Symbols - What does heaven look like
Bread
Bread represents Spirit input. Personally I find it jars somewhat with the other symbols chosen for this concept, but there is a sort of odd logic to the choice. Bread symbolises spiritual nourishment, spiritual experiences – everything from a simple crumb to a full blown loaf!! It ties in with the symbolism of grain and seeds. Thus it is more symbolical of the content than the energy itself.
Emily Dickinson – from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Deprived of other banquet
I entertain myself
At first a scant nutrition
An insufficient loaf
But grown by slender addings
To so esteemed a size
‘Tis sumptuous enough for me
And almost to suffice
So there is a subtle difference here, ‘bread’ is symbolic of the little fragments of spiritual wisdom, intuition, inspiration and so on that we get during spiritual experience, as opposed to the spiritual energy itself.
John 6
1After these things Jesus went over the sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias.
2And a great multitude followed him, because they saw his miracles which he did on them that were diseased.
3And Jesus went up into a mountain, and there he sat with his disciples.
4And the passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh.
5When Jesus then lifted up his eyes, and saw a great company come unto him, he saith unto Philip, Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?
6And this he said to prove him: for he himself knew what he would do.
7Philip answered him, Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little.
8One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, saith unto him,
9There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many?
10And Jesus said, Make the men sit down. Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, in number about five thousand.
11And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would.
12When they were filled, he said unto his disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.
13Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten.
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
God gave a loaf to every bird
But just a crumb to me
I dare not eat it – tho’ I starve
My poignant luxury
To own it - touch it
Prove the feat – that made the pellet mine
Too happy for my sparrow’s chance
For ampler coveting
It might be famine all around
I could not miss an ear
Such plenty smiles upon my board
My garner shows so fair
I wonder how the rich may feel
An Indiaman – an early
I deem that I with but a crumb
Am sovereign of them all
Observations
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- Alice in Wonderland - Ch 07 - 1 A Mad Tea Party
- Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz - The First Day
- Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz - The Second Day
- Count of St Germain - A Philosophical sonnet
- Crowley, Aleister - Book of Lies - The Cry of the hawk
- Crowley, Aleister - Book of Lies - The Wound of Amfortas
- Dickinson, Emily - ‘Tis not that dying hurts us so ‘Tis living hurts us more
- Elijah - 1 Kings 17 01 - The brook dries up
- Elijah - 1 Kings 17 08 - Oil, meal and water
- Elijah - 1 Kings 18 01 - Ahab and Obadiah
- Exodus 16
- Hawker, Robert Stephen - Ephphatha - High matins now in bower and hall
- Hennell, Thomas - Of finer, thinner stuff than iridescent bubbles
- Hesiod - Works and Days - The five ages of man
- Isaac Luria – Hymn for the Friday evening meal
- Jesus - Luke 4 - And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost
- Lal Shahbaz Qalandar - The juice of the grape
- Poetic Edda - Sayings of the High One [Odin's sacrifice]
- Proverbs 9
- Saint Brendan - 06 The Voyage of Saint Brendan
- Shah, Idries - The Sufis - QaLB
- Sheik Mauji - The Durud
- Sing a song of sixpence
- Symeon the New Theologian - You, oh Christ, are the Kingdom of Heaven
- The Lion and the Unicorn
- There was an old woman
- Through the Looking Glass - Ch 03 - 3 The Gnat
- Through the Looking Glass - Ch 05 - 1 Wool and Water
- Through the Looking Glass - Ch 07 - 2 Hatta and Haigha