symbolic.
- Once man understood nature enough to reproduce it, the symbolic age emerged.
- The symbolic age birthed civilization, where the laws of nature are copied in manmade systems and institutions: governments, industries, hierarchies, and technologies.
- In the symbolic age, we are increasingly interacting with representations of reality rather than reality itself.
- Instinct doesn’t disappear in the symbolic age, it simply changes its object.
- In nature instinct binds us to land, seasons, food, shelter, reproduction, physical danger.
- In civilization that same underlying machinery gets attached to systems, screens, signals, status, identities, and social approval.
- Civilization is considered the “valley of creation,” the stage where consciousness feels most separate from God.
- In civilization, power changes from physical force to control over meaning. Those who are physically strong end up serving those who control the symbols.
- He who controls the symbols can influence status, identity, legitimacy, value, morality, belonging, aspiration, social hierarchy.
- Humans shift from pursuing natural victories to symbolic ones, spending their lives accumulating symbols of victory rather than experiencing the victory itself.
- While nature gives us victories the collective cannot revoke, a symbolic victory depends upon collective agreement, and what is celebrated today may be condemned tomorrow.
- The trap is that the farther the symbol gets from reality, the more dangerous its grip becomes. This is because in nature, consequences test the idea against reality immediately. While in civilization, symbols can survive without being tested.
- In the inherent stage, consciousness is inside the mother’s world, and is bound to her cycles of life, death, and continuity.
- But as the symbolic age emerges, the masculine principle begins to rise above the feminine in power and influence, because consciousness is seeking to become sovereign itself, and break free from the sustaining, primordial forces.
- This represents a metaphorical weaning from nature, as the feminine forces move from the visible organizing principle of life to the power operating behind the throne.
- Thus the visible organizing principle of life is no longer feminine in nature: cyclical and embodied, but masculine: individuating, abstract, and deliberately constructive.
- As consciousness grows more distant from the Mother, something new emerges: the possibility of self-expression, creating one’s own destiny, rules, rhythms, and rituals beyond the cycles of nature.
- Humans are no longer bound entirely to the cycles of life, death, and survival, and consciousness gains room to contemplate the self: its gifts, talents, relationships, and possibilities beyond the tribe.
- The power of the feminine does not disappear, but takes on a different role as consciousness becomes sovereign.
- The Mother and Queen Regnant, alongside the Divine Son, give way to the King Regnant and Queen Consort.
- Other symbols that represent the age of symbols include: throne, phallic architecture (institutionalized generative power vs. embodied generative power of nature), feminine figures in governmental/legal architecture, winged creatures and humans, man conquering/slaying animals (especially mithraic bull), coins, seals, regalia, flags, scales, scepters, keys, tools of measurement, alphabets, heraldic beasts.
- The signs express the four elements through their symbolic nature: leo as symbolic fire, virgo as symbolic earth, libra as symbolic air, and scorpio as symbolic water.
- Leo is symbolic fire. It brings what is latent within the individual into expression, especially qualities that survival alone would never require.
- Virgo is symbolic earth. It takes raw possibility and builds systems capable of producing a desired result.
- Libra is symbolic air. It creates shared narratives, values, agreements, and meanings that allow people to participate in the same system.
- Scorpio is symbolic water, the hidden force moving beneath systems, allowing them to transform from within.