Symbol Watcher

Wicked Green

In alchemical texts, the green lion eating the sunflower conveys the experience of being frustrated because our wild desires (the green lion) are overtaking our conscious attitude (the sun/sunflower). Most of us know this experience as a depression.

Last night I went to see the Broadway hit “Wicked.” As many of you already know, the musical is based on Gregory Maguire’s revisionist take on L. Frank Baum’s classic, ”The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” So green plays prominently in the production. There are costumes in all shades of green. There are trips to the Emerald City, a place some people have interpreted as standing for American capitalism and the move away from gold to paper money. And of course there’s Elphaba, the “Wicked” witch herself.

Elphaba was born with green skin, an anatomical fact which instantly ostracizes her from her parents and most everyone she meets. After all, we like our plants and our money green, but not our people. Historian Jack Tressider reminds us, “Satan himself is sometimes represented as green. Perhaps this stems from the fact that green is not the skin-colour of healthy normality.”

I haven’t been able to find out why Satan is sometimes pictured in green. So, if you know the origins, please post. More often than not, green has positive symbolic associations — renewal, fertility, hope, and most recently, ecology. Green is even a sacred color in Islam, standing for the Prophet and divine providence.

But green is also the color of envy and jealousy. Perhaps these associations — given his jealousy of Christ — are the reasons why Satan is portrayed in green. I don’t know.

As for Elphaba, I’ve read some hypotheses that her green skin symbolizes the jealousy she feels toward her wheelchair-bound sister because her sister was her parents’ favorite. I disagree. Elphaba was born with green skin — before she ever had a chance to develop any envy or jealousy toward anyone. She even used her magical powers to cure her sister’s paralysis.

I’m wondering if Elphaba’s green skin isn’t more of a harbinger of her fate, a sign that no matter what her actual intentions or actions, she was destined to be labeled “wicked,” a sister of the green-skinned devil himself.

Are there any “Wicked” fans out there? What do you think is the symbolic meaning of Elphaba’s green skin?

– Writeye

Proof of an After, After This?

Fourth-century Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi awoke from dream about butterflies wondering if he was a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi or Zhuangzi dreaming he was a butterfly. Jung's thinking about the afterlife resonates Zhaungzi's philosopnhy that "life is limited but the amount of things to know is unlimited." Source: Wikipedia.

Jung's ideas about the purpose of an afterlife resonate with the thinking of 4th-century philosopher Zhaungzi: life is limited but the amount of things to know is unlimited. This drawing illustrates Zhuangzi's experience of dreaming he was a butterfly. When he woke up, he wondered if he was a butterfly who dreamt he was Zhuangzi or Zhuangzi who dreamt he was a butterfly. Source: Wikipedia.

Andrea and Bruce Leininger are the parents of James Leininger, a little boy who they believe was a WWII pilot in a previous life. The Leiningers have chronicled their family’s experience with the paranormal in two Good Morning America interviews (most recently on Monday) and in the book Soul Survivor: The Reincarnation of a World War II Fighter Pilot.

According to the Leiningers, just a couple weeks after son James turned two, he began having nightmares about a plane crash. His visions were filled with such specific details about the incident — including the type of aircraft and damage sustained – that the Leiningers began researching the details to see if James’ dream visions could have been someone else’s reality. The Leiningers are convinced their son’s nightmares were the experiences of James M. Huston, Jr., a 21-year-old fighter pilot who was killed when his plane was shot down by the Japanese as he flew over Iwo Jima on March 3, 1945.

I’m not at all skeptical about the validity of the Leiningers experience, or the conclusion of reincarnation they drew from it. I’m sure many of us who have taken care of very young children have had experiences where those children mention the names of dead people they couldn’t know anything about, or tell us the name or sex of children yet to be born or even conceived.

One day when I was playing with my nieces, two-year-old Meghan suddenly turned to an open bedroom door, pointed, and yelled “Grandma.” I asked her if she saw grandma and she said yes, even though there wasn’t anyone standing there. When I asked which grandma she saw, she couldn’t tell me. One of them, my mother, has been dead for 30 years. Still, I could tell Meghan really “saw” one of her grandmas in that doorway.

