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Symbols of sexuality – 2. Deer hunt

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Here comes the second most classic symbol of sexuality – the Deer Hunt.

Heads up to everybody! From now on when you see a hunting scene, especially in the artworks from middle ages (especially, miniature paintings), do not be fooled. Many times it is not really about a hunting scene. Well, not in a sense that we generally understand it. It actually talks about the intercourse! Well, you can call it a different kind of hunting.

The subtle difference of this symbol is in its reference to qualities rather than an action – a hunter obviously stands for the male principle, which conquers the female principle in the form of a deer. The deer here symbolizes the feminine grace and shyness.

Click to decipher another symbols of sexuality
The cup and the spoon
The ax and the door

To put it in another way, this variation has more romantic air than the first one. While the cup-spoon makes direct reference to the act, this one talks more about feelings and emotions.

In fact, I ca’t get rid of my prejudice about this expression. In my native language there is a “teenagerish” expression that is a perfect sample (Jeyran ovuna cixmag). I shivered out of disgust every time I heard it. I literally hated that expression and found it very low. During my studies I was astonished to find out that this “lowness” was in fact a universal and classic symbol. I can’t say I like it now. Yet this was one of the very first things that made me wonder more about the dark alleys of our psyche and look for more similarities in the unconscious images and expressions.

Click to decipher another symbols of sexuality
The cup and the spoon
The ax and the door

Symbols of sexuality – 1. Cup and spoon

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The topic of this week is the Symbols of sexuality. During the week I’ll publish four very short, kind of fun posts, each dedicated to one symbol. The first symbol will be the Cup and spoon. I am most definitely not the one to pick this example as it comes from Russian and I don’t speak it well. But I assure you I understand this example quite well.

The Cup and Spoon is one of the classic symbols of sexual act. This is a common expression in spoken Russian and refers to a “romance with probable sexuality involved”. When one thinks hard about its meaning, it may not even come to mind. But this “folk” metaphor definitely pops up in casual talks (definitely in Russian). If it occurs in dreams, it has the same meaning. Because metaphoric expressions in our spoken language and dreams originate in the same “land”.

Click to decipher another symbols of sexuality
The deer hunt
The ax and the door

Now, back to the Chashka-Lojka (cup-spoon) – now wondering why this kind of cheesy expression has a sexual connotation? Funny enough, here is a very short answer – any object that is sharp and can penetrate obtains phallic nature in our psyche.  Any object that is affected by penetration or is recipient symbolizes female genital organs.

Here we’ve solved the mystery of Chashka-Lojka (cup and spoon) – the symbol of sexual act with the Chashka taking up a feminine and the lojka a masculine nature.

Click to decipher another symbols of sexuality
The deer hunt
The ax and the door

Lamb – Not Your Usual Animal

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What’s in there for me: An eye-opening fact that would make us think twice before making “religiously discriminating” statements. Here it goes – To our consciousness Lamb maybe only a household animal, but not for the unconscious. Just to scratch the surface, Lamb, at least for the descendants of Abrahamic religions, is a symbol of humility, willingness to surrender to higher power or higher order. It symbolizes acceptance of and repentance for shortcomings and malevolent deeds. The sacrifice of Lamb means to symbolically exterminate the aspects of human nature that have tendency to inflate to the point that may hurt others. For example, our anger, ego, jealousy, self-importance, among others. It is a mechanism of our psyche to keep our worldly attachments in control.

This post makes part of the post “The Secret Stories for Symbols“. Click the link to read more about the wonderfully secretive nature of the symbols. 

Full post starts here

Me and the Lamb

These days, when one talks about Lamb as sacrifice, automatically our mind associates it with Islam. Does this symbol really belong to Islam only? From what I found out, absolutely NO.

While in Argentina when I started these studies, one of the things I was surprised to find out was that one of the names of Christ was also The Lamb. He himself represents sacrifice in this case.

