On the Life of the Symbol
To close your eyes is to see. In the dream state, the altered state, or even in the everyday mundane, the symbol emerges—laden with ambiguous meaning, carrying its own psychic charge, and living its own life as if autonomously from our body-minds. The symbol—from symballein in ancient Greek—means "to join." Unlike a sign, which refers to a single thing (often lost in infinite chains of deferral, eventually failing in precision or clarity), a symbol unites multiple images and associations into one cohesive semiotic entity that feels eerily alive and relevant. It is simultaneously objective and subjective, both self-contained and open to interpretation.
Thus, a symbolic "key" is significantly richer than a figurative key. The symbolic “flower” holds far more compound meaning than a bloom. A monkey in a field may simply be a monkey—but a monkey appearing in waking dreams may be an omen.
When symbols emerge, they take on a life of their own, weaving their patterns and influence into everyday life—into the fabric of one’s biography. During a trance, when a monkey prince arrives in a chariot within a Medieval, perhaps Mughal, scene, only to transform into a human prince, this is quite likely an omen of an imminent shift in personal values and ethics. And when hot pink flowers appear in one’s throat, they could be announcing the outset of psychic regeneration. If you’re ushered by a tribe in a boat along a river, leading you to a shore with a round-shaped dwelling—well, congratulations, you’ve likely just undergone an initiation.
It’s always a “could” and “possibly” because symbols are not codified and cannot be catalogued or mathematized. Rather, symbols are highly context-sensitive. Of course, there are the universal symbols and motifs which appear in the mythologies, arts, and religions of disparate human civilizations and act like the vocabulary of our collective unconscious, but just like words, letters of the alphabet, sonorities or pitches, they allow for countless expressions and nuances. Just like us, symbols are inherently multiple and mutable.
Whether the symbol produces the event– i.e. it is itself imbued with vitality– or reflects the active dynamics constellated in the psyche that, in turn, produce the event– a psychoid pattern– the practical ends remain the same. Whether the symbol possesses agency or merely serves up the image of the psyche’s agency, that’s enough material to ascribe a sense of life to it either way, as long as we recognize agency and emergence—not metabolism or multiplication—as the true blueprint of life. And we should, for what is life, if it is inert—unable to affect or be affected, to act and to be acted upon?
This is neither animism nor panpsychism. Rather, this is us in our New Materialist garbs, coming to terms with ‘things’ like Capitalism, AI, viruses, and algorithms as active agents, and consequently with lives, or flows of their own. In this extended ontological democracy, the boundaries between the tangible and the abstract dissolve, and everything that can manifest materially is matter. The same holds true for dreams, myths, rituals, and symbols—they, too, become matter imbued with agency, casting their shadows into our lived experience.
So when a symbol emerges, I invite you to approach it in the same manner James Hillman suggests we approach the dream image, for the symbol and the archetypal image are of the same category. Resist the urge to “thing” the symbol, or to immediately analyze it; instead, linger with it. Enter into an aesthetic relationship with it—befriend it as you would befriend a sentient being. Approach it with curiosity, as if welcoming a visitor from the beyond, which is nothing other than the hidden layers of the here and now. Make space for the symbol, and allow it to dwell comfortably in your waking consciousness. Observe where it wants to go and where it intends to take you along with “them.”
We owe ourselves an apology for taking life too literally. Befriending symbols offers us an escape—a line of flight—from the tyranny of dualism. When you next encounter a symbol, grant yourself a window of weirdness, even madness, and step into a dialogue with it. Symbols might have far more to reveal than the rigid narratives we call ego consciousness.