I believe very young children possess a unique ability to peer over to the other side. After all, it was not long ago that they themselves were “not of this world.” Their consciousness hasn’t been narrowed yet by ego concerns and the demands of this earthly life. Departed souls know small children are a doorway through which they can reconnect with this plane of existence and, in James Huston’s case, take care of unfinished business.

I’ve always thought there might be some sort of life after death, including reincarnation. Between my own experiences and others I’ve heard about, I can’t rule out the possibility of an afterlife just because it hasn’t been scientifically proven.

Two things struck me about the Leininger’s story. First, when James started talking to a therapist who believed in reincarnation, the nightmares became much less frequent. Second, James’ father had an intuitive sense that, “[Huston] came back because he wasn’t finished with something.”

I think we’d be wise to at least entertain the idea that, because Huston died suddenly and violently, his soul could not rest until he came to grips with the trauma of his death. Huston needed some ”talk therapy,” if you will. And through James, he was able to get it.

In his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung provides a thought-provoking hypothesis as to why the dead communicate with the living. ”People have the idea that the dead know far more than we, for Christian doctrine teaches that in the hereafter we shall ‘see face to face.’ Apparently, however, the souls of the dead ‘know’ only what they knew at the moment of death, and nothing beyond that. Hence their endeavor to penetrate into life in order to share in the knowledge of men. . . . It seems to me as if they were dependent on the living for receiving answers to their questions, that is, on those who have survived them and exist in a world of change . . .”

Jung says the dead are in a space without time and a time without space — eternity — where nothing changes. But we humans exist on a plane ruled by the passing of time and the evolution that comes with it. As such, we develop; we gain knowledge we didn’t have before — knowledge the dead lack since they are at a still point.

Given this hypothesis, it’s possible that Huston wasn’t reincarnated in James, but called out to James for help because he could not come to grips with his sudden, traumatic end unless he gained greater understanding about that end.

However, Jung didn’t rule out the possibility of reincarnation. “I could well imagine that I might have lived in former centuries and there encountered questions I was not yet able to answer; that I had to be born again because I had not fulfilled the task that was given to me. When I die, my deeds will follow along with me — that is how I imagine it.”

Jung’s hypothesis on life after death, including reincarnation and karma, centered around a need for departed souls to fill in the gaps of the spiritual education they received on earth. It seems to me that Huston’s demands on the Leininger family to help him find answers support this.

– Writeye

Symbol Brief — Clothes

If we're washing our clothes in our dreams, we may be attempting to clean our persona. If we're buying clothes, it may symbolize that we're tyring to use our psychic energy, or force of will, to change an aspect of our persona.

Most of us have different types of clothes to fit the different roles we play. If we're washing clothes in our dreams, we may be trying to clean up one aspect of our persona. If we're buying clothes, it may symbolize that we're trying to use our psychic energy, or force of will, to change one role, or aspect, of our persona.

Iconic fashion designer Edith Head once said, “You can have anything you want in life if you dress for it.” While I don’t think Head’s sentiment is true for most of us, I do think it serves as a reminder that we humans place a lot more value on clothes than simple utilitarian protection from the elements.

Clothes have always said something about who we are and where we fit into society. The most embellished attire and richest fabrics are, even to this day, worn mostly by those with the greatest power and money. Crowns and other ornate headdresses are usually reserved for royalty and tribal chieftains.

It takes us only a second or two to scan someone’s clothing and overall appearance and make a judgement about where that person stands on the socio-economic ladder. Clothes have been a status marker since we donned the first animal hide.

With that kind of collective importance ingrained in us, it’s no wonder clothing appears prominently in our dreams. From a psychological perspective, clothes often stand for our persona — that mask we decide to show the outside world. When we’re dressing or undressing in our dreams, we’re often changing personas.

To discover exactly what our unconscious is trying to tell us, we need to look at what type of clothes we’re taking on and off. What are our associations with these type of clothes? Who might normally wear them in conscious life? Are these clothes the type our father or mother wore to work? Are they the clothes of a person in history or current culture that we admire? Are they clothes we wore when we were much younger (perhaps pointing to a regressive attitude we need to let go of or a childlike creativity and wonderment we need to embrace)?

Which persona are we trying to adopt or shed in our dream and why?

