The Book of Symbols, Day 40: Stone

Day 40: Stone, collage, mixed media, 7x7 in., Otto

Compared to our brief human life span, stone becomes a symbol of endurance; indeed it suggests the concept of eternity.  Yet the common stone surrounds us everywhere, and we give it little value.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 39: Darkness

Day 39: Darkness, collage, mixed media, 7x7 in., Otto

But if one consciously enters into the Darkness and endures its enshroudment, if catlike, one learns to see and hear acutely in its recesses, the darkness will gradually reveal the treasures concealed there.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 38: Night

Day 38: Night, collage, mixed media, 7x7 in., Otto

Like a finely woven shawl, night enfolds in the interval between dusk and dawn.  Bringing silence, healing and a cool hiatus from the sun's burning heat and light, night evokes the restorative darkness and repose, the veiling of sunlike consciousness that follows upon the tumultuous splendor and striving of day.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 36: Dusk

Day 36: Dusk, collage, mixed media, 7x7 in., Otto

Dusk signifies the evening of the day and the evening of life, or the evening of time as the "twilight of the gods" when earth's light is swallowed.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 30: Ice

Day 30: Ice, collage, 6x6 in., Otto

In psychology, [ice would be] the dividing line between the conscious and the unconscious.

The Book of Symbols, Day 29: Snow

Day 29: Snow, collage, mixed media, 6x6 in., Otto

Snow creates simple beauty and activates fantasies of transformation.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 28: Fog

Day 28: Fog, collage, mixed media, 6x6 in., Otto

Symbolically, the world of clear rational thought gives way to dreaminess, ambiguity, a kind of knowing that is more nuanced, less absolute...

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 27: Dew

Day 27: Dew, collage, mixed media, 6x6 in., Otto

Not merely an intellectual form of understanding, but incorporating feeling values, the "dew" alluded to psyche's capacity to freshen and reanimate the personality desiccated by unconsciousness of its soul-stuff.  The illumination of these contents, like glistening drops of dew, represents the "moisture that heralds the return of the soul."

- C.G. Jung

The Book of Symbols, Day 26: Rainbow

Day 26: Rainbow, collage, mixed media, 6x6 in., Otto

Myth has portrayed the rainbow as the highway over which pysche's supernal emissaries bring their messages to consciousness.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 25: Lightning

Day 25: Lightning, collage, 6x6 in., Otto

Sometimes signaling the advance of high winds and violent storms and followed by deafening peals of thunder, lightning evokes unexpected, over-powering shifts in the physical or psychic landscape.

- C.G. Jung

The Book of Symbols, Day 24: Thunder

Day 24: Thunder, collage, mixed media, 6x6 in., Otto

Always ambivalent, the gods of thunder and lightning could bring either death and destruction or fertility and new life to humankind and its surroundings.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 23: Storm

Day 23: Storm, collage,6x6 in., Otto 

Symbolically storm evokes psychic tension gradually building to the bursting point, or more sudden in-breaking of highly charged transpersonal energies.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 22: Rain

Day 22: Rain, collage, mixed media, 6x6 in., Otto

The water upon which all life depends descends to earth as raindrops both gentle and torrential.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 21: Wind

Day 21: Wind, collage, mixed media, 6x6 in., Otto

On wind we have projected the unpredictable factor that moves us and carries us, sometimes directing our course or forcing us to change course.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 20: Cloud

Day 20: Cloud, collage, mixed media, 6x6 in., Otto

Because of clouds hovering between heaven and earth, it has been an image that conveyed the hiddenness as well as the manifestation of the divine.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 19: Sky

Day 19: Sky, collage, 6x6 in., Otto

Image of cerulean infinity, sky intimates both unbounded freedom and unearthly void.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 18: Air

Day 18: Air, collage, mixed media, 6x6 in., Otto

Air in motion - inhalation and exhalation, the potency of wind - captures our imagination.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 17: Bubble

Thursday, May 11, 2011

Day 17: Bubble, collage, mixed media, 6x6 in., Otto

The bubblelike enclosure of the figure excludes all references to the world beyond and imparts a timeless, supernatural quality.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 16: Flood

Day 16: Flood, collage, 6x6 in., Otto

Floods are especially frightening because they intimate unpredictable forces of nature within ourselves, times of great stress and change, when consciousness can be submerged by flooding anxieties and affects.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 15: Waterfall

Day 15: Waterfall, collage, mixed media, 6x6 in., Otto

"Amid the waters, under the high cliff...even the sluggish soul can rise to the noblest concerns"

- Petrarch