Lamb in religious symbolism together with symbols of Evangelists. Group of four elements is typical in religious depictions. Photo: Internet
The Lamb together with symbols of Evangelists. In general, group of four elements is typical in religious depictions. Photo: Internet

Currently I live in Rome and this place is just heaven for those interested in evolution of thought. Just by walking down the street one can learn so much by carefully observing monuments. This city is also home to the oldest catholic churches, which still carry old facade paintings. This is what I love about Rome. History is live here. Cut to the chase, about 4 blocks from my home there is an old church. Over the façade of this church there is an image of the Lamb right at Christ’s foot. After seeing this I started to inspect the facades of other churches. Interestingly, I found a handful of them with similar illustrations. So this has been a recurrent symbol.

The Secret Story of Lamb

True, The Lamb is almost a forgotten image in Christianity these days. However, I guess, everybody knows that it is a very living symbol in Islam. It is a symbol of Muslim holiday Eid-Mubarak. Again, it is a symbol of sacrifice. Also, Torah mandates Jews perform sacrificial ritual of Paschal Lamb on the eve of Pass Over (Pasqua).

To sum up, to our consciousness Lamb maybe only a household animal, but not for unconscious. Just to scratch the surface, Lamb, at least for the descendants of Abrahamic religions, is a symbol of humility, willingness to surrender to higher power or higher order. It symbolizes acceptance of and repentance for shortcomings and malevolent deeds. Sacrifice of Lamb means to symbolically exterminate the aspects of human nature that have tendency to inflate to the point that may hurt others. For example, our anger, ego, jealousy, self-importance, among others. It is a mechanism of our psyche to keep our worldly attachments in control.

Why such a bloody ritual? Pain in body makes soul suffer and suffering is fundamental for spiritual growth. Just like a famous expression goes: Light enters through wound.  That’s why normally religious rituals are violent and harsh.

This post makes part of the post “The Secret Stories for Symbols“. Click the link to read more about the nature of the symbols.

Secret stories of symbols

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What is in there for me: Awesome tips to those who take “spirituality thing” very seriously. These days it is cool and “spiritual” to meditate and do yoga to “attract good vibes”. That is true, serious dedication to meditation would ultimately lead to some deeper connection with inner self. Yet, it has some high prices to pay. I ask myself: Would I dedicate myself to it without supervision of some sort of guru? Absolutely, NO! Because that means embarking on an internal journey towards the dark depth of the unconscious, an unknown territory for us. Plus, we have no knowledge how to deal with powerful forces of the unconscious. This journey is potentially very dangerous for an untrained rational mind.  Especially, in modern times when we tend to deny anything that we can’t explain with help of the reasoning. Before opening up its healing aspects, the unconscious throws all the rocks, bugs, snakes, monsters on the path of the one who meditates. Only the most victorious ones get to drink the elixir of life. Just like in the story of Buddha, or in the tales of Sinbad, the most precious gems are kept in the deep wells where venomous snakes live. To get the gem, the Hero should kill the snakes first. If the language gets really weird now, I’d suggest that you go on reading the post to learn why.

Full post starts here

Signs Are Not Symbols

Our daily language is full of metaphors, symbols, logos, trademarks etc. But not all of them have the same power and impact over our psyche. Jungian psychoanalysis divides them into two generic groups – Signs and symbols. Which falls into which group? To describe very roughly, signs are man-made but symbols are produced spontaneously by the unconscious. How we decide which one is which? Here is the differentiating factor: Signs by themselves do not mean anything. They acquire a certain meaning due to deliberate use of that specific sign over an extensive period of time for a specific purpose. For example, when we see Golden arch of McDonalds, we know what it stands for. Other globally perfect examples would be Android, LG, Pantene, UNESCO etc. In other words, Signs are products of the conscious and used for a specific end or reason beyond which they do not express much.

