Symbol

Symbols – in the proper sense of this term – cannot be reduced to mere signals. Signals and symbols belong to two different universes of discourse: a signal is a part of the physical world of being; a symbol is a part of the human world of meaning. Signals are “operators”; symbols are “designators.” Signals, even when understood and used as such, have nevertheless a sort of physical or substantial being; symbols have only a functional value.
-- Ernst Cassirer
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Symbol in English Gematria equals 516:
* pyramid ☺ arthur ☺ infinite ☺
* shocking ☺ red dragon ☺ we are one
*
* clowns * commander * adeptus ♥ the archer *
* tunnel
* Remarkable	☺ Fantasy	☺ Celestial	☺ Compass	
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Mahmutćehajić ↓ Every symbol is a sign, not every sign a symbol. When a sign, accessible to reason, passes beyond individuality and so finitude, when it connects with Intellect, it becomes a symbol. Symbols are constant and universally valid relations between particular id contents and specific word or thing representations. The knowledge of these relations enables us to draw reliable inferences from conscious manifestations as to the unconscious material behind them, without without having first laboriously to reverse some measure which the ego has adopted in defense. The technique of translating symbols is a short cut to understanding [...]--- Anna FreudAnna Freud. 1937. The knowledge of the language of symbols has the same sort of value for the understanding of the id as mathematical formulae have for the solution of typical problems.--- Jacques Schnier"The Animals and Their Symbolic Meanings Ujamlal Kothari American Imago Vol. 19, No. 2 (SUMMER 1962), pp. 157-162 (6 pages) Published By: The Johns Hopkins University Press"A symbol is something that changes the state of the viewer --- it is an effector --- a differentiator. A symbol changes through an arrangement of differences. A symbol provides access to arrangements, and conduits energy. For example, the correct symbols may provide access to gangland or a military territory since a uniform is a symbol, the word uniform literally meaning a specific type of form to symbolise affiliation (Eiríksson).Self-published.Take a moment, now, to look at some nearby object: a cup, for instance. If you are like most people, you have probably always assumed that what you see is what is actually there. This assumption is so deeply ingrained in our ways of thinking that most of us never even realize it is an assumption. As you look at that cup, though, think about how the image you see is actually formed. First of all, light waves strike the cup; depending on the atomic structure of the cup’s surface, some of these waves are absorbed while others are reflected and scatter in all directions. Some of these reach your eyes, where they cause a set of chemical changes in your retina. These changes trigger cells in the optic nerve, which sends a pattern of electrical charges back through several different parts of the brain to the area at the upper back of your head, and there, by a process no one yet understands, the nerve messages are processed into the image of the cup that you actually see. We can only guess at the effects many of these stages have on the final image, but the one thing we can be sure of is that the cup and the image are not the same. The image is a representation of the cup in the mind’s terms, a kind of mental model. It is, in a word, a symbol.If at this point, you go from looking at the cup to talking or writing about it, you will find yourself even deeper into the world of symbols. Instead of the cup or your image of it, you will be dealing with sounds made by a voice or marks made with a pen. These sounds and marks have only the most arbitrary relationship to the thing they represent, so that if you travel to another part of the world you may have to use a completely different set of them to make yourself understood. By contrast, anyone with normal eyesight who looks at your cup will see an image very similar to the one you see.The thinking mind, the part of us which creates and uses language, deals principally with the world of our everyday experience; language takes its meaning from that world, from the things most people perceive in common. And yet, the attempt to talk about mystical experiences—which most people do not perceive—has to be made, if only to explain to others just what all the strange activities and experiences of the mystical path are about. In the process, mystics the world over have resorted to symbolism to hint at truths that cannot otherwise be expressed.The founders of the Cabalistic tradition turned to the same resource to express their insights. In the course of time, however, they (like the founders of several other traditions) realized that the link between the symbol and the experience could be made to work in more than one way: not only could spiritual experiences be communicated in symbolic terms, but the symbols thus created could then be used by other people to experience these things for themselves. Working with this realization, Cabalistic adepts explored the subtle links between one symbol and another, and between the symbol and the thing it represents. Once these were mastered, the hidden doors to the higher levels of human experience lay open.— John Michael Greer, «Paths of Wisdom»Art is to Symbol as Mary-Sophia is to Christ-Logos
=== Blood as a symbol ===
The third means of attraction is this—that as we see the sun draw up the mists from the earth to heaven, so the heart of our Lord Jesus Christ waxed hot as a fiery furnace upon the Cross, so fiercely burned the flame of love which He felt towards the whole world. Thus, with the heat of His love, from which nothing could be hidden, so intense was it—He drew the whole world to Himself. Never did our Lord Jesus Christ display such great love as when He suffered the torture of the Cross when He gave His life for us, and ;washed our sins with His precious Blood. 
— Meister Eckhart
== Rhizomata ==
* Order; Meaning; Symbolism; Sign; Icon; Iconography; Iconoclasm; Signs of the times
* Differentiator
* Occult symbol; Symbolic Order; Universal symbols; Religious symbol; National symbol
* Tradition; Occultism
* Symbolic animals
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Category:Art
Category:Concepts