Symbologists - Definitions

Definitions

In consideration of its effect on the psyche, in his seminal essay, The Symbol without Meaning, Joseph Campbell proposes the following definition: A symbol is an energy evoking, and directing, agent.

Later, expanding on what he means by this definition Campbell says:

"a symbol, like everything else, shows a double aspect. We must distinguish, therefore between the 'sense' and the 'meaning' of the symbol. It seems to me perfectly clear that all the great and little symbolical systems of the past functioned simultaneously on three levels: the corporeal of waking consciousness, the spiritual of dream, and the ineffable of the absolutely unknowable. The term 'meaning' can refer only to the first two but these, today, are in the charge of science – which is the province as we have said, not of symbols but of signs. The ineffable, the absolutely unknowable, can be only sensed. It is the province of art which is not 'expression' merely, or even primarily, but a quest for, and formulation of, experience evoking, energy-waking images: yielding what Sir Herbert Read has aptly termed a 'sensuous apprehension of being'.

Heinrich Zimmer gives a concise overview of the nature, and perennial relevance, of symbols.

"Concepts and words are symbols, just as visions, rituals, and images are; so too are the manners and customs of daily life. Through all of these a transcendent reality is mirrored. They are so many metaphors reflecting and implying something which, though thus variously expressed, is ineffable, though thus rendered multiform, remains inscrutable. Symbols hold the mind to truth but are not themselves the truth, hence it is delusory to borrow them. Each civilisation, every age, must bring forth its own."

Symbols are a means of complex communication that often times can have multiple levels of meaning. This separates symbols from signs, as signs have only one meaning.

Human cultures use symbols as a means to express their specific ideology, social structures, and to represent characteristics of their specific culture. Thus, symbols carry different meaning depending upon one’s cultural background. The meaning of a symbol is not inherent in the symbol itself, but is culturally learned.

Symbols are the basis for all human understanding, and serve as vehicles for conception for all human knowledge. Symbols facilitate human understanding of interaction with the world they live, thus serving as the grounds upon which humans make judgments. In this way, people use symbols not only to make sense of the world around them, but also to identify and cooperate in society through constitutive rhetoric.