The Book of Symbols 6...

Flower

The ancient Greek counterpart to Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers, was named Chloris, meaning "green." Zephyr, the gentle west wind, enamored of Chloris, pursued her, and as he overtook the maiden, flowers spilled from the lips, and they were subsequently married.

Mayan whistle depicting most probably Xochiquetzal

or "Flower Feather," goddess of love, erotic pleasure

and spiritual transformation. Ceramic, ca. 550-850,

Jaina Island, Campeche, Mexico.

Flowers are the hallmark of springs. There is no surer sign of renewal in the world, of awakening and rebirth. The young, budding shoots of violets, snowdrops and crocuses push up even through the impacted earth and late snows of winter's end. Delicate, fragrant cherry and apple blossoms signal anticipated fruits; other flowers are themselves vegetation's radiant, culminating bloom. Their ephemeral blossoms have associated flowers with all the brilliant forms that quickly fade. The transitory soul, for example. Or Kore, the divine maiden who, picking flowers, was herself plucked by Hades and carried to the underworld to become its queen. Or the lovely, short-lived mythic youths of antiquity: Narcissus, who wasted away, spellbound by his own reflection; Hyacinthus, felled by Apollo's misguided arrow; Adonis, for whom the briefly petalled anemone memorializes the blood of his mortal wound from a boar. Yet flowers are, in truth, remarkably resilient. Their aggressive roots invade rough, inauspicious soil. They assert their bright growth on the rocky banks of highways and out of asphalt cracks. Wildflowers gloriously latch onto walls and railings and fill jungles, deserts, and woods. Rare species of orchid thrive in swamps.

Possibly a figure of one of the Graces, Thalia (bloom)

evokes springs; virginal, feminine beauty and all that is

 lovely and fleeting. Primavera, painting from a 

bedroom of Villa Arianna, 89 B.C.E.-79 C.E., Stabiae (near

Pompeii),Italy.

All of nature is enticed into the flower's proliferation. The stamen forms golden pollen grains that produce male gametes. These sperms are transferred to the stigma or tip of the pistil and burrow down through the pistil to ovules at its swollen base. In the fusion of sperm cell and ovule a seed is formed. Most flowering plants are hermaphroditic, but some have either a stamen or a pistil. Cross-pollination of flowers is provided by bees, wasps, butterflies and moths, birds, bats and other mammals, water, and the fructifying wind: "There's April in the west wind and daffodils," said the poet John Masefield. Color, fragrance and sweet, golden nectar in the cup of the flower invite and guide the many pollen carriers.

Is anything more sensual than the flowers? Its green sepals forming the calyx, its shy buds unfurling to reveal a corolla of velvety petals, its heady perfumes, the edible and cosmetic essences of rose, jasmine, lily, freesia? In Pampore, India, the lavender-blue crocus sativus that flowers for just two weeks in October is plucked at dawn and the stigmas carefully removed to make saffron, that costliest spice with which the Hindu deities Krishna and Radha were traditionally anointed (Bharadwaj, 36-7). Flowers are incorporated into ritual and sacrament the world over, as emblems of eros, beauty, perfection, purity, fertility, joy, and resurrection. The simplest form of the flower with a radial shape is a natural mandala linking the flower symbolically with the wheel and eternal, cosmic movement around a mystic and orienting center. The flower's hermaphroditic qualities suggest the joining of opposites in self-becoming. Visible above yet rooted in the invisible below, the flower symbolically bridges the manifest and unseen worlds, realms of latency and potentiality and those of active generation. The poppy, for example, associated with the grain goddess Demeter, combines bright, many-hued blooms with narcotic properties inducing painlessness, slumber or death. The four-petalled "blue flower" of alchemy signifies both the darkness of the prima materia, as the shadowy, unknown self and the quadratic, unifying totality of the lapis.

Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers. Primavera,

detail, by Sandro Botticelli, tempera on panel, ca. 1482,

Italy.