Allusions to celestial spheres in Valentino piece. Dream motifs. Photo: Internet
Allusions to celestial spheres in Valentino piece. Dream motifs. Photo: Internet

On the contrary, symbols are produced by the unconscious and their meaning stays more less the same. Normally, they have more to their meanings than what we know about them. If we muse over them, we may get some vague sense about their meanings, but it will be impossible to fully decipher them. Their unconscious meanings have so many intertwined layers and far reaching connotation that it is almost impossible to exhaust with interpretation. They express what is inexpressible in words. They talk about the realities of our psyche in a dimension that logic can’t penetrate. They are the “letters of the alphabet” of the Unconscious and influence us on the unconscious level. This is the reason religions and moral doctrines resort to picture language. Those images transcend boundaries of duality and make logical explanation fail big time.

Faces of Symbols

Our instincts are psychical urges, like hunger, sex-drive, self-protection, fears, desires etc. But they have their own way of self-manifestation in the unconscious. These urges get personified and take a relatable shape in our psyche. So they have a living nature. The ogres, monsters, fairies, sirens, centaurs we read about in fairy tales, or falling, flying, life-regenerating breeze, deep waters, pregnancy (in case of men) and all sorts of bizarre dreams are not to be taken literally. These symbols are shared across humanity. Jung has called them “archetypes of collective unconscious”.

Their job is to kind of represent the processes happening in our soul in a highly symbolic form. But they are not produced randomly, without a purpose. They are kind of transmitters of traditional wisdom that lays in the unconscious. They call the consciousness to act upon the troubles going on in the emotional life of a person. Among other things, they talk about the psychological challenges of adaptation in different periods of human life. Going even further, they give hints about what expects us at the end of different paths. They pass this wisdom on to us in dramatized language of myths and fairy tales.

Power of Symbols

These symbols are no joke. Without doubt they underlie the patterns of our conscious behavior because they are pure manifestations of our life instincts.  Yet we fail to recognize them when we come across them in pictures, monuments, riddles, myths, fairy tales, dreams, religious texts, hallucinations etc. Because they are alien to logical thinking.

They are products of creative energies of the unconscious and possess enormous energy projected on certain images. This is why religious pictures and objects hold so much emotional charge for devotees.  Even though we do not understand their meanings, we feel that they hint to something hidden.  They pass their messages to us on a very deep level. They are in a sense numinous. They evoke deep, inexplicable feelings inside us like Mecca for Muslims, cross in Christians, idols for idolater etc. If recognized and integrated, the healing aspects of the unconscious manifest itself. Put in religious terms, the grace dawns upon. If not, they turn into repressed energies chasing one in form of hallucinations, morbid dreams, inexplicable sufferings, loss of interest in life until they drive one into pure madness and schizophrenia. If I put this in the language of our unsuspecting ancestors – one becomes possessed by daemon.

Yet their power lies in this enigmatic nature. Once explained logically, they lose that power of spell over our psyche. Just like Sun has lost its “God” image once explained with the help of science.

What are specifically those symbols and myths? Follow fashion posts to learn about them.

1. That wasn’t technically fire…what was it?…

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“The light was lit to illuminate the temple of soul”
“Prometheus stole fire from Gods and Zeus condemned him to a life of perpetual torture”.

The above examples do sound like total absurdity when we try to analyze them literally, don’t they? Talk about tricky and allegoric language of the unconscious!

This is the very first post and I am still not sure how to enter the topic. I’ve changed it million times already. Especially after second birth and months of breastfeeding, I think, some part of my brain has really shrunk. I think, before talking about unconscious, I should probably, talk about definitions ascribed to conscious. After all, that is the realm where we function in general. So, simplicity in mind, I’ll try my best.

Gucci bag featuring Unicorn. The Unicorn is symbol of spirit, which is associated with reasoning and intellect (Soul is feminine, receptive). Now, reasoning has a penetrating nature that's why in the Unconscious it is linked with masculinity. To rephrase it, in the depth of our psyche reasoning and masculinity are linked due to their penetrating nature. Photo: Gucci.com
Gucci bag featuring Unicorn. The Unicorn is symbol of spirit, which is associated with reasoning and intellect (Soul is feminine, receptive). Now, reasoning has a penetrating nature that’s why in the Unconscious it is linked with masculinity. To rephrase it, in the depth of our psyche reasoning and masculinity are linked due to their penetrating nature. Photo: Gucci.com

 

Evolution….Not a Joke

We humans, obviously, are the product of long, tedious journey of evolution. Nature has been polishing functionality of our body to meet our physical needs and capacity (which itself kept evolving along the way). That means the same evolution process has taken place in our psyche as well. It is a part that we do not see, however it is the very part that has been honed and shaped the most by the evolution process. Just like how a huge tree grows from a single seed, the consciousness has grown into its current state over countless years… Does it make sense? If it does, we’ve started on the right foot!

