Many / One

A database of 11,000+ illuminated guiding quotations in 40 categories from 600+ inspired books by our most brilliant and influential authors.
Compiled by JoAnn Kite

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1		"Symbols are living entities with a life-cycle of their own; they are born, flourish for a while, then dwindle and die. New symbols come into existence all the time, but not in an arbitrary or unrelated way. They bear a family resemblance to each other and to their ancestors, in the sense that they are imaginal forms which possess a dynastic relationship to symbols that have preceded them." Ariadne's Clue, A Guide to the Symbols of Humankind (Anthony Stevens)

2		"Mythological expression has its own teleological directedness. It is a 'tool of the gods' which necessarily leads back to its source in the Divine." The Strong Eye of Shamanism, A Journey Into the Caves of Consciousness (Robert E. Ryan, Ph.D.)

3		"Modern man must return to the mythic voice if he is to heal the divisions in his soul." Origins of the Sacred (Dudley Young)

4		"The visible world was made to correspond to the world invisible and there is nothing in this world but is a symbol of something in that world." Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali, eleventh century visionary The Way of The Earth, Encounters with Nature in Ancient and Contemporary Thought (T. C. McLuhan)

5		"Behind symbol and myth stands reality – an essential, dramatic and practical truth." From Bethlehem to Calvary (Alice A. Bailey)

6		"We can grow in awareness of the images which deeply affect us in our lives. They can be discovered, listened to , and incorporated into our ongoing story. In our dreams, in our loves, on our journeys, we are being addressed by images. They are inviting us to enter more deeply into our lives, to allow our stories to unfold." Spiritual Pilgrims, Carl Jung & Teresa of Avila (John Welch, O. Carm.)

7		"Symbolism adds a new value to an object or an act, without thereby violating its immediate or historical validity. Once it is brought to bear, it turns the object or action into an 'open' event: symbolic thought opens the door on to immediate reality for us, but without weakening or invalidating it; seen in this light the universe is no longer sealed off, nothing is isolated inside its own existence: everything is linked by a system of correspondences and assimilations." A Dictionary of Symbols (J. E. Cirlot)

8		"Universal symbols are common to all humankind and are used to express our relationship to our Creator and to teach universal truths. They also tell us a great deal about our true selves." Symbols, Guiding Lights Along the Journey of Life (Kathleen R. Prata)

9		"The first function of mythology is to sanctify the place you are in." A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living (Diane K. Osbon, editor)

10		"Whether it is expressed in the prose epic of the Winnebago Indians, in a lament for the death of Balder in the Norse sagas, in Walt Whitman's poems of mourning for Abraham Lincoln, or in the dream ritual whereby a man returns to his yourthful hopes and fears, it is the same theme – the drama of new birth through death." Joseph L. Henderson Man and His Symbols (Carl Jung)

11		"Myths could well be considered the ever-recurring collective dreams of mankind. To our rational outlook they are as unreal as dreams, and yet as uncannily effective when carefully considered as indicators and directors of psychic development." Return of the Goddess (Edward C. Whitmont, MD)

12		"The history of symbolism shows that everything can assume symbolic significance: natural objects (like stones, plants, animals, people, mountains and valleys, sun and moon, wind, water, and fire), or man-made things (like houses, boats, or cars), or even abstract forms (like numbers, or the triangle, the square, and the circle). In fact, the whole cosmos is a potential symbol." Aniela Jaffe, 'Symbolism in the Visual Arts' Man and His Symbols (Carl Jung)

13		"Myth is psychic truth." The Transforming Mind (Laurence and Phoebe Bendit)

14		"I believe that a large proportion of the mythological conception of the world which reaches far into the most modern religions is…psychology projected into the outer world." Sigmund Freud, 'Psychopathology of Everyday Life' The Garden of the Golden Flower, The Journey to Spiritual Fulfilment (Longfield Beatty)

15		"St. Augustine shows that teaching carried out with the help of symbols feeds and stirs the fires of love, enabling Man to excel himself; he also alludes to the value of all things in nature – organic and inorganic – as bearers of spiritual messages by virtue of their distinctive forms and characteristics." A Dictionary of Symbols (J. E. Cirlot)

16		"The soul-journey resembles very much the sort of adventure one encounters in folklore and myth." Paul Zeig (1935-1984), American author, 'The Adventurer' The Quotable Spirit (Peter Lorie and Manuela D Mascetti, editors)

17		"All cultures begin in explosions of myth in the minds of prophets, mystics, visionary scientists, artists and crazies. Whether it is in the dreams of Descartes, Alfred Russell Wallace and Niels Bohr, or in the visions of Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed, culture springs from the depths." William Irwin Thompson, Foreword The Findhorn Garden: Pioneering a New Vision of Man and Nature in Cooperation (The Findhorn Community)

18		"It does appear that anyone viewing with unprejudiced eye the religions of mankind must recognize mythic themes at every hand that are shared, though differently interpreted, among the peoples of this planet." The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, Metaphor as Myth and as Religion (Joseph Campbell)

19		"What is sought in Alchemy or the Hermetic Books…is the basic spiritual pattern of the human mind in symbolic garb, as it presents itself in the individual and behind that, in the enduring structures of the human organism." Encyclopedia of Ancient and Forbidden Knowledge (Zolar)

20		"Mythology is the history of the self." The Visionary Window: A Quantum Physicist's Guide to Enlightenment (Amit Goswami, Ph.D.)

21		"We discern golden glints of truth within musty and antiquated myths. These shining facets free us from narrow and limiting concepts." Rediscovering the Angels (Flower A. Newhouse)

22		"Just as traditional symbols are necessary to ensure cultural coherence and the assimilation of successive generations, so it is our innate ability to think symbolically that enables us to reshape our universe." Ariadne's Clue, A Guide to the Symbols of Humankind (Anthony Stevens)

23		"Myth is the primordial language natural to these (unconscious) psychic processes, and no intellectual formulation comes anywhere near the richness and expressiveness of mythical imagery." 'Psychology and Alchemy' Collected Works (Carl Jung)

24		"The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in." Harold Goddard As Above, So Below: Paths to Spiritual Renewal in Daily Life (Ronald S. Miller and the editors of New Age Journal)

25		"Myth is a picture language….In the first place, this language is the native speech of dream. But in the second place, it has been studied, clarified, and enriched by the poets, prophets, and visionaries of untold millenniums. Dante, Aquinas, and Augustine, al-Ghazali and Mohammed, Zarathustra, Shankaracharya, Nagarjuna, and T'ai Tsung, were…masters of the human spirit teaching a wisdom of death and life. And the thesaurus of the myth-motifs was their vocabulary. They brooded on the state and way of man, and through their broodings came to wisdom; then teaching, with the aid of the picture-language of myth, they worked changes on the patterns of their inherited iconographies." The Flight of the Wild Gander (Joseph Campbell)