Symbol Watcher

Martyred around 303 A.D., St. Romanus of Caesarea spoke out in favor of the church. His tongue was subsequently removed on the order of Emperor Galerius.

Baring teeth and protruding tongues have long been displays of aggression and dominance in the human and animal kingdoms.

Along with their self-protective power, teeth can also symbolize vitality because they are crucial in helping us break down and consume food. Teeth are also associated with sexual potency. Various species bite their mates during sex.

In dreams, loosing teeth or needing to clean ones teeth could point to a need for the dreamer to examine power issues in his or her life.  Perhaps the dreamer’s sexual energy is waning for some reason. The dreamer could also be loosing power in some other area of life — perhaps in some personal, non-sexual relationship, or in a work relationship. Other symbols in the dream should help narrow down the interpretation. 

If the dreamer is very domineering and perhaps even destructive in some aspect of his or her waking life, a dream of loosing teeth may show the necessity to find a more balanced outer attitude when dealing with others. Conversely, maybe the dreamer is not usually aggressive enough in conscious life and a dream of having an inadequate number of teeth is a comment on needing to take the necessary steps to ensure a nourishing and fulfilling life. 

Brushing teeth in a dream may be showing us that we need to clean up some aspect of the agressive/defensive or sexual side of our psyche.

Tongues, when extended, symbolize aggression right along with teeth. But a stuck-out tongue also communicates defiance — just ask any teenager whose ever stuck her tongue out at her brother or sister, or even her parents. Tongues are also associated with flames because both are red and moving and consuming.  Tongues are crucial to our ability to form the sounds that become the language we need to communicate. So if we have a dream in which our tongue has been cut out, what force within or without is stifling our ability to speak? If we find ourselves with a forked tongue, we may need to ask ourselves if we are communicating in a harmful, deceitful way. 

– Writeye

May 12th, 2009 | Tags: teeth symbolism, tongue symbolism | Category: Dreams, Jungian Psychology, Symbol Brief |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Leave a comment

Video Link: Face Transplant Recipient Talks About Being Thankful and Forgiving

I’ve been following the story of Connie Culp with some fascination and much admiration. She is the 47-year-old woman who underwent the first total face transplant in America. She lost her face five years ago when her husband blew it away with a gun shot blast.

Connie’s story has captured me because she has lived through — on a physical level — one of the more painful psychological experiences a person can have: Connie has lost her face.

From our earliest childhood, we are taught the importance of adapting to the larger society, of fitting in.  Jung reminds us in his work, The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious (Volume 7), that we adjust our individuality to conform to the various segments of society with which we’re associated: our families,  employers, ethnic and cultural groups, social networks, religious affiliations, etc. “This arbitrary segment of collective psyche — often fashioned with considerable pains — I have called the persona. The term persona is really a very appropriate expression for this, for originally it meant the mask once worn by actors to indicate the role they played.  . . . Fundamentally the persona is nothing real: it is a compromise between individual and society as to what a man should appear to be.”

I am so struck by Connie and her story. Especially in Western culture, we are judged so severely for our looks. We change our dress and hair (especially women) to fit in to the particular social situation. Studies have shown we are more receptive to attractive people on first meeting than people we deem unattractive. As humans, we even have an embedded blue print for attractiveness that has to do with the symmetry of our facial features. In an interview that aired this morning (I’ve included an excerpt above), Connie tells Good Morning America’s Diane Sawyer a wonderful story of how she turned an encounter with a little girl who was frightened by her looks into a learning experience for both the child and the girl’s father.

What happens to us when our personas are stripped away? When we are cast out because we are no longer the “compromise between individual and society as to what a man should appear to be”?

Some of us are cast out because of something we did that the group finds unacceptable and some of us are cast out because we are victims of someone else’s negative projections, misunderstandings or out-and-out anger. I’ve experienced both and Connie has certainly experienced the latter in one of the most painful ways I can imagine.

Jung tells us that we still need our various personas as tools to function effectively in a collective world, but he stresses that it is unwise to identify too much with any one mask because if we lose that mask, it may be a fall from which we won’t be able to recover.

It seems to me this is a lesson Connie has learned well and is trying to teach the rest of us. Whenever we are stripped of one of our masks, it can give us the hard-earned gift of coming into closer contact with our core individuality, if we’re willing to let go of the who who is no longer.

As Connie pointed out to the little girl in the grocery store, her face is not who she is.  It seems to me that Connie’s wisdom is in her ability to let go of her old identity, to be grateful for and make the most of the  new life she has been given and forgive her husband for the pain he caused her.  

– Writeye

May 8th, 2009 | Tags: Connie Culp, face transplant recipient, persona | Category: Current Events, Jungian Psychology |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Leave a comment

I’ve been having one of those mornings when I haven’t been able to decide what I should do today. I feel so many responsibilities staring me in the face and they’re all running through my brain simultaneously. I want to write and I’d like to do some research to see what type of freelance and part-time writing opportunities are out there. Then there’s my cat-fur laden carpet that needs to be vacuumed, my food-splotched kitchen floor that needs to be mopped and my allergy-aggravating dusty furniture that needs to be cleaned.  It’s all been calling my name, all at once.