We flourish in concert with the flower. It is an emblem of the hidden "seeding-place" within ourselves, supported by multiple, participating energies. The Holy Spirit makes itself known in the secret redolence of flowers. The lush rose intimates the presence of Aphrodite and the Virgin Mary. In Buddhism, the lotus signifies enlightenment and the "golden flower" of Chinese alchemy the achievement of the "diamond body" through the interior circulation of light. A European alchemical text describes the synthesis of the four elements, the hoped for unity in multiplicity of nature and psyche as the goal of the opus: It is " as if it were a meadow decked with colours and sweet- smelling flowers of divers kinds, which were conceived in the earth by the dew of heaven" (CW 14:389).  

~Bella

The Book of Symbols 5...

Kiss

Over the doorjamb of the womb-chamber of the Konārak temple in Southern India, and among the images in niches on its facade, are small, erotic sculptures of ardent couples, or mithuni. Their flowing bodies melt together in a passionate embrace, evoking the sexual play of both gods and mortals, and, paradoxically, the release from it in the union of the self and Supreme Self within a single being. Rapturously, the figures kiss. And here, under the arched brows and interlocked noses of two who are one, the lips merge in a state of bliss that knows nothing of a within or without, and in which there is no longer separation, desire or grief (Brhadaranyaka Upanishad IV:3:21; ARAS, 7Ao.044). 

A kiss of passionate longing may be shunned on the 

chaste movie screens of contemporary India, but it is

openly depicted in the sacred temple sculpture of the 

13th century. Sandstone, Surya Temple, Konārak, 

Orissa, India. 

Behind sealed lips, we protect one of the most personal spaces of the body; we part our lips to draw in the breath of inspiration or to speak intimate feelings into the beloved's ear, finally surrendering the private self in the loving convergence of one's own lips with the lips of the other. Even when not romantic, the kiss implies affection, blessing, recognition and reconciliation. Thus the psalmist intones, "Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other" (Psalm 85:10). The comparable climax of the Muslim hajj to the Grand Mosque in Mecca is the pilgrim's kiss upon the Black Stone of the Kaaba, an act of reverence first performed by Muhammad. In these religious traditions, kissing is a ceremonial act, a sign of the bond between kin, or respect to holy relics, prayer shawls or altars or homage to one's ruler (kissing his feet) or to one's conqueror (licking the dust beneath his feet). With the bridal kiss, Western culture bridged the sacred and the romantic, although such European fairy tales as "Sleeping Beauty" or "Snow White" mark the approach of true love by a kiss that awakens the soul, rather than kindles sexual libido. 

Through the identity and meaning of many of the 

characters in Bronzino's mannerist allegory are still

debated, this detail is unequivocally of Venus and her 

adolescent son Cupid engaged in an amorous, 

incestuous kiss. Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time, detail, 

oil on panel, 1544-5, Italy.

However, the sensuous, unseemly kiss between Bronzino's Cupid and Venus, his mother-  slipping the tip of the tongue into her son's lips- portrays a sly, incestuous carnality. To some cultures, the public display of kissing is considered scandalous, for its signals the opening act of coitus, and casual, devouring tongue-kissing has even suggested cannibalism. Jung, in fact, disagreeing with Freud that all libido was sexual, noted the pleasure infants take in sucking and observed that "kissing derives much more from nutrition than from sexuality" (CW 5:652). The empty "air-kisses" of celebrities or the shallow "spit-swapping" of teenagers can seem to cancel out any encounter between two halves of a single soul that we can still feel in the secular sculpture of Rodin's The Kiss. The songbirds whose crossed wings surrounded Aengus, the Celtic god of love, deteriorated into the banal "x's" that close sentimental love letters. Modern Valentines- whose puckering smooches even use kisses to veil hostility- anticipate the chilling intentions of such phrases as "kiss off" (to dismiss a stale lover), "kiss up" (to display shameless obsequiousness) and "kiss and tell" (to betray matters shared in confidence). More stunning is the submissive "kiss of shame" upon the devil's anus (or that of his masked proxy). Here, the disciple kisses the "nether-lips" at the opposite end of the body than the mouth, a practice of medieval Satanists at their black Sabbaths, which often inverted conventional ritual. Similarly, the "kiss of death," such as Judas kissing Jesus, reverses, in the perfidious intimacy of betrayal, all that is signified by the kiss of love. The kiss can also convey a different kind of reversal. Francis of Assisi placed squarely on the lips of a fearsome leper the "kiss of peace," communicating a spiritual love that drew the most reviled being of the age into the saint's most personal interior. 

