe, hibernation, literature, love, passion, rebirth, regeneration, Romanticism, Shakespeare, spring, suffering, symbolism, symbols, trauma, Werther, Werther effect, winter, Winter's Tale | 10 Comments

The Blessings of Darkness and Light: Tribute to Khalil Gibran

Posted on January 8, 2016 by Symbol Reader

I.“Now I know that I am the sphere, and all life in rhythmic fragments moves within me.” “The reality of the other person is not in what he reveals to you, but in what he cannot reveal to you.” “Love … Continue reading →

Posted in Khalil Gibran, Uncategorized | Tagged "The Prophet", Almustafa, archetypes, Khalil Gibran, love, Mary Haskell, mysticism, pain, religion, spirituality, suffering, symbolism, symbols, the union of opposites | 20 Comments

On the Birth of Aphrodite

Posted on July 19, 2015 by Symbol Reader

If our exact time of place and birth is like a lodestar to interpreting our qualities and our destiny, it must make a lot of sense to look closely at the birth of Venus and relate what we find to … Continue reading →

Posted in Aphrodite/Venus | Tagged Ananke, Aphrodite, apple, archetypes, beauty, birth of Venus, blood, castration, Furies, Gaia, goddess, Greek myth, Greek mythology, harmony, Kronos, love, Ouranos, red, Rilke, rose, sexuality, symbolism, symbols, Titans, Uranus, Venus | 17 Comments

The Flames of Passion in Bellini’s “Norma”

Posted on March 15, 2015 by Symbol Reader

While learning Latin in high school, we were supposed to memorize parts of Julius Ceasar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War. The first sentence has been forever etched in my memory: “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, … Continue reading →

Posted in Norma | Tagged archetypes, Bellini, betrayal, Druids, emotions, ethics, love, Maria Callas, morality, music, Norma, opera, passion, religion, sacrifice, symbolism, symbols | 17 Comments

Awe-Inspiring Sculptures: “Night” by Michelangelo

Posted on November 8, 2014 by Symbol Reader

“Night” by Michelangelo was sculpted in white marble and put to rest on the tomb of Giuliano de Medici in San Lorenzo Church, Florence. Her attributes are an owl and a mask. I remember seeing the sculpture for the first time … Continue reading →

Posted in Sculpture, The Night | Tagged animus, art, Carl Gustav Jung, Chaos, Dark goddess, darkness, Greek myth, Greek mythology, love, Michelangelo, night, Nyx, sculpture, symbolism, symbols | 31 Comments

Eros and Thanatos

Posted on October 31, 2014 by Symbol Reader

I. The Way of the West “… each organism only lives through contact with other matter, assimilation, and contact with other life, which means assimilation of new vibrations, non-material. Each individual organism is vivified by intimate contact with fellow organisms: … Continue reading →

Posted in Quotations | Tagged archetypes, D.H. Lawrence, death, depth psychology, ego, illusion, love, symbolism, symbols, transformation | 17 Comments

Life’s Prose and Love’s Poetry: On Various Types of Relationships

Posted on April 5, 2014 by Symbol Reader

“Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is like a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world … Continue reading →