If we keep in mind that dreams are, by and large, compensating for some conscious attitude that is out of balance with our true Self, then the dream may be trying to show us we need to shed — or adopt — the persona aspects the clothes represent in order to achieve greater inner harmony.

In her book, Awakening Woman Dreams and Individuation, Jungian analyst Nancy Qualls-Corbett tells us about a dream her analysand “Leila” had in which her mother is instructing her to put on layer after layer of clothing, criticizing Leila every step of the way.: “In the dream there are layers and layers of persona issues which mother has commanded her daughter to wear . . . Some are hidden away, out of sight . . . all is a mess and belongs to Mother, a sick persona where the mask is rigidly stuck.”

Fortunately for Leila, she grew out of needing to adopt the personas her mother thrust upon her. She soon developed her own style of dream dress that corresponded to her burgeoning individuality in waking life.

– Writeye

The Squaring of the Circle

In my previous two blogs, I talked about the circle representing the whole of the universe, all that is heavenly and spiritual. I also said the square symbolizes earthbound, physical reality. Given these symbolic backdrops, it makes sense that an image which brings these two geometric shapes together in equal measure (i.e., the squaring of the circle) would be illustrating humankind’s desire to achieve balance and harmony among the opposites of existence. (For an example, see the drawing below, which accompanies last Friday’s blog.)

To help me better understand the psychic purpose behind the image, I’m turning once again to the insight Jung provides in The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious: “The squaring of the circle is one of the many archetypal motifs which form the basic patterns of our dreams and fantasies but it is distinguished by the fact that it is one of the most important of them from the functional point of view. Indeed, it could even be called the archetype of wholeness.”

The circle and the square are geometric and symbolic opposites. So when our psyches bring the two shapes together in such a way that they inhabit an equal area, we are trying to reconcile all that is seemingly at odds within us — spiritual and material, light and dark, male and female, inferior and superior functions, etc.

Jung tells us these mandalas occur when nature is trying to heal a divide. “The fact that images of this kind have under certain circumstances a considerable therapeutic effect on their authors is empirically proved and also readily understandable, in that they often represent very bold attempts to see and put together apparently irreconcilable opposites and bridge over apparently hopeless splits. Even the mere attempt in this direction usually has a healing effect, but only when it is done spontaneously. Nothing can be expected from an artificial repetition or a deliberate imitation of such images.” (Excerpted from The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious.)

I think the last part of Jung’s statement is particularly important. I take it to mean that we can’t use force of will to sit down and consciously think through and draw out what we’d like our “Self”-reflective mandalas to look like. Nature, as she always does, will provide the images to us when she feels we are in need and ready to receive them — either through active imagination in our waking hours or in our dreams during sleep.

– Writeye

Mandala Symbolism

After some internal struggle, Jung's analysand/artist drew this picture, indicating that she was experiencing a greater understanding of her Self. Jung says, "Here the rainbow-coloured radiation of the mandala begins again for the first time, and from then on was maintained for over ten years . . ."

After a period of internal struggle, Jung's analysand/artist drew this picture, indicating that she had reached a greater understanding of her Self. "Here the rainbow-coloured radiation of the mandala begins again for the first time, and from then on was maintained for over ten years . . .," says Jung. Notice that a square resides inside the circle. This "squaring of the circle" has its own symbolic significance. I'll talk about that in my next blog.

Today, I’ll start right off the bat with an excerpt from Jung’s work, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Vol. 9): “The Sanskrit word mandala means ’circle.’ It is the Indian term for the circles drawn in religious rituals. . . . The best and most significant mandalas are found in the sphere of Tibetan Buddhism. . . . A mandala of this sort is known in ritual usage as a yantra, an instrument of contemplation. It is meant to aid concentration by narrowing down the psychic field of vision and restricting it to the centre. Usually the mandala contains three circles painted in black or dark blue. They are meant to shut out the outside and hold the inside together.”

As I said in Monday’s blog, the square, with its corners and sides and stops and starts, is all about earthly life and time. In contrast, a circle has no beginning or end. It’s the shape of the planets and the sun and the moon. The circle speaks to us of heaven and spirituality, and of a wholeness that encompasses the entire universe.

The all-inclusive aspect of the circle is why the imagery found in mandalas is so complex and striking. Through mandalas we attempt to express our glimpses into what is really the unknowable and undefinable expanse and depth of being.