Incapable of making a decision, I picked up a book I started a couple weeks ago.  For me, the mystery of books is that I always seem to find some information or insight I need in my life right then and there, even though I’m not necessarily looking for it in the particular book I’m reading.  And so it went this morning, when, in his book Pathways to Bliss, Joseph Campbell taught me the following: “All life has drudgery to it.  . . . In Zen, however, even while you’re washing the dishes, that’s a meditation, that’s an act of life. It’s not a chore . . . Sometimes the drudgery itself can become part of the hero deed. The point is not to get stuck in the drudgery but to use it to free you.  . . . When you know, from the heart in the middle, this is when you bring the factor of love in. As long as the dishes aren’t it, you’re just trapped in the chore. When you love the dishes and you think about what they mean in your life, when they’re your family’s food, sustenance, and all, then it’s all transformed into metaphor and you’re free.”

After I read Campbell’s words, I realized I need to practice moving through my day with an inner balance, not letting myself feel split because I’ve tagged some things that require my attention ”chores.” Cat hair and dust in high enough amounts are irritating whether you’re an allergy sufferer or not. If I begin to think of vaccuming and dusting as “metaphor” for keeping my family healthy and more comfortable, then the tasks become demonstrations of love and kindness and not dull duties. I never looked at housework that way before (making meals, yes, but housework, no).

When I’m ready to take a break from writing today, I’m going to try grabbing the vacuum with a little more gladness in my heart.  

– Writeye

May 7th, 2009 | Tags: housework as metaphor, Zen philosophy of finding joy in all aspects life | Category: Books, Jungian Psychology |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Leave a comment

Nichols reminds us that sustained candlelight is achieved through living. "One of the shutters of the Hermit's lamp is blood red, so that the light filtering through it is touched with the color of flesh-and-blood humanity -- tinged with the passion and compassion distilled from the experiences of a lifetime."

I’ve been sitting here in my home office this morning trying to decide what I want to post on my blog. As I was waiting for my brain fog to clear, I lit a candle. I go through a lot of candles. I need the light.

Often, when I’m meditating on a dream I had, or when I’m asking the tarot cards for some illumination, I’ll sit in front of a candle. During the times when I become relaxed and open enough to hear my inner voice, it seems as if the candle streams rays of light right to me.  

The ritual of lighting candles is found in most religious traditions. It’s a way for a universal phenomenon to be brought down to our small, individual, human level.  Advent candles, Eucharist candles, Menorahs, Diwali lamps, candles at Buddha’s feet . . . all lit in our attempt to achieve some spiritual enlightenment during our ongoing battle with the black void of ignorance.

I said earlier that I use Tarot cards as one tool to help me along in my journey. I think it’s interesting that there’s only one card among the major arcana of the deck that shows candlelight. It’s the Hermit. In her book, Jung and Tarot  An Archetypal Journey, Sallie Nichols talks about how candlelight stands as a symbol for both psychological and spiritual insight. “His lamp seems an apt symbol for the individual insight of the mystic.  . . . the Hermit offers us the possibility of individual illumination as a universal human potential, an experience not confined to canonized saints but available, in some degree, to all humankind. . . . He offers us that inward light whose golden flame alone dispels spiritual chaos and darkness.”

So if candlelight, from a psychological perspective, symbolizes spiritual insight gained through inner knowing, I think we’d be wise to take note if it shows up in our dreams.  Are we able to light the candle and keep it lit? Is someone helping us light it? Who is that person? Remember, the person might represent an aspect of ourselves. Is the candle protected from negative influences (both internal and external) such as wind and rain? If not, what blew it out?

– Writeye

May 5th, 2009 | Tags: candlelight symbolism, Hermit tarot card symbolism | Category: Jungian Psychology, Symbol Brief |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Leave a comment

From William Blake's collection of engraved prints, "Illustrations of the Book of Job," published 1826.

It’s very windy in my part of the world today.  The just-budding bushes and trees are knocking at my windows letting me know they’re awake and spring is moving in.

Wind is the world pushing forward, changing, ending and beginning. It stops long enough to pick up and carry off whatever is in its path — from the smallest dirt speck to the biggest ocean wave. It is both powerful and invisible.

Many ancient cultures revered the wind.  In ancient China the wind, called “feng,” was worshipped as a bird god.  In the Islamic tradition of ancient Islam, the wind was believed to help organize the chaos of the cosmos. Aztecs recognized the power of air by honoring the wind god, Ehecatl.

Jung reminded us that the Greek word “pneuma” means both wind and Holy Spirit.  In the Old Testament, God comes to Job in a whirlwind.  The Hebrew word “ruah,” which is feminine in gender, means wind, spirit and breath. 

In her book, Awakening Woman Dreams and Individuation, Jungian analyst Nancy Qualls-Corbett says, “Wind, in religious and mythological thought, is symbolic of creative spirit.  For example, four winds were evoked by Ezekiel to bring life to dry bones.  . . . Even prior to Christian writing, the sun god was thought to have a long tube connected to him like a phallus from which the procreative winds originated to disperse his fructifying rays.”

I’m in a bit of a winter mood, wondering if certain parts of my life are ever going to move forward again. So I’m thankful I heard the wind today. It reminded me that the winds of change do come, even though they come in their own time and at their own speed. I just have to be patient. 

– Writeye

March 29th, 2009 | Tags: wind symbolism | Category: Jungian Psychology, Symbol Brief |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Leave a comment