Symbols, sigils, seals, Chinese hexagrams, mandalas – they come to us from the substrate of the collective unconscious; memories we did not personally experience but that are in the blood (Dracula was right). The meaning they hold, initially, is the stuff of intuition. If we have their secret knowledge, their meaning expands. In the ancient world, a name or a symbol was thought to invoke the deities, themselves. The name of G-d was never written.
The burning bush never answered Moses’ question.
“The collective unconscious, as we understand it today, was never a matter of “psychology,” for before the Christian Church existed there were the antique mysteries, and these reach back into the grey mists of neolithic pre-history. Mankind has never lacked powerful images to lend magical aid against all the uncanny things that live in the depths of the psyche.”
Carl Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