~Bella

The Book of Symbols 4...

Shell

From time immemorial, we have held conch shells to our ears to hear the surflike sound - the eternal tides of life that engrave their markings upon us. The human ear resembles a shell, gathering vibrations of air in its outer cavity called the "conch," and directing them through the winding passages of its shell-like inner ear as sound, symbolically evoking an interior listening. "He who has ears to hear let him hear," said Jesus of the hidden meaning of his parables. Images of the Buddha with elongated ears suggest that listening with the inner ear includes keeping silent, meditating on what has been said and opening ourselves to the resonance of the source. 

Shell-shaped and oversized, the ear of the Grand

Buddha suggests wise listening. Detail from a carved

cliff face, 713 C.E., Leshan, China

We have also raised the conch shell to our lips, trumpeting as gods of the sea might have, for the sound of the conch was said to lull the tumultuous waves of the sea.That the conch comes from the deep associates it with the underworld. The Mayan deity Quetzalcoatl mythically descends to Mictlan, the abode of the skeletons, as a dead conch that has fallen silent, so that worms may bore into him in order that he come to life again inside (Moctezuma, 138-9).

Figure, perhaps a deity, emerging from a shell,

showing whorls a growth. Effigy vase, painted

terra-cotta, Mayan, 600-800 C.E.

Shells are mysterious sea treasure, in beautiful shapes, sometimes symmetrical, often ridged and whorled, reflecting stages of growth. The recesses of a shell are reminiscent of the sacred spiral, labyrinth, and center. The intimation of marine life is also an allusion to the hidden life of our interior world, sometimes surfacing, leaving its evidence in consciousness, sometimes not. A shell is an exoskeleton serving to protect the vulnerable creature that dwells within. But shells are also delicate, easily broken, not the tough carapace of defensiveness. We speak of coming out of, or going into, one's "shell," suggesting a gradual, tenuous exposure to the world, or of retreat from it, in privacy, refuge or withdrawal.

As if incised by the waters of eternity- a stone conch 

shell. Aztec, ca. 1486-1502, Temple Mayor, Mexico.

The shape and depth of some shells, the lush pink of their coloring, brings to mind the female vulva, associating the shell with the allure and mystery of the feminine, and with incarnation and fertility. Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love (to the Roman Venus), materializing out of the ocean's foam, is borne ashore on a seashell. In his celebrated painting, Odilon Redon depicts the open, vulva-shaped shell, its soft opalescence infusing the sky and the goddess lying, yet standing, asleep and yet waking, as in a vision. We adorn ourselves with shells, remembering the goddess and her beauty, her seductions. The shell and its evocation of the uterine salt-sea, the moon, tidal ebb, and flow imparts a sense of birth and rebirth; early Christian art made the empty shell an image of the soul's departure to immortality. 

The Birth of Venus, by Odilon Redon, oil on canvas,

ca. 1912, France. 

~Bella

Little note: I won't be able to post on Friday so I'm going to post tomorrow instead. Sorry about that, but you'll still get a post :) 

The Book of Symbols 3...

