The Book of Symbols...

A year ago, I received a book of symbols that I still read to this day. It's a pretty big book, and I've learned a lot so far. I wanted to write what they say about "Bubble". It's the most interesting one that concerns me... So read below if you want to learn about the meaning of a bubble. 

"In physical reality, a bubble exists as a watery transparent object filled with air or gas. Its smooth, glassy surface mirrors rainbow colors of light, intermingling in fluid movement. The weightlessness of the bubble allows it to float freely on invisible currents of a gentle breeze, but its fragility soon causes it to burst and dissolve into mist. 

In contrast, the archetypal symbol of a bubble exists in the psyche beyond time and space. It constitutes an invisible reality imaged by mystics throughout the ages, around nothingness that is paradoxically the primordial source of all. The unseen forces within the archetypal bubble symbolize the oneness, which can be likened to the Tao as described in the Tao Te Ching ( ch. 25 ): 

There is something formless yet complete

That existed before heaven and earth.

How still! How empty!

Dependent on nothing, unchanging.

All-pervading. Unfailing.

One may think of it as the 

mother of all things under heaven.

I do not know its name, 

But I call it "Meaning."

If I had to give it a name,

I should call it "The Great."

Throughout history, the translucent bubble has inspired contemplation of the infinite and the eternal. In ancient Egypt, the Ba-soul, or ghost that appeared after death, flew in and out of the tomb as a weightless bubble. Like the circle or sphere, the globular roundness of the bubble connotes oneness, wholesome, totality, completion and spiritual perfection. The translucency of the bubble introduces, in addition, the numinosity, ethereality, and spirituality associated with the celestial light of heaven. The painting of Kukai, founder of the Shingon school of Buddhism, illustrates the golden luminosity of the spiritualized bubble. He is shown in a devotional posture, seated on a lotus floating in a luminous circle. This image symbolizes the beginning of spiritual awareness in the divine boy. The bubble-like enclosure of the figure excludes all reference to the world beyond and imparts a timeless, supernatural quality. 

In this 15th-century Japanese hanging scroll by an unknown artist, 

Kukai is depicted as the Divine Child in the bubble-like enclosure.

Detail of Kobo Daishi (Kukai) as a boy (Chigo Daishi). 

The bubble has a shadow side as well. For example, the bubble that bursts suggests an elusive idea or delusive scheme, denoting untrustworthiness and instability. Someone lacking cogent thought is called a "bubble head," and a burp or intestinal gas may be called a bubble. And bubbling evokes the image of a boiling witch's cauldron, the frightful brew of nightmares. 

There are more positive projections than negative ones for the elusive bubble, such as flying dreams, flying golden balls, drifting vessels and colorful balloons. A happy child is filled with bubbling effervescence and bubbling laughter. Bubbles carry children to lands of make-believe, where fairies and elves represent a life of enchantment. And the song that goes "I'm forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air" evokes a sense of lightness of spirit and a creative imaginative way of life. As the shining soap bubble soon dissolves into thin air the archetypal symbol of bubble conveys - beyond the certainty of the body's demise - the hope of the soul's eternal life. 

"Inside the Bubble of Love," detail from The Garden of Earth Delights, 

by Hieronymous Bosch,

oil-on-wood triptych, ca. 1504, the Netherlands.

"Symbols are the language of something invisible spoken in the visible world." - Gertrud von Le Fort.

~Bella