candles
The Seba library treats Candle in 8 passages, across 7 authors (including Hillman, James, Edinger, Edward F., von Franz, Marie-Louise).
For every bit of light that we grasp out of archetypal ambivalence, illumining with the candle of our ego a bright circle of awareness, we also darken the remainder of the room.
Hillman argues that the candle of ego-consciousness is a figure for the irreducible paradox whereby any act of illumination simultaneously produces its own surrounding darkness, making consciousness and unconsciousness co-originary.
, Senex & Puer, 2015thesis
I understand the lighted candles as symbolizing the life process itself. This is suggested by such common phrases as ‘burning the candle at both ends.’ The molten wax, produced by the candle flame, can then be understood as a malleable substance produced by the act of living.
Edinger reads the lighted candle as an alchemical emblem of the life process, its molten wax being the formless yet plastic material of lived experience that is subsequently shaped by the Self’s predetermined mold.
, Science of the Soul: A Jungian Perspective, 2002thesis
The burning candles in this context are obviously related to a Catholic viewpoint. They represent the little light everyone has to carry in order to contribute to the solution of the problem.
Von Franz interprets the candle carried in religious procession as an archetypal symbol of each individual’s obligatory, if small, contribution to collective psychic and spiritual renewal.
, Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales, 1997thesis
the use of holy candles to chase away demons in an exorcising ritual has a negative effect… it is because the hero’s mother advised it. The mother wanted to prevent her son from redeeming the feminine principle, and to do so she misused a sacred object of the Church.
Von Franz demonstrates that the candle’s sacred power is not inherent but conditional: employed from within a mother complex and for egocentric ends, the ritual light inverts into a destructive, quasi-magical force.
, Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales, 1997supporting
Finally, with a heroic effort, so it seemed to me, I lit the candle and went over to the chest of drawers. There was no water on the floor, and no damp spot on the plaster ceiling.
Jung records lighting a candle to investigate a hallucinatory percept, grounding the symbol in the liminal zone between somatic torpor and reality-testing consciousness.
, Collected Works Volume 18: The Symbolic Life, 1976supporting
Next to each of the four outer candles, place a crystal pointing in toward the center… Light the candle and visualize a beam of golden light, like the rising sun, flowing through the point of the crystal.
In Tarot ritual practice, candles serve as directional and elemental markers structuring a consecrated ritual space, their light operationally linked to elemental invocation and intentional visualization.
, Tarot for Your Self: A Workbook for the Inward Journey, 1984supporting
she has repeated images of the color red and a candle. It makes no sense to her, but it has been going on for as long as she can remember.
Shapiro cites the candle as a recurring traumatic image whose persistence resists rational interpretation, illustrating the candle’s potential role as an intrusive memory fragment in clinical psychology.
, Getting Past Your Past: Take Control of Your Life with Self-Help Techniques from EMDR Therapy, 2012aside
O Envy (? of his triumph), you have put out the kindled torch of his beauty. Light symbolism as it occurs in the Byzantine religious tradition marks a further development, joining to Greek the Christian heritage.
Alexiou traces the torch-as-life metaphor through Greek funerary inscriptions and Byzantine hymnody, providing a comparative backdrop for the candle’s association with mortal life and its premature extinction.
, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition, 1974aside