Symbols

1. Symbols • Definition • Shared understandings about the meaning of certain words, attributes, or objects. • Characteristics • Displacement • Our ability to understand that a certain symbol means a certain thing. • Arbitrary • A symbol has no direct connection with the thing it refers to. Meaning is a construction of the human mind. • Openness • Our ability to create and use symbols as we see fit.

2. Circle with dot • Egypt: • The Sun, Ra • Greek philosophy of the Monad • The First, the seed, the essence, the builder the foundation. All is one, there are no fundamental divisions. A unified set of laws govern nature. • Contrast to dualism, i.e. yin yang: 2 underlying, opposing powers incorporating and governing reality. • Pythagoreans • From the Monad came the Dyad (2-powers); from it numbers; from numbers, points; then lines (2 dimensional entities), then 3 dimensional entities, celestial bodies (stars/planets), culminating in the four elements of earth, air, water and fire from which the rest of the world is built. • Flatland (1884) Edwin Abbott Abbott

3. Hexagram • Earliest examples: 800-600 B.C.E. • Antiquity: symbol for Jewish Kingdom. • Star/shield of David. Symbol for Jewish faith. • Alchemy symbol in middle ages representing the combination of fire and water • Alchemy: A practical science concerned with the art of transforming elements and compounds, and a religious-philiosophical system resting on the idea of the existence of a substance called the philosopher’s stone which could change base elements into more precious substances (i.e. gold). • Other alchemy symbols: Ouroboros • Represents same thing as Indian yoga (unity), Chinese yin-yang, Christian ascendance to God, Buddhist Nirvanna, etc.

4. Pentacle • A type of Pentagram (5-sided figure) • Probably discovered as a result of astronomical research in ancient Mesopotamia (~4,000 BCE): It is the structure that results if one plots the movement of Venus as seen from earth in the Zodiac. • The goddess Venus (Ishtar) from the ancient Mesopotamians appeared both as the Morning (battle/hunting) and Evening (beauty/fertility) star • Pythagorean mysticism • Numbers/values constitute the true nature of things. Can know God through mathematics. • Symbolizes the human being and mathematical perfection. • Christianity • 5 wounds of Christ, 5 senses • Islam • Used in the Morning Star and Crescent to denote the Islamic faith. • 5 points of star represent 5 pillars of Islam (the profession of faith, the prayer, giving a portion of one’s income to the poor, fasting during Ramadan and the pilgrimage to Mecca • Judaism • Official seal of the city of Jerusalem during 300-150 BCE. • Satanism • Inverted star, symbolizing the rejection of Christian Holy Trinity. • Wiccan/Neopagan • Symbol of Wiccan faith. Represents 4 elements and the Spirit.

5. Sacred Art • Formed from a myriad of religious symbols. • Ex: Cathedral • Not art for art’s sake (i.e. not based on creative urges of the artist). Rather art as a collection of symbols meant to convey a specific religious message. • Ex: • Byzantine and Egyptian religious art • Does not mean that these artists were incapable of drawing a more fluid/natural body. Needed this structure to convey the correct meaning. Art in this case is a symbol. To change the style of the symbol would be to change the meaning.

6. Sacred art and sacred space • The Sarcophagus of Lord Pakal (book) • The symbols combined create a passageway through which Pakal passes to reach the Underworld and then be resurrected as a God. • Psychoduct: A passageway for Pakal’s spirit to pass from his Tomb to the Temple during rituals. Made of brick and running along the stairway • Egyptian spacetime • With its orientation to the heavens, sacred space in Egyptian architecture represents a dimension where heavenly time reigns (a sort of space time mix). To build a sacred space was to establish not only a spatial but also a temporal link with the heavens; it was a realization of eternity. In the Old Kingdom all the construction work done by the state concentrated on the pyramid as the epitome of sacred space: a structure built for the king to touch and enter into eternity. • The Tomb of Knum-Hotep (Beni-Hassan, Egypt)

7. Color • The separation of the color spectrum is cultural and arbitrary. • Who’s to say where red ends and yellow begins? Why do we have orange? Why not have a million different color names? Why not have only, perhaps, 3? • The Yoruba of Nigeria (Guinea Coast) distinguish only these 3 colors: Funfun (cool colors: white, silver, pale gray) Associated with wisdom and respect. Pupa (red, pink, orange, deep yellow) Passion and pride. Dudu (black, blue, purple, green dark browns, red-brown) Cool, dark, warm. • The colors on the crown are both hot and cool. This is necessary to symbolize the wisdom of a king to bring harmony and balance to the community.

