symbolsalso a solar figure who possesses great importance for later Hinduism. In
ancient Japanese cosmogony, the husband of the primordial pair produces
the sun (female) and moon (male) from, respectively, his right and left
eyes. The sun is identified as the goddess Amaterasu, who represents
light and purity, whereas Susano-o-no Mikoto stands for violence and
death. Both figures represent complementary aspects that are necessary
for life on earth.Further reading: Aldhouse-Green (1991); Hultkrantz (1981)SYMBOLS
A concept that can be traced back to the Greek term sumbolon (sign,
token, pledge), implying that it points to something beyond itself. A flag
is, for instance, a sign symbolizing a nation, the cross a symbol of the
Christ event. In his theory of the symbol, Mircea Eliade (1907–1986), a
historian of religions, stresses that a religious symbol is multivalent
because it can express several meanings simultaneously. The symbolism
of the moon suggests fertility, recurrence of life, time, destiny, and
change. An inaccessible modality of the real is expressed to ordinary
people by symbols. The manifestation of power can be expressed by a
symbol, which can also be revealed in myth, a narrative form of a sym-
bol. This point indicates the ability of symbols, which precede language
and discursive reason, to reveal deeper layers of reality. Moreover, sym-
bols can express paradoxical situations. Symbols have a logic, which
means that they can fit together diverse realities into a coherent system,
and possess a history in the sense that a symbol may have spread from a
specific cultural center.
According to the philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005), symbols pos-
sess three dimensions: cosmic, oneiric, and poetic imagination. With the
cosmic dimension, a person understands the sacred as, for instance, an
aspect of the world in sky, sun, and moon symbolism. Having innumera-
ble meanings, these unified significations give rise to speech. Thus the
manifestation of a thing and its meanings are contemporaneous and recip-
rocal. The oneiric dimension refers to manifesting the sacred in the human
psyche during dream states, delving into the inner depths of the imagina-
tion that is common to all religious cultures. Finally, the poetic imagina-
tion forms the complement of the cosmic and psychic dimensions. The
poetic modality of symbols puts language in a state of emergence.