A DICTIONARY OF SYMBOLS Second Edition - by J. E. CIRLOT

Delimitation of the Symbolic On entering the realms of symbolism, whether by
way of systematized artistic forms or the living, dynamic forms of dreams and
visions, we have constantly kept in mind the essential need to mark out the field
of symbolic action, in order to prevent confusion between phenomena which
might appear to be identical when they are merely similar or externally related
The temptation to over-substantiate an argument is one which is difficult to
resist. It is necessary to be on one’s guard against this danger, even if full compli-
ance with the ideals of scholarship is not always feasible; for we believe with
Marius Schneider that there is no such thing as ‘ideas or beliefs’, only ‘ideas and
beliefs’, that is to say that in the one there is always at least something of the
other—quite apart from the fact that, as far as symbolism is concerned, other
phenomena of a spiritual kind play an important part.
When a critic such as Caro Baroja (10) declares himself against any symbolic
interpretation of myth, he doubtless has his reasons for so doing, although one
reason may be that nothing approaching a complete evaluation of symbolism has
yet appeared. He says: ‘When they seek to convince us that Mars is the symbol
of War, and Hercules of Strength, we can roundly refute them. All this may once
have been true for rhetoricians, for idealist philosophers or for a group of more or
less pedantic graeculi. But, for those who really believed in ancient deities and
heroes, Mars had an objective reality, even if this reality was quite different from
that which we are groping for today. Symbolism occurs when natural religions are
degenerating.’ In point of fact, the mere equation of Mars with War and of Her-
cules with Labour has never been characteristic of the symbolist ethos, which
always eschews the categorical and restrictive. This comes about through alle-
gory, a mechanical and restricting derivative of the symbol, whereas the symbol
proper is a dynamic and polysymbolic reality, imbued with emotive and concep-
tual values: in other words, with true life.
However, the above quotation is extremely helpful in enabling us to mark out
the limits of the symbolic. If there is or if there may be a symbolic function in
everything, a ‘communicating tension’, nevertheless this fleeting possession of
the being or the object by the symbolic does not wholly transform it into a
symbol. The error of symbolist artists and writers has always been precisely
this: that they sought to turn the entire sphere of reality into a vehicle for impal-
pable ‘correspondences’, into an obsessive conjunction of analogies, without
being aware that the symbolic is opposed to the existential and instrumental and
without realizing that the laws of symbolism hold good only within its own
particular sphere. This distinction is one which we would also apply to the
Pythagorean thesis that ‘everything is disposed according to numbers’, as well as
to microbiological theory. Neither the assertion of the Greek philosopher on the
one hand, nor the vital pullulation subjected invisibly to the science of Weights
and Measures on the other, is false; but all life and all reality cannot be forced to
conform with either one theory or the other, simply because of its certitude, for
it is certain only within the limits of theory. In the same way, the symbolic is true
and active on one plane of reality, but it is almost unthinkable to apply it system-
atically and consistently on the plane of existence. The consequent scepticism
concerning this plane of reality—the magnetic life-source of symbols and their
concomitants—explains the widespread reluctance to admit symbolical values;
but such an attitude is lacking in any scientific justification.
Carl Gustav Jung, to whom present-day symbology owes so much, points
out in defence of this branch of human thought that: ‘For the modern mind,
analogies—even when they are analogies with the most unexpected symbolic
meanings—are nothing but self-evident absurdities. This worthy judgement does
not, however, in any way alter the fact that such affinities of thought do exist and
that they have been playing an important rôle for centuries. Psychology has a
duty to recognize these facts; it should leave it to the profane to denigrate them as
absurdities or as obscurantism’ (32). Elsewhere Jung observes that all the energy
and interest devoted today by western Man to science and technology were, by
ancient Man, once dedicated to mythology (31). And not only his energy and
interest but also his speculative and theorizing propensities, creating the immea-
surable wealth of Hindu, Chinese and Islamic philosophy, the Cabbala itself and
the painstaking investigations of alchemy and similar studies. The view that both
ancient and oriental man possessed a technique of speculative thought which
assured them of some success in prophecy is affirmed by, for example, the
archaeologist and historian, Contenau, who maintains that the schools of sooth-
sayers and magicians of Mesopotamia could not have continued to flourish with-out a definite proportion of correct prognostications; and again by Gaston
Bachelard (1), posing the question: ‘How could a legend be kept alive and per-
petuated if each generation had not “intimate reasons” for believing in it?’ The
symbolist meaning of a phenomenon helps to explain these ‘intimate reasons’,
since it links the instrumental with the spiritual, the human with the cosmic, the
casual with the causal, disorder with order, and since it justifies a word like
universe which, without these wider implications, would be meaningless, a dis-
membered and chaotic pluralism; and finally, because it always points to the
transcendental.
To revert to the question of the limits of the symbolic and to fix more pre-
cisely the aims of this work, let us consider how, on the façade of a monastery, for
example, we may note: (a) the beauty of the whole; (b) the constructional tech-
nique; (c) its period-styling, bearing in mind the geographical and historical impli-
cations; (d) the implicit or explicit cultural and religious values, etc.; and also (x)
the symbolic meaning of the forms. In this instance, the appreciation of the
symbolical implications of an ogival arch beneath a rose window could constitute
an item of knowledge different in kind from the other items we have enumerated.
To facilitate analyses of this kind without, let us repeat, confusing the symbolic
essence of an object—the transitory symbolic function which heightens it at any
given moment—with its total significance as a real object in the world—that is
our main aim. The fact that a Romanesque cloister corresponds exactly to the
concept of temenos (sacred precinct) and to the images of the soul, the fountain
and the central fount—like sutratma (silver thread), linking a phenomenon by
way of its centre to its origin—does not invalidate or even modify the architec-
tural and utilitarian reality of this cloister; it enriches its significance by identify-
ing it with an ‘inner form’.