Dome

the dome and arch had begun to appear in the architecture of Rome, and therewith — as Spengler recognized — the world-feeling of the rising Levant was announced… The mosque, in contrast, was all interior: an architectural likeness of the world-cavern

Campbell, via Spengler, argues that the dome inaugurates a new cosmological ‘world-feeling’ — the sacred interior space as image of the universe — marking the shift from Classical exteriority to Levantine interiority.

Campbell, Joseph, Occidental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume III, 1964thesis

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Starting from the beautiful navel-symbol of Delphi, we may safely assume that all ornamentation which consists in the tying up of separate balloon-shapes stands for the exceedingly important mother- or woman-symbol that signifies rebirth in the flesh

Rank derives the dome-shaped tomb and church cupola from the navel-symbol, positioning the dome as a chthonian mother-symbol encoding rebirth and the microcosm-macrocosm homology.

Rank, Otto, Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development, 1932thesis

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the weight of the dome and even of the very walls seems to dissolve completely. An ocean of light pours in from above and dominates the whole space below — it enchants, convinces, as it seems to say: I am in the world and the world is in me.

Bulgakov reads the dome of Hagia Sophia as a Sophiological symbol in which the dissolution of material weight under flooding light enacts the interpenetration of the divine and the world.

Bulgakov, Sergei, Sophia, the Wisdom of God: An Outline of Sophiology, 1937thesis

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the mystical vocabulary of India has preserved the homology man-house and especially the assimilation of the skull to the roof or dome. The fundamental mystical experience… is expressed in a twofold image, breaking the roof and flight.

Eliade establishes the skull-as-dome homology in Indian mystical vocabulary, where transcendence of the human condition is symbolized as breaking through the cranial dome in upward flight.

Eliade, Mircea, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, 1957thesis

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The region of supreme isolation (kaivalya) is at the crown of the dome inside the hollow of the skull. After its pilgrimage of innumerable existences… the life-monad rises to the cranial zone of the macrocosmic being, purged of the weight of the subtle karmic particles

Zimmer locates the Jaina summit of liberation at the crown of the dome within the cosmic skull, confirming the skull-dome-heaven axis as a structural feature of Indian cosmological anthropology.

Zimmer, Heinrich, Philosophies of India, 1951supporting

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Many traditions acknowledge the archetypal nature of a house with some kind of cosmic ornament — a sun and moon, a band of stars, a dome that obviously reflects the canopy of the sky.

Moore identifies the domestic dome as a universal cosmic ornament, an architectural means by which the soul maintains its felt relationship to the celestial order within the intimate space of habitation.

Moore, Thomas, Care of the Soul Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition: A Guide, 1992supporting

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the church represents its spiritualization. We cannot therefore agree with psycho-analysis in its symbolic interpretation — on biological lines — of the church as nothing but a sheltering cavity which replaces the mother’s womb.

Rank critiques the reductive psychoanalytic reading of the domed church as mere maternal enclosure, arguing instead for its dimension as spiritual microcosm-macrocosm symbol beyond biological analogy.

Rank, Otto, Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development, 1932supporting

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Ouranos: dome above the earth… part of Orphic world-egg

Onians’ index entry connects Ouranos etymologically and conceptually to the dome above the earth and the Orphic world-egg, grounding the dome symbol in archaic Greek cosmological structure.

Onians, R B, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting

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Ceilings emphasized design — and I do not mean only the magnificent ones painted to represent the heavens and the gods. Inside the Latin root of the word itself (celum, caelatura, caelo) is the idea of design as burnishing, chiseling, engraving.

Hillman’s etymological meditation on the ceiling as figured sky gestures toward the dome’s symbolic logic — overhead architectural space as an imaginal canopy oriented toward the heavens and the gods.

Hillman, James, A Blue Fire: The Essential James Hillman, 1989aside

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