…and I’m finding it quite fascinating. The book I just read is called man and his symbols, it is an assembly of essays about common symbols that appear throughout mankind’s history, art, dreams, etc. Although I found it hard to read at first it grew on me and now that I’ve finished it I’m considering reading it again to see how much more I can get out of it on a second read. It has helped me to interpret some recent dreams that were bothering me, and also inspired me to investigate an image I created recently. It is the symbolism in this image that will be the main point of this post. I am amazed that I made this image before I came in contact with the lecture that inspired me to start learning about the Mayan calendar systems and put me on my current quest for philosophical knowledge.
So, Here’s the image:
Okay, the thumbnail above is a bit hard to see, but it links to the full size image. It is a huge square because I have a large wide-screen monitor that I can rotate. I make my backgrounds so that they can be centered on the screen and look right for whichever screen orientation I’m using. This one is 1680px square, it fits my screen perfectly, and it will look right centered on any resolution from 800×600 all the way through 1680×1050, or 1600×1200. Enough about the image’s usefulness, lets look at the symbols that are found in this thing and see what my unconscious self was trying to tell me.
First off, this image is essentially a mandala, it has a granite background in the shape of a large square, and a circular object in its center. I believe the square represents the material world or ‘reality’ as seen through the number four. Four directions, four states of matter, four seasons, etc. The fact that is is square, as opposed to rectangular or other four sided shape, means that it represents a balanced harmony. I have covered this square with granite, throughout history stone has been linked with the divine. It has been used for such things as tombstones, altars, carvings, landmarks for holy places, and many other divinely linked ideals. It has also been attributed with being the dwelling place of spirits, both earthly and divine, as well as occasionally thought of as having its own spirit. I think that covering this square with rock instead of the usual holy symbols that one would find on a mandala is an interesting and important action. I believe that it causes the entire square to become a representation of the divinity of nature, or the secret soul of the universe. The universal consciousness, as seen when viewed without the lenses provided by so many religions, it is the clean blank slate of balanced natural energies that is the truly divine force in nature.
Moving on to the circular object in the center of this image. It is made up of three separate circles, the outermost is a dark ring that connects it to, but separates the rest from, the stone square. The second ring is a brighter metallic ring, it is covered in pits and crevices and it appears to be the ring that connects the outer ring to the innermost ring. The innermost circle is actually a large stone disk, formed from black granite and connected to the outer square by three power wires which seem to supply the power to light the kanji glyph recessed into its center. The entirety of this object represents the human psyche, or at least the human psyche as it pertains to me.
I think the dark ring around the outside represents the unconscious, or ’shadow’ portion of the psyche. It appears to be made of a rubbery substance and seems to be insulating the inner circles from the outer square, or the rest of the psyche from the raw energy of the universe. This layer of unconscious insulation allows our psyche to to exist separately from the consciousness of the rest of the universe, though it’s dark nature also leaves us feeling alone, disconnected, and and somehow wrong or filled with ’sinful’ desires. I think the appearance of this ring is also important as it appears to be under the second ring, almost as if it were a secret realm underneath the other levels of this image.
The next ring is our ego, our learned personality, it is who we think we are. It is pitted with the scars of psychic wounds and past mistakes. This piece is bolted to the dark ring with six slightly rusty bolts, and though it appears to be made of metal it has virtually no shine. I think this represents the bindings between the ego and the shadow, and possibly that the ego is best off in balance with the shadow instead of trying to shine with glory. If you draw lines connecting the bolts you can see that they form two triangles, perfectly overlapped and centered within the psyche. These two triangles are a common representation of the two halves of the unconscious self, the anima and the animus, when they are in balance. In this case the triangles are crossing the center disk, and fastening the conscious ego to the unconscious shadow. It is interesting to note that in this image the two triangles are not found in their normal orientation, which would have one pointing up and one pointing down, but are turned in a ninety degree angle from normal. This places the points in positions that point right and left instead of up and down. To me this signifies that the balance is to be found between reason and intuition, conscious and subconscious, the classic symbolic meanings of right and left.
The innermost circle in this image is a dark granite disk, representing what Jung referred to as ’self’ and I believe others have called spirit, soul, true self, etc. Once again this is made of stone, showing the divinity of the human soul or our connection to the creative force of the universe. However, this is a dark stone, covered in shadow and in direct contrast with the light stone of that in the universal background of this image. It represents the solitude and separation that humans suffer from having an ego and a shadow that separates our consciousness from the universal consciousness that is the natural material universe.
If we look closer, at the kanji glyph and the wires we can see that there is a way around this separation, this kanji is the symbol of ‘enlightenment’, as in ‘becoming aware’. We can see that it is sunk into the center of our ’self’, and in this image it is glowing with a softly mottled light. The power for this inner light is obviously coming through the connections that reach from within the divine part of our ’self’ to something within the divine part of nature. I believe the glyph is sunken into the stone of self to show that enlightenment comes from within, while the connecting wires show that the energy that can power enlightenment comes from the same energy that powers all of our universe. To put it more simply, we need to reconnect to the creative force of the universe, or connect our own consciousness with the universal consciousness, to enable our own enlightenment.
The wires that connect the inner self to the outer universe are three in number, according to Jung three usually represented something that was incomplete or missing an element, I believe that this connection is exactly what is missing from the current human experience of life. We have grown completely away from not only nature, but our spiritual connections in general. If the outer square represents the divinity of the material world or the consciousness of the universe then we have definitely lost our connections to it, the shadow and the ego have worked to remove us from that and leave us in our own little bubbles of miscommunication and solitary fears. I think the message here is that we need to reconnect the deepest parts of our innermost selves with the consciousness or soul of the universe, a quest which is today incomplete.
The lighting of the glyph also stands out to me, it is a mottled purple, or violet glow. The color itself is seen as the color of people seeking spiritual fulfillment, and is associated with the crown, or seventh, chakra. It is red, which is fiery temper, danger, life’s blood, and lust, balanced with blue, which is cool, calm, open sky, and spiritual growth. Once again we are seeing a balance of opposites, which when combined with the mottled appearance caused by the mingling of shadow and light within enlightenment we can see that spiritual bliss is a balancing of all of the opposing forces within the human psyche, while connecting back to the creative forces of the universe.
Well, I’m done with this for now, though I do hope to get back to it with a comparison of these symbols with some other belief systems that I have been looking at recently. I think it will be interesting to compare this with cultural meaning such as Mayan, Bhuddist, and possibly even Christian. I’m hoping for comments on this piece, in particular I would like to see references to opposing idea, or even supporting ideas, but I am open to just about anything at this point. 
