Tag Archives: religion

His Dark Materials

Posted on February 5, 2023 by Symbol Reader

Philip Pullman finished his trilogy of fantasy novels His Dark Materials in 2000. But I feel his epic has a lot to say about the symbolic portents of our times and the near future. I tremendously enjoyed the HBO/BBC adaptation … Continue reading →

Posted in His Dark Materials | Tagged Age of Aquarius, air, alchemy, alethiometer, archetypes, C.G. Jung, consciousness, creativity, daemon, daimon, Dust, freedom, Gnosticism, His Dark Materials, Milton, orthodoxy, Paradise Lost, Philip Pullman, psyche, religion, Soul, symbolism, symbolreader, symbols | 10 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

Black Madonna: An Icon of Mystery

Posted on December 30, 2021 by Symbol Reader

“There is a grave aura about many of the Black Virgins, an expression of utter solitude so intense that the child on her knees or in the embrace of her left arm seems strangely appended. She sits, solitary, weighted, at … Continue reading →

Posted in Black Madonna | Tagged alchemy, archetypes, black, Black Madonna, blackness, C.G. Jung, chaosorder, Christianity, creation, Dark Feminine, Dark Virgin, depth psychology, earth, enlightenment, feminine, God, goddess, matter, mysticism, nature, nigredo, religion, Soul, symbolism, symbols, transformation, transmutation, Trinity | 7 Comments

Reading The Red Book (37) – Seven Sermons to the Dead

Posted on October 24, 2021 by Symbol Reader

Seven Sermons to the Dead (Septem Sermones ad Mortuos) is a collection of seven Gnostic texts written and privately published by C. G. Jung in 1916, under the title Seven Sermons to the Dead, written by Basilides of Alexandria, the City … Continue reading →

Posted in The Red Book by C.G. Jung | Tagged Alexandria, archetypes, Atman, Basilides, C.G. Jung, Christianity, fullness, gnosis, Gnosticism, individuation, Jungian psychology, Liber Novus, nothingness, opposites, Philemon, pleroma, psyche, religion, Septem Sermones, Soul, symbolism, symbols, The Red Book | 7 Comments

Reading The Red Book (31)

Posted on February 26, 2021 by Symbol Reader

“Little good will come to you from outside. What will come to you lies within yourself. But what lies there!” C.G. Jung, The Red Book, chapter XVIII (Liber Secundus) Chapter XVIII of Liber Secundus is called The Three Prophecies. The … Continue reading →

Posted in The Red Book by C.G. Jung | Tagged analytical psychology, Aquarius, archetypes, C.G. Jung, Chaos, eternity, Liber Novus, magic, mysticism, opposites, prophecy, psyche, psychology, religion, Rudolf Steiner, science, Soul, symbolism, symbols, The Red Book, timeless, truth, unconscious, vision, War | 6 Comments

Reading The Red Book (22)

Posted on July 19, 2020 by Symbol Reader

We have reached chapter IX of Liber Secundus, entitled “Second Day.” God Izdubar (Gilgamesh) is resigned to dying; Jung, however, is determined not to let him perish. A thought occurs to him, as he watches Izdubar’s suffering: “And this speech … Continue reading →

Posted in The Red Book by C.G. Jung, Uncategorized | Tagged amulet, archetypes, C.G. Jung, Carl Gustav Jung, divinity, egg, fantasy, God, gods, imagination, Izdubar, Know thyself, Liber Novus, psyche, religion, science, Soul, symbols, The Red Book | 4 Comments

Symbolism of the Door

Posted on March 31, 2020 by Symbol Reader

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” V. Woolf, A Room of One’s Own My favourite master of symbolism, J.E. Cirlot … Continue reading →

Posted in The Door, Uncategorized | Tagged ancient Egypt, archetypes, Bachelard, door, doors, doorway, false door, Poetics of Space, religion, safety, security, shelter, symbolism, symbols, the new, threshold, torii | 7 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 Splendour of Córdoba

Posted on August 11, 2019 by Symbol Reader

“Córdoba is not a decadent town, one of those haughty cities languishing in its own past, in which life becomes stifled. It maintains its own elegant poise, made of the web of dreams and the substance of time itself. There … Continue reading →

Posted in Córdoba, Uncategorized | Tagged Andalusia, archetypes, Córdoba, history, Inquisition, Maimonides, Mezquita, Moors, mosque, Muslim Spain, Reconquista, religion, Renaissance, Spain, symbolism, symbols, Umayyads, Wallada | 10 Comments

Symbolism of the River

Posted on March 10, 2019 by Symbol Reader

“I do not know much about gods, but I think that the river is a strong brown god,” so begins the third of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. The divinity of rivers has been recognized by all mythologies since the beginning … Continue reading →