Human Reproductive (Male) (v.1.1)

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" . . .When the usually flaccid penis becomes engorged with blood at the instant of erotic excitement, filling the corpus cavernosa (erectile tissue) that runs along the dorsal length and the corpus spongiosum that forms the ventral shaft and urethral passage, it takes on the ithyphallic form that is worshipped as a numinosum. Seed-bearer, penetrator, begetter, the phallus was also wonderful for its association with not one, but two sacred fluids--golden urine and the semen of life. Representations of the phallus are extremely ancient. Human beings were making stone phalli almost 28,00 years ago. Ithyphallic figures were etched on cave walls such as that at Lascaux, France, as early as 17,000 B.C.E. The phallus and the ithyphallic god or divine shaman were often identified with the sun and its far-reaching rays, and with the crescent moon as the Bull, the Horned God or the cup into which the divine semen was poured. The serpent rearing up, the bird in ascent, the vigorous bull, lion, horse, cock, and goat, the proliferating, elongated fish are all vehicles and animal forms of the phallic god. The primordial mound, or omphalos, or upright stone, the pillar, herm and obelisk, and the plow that enters and fertilizes the earth are images of the phallus. The ancient Lord of Animals or Lord of Plants personify it. So do spermatic deities of logos, creativity, virility, fire, lightning, anger, and lust.

And, to be sure, the phallus is also the violence of the creative impulse and 'the sudden, obsessive invasion that plucks away the flower of thought'. . .The brutal violating aspect of the phallus is manifest in the rape of the individual, in the rape of the earth. Phallic power can shatter, uproot, and lay waste. There are interior forms of coercive penetration, like self-destructive compulsions and invasive thoughts ; or intellectual or religious transfixion, where the phallic presence overwhelms its vessel. . . "

- _The Book of Symbols : Reflections on Archetypal Images_ (02010)

 

Human Reproductive (Female) (v.1.1)

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" . . .Vulvas --external female genitals-- are distinguished by a dark opening loosely covered by labia. Through this deep orifice emerge menses, birth waters, birth blood, and newborns. Similarly, water emerges through clefts in stone, plants sprout from seeds opening through the earth, and souls and spirits enter this world from the other side ; souls reenter the hidden world in spirit journeys and at death.

Etymology observes what is inside the vulva, what is held and covered in the womb, about to be born, is not visible from the outside. Every new birth is replete with the mystery of the other side. Technically, the vulva includes the mons pubis and labia majora, of adipose and fibrous tissue, and the smaller, darker labia minora, cloaking the sensitive, erectile clitoris, its prepuce and frenulum. The vestibule in the cleft between the labia minora has, opening and closing, orifices of the urethra and vagina, and the ducts of four glands.

Perhaps among the most ancient carved symbols, going back 30,000 years, the vulva/yoni honors the sacred power of birthing. It reminds us of our embeddedness in nature, in the mystery cycle of life and death. Temples and cave shrines replicate the female body with its deep sanctuary for darshan, sacred seeing. . .

Prayer, meditation, ritual arts, and dreams awaken remembrance of the hidden side from which all things come, which they carry within them, to which they return. . .As a mystical symbol, the yoni circle holds the introspective body one enters through meditation. At the center is the womb-space, the heart cave, where the inner spirit dwells. . . " 

- _The Book of Symbols : Reflections on Archetypal Symbols_ (02010)

 

Human Digestive System (v.1.1)

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" Feces (Latin for 'sediment' or 'dregs') consist of excess fats such as cholesterol, dead mucous membrane sloughed off from the lining of the alimentary canal, and protein debris shed by the intestinal bacteria that produce sulphuric odors of flatulence. Their typical brown coloration is due to dead red-blood cells. Young children often conceive scatological theories of childbirth, and see their excrement as proof of their own creative magic ; psychotics are known to smear themselves with their feces or to swallow them (corpophagy). Because defecation is usually a deliberate act, its imagery has been linked to assertion, expression, willing, creative potential and transformation, and also to compulsions having to do with control, domination, and withholding. Excretory images often evoke the circumstances and issues related to the channeling and appropriate containers for creative urges. We apply 'constipated' figuratively when we feel creative stultification ; what needs to come out can't or won't, and diarrhea symbolically  supposes an abnormal, too loose, out-of-control discharge of one's substance. Even at the dawn of consciousness, and well beyond, our 'droppings' were highly valued, as was the fertile excrement of the revered animals like the elephant and cow. How extraordinary that from our most ancient ancestors to Freud and Jung, the divine nature of excrement has been intuited : 'the lowest value allies itself to the highest' so that symbolically, one's shit really can smell like a rose. "