Prometheus is representation of acquisition of consciousness. Since the moment He stole fire, he became different. He was aware of his difference. He couldn't be like the rest of living things any more. So he was condemned to eternal punishment of being consciously different. On the other side, compulsive impulses rising from depth of psyche are always after him trying to swallow him back. Photo: Wikimedia
Prometheus is representation of acquisition of the consciousness. Since the moment He stole fire, he became different. He was aware of his difference. He couldn’t be like the rest of living things any more. So he was condemned to eternal punishment of being consciously different. On the other side, compulsive impulses rising from depth of psyche are always after him trying to swallow him back. Photo: Wikimedia

Here Came that Light – Conscious

Let’s dig a bit deeper. Way back in times of our ancestors some big change took place. Extremely slowly, yet surely – our grannies acquired a new skill – The Consciousness! In language of the unconscious he learned “a well-concealed secret of revengeful Gods”.  Thus “The Light illuminated the darkness of abyss”. In other words, reasoning shed light over the bottomless unconscious… Prometheus thus stole fire. Jung calls this painful and slow process “the Battle for Deliverance”. Just like how difficult it is to totally separate oneself from mother, separating itself from Great Mother (the unconscious) was the “mission impossible” for consciousness. It separated itself through a painful process. To make it worse, it had to fight hard against violent and compulsive impulses of the unconscious not to relapse. Or not fall into possession of one of them. In other words, He had to fight against “revengeful Gods” to keep this fire.

Now, let’s see why consciousness is symbolized this way and who are those revengeful gods? Once differentiated, The Conscoius – the New Hero became aware of himself just like a baby recognizes herself in the mirror for the first time. He was different and he became aware of this.

With it came a different mode of seeing and understanding things. His mode of thinking wasn’t vague and could control the train of thoughts. Also, his judgement was causal. For him everything had a cause and effect in a way that he understood. Thus, his mode of thinking was deductive, mathematical and calculated. He reasoned for the first time. Unlike predecessors, he rose above the free rein of instincts and felt, still very dimly, the capacity to control them. This new realm of psyche had its own small center, which we call Ego today. He was the intellect illuminating the dark mass of unconscious, the Great Mother.

Revengeful Underground Gods?…Seriously?

Here comes another question, who are those revengeful gods that condemned Prometheus to a life of eternal torture? They are our own instincts, urges, impulses, all the impetuous animalistic tendencies. They are our desires and fears that inhabit in the depth of our psyche. In the unconscious landscape they get personified just like in fairly tales and myths. They are living realities that are out of conscious control. They are capable of full manipulation of our mind. In a sense, they are creative powers of cosmos such as sexual desire, hunger drive, survival instincts etc.  But if experienced in destructive form, they turn into obsessive impulses chasing one to insanity. These are the cases they are experienced as wrathful Gods and underground frightful creatures. This battle has been one of the major themes of fairy tales, myths, monuments (Rome is full of it), paintings etc.

Here the Hero is the consciousness fighting against primordial Semi-Gods in shape of half snake-half human monsters, flame-breathing, many-headed dragons, wrathful and scary creatures, ogres, treacherous trolls, deceitful sirens etc. These dark forces persecute this new Hero each trying to assume total control. It would take this New Hero a very long time to learn how to tame and subdue dark aspects of these forces of psyche. Once subdued, Hero experiences the illuminating, spiritual and celestial aspects of those same Gods. Interestingly, during our lifetime, our consciousness repeats – in a fast pace – the evolution of conscious development.  That explains why toddlers up until five to six years can not tell difference between imagination and reality. At those ages the level of conscious development is still incipient and fragile.