As Jung worked with the contents of the unconscious, he noticed how often these circular images occured in the dreams and drawings of himself and his analysands. “It is not without importance for us to appreciate the high value set upon the mandala, for it accords very well with the paramount significance of individual mandala symbols which are characterized by the same qualities of a — so to speak — ‘metaphysical’ nature. Unless everything deceives us, they signify nothing less than a psychic centre of the personality not to be identified with the ego. I have observed these processes and their products for close on thirty years on the basis of very extensive material drawn from my own experience.” (Excerpt from Jung’s work Psychology and Alchemy, Vol. 12.)

The consistent experience of manadalas led Jung to theorize that the circle is a symbol for the individual Self. In Jungian terminology, the Self is always capitalized because it refers to the circumference of the individual psyche. As such, it contains all that is conscious and unconscious to the individual, as well as the individual’s relationship to the greater whole of the universe.

So, Jung tells us, when manadalas erupt in our dreams and drawings it is, “. . . at such times when psychic equilibrium is disturbed or when a thought cannot be found and must be sought for, because it is not contained in holy doctrine.” (Again, from Jung’s work Psychology and Alchemy, Vol. 12.)

In Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Jung provides a very straightforward list of elements commonly found in mandalas:

Circular, spherical or egg-shaped formation.
The circle is elaborated into a flower (rose, lotus) or a wheel.
A centre expressed by a sun, star, or cross, usually with four, eight or twelve rays.
The circles, spheres, and cruciform figures are often represented in rotation (swastika*).
The circle is represented by a snake coiled about a centre, either ring-shaped (uroboros) or spiral (Orphic egg).
Squaring of the circle, taking the form of a circle in a square or vice versa.
Castle, city and courtyard (temenos) motifs, quadratic or circular.
Eye (pupil and iris)
Besides the tetradic figures (and multiples of four), there are also triadic and pentadic ones, though these are much rarer.

I highly recommend the two books I’ve referenced today — The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious and Psychology and Alchemy – if you’d like to learn more about mandalas as symbols for the Self. In each work, Jung chronicles the journey of a patient struggling through the process of individuation (i.e., “the process where a person becomes a separate, indivisible unity or whole”).

In “Archetypes” the patient is a 55-year-old woman who uses her extensive artistic talent and active imagination techniques to draw the unconscious content that came bubbling to the surface. The drawings, interpreted by Jung, are beautiful and fascinating examples of how mandala symbolism can present itself in order to guide someone along her journey toward wholeness.

“Psychology” gives us a detailed examination of how mandala symbolism sprang up in the dreams of a young man who had an aptitude for science. Although this series lacks the visual impact of the woman’s drawings, I found it very helpful to read how Jung analyzed dream content. He brought to my attention the subtle ways in which mandalas and other symbols of wholeness can present themselves in our dreams.

– Writeye

*Please note the swastika was originally a positive symbol of regenerative power before it was contorted by the Nazi Party.

My Dream Attic: Not What I Expected

My rendering of the wooden floor tile in my dream. Although there are many elements which speak of wholeness in this graphic, it is not a mandala. I'll explain the differences and provide Jung's characteristics for a mandala in a blog later this week.

I can recall only a handful of dreams I’ve had in which a graphic pattern was a central symbol. But I had one late last week and I’ve been trying to make sense of it for days.

The dream is very long so, for the sake of electronic brevity, here’s a shortened version:

I am in the living room of my “home” (not where I reside in conscious life). I see the dark turquoise paint has begun to peel off my living room wall. It’s rolling neatly down to the floor, revealing the white drywall underneath. I realize the paint is peeling because there’s a leak somewhere; water is dripping down the back of the wall.

Now I’ve gone up to the attic to find out what part of the ceiling is leaking. I am surprised at how large the attic is. It’s actually a very wide, long hallway. Nothing is stored in the attic, but I can see the opening to another room at the far end. I can’t see how large the room is or what’s in it.

I look down at the floor. It’s made of a beautiful, rich wood — like cedar or redwood or teak. The wood is cut into square tiles that repeat throughout the entire space. The walls are made of the same rich wood but they are cut in long planks that run on a diagonal from floor to ceiling.

