The World of Symbols

The lost art of magic, religion, fairytales and mysticism

If there is a paradise on earth,
It is this, it is this, it is this”
― Amir Khusrau,

TO SPEAK USING SYMBOLS

The world operates in symbols. It is the way that humans learned to project their inner understandings, thoughts, and ideas into a visual form. Pictures and drawings later evolved into words and letters… they became symbols that could be pronounced and understood through auditory communication, no longer something that needed a visual form but rather a vocal form. One that is unseen.

Something changed when humans understood how to use their ability to hear to their advantage, to communicate abstract thoughts that could otherwise not be explained as concisely or clearly as before. We became masters of our reality. We used it as a tool to discriminate against others who could not understand our voice, our song—who in turn could not understand us. A tool that allowed us to form secret societies based on our symbolism, our words, our pronunciation, specific to culture and even religion. Words, when they are spoken, exist only for a split second. They disappear as quickly as they take form. They do not leave a trace. They exist outside of matter.

The ability to form a symbol is a person’s only influence over this world. It is something we are born with the ability to do. Babies can learn sign language earlier than they can learn to speak. The ability to place our influence on this world through communication is an innate desire. We can use it for good, or we can use it for bad, but without the ability to do so we burn with frustration as the world around us fails to acknowledge our existence. Whether it’s through music, art, or language —every form of manmade creation is expressed through symbols.

Ironically, symbols aren’t a manmade creation. How did humans learn to tie plants, animals, and objects to abstract thought? Surely these concepts existed without help, they slithered into our dreams, they occurred without intention. We tied the concept of fish to water, two tangible things, but we also began to use it to symbolize rebirth, fertility, and transformation. We connected the idea that life comes from water, and so water must symbolize something intangible… something greater than us. Something obscured —concealed.

SYMBOLS IN RELIGION

Similarly, religion also integrated the use of symbols. The star of David represents the relation between God and humans in Judaism, but can also be seen in Islam —accompanied by a crescent, symbolizing faith. A great example of the ways in which symbolism connects us despite cultural or religious differences. Symbols are timeless, and they present themselves in different yet consistent ways throughout history.

Christianity is another religion that relies on symbolism to convey important messages. Jesus only spoke in parables to the unbelieving because he wanted them to have to uncover meaning through an understanding in their heart. Another example of how symbols are more intuitive than they are logical. We do not consciously create symbols, they simply exist in our subconsciousness. Jesus knew that being able to uncover a symbol meant a deeper understanding of creation, one that could not be intentionally surfaced, but was given from God.

He says in Mathew 13:13-15

13 This is why I speak to them in parables:

“Though seeing, they do not see;
    though hearing, they do not hear or understand.

14 In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:

“‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
    you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
15 For this people’s heart has become calloused;
    they hardly hear with their ears,
    and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
    hear with their ears,
    understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.”

The cross is the most widely known symbol in Christianity, upon which Jesus Christ was crucified. The cross, while being a tangible concept of Christ’s death, symbolically represents his victory over sin and death through the ultimate sacrifice. But like I said before, these symbols occur in different yet consistent ways throughout history. The concept of sacrifice was not only presented in Christianity but also in Judaism as an animal (commonly a lamb) which was ritually slaughtered as an offering to God. Through the act of burning offerings, the Israelite conception of God moved away from something material and objective towards a more multidimensional universal being with less tangible realities —God himself became a symbol. Surprisingly enough the concept of sacrifice as an offering to God exists in Islam as well. Although in Christianity it is the most extreme in the sense that God himself came down in human form to fulfill the ultimate sacrifice as an act of love.  

Much of what Jesus does in the gospels is related to the symbols in the Torah. The sacrifice of the Passover lamb in the Torah is considered to be fulfilled by the death of Jesus in the gospels. As the blood of the Passover lamb was given to God as a sacrifice, in the last supper the breaking of bread symbolizes Christ’s body and the wine represents his blood as a sacrifice for sin.

Symbols exist all around us. They have existed since the dawn of time itself. They occur time and time again in our dreams. When societies didn’t have a complete understanding of God or religion, the sun was connected to a Supreme Deity. One could say that the need to relate symbols to grand ideas is alchemized through our desire for meaning.

Carl Jung wrote in his book Man and His Symbols

“A sense of a wider meaning to one’s existence is what raises a man beyond mere getting and spending. If he lacks this sense, he is lost and miserable.”

The existence of symbols, their significance, the feelings of something true and beautiful they stir inside us —cannot be formulated or intellectualized. Carl Jung stated, “For it is life itself that produces emotions and symbolic ideas.”

SYMBOLS IN FAIRYTALES

Man has always made a habit of storytelling through symbols. These stories take place in faraway realms, they deliver hope and faith through the triumph of evil. As Friedrich Max Muller put it — the “epidemic” of “incredible and impossible” matter in Märchen and myth must “possess some raison d’être.” ¹

Stories of speaking animals, wicked witches and innocent princesses, of kisses that wake the dead and love that surpasses the physical realm —fairytales hinge on metaphors that constitute a network of symbols and are constructed through imagery. The story being told can be interpreted in many different ways because they operate through code, none of which convey a meaning set in stone. Myths reveal that “metaphor rests on the intuition of logical connections between one domain and other domains in which [the metaphor] reintegrates it.”²

As stated previously, symbols are not entirely manmade. The reason fairytales can even exist is that we have some greater concept of magic and mysticism, which was never accepted or even formulated by our rational brain. These ideas exist simply because every human has an ingrained sense of things he has never truly seen occur. But where does that come from? Surely seeing is believing. Believing in mysticism, magic, religion and fairytales through symbols then, must require faith in the unseen. It must require, on the basis, an itch to ask “what if there is more to the world?”

We cannot question how these symbols came to be, we can only build and revolutionize the world through them. We can use them to create a deeper sense of wonder… that maybe something is lurking in the shadows, powerful forces ruling our lives that exist beyond matter, things we must overcome. Storytellers should not concern themselves with genesis. This is part of the process of trusting the mystery of the divine.

The myths that take possession of us, that grip our mind and influence it to create dreams, fantasies, and hallucinations —make us something greater than mere humans.

God is not external to anyone, but is present with all things, though they are ignorant he is so.

Plotinus

1. F. Max Müller, “Solar Myths,” The Nineteenth Century 18 (1885), 902.

2. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Le cru et le cuit (Paris: Plon, 1964), 345.