Proportion of The Conscious – To be or not to be…

But this differentiation doesn’t mean that the “job” of Ego is over. Like any other acquired skill, there is always a danger to lose it. Relapsing back into the unconscious or “being swallowed by devouring monsters” is looming danger for each of us. However, too much separation of the consciousness is not good either as it will strip off that irrational, intuitional, “feeling” foundation upon which the Conscious has built its small kingdom and on which still nourishes and keeps its balance. The more separation, the greater the danger to be “possessed by daemon”. Meaning, the more danger to be associated with certain psychic forces that are already out of conscious control. So this Ego it is a bittersweet affair of mankind, which is too sweet to give up and too costly to keep in right proportion.

2. The Unconscious – the Great Mother

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Before reasoning jumps in, the unconscious readily presents tone of decision based on likes, dislikes, preferences, attitudes and biases formed through our previous memories.

These days I dream a lot about shoes. Not that I am a shoe addict (I am definitely not a shopaholic), but one day I keep dreaming that I wear a fancy, high-heel shoe, which fails me just at the first traffic light, next day I dream a bunch of loafers and espadrilles and I wonder whether I should wear them and which one. Now, I understand that if such dreams happen as a series, it is about something that really matters to me.  Also, I understand that these dreams are not about physical shoes, for in the unconscious different types of shoes would mean “different walks in life”. Rather than talking about shoes, the dream talks to me about the hesitations I am having right at that moment about which path I should choose and which ones I just can’t because of my life situation.

Design by Alexander McQueen. An example of what kind of feeling associations and connotations a basic object like shoe can obtain in unconscious. These are not mere shoes, they are manifestation of troubled mind possessed by morbid impulses.
Alien Heels – Design by Alexander McQueen. An example of what kind of feeling associations and connotations a basic object like shoe can obtain in the unconscious.
Photo: Internet

This is a very silly sample, but I think dream is the easiest way to make transition into the unconscious. Because dreams are our only direct contact with the unconscious, which talks to us through feeling associations. Down there everything is irrational. The heroes of the domain are feelings, emotions, instincts and urges that rule and decide everything, including our “rational” decisions.

Irrational “rationality”

To make my point, I’ll give some everyday examples. These examples are patterns of behavior, which we do repeatedly and mindlessly without giving much thought to how they happened.

Usually deep waters in dreams and visions represent unconscious. If water is dark or wavy, it is not a good sign.
Usually deep waters in dreams and visions represent the unconscious. If water is dark or wavy, it is not a good sign. Photo: Unsplash.com

For example, power of smell. When shopping, we tend to decide on a perfume that evokes some inexplicable warm and nostalgic memories. Over and over we return to give credit to our gut feelings and first impressions. Because after a long rational trial we realize they were right. Cases when our tongue pops out that most inappropriate thought that we were trying to hide a second ago. Many times when we do not like someone and block her at every opportunity. But when we want to judge our attitude, it becomes clear that our attitude has nothing to do with personality of that person. We do not like him/her just because she has something that we wish to have, or she reminds us someone we do not like.

The list may go on, this is just to show how “utterly irrational” motives form the basis for our “rational decisions”. These motives spring from deep down and act faster than our reasoning. Actually, they set the tone for our “rational” decisions. How?

It turns out, behind all these “machinations” is the mysterious unconscious, the master that cooks up all the moods, feelings, attitudes and prejudices which make up the “invisible base” for all the “rational decisions”.  Then the consciousness brags about “being free”.

The Unconscious – Mysterious Master

Below the threshold of the consciousness, our little tiny dwelling, where we keep our thoughts and ideas neat and organized, lies the unconsciousness.  In this ages old chaotic abode black is not black only and white is not white only anymore. Black is black and white at the same time. Duality of our worldly reality ceases to dictate life here, memories gain upper hand. They are lumped up together in vague shapes based on feeling associations (like in my dream – shoe is not only shoe, but representation of “walk” in broad sense). They prompt emotions, not reason. And memory is no joke.

