MEMOIR LOGO CONCEPT: The aleph and a Sufi mystic inspired my creation and design of the syzygy logo, which I initially based on the symbolism of the yin and yang.
But the concept expanded when I first saw the aleph in Judith Cornell’s
Mandala Healing Kit, My inexplicable attraction to it led me to incorporate it into my logo before I knew what it meant.
I later read that the “Aleph (the first letter of the sacred Hebrew alphabet) embodies the primordial, divine potential of the universe. ... Aleph contains all the universe’s potential and all of its emptiness simultaneously. Aleph represents a dynamic process of movement from unity to diversity and back to unity,” Jennifer Judelsohn, Songs of Creation.
And the mystic poet Rumi inspired me to use the fire and water concept after I read The Question. Here is an excerpt:
“The presence is there in front of me. A fire on the left, a lovely stream on the right.
One group walks toward the fire, into the fire. Another toward the sweet flowing water.
No one knows which are blessed and which are not.
Whoever walks into the fire appears suddenly in the stream.
A head goes under water, and that head pokes out of the fire.”
LOGO ART: Cropped fire and water images from Free Images.
LOTUS LOGO: In spiritual and religious literature, “the lotus is a symbol for the macrocosm and the microcosm, the universe and man. The lotus represents the divinity of the cosmos as well as the divinity of man.
The lotus is the center of the infinite, omnipresent consciousness which connects with the consciousness of the universe. Through the intuition, one of man’s divine gifts, the spiritual student can see the infinite, omnipresent consciousness as the lotus flower within himself.”
LOTUS ART: Courtesy
Homestead, my website service provider. (Temporary art while I design of my own lotus logo.)
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In my following interpretation of a pendulum and a fish, as they relate to elements in Marc Chagall’s painting, Time Is a River without Banks, I hope to illustrate how differently we each perceive and interpret various symbols in our dreams, in our art, and in our lives, based on our own situations, experiences, and feelings. I have no idea what the elements in Chagall’s painting symbolized for him, and when it comes to interpreting my dreams, it does not matter.
The following is my interpretation of the meaning of the elements in Chagall’s painting as they pertained to my own life after I discovered a few weeks ago that a couple of dreams I had had back in 1999 apparently picked up some of the elements from Chagall’s painting (right), a realization that has led me to a greater understanding of these dreams, which began a long-needed healing process—much to my surprise and my delight.
Unconscious Rejected Painful Associations
I had turned the pages to Jung’s Man and His Symbols every now and then since college, looking up the soul, or the Self, or the fetus image that I associate to Self, and I have a vague recollection of thumbing by Marc Chagall’s Time Is a River without Banks (p. 41). But something about it always annoyed me, and I refused to give it my full attention.
Then in March 2013, I committed myself to reading Jung’s first section of the book, “Approaching the Unconscious,” which required that I stay on that page while I read the adjacent page. But the painting kept distracting me, so fine! I finally looked at it, really looked at it, and realized that its elements perfectly reflected images right out of my own dreamscape, images that incited painful memories.
Stalking/Murder by Frying Pan
In a dream journal entry dated Tuesday, February 2, 1999, I am drifting through the flooded streets of a familiar city on a floating dock of some kind.
After a while, I no longer recognize where I am. It seems kind of fun, though I know I am in danger. Then I realize where I am, which is actually where I started. I’m somehow catapulted back on dry ground, where Griffin (my husband at the time) is stalking me, trying to kill me. He busts through two doors with locks on them, then he corners me. He swoops down on me slamming me in the head with a huge frying pan, bigger than Big Ben’s pendulum (it occurs to me for some reason). In a daze, I thought, “Now I know what it’s like to be murdered.”
The pendulum, fish tell tall tale of their own
“We should understand that dream symbols are for the most part manifestations of a psyche that is beyond the control of the conscious mind. ...There is no difference in principle between organic and psychic growth. As a plant produces its flower, so the psyche creates its symbols.”
