his essay “The Religious Symbol,” Daedalus 87 (1958): 321.
Jacques Ellul’s The New Demons, translated by C. Edward
Hopkins (New York, 1975), offers a good taste of his long-
standing campaign against the mindless absorption of the sa-
cred symbols of religious tradition into technological modes
of thought. Gabriel Vahanian’s God and Utopia (New York,
1977) and David A. Martin’s The Breaking of the Image (New
York, 1980) present contrasting but more positive approach-
es to the question of the future of religious symbolism in a
technological society.For some recent trends among sociologists of religion who are in-
terested in the subject of symbolism, see the Proceedings of
the Fourteenth International Conference on Sociology of Reli-
gion, Strasbourg, 1977. Jolande Jacobi’s Complex, Archetype,
Symbol in the Psychology of C. G. Jung, translated by Ralph
Manheim (Princeton, 1959), and a special issue of Rivista di
psicologia analitica (no. 2, 1971) both provide handy intro-
ductions to the Jungian approach to the symbol. The vol-
umes of the Eranos Jahrbuch (Zurich, 1934–) and Symbolon
(Basel, 1960–) are a good source of information for current
interdisciplinary work going on in the interpretation of an-
cient and modern symbolism, both Eastern and Western.
PETER T. STRUCK (2005)
SYMBOLIC TIME is understood to be the temporal
form that organizes the symbols of a religious system into an
order of periodicity. The analysis of symbolic time extends
the understanding of religion as a symbolic system, so that
the major functions of time within the system may be taken
into account: (1) the time intrinsic to the formation of reli-
gious symbols and to the ritual performance (i.e., the time
that is internal to the sacred event), (2) the connection that
symbolic time has with the history and dynamic of a religious
social bond, and (3) the time that is specific to the intention-
al life of the individual.
INTENTIONAL CHARACTER OF SYMBOLIC TIME. Symbolic
periodicity encompasses, in its temporal structure, both
change and duration, implying a sheer sequence of symbolic
events and also a type of internal correlation of events and
symbols that reflects the functional unity of the interval of
time and the continuity of its structure.
The calendrical structure of the symbolic system has a
complexity that differs from that of a means of time reckon-
ing or chronology. The temporal order of symbolic events
is quite different from the abstract concept of time as a con-
tinuous quantity infinitely divisible into successive parts that
are homogeneous and impenetrable (Hubert and Mauss,
1909, p. 190). When compared with the chronological suc-
cession of cosmological time units, the symbolic performa-
tive system of festivals within a given culture or historical re-
ligion appears to be discontinuous and to have an uneven
distribution over the sequence of the year. An order of prece-
dence among religious festivals emphasizes a single festival,
or set of festivals, around which the entire calendrical perfor-
mance of the symbolic system is organized and that is repli-
cated as the periodical structure of the religious year. Calen-
drical periodicity has an order that is temporally specific and
reflects the dynamics of the symbolic function. It cannot be
adequately analyzed by means of a descriptive model of the
immediate empirical form of cyclic repetition.
The analysis of symbolic time may be pursued by link-
ing the periodical structure of the religious symbols to the
relational character of the symbol itself. It is possible to iden-
tify the dominant symbols that constitute the paradigmatic
structure of a symbolic system and to identify their symbolic
components and processual aspects, which define the dy-
namic movement of symbolic time.
A dominant symbol is a processual unity of word, semi-
otic transformation of an object of mediation, and action.
It is structured as a relation that mediates a dynamic order
of reality. Each symbolic feature is formed in such a way as
to be a relational structure that binds two or more polarities
to each other. As a unity, the religious symbol is generated
within the dynamic of a relation between the subject and
God, or an ultimate reality that has the capacity to condition
the life of the subject. In their complex temporal features,
symbols are the work of reason and the structures of percep-
tion, the dynamics of value, and the form of action in an in-
tentional condition that comes into being when a constitu-
tive relation between polar subjects appears as a new
possibility or a new necessity.
In this sense, religious symbols are structures that are
formed in the course of action and in the elaboration of expe-
rience. Symbol formation is present in the mental activity of
the individual from the earliest stages; it is the way by which
the relation with reality is established. But the temporal anal-
ysis of the type of processual structures that are differentiated
by the religious symbol shows that the relation may not be
defined simply in terms of subjectivity or in terms of inter-
subjective exchange. The central structure of a religious sym-
bol defines the condition itself of “being in relation,” the
condition that shall be called intentionality or intentional
bond; a symbol articulates the effective relation that condi-
tions the life of the intentional subjects.
Symbols differentiate the direct expression and perfor-
mance of the bond that relates the subject with the intention-
al object. The symbolic bond has a polar structure: It is con-
stituted both by the orientation of the subject toward the
object and by the way in which the object is determinant and
active in the intentional life of the subject. The symbol is also
performative because it elaborates the cognitive and dynamic
structure of the intentional relation itself.
Symbolic time in its specifically religious form is the re-
sult of a temporal elaboration of the intentional exchange
with an ultimate reality. This temporal elaboration repre-
sents a dynamic, generative process. In fact, symbols are tem-
porally correlated in such a way as to constitute the nascent
state of a bond with an intentional reality and to resolve un-
viable conditions in that relation. This article shall call theSYMBOLIC TIME 8915