Biologically we are wired to use impressions from previous memories as precursor to avoid dangers. This system has been in place for ages to guide us, animals with kind of complex emotional and feeling system. So, before reasoning jumps in, the unconscious readily presents tone of decision based on likes, dislikes, preferences, attitudes and biases formed through our previous memories.

The reasoning of consciousness is razor-sharp, is unicorn. However, its capacity is limited only to “reasonable facts”.  On the other hand, the unconscious has a further reach. It perceives and registers everything else that is irrational and cannot be reasoned or arrived at by reasoning. Yet is essential to how we think, perceive, behave and experience life. Besides, consciousness is a comparatively newly acquired skill. It has kind of specialized in analysis of cold facts. By now it should be pretty much clear why our emotions and feelings become ruling force behind our reasoned and “rational” decisions. Reasoning is the most precious treasure of humankind, no doubt about that. However, the unconscious is the container of ages old wisdom and germs of future life. It rules our lives in ways that is beyond our capacity to fully comprehend.

Our lives wrapped in rituals

Do we ever look at our lives and wonder how much we have surrounded our lives with rituals while boasting our rationality? They are so ingrained in our lives that we even do not realize it. Celebration of birth, adolescence, graduation, marriage, funeral etc. I am not even getting close to the most important holidays that as a rule are religious meanings of which we mostly do not understand.  Not to mention love and fame the Disney classics have harnessed just because they are based on fairy tales (the eternal stories of the unconscious). It is hard to accept that we are still busy with rudimentary play games of archaic man, but as it turns out we really are.

A bit further…

To dig a bit deeper, I am sure, like myself, there are many people who are just unable to give proper meaning through reasoning to obviously irrational language of religious texts. Especially, human-like personal Gods in Abrahamic religions. Where do they come from? From God? Then why God didn’t create just one prophet and one religion to save humanity from killing each other along the centuries in the name of sacred war?

Let it aside, when one reads lives and deeds of prophets, one realizes that they do not sound much different from schizophrenic hallucinations (judging by occidental medicinal lexicology coined by consciousness). I am referring to all envoys and saviors from Buddha to Jesus to Muhammad. So, maybe a change of perspective would solve this puzzle. Maybe their messages do not come from without, but spring from within, the depth of our psych. Interestingly, each savior is “adapted” and reflects traits of the local culture. Also, all the saviors are men. Even if there were a parallel life out there, the unconscious is the medium through which we would be communicated.

The Unconscious – Great Mother; The Conscious – Confident Kid

At some point in history the consciousness has differentiated itself. This divided our psyche roughly into two parts – consciousness and the unconsciousness. The first part takes care of our rational life and reasoning, our direct contact with the outer world. The second part is responsible for our basic instincts, memory deposit, our experience and feel of life through adding color and meaning to the gray reality of rationality.

Consciousness likes to separate, to divide until the last divisible particle to understand. It is like an over-confident kid who thinks he knows all and needs no advice. Everything that goes through the filter of reasoning loses color of emotions. Yet take away our feelings, emotions, fears and desires, what is there to live? Numbers and cold-faced calculations only? The cold fact that we were born to die after just couple of decades? Why even we are to live then? This is where the unconscious comes in. It is like a wise mother who sees the whole picture not parts.

Souls in Search

In other words, our lives in a sense are in darkness through which our souls are looking for their ways. The Unconscious, the container of innumerable years of memory is there to shed light to our ways through what we call traditional wisdom manifested in the form of religions, myths and fairy tales. But it doesn’t stop there. Its creative energy manifests itself in our quest to attain full potentiality of our lives, move forward and elevate our souls. We call it “fulfillment”. Yet such fulfillment is possible through bringing in terms these two separated parts of the psyche. Alienating any one of them would cost us a serious loss – either losing our ties with our inner guide or our physical contact with outer world.