Symbols - What does heaven look like
Nymph
Nymphs are both a concept and a symbol - see also Nymph in the concepts section.
Conceptually, a nymph or undine is a spirit being that is responsible for one or more of the functions of water. Symbolically a nymph is the personification of that set of functions.
As water is found in all living things, the processes of water are apparent in all those living things. For example there may be very specific ‘plant’ functions, but interacting with those functions will be water based functions [and mineral functions too].
Rudolf Steiner – Nature Spirits
Once the plant has passed into the sphere of moist air, the plant develops what comes to outer physical form in the leaves. Other beings are at work now in everything that goes on in the leaves – water spirits, elemental spirits of the watery element, to which an earlier intuitive clairvoyance gave among others the name of undines.
Nymphs are not the same as mermaids or mermen or sirens.
There are numerous synonyms in various languages for example, the Neck or Necke, in Danish the Nokke; the Stromkarl; the Icelandic Nickur, Ninnir and Hnikur. In the Faeroes the Neck are called Nikar and are said to inhabit streams and lakes.
In dreams, you may see a nymph if you have drunk a large glass of water before going to bed!
Observations
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- Beuys, Joseph - Flower nymph
- Bouguereau - Nymphs and Satyr
- Bouguereau - The Nymphaeum
- Braveheart - Rivers, locks and nymphs
- Braveheart - Rivers, locks and nymphs continued
- Braveheart - Rivers, locks and nymphs with demons
- Burne-Jones, Edward - Sea Nymph
- Cameron, Norman - Though many men had passed the ford, not one
- Coleridge, Samuel Taylor - The Ancient mariner
- Cyliani - Hermès dévoilé 1831
- Eliot, T S - Four Quartets - 08 The Dry Salvages I
- Evans-Wentz, W Y - Alchemical and Mystical Theory [1911]
- Heine, Heinrich - Oft he sat in the gloomiest corner at home
- Hesiod - Theogony - 02 Order of creation
- Hesiod - Theogony - 03 Order of creation
- Homer - The Odyssey - The nymphs
- Hypnerotomachia Poliphili - Boat to the Isle of Venus
- Hypnerotomachia Poliphili - Nymphs and the Songlines
- Iamblichis – The boys in the spring
- Juan Luis Arsuaga - The Neanderthal's Necklace - Galtxagorri
- Keightley, Thomas - Nymphs and Nereides
- Keightley, Thomas - Stromkarl
- Keightley, Thomas - The Still people
- Klimt - Water Snakes
- Leighton, Frederick Lord - Nymph
- Mircea Eliade - Meeting a water spirit
- Mircea Eliade - On the Gardens of the Hesperides
- Mircea Eliade - The role of the feminine spirit helpers
- Mircea Eliade – On Sea nymphs
- Mr Bryant on the 'worship in caverns'
- Ovid - Metamorphoses - Birth of Bacchus
- Ovid - Metamorphoses - The Giant's War 2
- Paracelsus - extract from Scritti alchemici e magici
- Porphyry - The cave as the symbol of the perceptible cosmos
- Poussin - Sleeping Venus surprised by a satyr
- Seeing nymphs by the sea shore
- Seven Ages of Man - 05 The Mermaids and mermen - 01 Aquatic man
- Shaivism - Concepts and symbols - Mountain
- Sibelius - Wood nymph
- Von Stuck, Franz - 1895 Centaur and Nymph
- Waterhouse, John William - A Naiad
- Waterhouse, John William - Hylas and the Nymphs
- Waterhouse, John William - Nymphs Finding the Head of Orpheus
- Watson, Lyall - Sacred wells and pools
- Wirth, Oswald – 15 The Devil