I wonder why the workers who built the house went to such great pains to build the attic with such quality and detail. I look up and see an open sky light. Then I see a second one that’s open but covered with a screen. I look to my left and see that a portion of the upper part of the wall is completely open. I realize the attic has been open all this time, but I didn’t know it. I think of winter time and the attic being open to the cold and I wonder if it’s made the living areas of the house colder.

I look at the floor again. The wood is wet from the rain, but I realize it’s the kind of wood that is made to withstand the elements. I understand the leak in my living room is not coming from the attic.

Now I’m standing on the outside of my house. I look up very high above my head and see water streaming down from the roof line. The wood is not of the same high quality as the wood in my attic, so the rain has rotted it through. I know this is where the leak is coming from.

Since this is a blog and not a book, I’m going to focus on the symbolism and interpretation of the middle part of the dream: my journey through the attic. When I think of an attic, I think of a place where we store things from our past that we rarely use but that we may want to keep for sentimental or reference reasons, such as family heirlooms or old paperwork. So in dream symbolism, I associate an attic as my psyche’s repository for my individual life experiences.

At first, I couldn’t understand why there weren’t any objects there — only the wood-laden walls and floors and the sky-lit roof. Then I realized my attic being empty is a comment on me feeling that I don’t have any life experiences that are hidden from view. Either because of my own candor or the candor of others, my ups and downs are well known among the people closest to me. It’s all quite open and exposed to the outside.

I suppose anyone who’s gone through any sort of self-induced disclosure or public prying knows what it’s like to have an empty attic. For me, discovering this open dream attic forces me to ask myself: have the harsh feelings and cold assumptions of the outside world (winter) caused me to become a bit of a hermit, to withdraw and distance myself from other people (have my experiences made the living areas of my house colder)? As I thought about this part of the dream, I teared up and became very sad because I know the answer is yes.

So at the same time I’m beginning to realize how my open-book life has affected my relationships, the dream also points out that I have the inner strength to withstand what the outside world brings in. There’s no reason to stop. I need to keep moving along my journey. This is the comment my dream makes through the symbolism of the wooden floor tiles and walls.

My dream attic screams movement. Its proportion is that of a very wide and long hallway — a passageway to that room at the far end. The wall planks slant forward, not straight up and down or back. The wood tiles are a paradox in that their design both points to the center yet repeats out ahead of me to create the entire expanse of floor.

In Man and His Symbols, Aniela Jaffé tells us, “The square is a symbol of earthbound matter, of the body and reality.” The square relates to physical space, the four directions. In some circumstances it can also refer to the four functions of consciousness — thought, feeling, intuition and sensation. It’s a shape of balance. It’s a shape that comments on earthly existence and our relationship to it, in it. The square is the here and now of this life.

The two lines that form an X speak to me of symbiotic movement to and from the center, to and from the four corners (the directions I take my life and the functions of consciousness I utilize to carry me in those directions). This center point represents the balance that is possible for me to achieve within myself and therefore within this world if I can manage to bring these disparate aspects together.

The triangles perform double duty to me. Each acts as a directional device pointing to the center. But each also seems to represent a certain element of my psyche. A triangle pointing up is a male symbol and a triangle pointing down is a female symbol. The triangle on the right says something to me about consciousness and the one on the left reminds me of what is within myself that is shadow and unconscious. So it seems the triangles are showing me that I must also strive to incorporate these aspects of myself, to bring them together, in balance, at the center.

What also struck me about these tiles is that the square and the triangle shapes are each doubled within the tile. There is a square inside a square. There are the triangles created by the two intersecting lines and then the triangles within each of those four quadrants. I’m not sure, but perhaps this is to emphasize the importance of the task I have in front of me, and/or to reassure me that I have the power (times 2 maybe?) to accomplish it. I’m not sure.

What I do know is the strength, richness and intricacy of the wood in my attic touched me and I’m grateful I was given the dream.

Please feel free to post any thoughts you have on the dream I’ve shared with you or on any dream you’ve had where a graphic element has had special meaning for you.

– Writeye

Symbol Watcher

Wicked Green

Proof of an After, After This?

Symbol Brief — Clothes

The Squaring of the Circle

Mandala Symbolism

My Dream Attic: Not What I Expected

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