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		"As the imagery of a dream is metaphorical of the psychology of its dreamer, that of a mythology is metaphorical of the psychological posture of the people to whom it pertains." Inner Reaches of Outer Space, Metaphor as Myth and as Religion (Joseph Campbell)

2		"Symbols are units, instruments, and media designed to convey and elicit thoughts, feelings, and intuitions, the core of the symbol being its ability to activate and focus the intuition." Divine Light and Fire, Experiencing Esoteric Christianity (Peter Roche deCoppens)

3		"As a culture-wide paradigm shift makes its presence felt, people are searching frantically for a New Story to give their lives meaning….the New Story involves our reunion with the natural world, based on the interconnectedness of all living systems." As Above, So Below: Paths to Spiritual Renewal in Daily Life (Ronald S. Miller and the editors of New Age Journal)

4		"In fact, the whole of mythology could be taken as a sort of projection of the collective unconscious." 'The Structure of the Psyche' Collected Works (Carl Jung)

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

6		"A common theme in worldwide mythology is the human as microcosm, a miniature model of the whole universe…this view was long considered a key to the understanding of the Self. The ancient philosophers saw their inner lives arranged according to nature's own harmonies, for in nature, geometry, and their spiritual lives they discovered the same principles." A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art & Science (Michael S. Schneider)

7		"Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have something to do with faith, faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically." Madeleine L'Engle Spiritual Literacy, Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life (Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat)

8		"Human creativity in art and myth arises from the unconscious formative force with the same necessity and universality as do the products of nature and in its timelessness and universality of form becomes their correlative." The Strong Eye of Shamanism, A Journey Into the Caves of Consciousness (Robert E. Ryan, Ph.D.)

9		"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)

10		"The oldest, the most profound, the most universal of all symbols is the human body." Manly P. Hall, 'Masonic, Hermetic, Quabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy' The Flowering Tree (Gladys V. Jones)

11		"The more unconscious humans are the less control they have over which myth operates through them." Myth, History & Faith (Morton Kelsey)

12		"Deciphering the meanings of myths and symbols is repaid by a considerable enrichment of consciousness." Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, The Encounter Between Contemporary Faiths and Archaic Realities (Mircea Eliade)

13		"The first function of a mythology is to waken and maintain in the individual a sense of wonder and participation in the mystery of this finally inscrutable universe, whether undestood in Michelangelo's way as an effect of the will of an anthropomorphic creator, or in the way of our modern physical scientists – and of many of the leading Oriental religious and philosophical systems – as the continuously created dynamic display of an absolutely transcendent, yet universally immanent, 'mysterium tremendum et fascinans', which is the ground at once of the whole spectacle and of oneself." Historical Atlas of World Mythology, vol. 1, The Way of the Animal Powers (Joseph Campbell)

14		"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)

15		"Like the language of pure mathematics, which can describe abstract nth-dimensional processes and forms, the symbolic language of metaphorms is also multidimensional. It operates simultaneously on many planes of associations, nuances, and meanings." Breaking the Mind Barrier (Todd Siler)

16		"Scientific discovery itself is not possible without thinking in images and symbols and myths." Myth, History & Faith (Morton Kelsey)

17		"Whereas our outer consciousness expresses itself in words, our inner consciousness communicates in symbols. Throughout history we have used symbolic systems of one kind or another, to enable our inner selves to evolve. These systems are like springs welling up from some deep reservoir which appears to be fed by the totality of our experience of ourselves and our universe. Thus, any profound system of symbology has a universal dimension, through its source." The Rosicrucians: The History, Mythology, and Rituals of an Esoteric Order (Christopher McIntosh)

18		"There is only one true mythic poet repeatedly incarnated in human history, writing the one true mythic poem in various exemplars and with different inflections but with the lineaments of a thoroughgoing unity of expression." The Strong Eye of Shamanism, A Journey Into the Caves of Consciousness (Robert E. Ryan, Ph.D.)

19		“For the alchemists the world was an image and symbol of God.” Collected Works (Carl Jung)

20		"The dreams of ancient and modern man are written in the same language as the myths whose authors lived in the dawn of history…symbolic language is the one foreign language that each of us must learn. Its understanding brings us in touch with one of the most significant sources of wisdom, that of the myth, and it brings us in touch with the deeper layers of our own personalities….Indeed, both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves." Erich Fromm, 'The Forgotten Language' Reincarnation: The Phoenix Fire Mystery (Cranston/Head, editors)

21		"The task of the modern human being is to interiorize mythic symbology;…to comprehend, in short, that all mythological images are aspects of your own immediate experience." Robert Walter, Foreword World Mythology (Roy Willis, General Editor)

22		"Myths are first and foremost psychic phenomena that reveal the nature of the soul." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

23		"Mind has the possibility of seeing itself reflected in the forms and symbols to which it gives birth. Its words and numbers, forms and images, are metaphors describing itself, and so are our most powerful tools for penetrating into its actions and modes." Robert Lawlor, 'Ancient Temple Architecture' Homage to Pythagoras, Rediscovering Sacred Science (Christopher Bamford, editor)

24		"Each of us is living out of our own unique edition of the one universal story of how we, as human beings, discover and respond to the divine origin and fulfillment of our lives." Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence of God (James Finley)

25		"The images of myth are reflections of the spiritual potentialities of every one of us. Through contemplating these we evoke their powers in our own lives." The Power of Myth (Joseph Campbell)