8. Navaho: Turquoise blue is the ideal blue • Blue is the color of celestial and earthly attainment, of peace, of happiness, and success, of vegetable sustenance. • Ancient Egypt: Faience (a fired, man-made substance of crushed quartz and silica mixed with a bit of lime, ash and copper). Also a Turquoise blue. • A semi-precious material, beloved by the gods and goddesses. Suitable offerings to the Pharaoh and gods/goddesses.

9. Time as Symbol • We organize our lives around seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, etc. • Time is also arbitrary! Why 7 days in a week? Why not 5 or 16? Our “week” of 7 days is a non-physical symbol that stands for a particular period of time. • Ritual usually goes hand in hand with time. • Today: Religious rituals that are practiced on a specific day of the week/day of the month/day of the year? • Examples? • Periodic Rituals • Mayan calendar • Egyptian calendar

10. Time cont. • Chronotope: A timescale unique to a certain society • history, time and reality are social constructs and symbolic forms that undergo specific shapings and weighings in every culture and in every age.” (p. 17). • history is not a universal, uniform frame within which each culture develops in its own different way, but rather a product of culture, a cultural form.” • Our (Western) time: A linear Chronotope. • Augustine of Hippo (354-440 CE Christian Bishop & philosopher): Christ’s death on the cross was the irreducibly unique and irreversible event that, for the believer, creates a newly linear time. While the heathens wander around in circles (… a calendar, punctuated by the rhythms of mornings, noons, and evenings, births and deaths, repeating themselves over and over again indefinitely.) Christians move toward the consummation represented by redemption.” (linear time) • Rites cyclicalize time by observing regulations to the letter and by ensuring that each ritual celebration corresponds exactly with the preceding ones. The model for such cyclical congruence is the cosmos, with its orbital recurrence of astronomical, meteorological, and seasonal cycles. Hence the generation of cyclical time within society serves to harmonize the human order of things with the cosmic. • Mircea Eliade (1949 Le Mythe de L’éternel retour): mythical thinking constructs time as circular, and experiences all events as the recurrence of primordial patterns [ancient cultures typically “froze out” change through the ritual cyclicalization of time], whereas (our)historical thinking constructs time as a line or path of an arrow, along which events are experienced as breach, innovation and change. • Levi-Strauss: Linear time serves to consolidate power and sociopolitical identity: it goes hand in hand with statehood and a written culture.

11. Canonization • Canonization: a ban on variation. • Ex: The Old Kingdom in Egypt (3000 BCE) is the epoch that developed the style and repertoire of Egyptian formal idioms. By reverting to these forms, the later epochs canonized them, elevating style to the status of canon. Canonization, then, is the institutionalization of permanence, a strategy for foiling time, and hence one of the most favored cultural techniques for constructing a specific chronotope

12. Music as Symbol • Music as a symbol used to get across the desired meaning of a ritual • Music can be used to teach, express/affect emotional states, produce altered states of consciousness, to please/contact supernatural powers. • Membraneophones, Cordophones, Aerophones, Idiophones • Ex: Sistrum/clappers (Egypt) • Since music is symbolic, it is interwoven in the learned traditions of a culture. • Meaning: Music that uses pitch, tone, speed, cadence, beat to convey and emotion (like happiness) in a culture not your own, may not necessarily evoke in you feelings of joy. The reverse is also naturally true. • In order to bridge the music symbolism gap between cultures, some artists are employing syncretism (fusion of elements from 2 diff. cultures) to help convey meaning. • Ex: Missa Luba (Catholic mass + traditional tribal instruments/rhythm from Kongo tribe o/t Democratic Republic of Congo • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToNb-02n3KY • Ex: Loreena McKennitt (traditional Celtic mythology + modern instruments/synthesizers + occasional Christian elements) • Mummer’s Dance http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B7sH5QLyXY

13. Dance as Symbol • Many traditional religions use dance as a symbol to create meaning • Ex: Vodou • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYWFL3Bj2LU&feature=related • Ex: Whirling Dervishes • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJIofU-0jC0 • Ex: Pueblo Eagle Dance • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO2g9tgWjbU

14. Additional terms • Kiva: Usually, an underground ceremonial chamber. Used by the Tewa (Pueblo Native Americans) before they emerge to perform sacred dances. (pp 73-75) • Totemism: A special relationship between an animal (or plant/feature of the environment) and an individual/group of individuals assigned/formed during the period of creation. (See pp. 69-71 –Aboriginee groups-) • Totem: A symbol/emblem (animal/plant/environmental feature usually) that stands for a certain social unit (a person/group) • Examples in Western Culture: Mascots/ “What animal do you most identify with?”