There is an old knowing that lives beneath language. It does not arrive through fact. It comes through image. And not just any image, but one that carries time inside it. An image that remembers us from before we were born. One that waits in the dream, behind the door, beneath the ache we almost understand.
When the soul wants to speak, it does not use clear explanations. It shapes a symbol. Something layered and alive. Something that cannot be grasped all at once. A thing with roots. A thing with breath. A figure seen from the corner of the eye. A sound that echoes long after it ends.
Symbols are born in the same place the old stories come from. They carry what the world forgets. They speak in riddles and require patience. To live symbolically is to be pulled toward depth, to be drawn into something that has no easy answer.
The teacher reminds us that a symbol is not made by intellect alone. It is not a sign, not a fixed code. It is an image that has been lived in. Turned slowly. Held through memory and meaning. Breathed through the body. An image that has gathered something eternal in its shape.
The symbol is not what we look at. It is what we enter. It opens a space between worlds. The one we live in and the one just behind it. And when we fall into the symbol, we fall into that world behind. The place where ancestors speak through birds. The place where wounds remember their own healing. The place where every thread ties back to the beginning.
There are times when the symbol comes unannounced. A shape appears in the dream and won’t leave. A stranger says a phrase you’ve never heard and cannot forget. A song pulls tears before the words have meaning. In those moments, something older is calling. And something in you remembers how to answer.
The soul does not grow in straight lines. It spirals. It returns. It deepens. The symbol matches that spiral. It moves in circles, through shadows and echoes, touching the same place again with a different touch.
To work with a symbol is to allow it to shape you. You do not lift the meaning from it. You let it enter your skin. You let it alter your rhythm. You let it bring together the scattered pieces. Symbols gather what has been torn. They bring back the forgotten names.
In the old languages, the word for symbol meant to throw together. To gather what belongs. To carry both the sacred and the broken. To remember what the soul always knew, even when the mind had no words.
The image becomes a symbol when you stop trying to master it. When you let it live. When you let it hold its mystery. It becomes a doorway, not to answers, but to presence. A threshold you cross when you are tired of cleverness. A place to kneel and listen.
Some symbols will carry you for years. Others appear once and leave a mark. But each one opens a deeper rhythm. A secret pulse beneath the noise. A way to feel the ancient song rising again in your chest.
The world we see is held together by things we do not see. The symbol reminds us. It pulls back the curtain. It shows us how the visible world rests on invisible threads. And those threads do not run in straight lines. They cross through memory, story, and dream. They wind their way through the timeless and enter again through the ordinary.
If you are lucky, or paying attention, you will notice when the symbol appears. It may come softly. It may come with fire. Either way, it brings what is needed. And asks only that you make a place for it. Let it stay. Let it speak in the voice it chooses. Let it remember what you once knew and are ready now to learn again.
Madeline – Soulful Nuggets Team
This blog is a reflection on the course ‘Complexes and Archetypes‘ taught by Ken James .