- _The Book of Symbols : Reflections on Archetypal Images (02010)

Human Brain (v.1.1)

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" The brain is a soft, jellylike mass of billions of cells and their connections. Weighing two-and-a-quarter to three-and-a-quarter pounds, the human brain, by means of electrochemical energy, regulates conscious and unconscious sensation, perception, and behavior, as well as the sympathetic and autonomic activities of the internal organs. In the brain stem and limbic system we experience our commonality with animal ancestors and relatives. As the 'base' of the crown chakra, the brain houses our fantasies of a 'higher' universal mind. The brain provides an internal representation of reality, and in so doing it also carries our symbolic projections of wholeness, the mystery of totality and the alchemical 'alembic'-- the distilling vessel in which the transformation of human and world takes place. . .

. . .Originally a dark rotundum, the brain, along with the cosmos, quickly became the quintessential 'black box', that we feel compelled to open in pursuit of the ancient imperative 'Know thyself'. A proliferation of disciplines such as neuroscience, neuroepistemology, and psychoneuroimmunology now seek to unlock the 'X' factor and provide access to the mystery of being. Our consequent fascination with brain speaks to its symbolic function as an imaginal container of a timeless and unbounded process, which resolves opposites and divisions. . .

. . .Observing psyche's imaginings of the brain reveals images of 'geography' and brain maps, 'centers' of emotion and memory, 'types' of intelligence, localizations, specializations, right brain/left brain splits and the like-- and recent postmodern images of 'networks' and 'fields', neural ecosystems, plasticity and 'mirroring'. In our fantasies about the brain, these complements of specialization and holistic functioning marry the perennial opposites inherent in psychological experience : fragmentation and wholeness. Subject to both brainwashing and brainstorming, our imagination about the brain is informed as much by our fantasies about our essential natures, as by scientific and technological innovation. As the terrae incognitae of the universe and the brain open to exploration, it is worth noting that as we see into images of both deep space and the brain, we also see psychic imagining as well. "

- _The Book of Symbols : Reflections on Archetypal Images_ (02010)

Human Heart (v.1.1)

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" The heart is a living symbol. When we say 'I love you with all my heart', we do not mean the heart as organ whose beats cause the circulation of blood throughout the body, whose failure could drain the body of life. We also mean the heart as feeling, as the soulful, as the heart of the cosmos, echoed and amplified in the primal pulsation of the drum. Heartbeats correspond to the contracting and expanding movements of the universe, while the heart of the body is as essential to life as the sun is to our solar system. Among the first sounds experienced in the womb are the internally resounding rhythms of the mother's heart, enveloping and echoing the quicker beats of the embryo as it grows. The heart's undeniable physical centrality to our existence has its correspondence in the undeniable reality of our emotions, variable heartbeats measuring out our feelings of affection, desire, and delight, as well as pounding out our rages, fears, and vulnerabilities; the heart can be pierced and melted by the darts of Eros as well as broken by love's refusal. . .

. . . The heart shares with lotus flower and the rose the qualities of the hidden, enfolded center beneath the outer surface of things, the secret abode of consciousness, locked away, virgin and so inviolate that when we want to 'let someone in', we must give them 'the key'. The 'heart of the matter' expresses the essential core of any issue, and the heart is so identified as the center and unique essence of a human being that the idea of surgically transplanting a heart from one individual (((or species!))) to another still meets with powerful resistance. As the seat of all emotions, positive and negative, the heart is the point of contact for linkings of hatred or love, envy or compassion, fear or courage, deepest sorrow or brightest joy. "

- _The Book of Symbols : Reflections on Archetypal images_ ( 02010 )