Marc Chagall’s painting Time Is a River without Banks aptly depicts elements right out of my own dreamscape. The painting helped me to interpret several of my most disturbing dreams. (CREDIT: Click link for more on his life and work.)
plain in the dream that I know how to fix my marriage, I know where the turn is, but on some level, I really don’t want to go there. Nonetheless, I’m very sad at the thought of letting my marriage starve to death (not feeding the fish). At the time, I blamed our failing marriage entirely on my insecurities and anger issues, and I knew something needed to be done before it was too late. And although I did seek therapy from a Jungian analyst at the time, I still crashed or drove up on the sidewalk or screeched on the brakes.
Although the idea crossed my mind in a perfunctory way at the time, it was not until now as I think about Griffin stalking me, actually murdering me, that I fully realize the dream was warning me about something far greater than the end of my marriage but the actual death of my spiritual Self, for Griffin hated that side of me. He saw it as weakness and stupidity. And the only way to save my marriage was to give up my quest for Self. As sad as it made me feel, I had to choose between my life or my marriage.
For years I had blamed myself entirely for our breakup, but after “seeing” this painting after all these years, I realize some fault lies with Griffin as well, as he is chasing me, busting through my defenses (the locks), terrifying me, trying to crush—with a huge frying pan that reminds me of Big Ben’s pendulum—the very thing in me that I was trying to find and protect, that is, my higher Self.
Corrected Interpretation Begins Healing
Up until a few weeks ago, the mere sight of a photograph of Griffin or our wedding still seemed to bite me, which I couldn’t understand since, for crying out loud, we split 13 years ago! But when I realized where the images of these particular dreams came from, which in turn led me to formulate a fuller, more accurate, interpretation of my dreams, the sting I felt toward the sight or thought of Griffin quite dramatically vanished, like magic.
Future Analysis Still Rich with Possibilities
My analysis up to this point has not even touched on the flood waters in this imagery, which I could not explore here because the frequency of flood waters alone in my dreams warrant an exploration of their own. A Jungian analyst will be helpful with further analysis, but for now it is interesting to explore time itself and why my unconscious connected a frying pan to a pendulum. The fish seems to represent my marriage, but I look forward to further analysis using my dream symbols dictionary.
♂ ♀
C. G. Jung, Man and His Symbols
© 1955–2015 Syzygy: Crossing the Bridge to Self. All Rights Reserved.
Dream of Huge Fish Outdoors
Then I searched my journal for the word “fish,” which led me to an entry exactly two weeks later, to a dream I have no current recollection of, dated Tuesday, February 16, 1999. There’s a big screen TV in my bedroom; everyone is commenting on it. There’s a fish tank in the other corner. I don’t see it, but several times people comment about it. But I still couldn’t see it. I kept looking for it several times, until finally, I could see it. Then I am suddenly outdoors, and a huge fish, I think blue, like a cartoon, is crying because it’s hungry. I try to get to it, to feed it. It had a high-pitch crying sound, and I felt so sorry for it. It was screaming, a fish scream, squealing. I was driving around trying to find it, got in an accident, driving up on the sidewalk, snow, screeching on brakes. I know which corner to turn at to get to the fish, but I just keep missing the turn.
My Interpretation of Dream Symbols
The river without banks struck me first: It eerily resembled an image of flooding waters in a dream I vividly recalled, though I could not describe it adequately. The lovers remind me of my husband and I at around the time of the dream, when our frequent public displays of affection, or the “big screen TV in my bedroom,” prompted many friends to say, “Get a room.”
It seemed at first we couldn’t get enough of each other, although in private we began to have terrible arguments, which I kept secret because I was embarrassed about them. I think now our friends saw our apparent need for public caressing as perhaps insecurities in our relationship, but I just couldn’t see it. Both of our eyes are closed in the painting. But a fish and a violin?
It now seems to me that the dream imagery, which I must have picked up unconsciously from the painting in the book at some earlier time, was warning me about the pending doom of my marriage, unless I would “see” it and correct it before it was too late. But now it appears quite
