Fashion Symbols with Aynura Maye

Bringing together the opposites

You are here: Home / Archives for lamb

lamb

Lamb – Not Your Usual Animal

by

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

by

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.