The Symbols are all around us!

Secret Symbolism in Occult Art – Fred Gettings (1987)

The Hidden world calls yet again.  The word “Occult” means different things to different people.  To some, it describes only the knowledge that is “against god” in some manner.  To others, it describes the hidden world that is all around us, and of which we are all a part, but that remains mostly hidden, except for insights gleamed by mystics, shamans, sensitives, and other spiritually enlightened people.  One thing that is most certain, is that “occult” does not mean “forgotten.”  The ideas explored in the world of Occult knowledge are impregnated throughout our human world, and the symbols of those ideas can be found anywhere from a fishing village in Greece to the mightiest and most grandiose cathedrals of Roman Catholicism. 

The title of this book is a bit misleading, as all occult things are by nature secret, and the only way to describe any experiences of the world hidden from daily life is to use metaphor and symbol, for normal language does not have the capability to convey what these mystics experience.  People who believe in the occult-ed world feel that there exist many other planes of existence, apart from the material plane we find ourselves living in, and that our souls, composed of a different type of energy/matter, move on to a different plane of existence when our physical body dies.  Because we are all connected by virtue of our co-existence in the Universe, we can explore these separate realms through meditation, drugs, ritual, trance, and psychic abilities.

While all of that may sound like pure jibber-jabber, the influence of this type of thought is pervasive throughout our human culture.  The symbols of the Occult have been used and understood for thousands of years, and now are found in so many places that no one questions where they come from.  For example, in much of the Christian religious iconography, the saints and venerated folk are depicted with glowing halos of energy.  Christians claim this is a sign of their holiness.  However, the symbolic halo was originally used thousands of years earlier, by many different people to denote someone who had crossed over to the Aetheric plane from the material plane.  It is easy to see how this would relate to portraying someone who had a one-on-one encounter with god.

Another example is the portrayal of the Virgin Mary or Jesus Christ enclosed within a Vesica Piscis, which is a deeply rooted Occult symbol, both symbolizing the female, creative, life-giving impulse of the Universe, and the connection between the material world and the Aetheric.  The female symbolism is obvious, as the Vesica Piscis is symbolic of a vagina, of the eternal Feminine, and it makes sense to use the symbol to enclose the so-called Mother of God.  

"Let me save the little man from inside the boat" - Phife Dawg

The use of the Vesica Piscis for portrayals of Jesus Christ, however, have nothing to do with the feminine, and everything to do with the idea that Jesus dies, dwelt in the “Aetheric” realm (described as Hell in the Bible), and returned to Earth with a new awareness.  Because of this he is an enlightened one, worthy of being represented as one with greater knowledge and experience than the normal human.

He saw things we cannot imagine...

Part of my interest in symbols lies in their multiplicity of meaning.  A symbol can and does mean different things to different audiences.  They hold their power whether or not the viewer understands the symbol, but to someone who is versed in the lore of symbols and their meanings, seeing them opens up new pathways of understanding, new ways to approach a subject, and new forms of enlightenment.  To an average Christian, an upside down cross is a symbol of warped Christianity, of Satanism, of everything evil.  However, many Orthodox Christians see an upside down cross as a symbol of the piety of St. Peter, who chose to be crucified upside down in respect of his teacher Jesus having been crucified right-side up.  Context is everything, even in Occult matters.

(This book can be read online as a .pdf here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/36983769/Fred-Gettings-Secret-Symbolism-in-Occult-Art#scribd )

(This book can be purchased here:  AMAZON  )