![]() What if, in the end, a symbol is a concrete sign that reveals a whole world to those who know how to open their eyes? The symbol as a tool and a link, a correspondence, to the living. Heraclitus said of the Oracle of Delphi that it "says nothing and hides nothing, but signifies" Porphyry reports that Pythagoras taught "either by developing his thought or by using symbols".Īt the beginning of the XXth century, the symbol is a concrete sign evoking, by a natural relationship, something absent or impossible to perceive. The word "symbol" comes from the ancient Greek sumbolon, which derives from the verb sumballesthaï (from syn-, with, and -ballein, to throw away) meaning "to put together ", "to contribute", "to compare"Īristotle uses the metaphor "symbol" to designate a correspondence. The meaning of the word symbol has varied greatly since its origin, for example: emblems - refer to a precise, conventional meaning, whereas symbols evoke, leaving the possibility of various mental associations. It can be a person, a "symbolic figure" of something, a recognition formula of individuals belonging to a group, a gestural signal or a drawn or sculpted sign. In philosophy and in the humanities and social sciences, we tend to distinguish between a sign, which has a precise meaning - such as road signs, whose meaning is indicated in a regulatory text with the least possible ambiguity - and a symbol, which refers to a set of thoughts.Ī symbol can be an object, an image, a recognizable form possibly associated with a chromatic field, a word, a sound, a whole mark which represents something else by association, resemblance or convention. This is how mathematics defines symbolic calculation. ![]() Some fields, notably scientific and technical, make extensive use of the concept of symbol, which designates a writing that represents an abstraction. Wikipedia defines a symbol as an object, an image, a written word, a sound or even a living being, or a particular mark that represents something else by association, resemblance or convention. ![]() It is this heart, the center of man, that will be the object of our journey today.īut before we set off on this wonderful journey, let's go back to earth with the etymology and the meaning of the symbol. God thought about it for a long time, and then He answered them: "All these places seem excellent to me, but I would prefer to put it in a place that is both near and far, where man will not think of looking So he went to hide it in the very heart of the man. They suggested the most unlikely hiding places some even suggested hiding the key somewhere on the moon. Wanting to make the search very exciting, He wanted to hide it very well and went to consult His heavenly advisors. In fact, we are often used to looking for complexity when things are always very simple.Ī legend tells that when God had finished creating all things, he took the key of the One in his hand and said to himself that he would assign to man the task of finding it. It is so intimate to you that the search for it might seem so trivial that you might not even want to do it. The key to the symbols is at hand, at your fingertips. The human mind will try to understand symbols with the intellect, but you will get the best results with the heart. The symbol does not exclude, it includes, in the sense that it does not impose limits. The circle, the wheel and the mandala are symbols. In Buddhism, the most famous symbols are the conch, the parasol, the fish, the urn, the dharma wheel, the banner, the lotus, the knot, the Om. A world famous example is the Christian cross, a symbol associated with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ on the cross. ![]() This is a subject that I will eventually address in many other articles but here I would like to go back to the basics, to the essentials.Īll major religions have their symbols. ![]() What is a symbol? What is it for? This is the theme I propose to address today. ![]()
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