Pomegranate

Pomegranate Seed, by Elizabeth J. Milleker, 

gouache and sumi-ink painting, 2003, United States

A maiden kneeling on half a pomegranate holds her cloak in a gesture that signifies epiphany. The presence of winged Eros at her shoulder denotes that the one who discloses herself is divine- here, the goddess Persephone (Kerényi, 144). The smooth, hard, rosy shell of the pome granate, or "seedy apple," crowned by a golden aureole, opens up to reveal blood-red fruit and numerous seeds, the basis for the pomegranate's mythic dynamism throughout the ancient Mediterranean. According to a Phrygian myth, a fertilized stone phallus engendered a hermaphroditic being, Agditis, who, castrated by the gods, became the goddess Cybele (Daniélou 90); from the blood of the castration sprang the first pomegranate tree. The priests of Attis, a castrated son-lover of the earth goddess carried pomegranates in their hands or wore them on their heads in wreaths (Kerényi, 136). Along with the fig and apple, the pomegranate is associated with the underworld and the mysteries of the death, conception and rebirth of vegetation, personified by divine young men or maidens. The pomegranate's seeds and blood-colored flesh were emblematic of this eternal renewal of the life of the world in which the human initiate might also participate. The pomegranate was sacred to Hades, who seized Persephone, the daughter of the grain goddess Demeter, into the land of the dead. When Demeter in grief withheld the grain from the earth, Zeus agreed to have Persephone returned to her mother. But Hades gave the maiden "a single sweet pomegranate seed," which meant that she must spend a third of the year with him as his spouse and the Queen of the Dead (ibid, 133). The pomegranate played a part in the Eleusinian Mysteries, honoring the two goddess as the feminine source and continuity of life, and also in the phallic, Dionysian Holoa festival and the Thesmophoria. In some rites, the initiate was allowed to eat nothing except this seeds of the pomegranate; in others, the eating of this fruit was forbidden. As a votive offering to the subterranean aspect of the Great Goddess in particular, the pomegranate suggests, in the psychological sense, the bitter depths and majestic forces of the unconscious encountered in the taking of the fertile, dreadful seeds of the self. 

A girl with Eros kneeling on a half-pomegranate, 

terra-cotta, ca. 400-323 B.C.E., Greece.

~Bella

The Book of Symbols 2...

Fog

This monumental Japanese painting- it is 260 feet long- invites us into the world of fog. Studying it from right to left, in the tradition of Japanese scroll viewing, we move from forbidding blackness through a somber middle ground to delicate tracery and translucency to what finally appears to be hazy light. The symbolism of fog is just as variable.

The darkest images arose in Scandinavia, where Niflheim, a mythical wasteland of freezing mist and fog populated by monsters, also included the realm of the dead (Orchard, 118). "[F]og in my throat" was Robert Browning's metaphor for approaching death (in Prospice). Fog may arise from the work of demonic beings in fairy tales or surround Shakespear's witches, who comment on the "fog and filthy air" (Macbeth 1.1.16). In Asian legend, it may represent strange moods in which spirits appear (Biedermann, 139). Widely, through, fog is taken to represent confusion, uncertainty, indefiniteness, a state between the real and the unreal. Here it is opposed to the brilliant light of certainty.


While fog seems vaporous, we feel it, because it is formed by the condensation of very small water droplets around microscopic dust particles in the air. Fog limits horizontal vision. Less dense, it is called haze or mist. Unlike clouds, its base is on or near the ground and its symbolism is associated not with the sky, but with the earth realm. Sometimes the fog is seen as unfolding, blanketing. T.S.Eliot imagined fog as a yellow cat that "rubs its back upon the window pane" and finally "curled once about the house and fell asleep" (Eliot, 4 ). Contemporary poet Nan Hunt refers to fog as, "The mummy wrap of soft white/ that hints of a resurrection."

Fog is not favorable to direct action. Ships, planes, and fast-moving humans are delayed or stopped. A slower, more cautious awareness arises. Symbolically, the world of clear rational thought gives way to dreaminess, ambiguity, a kind of knowing that is more nuanced, less absolute. This knowing is perhaps more valued in the East than in the West. Zen sage Keizan Zenji puts it :

Though clear waters range to the vast

blue autumn sky. How can they compare with 

the hazy moon on a spring night!

Most people want to have pure clarity,

But sweep as you will, you cannot empty 

the mind.

Maezumi, iii

Fog is the medium in which the elements of a classic Japanese nature study are obscured, and materialize. Forest, Senju Hiroshi, fusuma (sling door) painting. 2001. 

~Bella