Symbols - What does heaven look like
Ocean and sea
The ocean and the sea take on the generic symbolism of water – that is the vibrational level directly above that of the earth and hence physical level. But we have the added symbolism of salt, which is symbolically matter or form, [the template for it] thus the ocean and salt water is either form in the process of being created or form in the process of being dissolved.
In effect, the ocean is the transition realm between the earth and the wider spiritual world. Because vibrationally the water is above the earth level, the deeper, figuratively, speaking one goes in the sea, the nearer you are to the physical. Thus at great depths one has almost gone back to the physical level.
The sea can also be symbolic of the return to chaos especially when 'churned up' and hence rough – in that it is spirit in the process of becoming unprogrammed energy. In a sense all programmed energy and hence spirit returns to unprogrammed energy and is thus 'dissolved' returning to the sea. A sea serpent is for this reason an agent of dissolution – a destroyer of function.
A rough sea, if you are on the shore can also be a symbol of a troubled mind
Conversely a calm sea is the symbolic sign of a calm untroubled mind.
The boat on the sea is symbolically like an island – a little centre of ordered energy amidst a dissolving force which may or may not threaten it.
A shipwreck is a break up of ordered function and can be a symbol of rebirth.
As the physical world is in a sense derived from the water level, it is water 'solidified', the sea is the origin of life. This is why Venus was born of the waters and why shells are symbolically important. But we can also return to the waters and thus the sea is also a symbol of death – or more correctly 'going home'. Our unwanted and unneeded function is returned to the waters and we emerge from the waters as our Higher spirit; to continue the alchemical symbolism, we emerge as sulphur!
There is a big difference symbolically between a lake and the ocean. The ocean is the unknown – uncharted waters – new territory, if you are sailing on the ocean in a dream you are going into the world of new ideas and new function – creating and exploring. Thus when the tide has turned it means new ideas are starting to get accepted.
Swimming in the sea is a form of purification symbolically, it washes away unwanted function.
But the sea being a combination of salt and water is also a symbol of the chemical wedding, as such if you symbolically drown it can represent spiritual annihilation. Thus to see yourself drowning in a dream or vision is not necessarily negative – unless of course you aren't that keen on being annihilated! The symbolism takes on added potency because sea water is not sweet it is bitter.
Observations
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- Aeschylus - Agamemnon - Precious as silver, of the purple dye
- Alice in Wonderland - Ch 02 - 3 The Mouse
- Alice in Wonderland - Ch 10 - 1 Lobster quadrille
- Alice in Wonderland - Ch 10 - 2 The voice of the lobster
- Arnold, Matthew - The Buried Life
- Arnold, Matthew - To Margeurite
- Asthma
- Atharvaveda - IV 10 The Pearl and its Shell bestowing long life and prosperity
- Atharvaveda - IX 1 from Hymn to the Honey lash
- Atharvaveda - XII 1 Hymn to goddess Earth - Part 02 Give us this day
- Attar, Fariduddin - All pervading consciousness
- Attar, Fariduddin - Invocation
- Baudelaire, Charles - Le Voyage - We want to break the boredom of our jails
- Baudelaire, Charles - Les Fleurs du Mal - Above ponds, above valleys Mountains, woods, clouds, seas
- Baudelaire, Charles - Les Fleurs du Mal - Tell me, Agatha, does your heart, at times, fly away
- Baudelaire, Charles - Rêve parisien
- Bax, Clifford - The Meaning of Man - For as those that are sunken deep
- Beowulf - Burial at Sea
- Bhagavad Gita - Vasuki and the Ocean of Milk
- Billy Joel - The River of Dreams
- Blithe spirit - I almost reached the Light
- Boehme, Jacob - Aurora - Just as a drop of water
- Boethius - The Consolation of Philosophy - The careful man will wish
- Book of Enoch-17
- Book of Enoch-69
- Book of Five Spheres - The Fire Scroll - Crossing a Ford
- Borobudur
- Bouguereau - The Birth of Venus
- Bowie, David - 1976 Station to station
- Braveheart - A long shamanic journey
- Braveheart - An island hut and pencil case
- Braveheart - Bridge to the tunnel
- Braveheart - Columns and colours
- Braveheart - Forest of bright birds
- Braveheart - Landscapes, stones and islands
- Braveheart - Lifting tree trunks
- Braveheart - Meets a dreadful demon
- Braveheart - Rivers, locks and nymphs
- Brittany - Isle de Sein and the Realm of the Dead
- Brittany - Ys
- Brittia
- Bronte, Emily - Anticipation - How beautiful the earth is still
- Bronte, Emily - The Philosopher - I saw a spirit, standing
- Burne-Jones, Edward - Sea Nymph
- Byron, Lord - from Don Juan
- Cameron, Norman - From lands where all the flowers have teeth
- Cameron, Norman - My soul is some leviathan in vague distress
- Cannabis and morning glory seeds - by Waking dream
- Carlyle, Thomas - Sartor Resartus - For a Teufelsdrockh will not love a second time
- Carpenter, Edward - from By the Shore
- Carroll, Lewis - The Hunting of the Snark
- Charles Fort - 0 Concepts - White coral islands in a dark blue sea
- Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz - The Third Day
- Chesterton, G K - The ballad of the White Horse
- Christian islands
- Chuang Tzu - You cannot speak of the ocean to a well frog
- Cirlot on boats
- Cirlot on snakes and serpents
- Clare, John - Wilt thou go with me sweet maid
- Cohen, Leonard - Suzanne
- Coleridge, David Hartley - How long I sailed and never took a thought
- Coleridge, Samuel Taylor - Christabel
- Coleridge, Samuel Taylor - Kubla Khan
- Confucius - The Doctrine of the Mean - 02
- Confucius - The Doctrine of the Mean - 09
- Corbin, Henry - Qazvini
- Cowper, William - God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform
- Cowper, William - The Castaway - Obscurest night involved the sky
- Crowley, Aleister - Book of Lies - Dust Devils
- Da Vinci, Leonardo - Allegory with Wolf and Eagle
- Dadd, Richard - Come unto these yellow sands
- Dali - Dream caused by the flight of a bee
- Dali - St John of the Cross
- Daniel 07
- Dante - Purgatorio - Canto 03 & 04
- Dante - Purgatorio - Canto 28
- Delville, Jean - The Angel of Splendour
- Delville, Jean - Orpheus
- Dickinson, Emily - One life of so much consequence Yet I for it would pay
- Dr Douglas Hyde - Seeing monstrous rabbits, and horses that change into women
- Dr Jordan Peterson – The Mesopotamian gods and the Creation story
- Ecclesiastes 1
- Eliot, T S - Four Quartets - 07 East Coker V
- Evelyn Lip - Chinese Geomancy
- Fleetwood Mac - Storms
- Frost, Robert - The people along the sand
- Frost, Robert - The shattered water made a misty din
- Gardner, Ingrid - Cliffs and the abyss
- Gentling the Bull – 08 Both Bull and Man forgotten
- Gerhardie, William - Resurrection 03
- Godwin, Joscelyn - The Starlight years
- Goethe - Selected poems - The sun proclaims its old devotion
- Goethe - Selected poems - The water lapped, the water swirled
- Green, Celia - The Recurrent nightmare
- Grieg - Peer Gynt Suite - Anitra's Dance
- Grieg - Peer Gynt Suite - Morning Mood
- Hafez of Shiraz - Thirty Poems - For years my heart had been searching
- Heine, Heinrich - The North Sea - By the sea, the dreary nocturnal sea
- Heine, Heinrich - The North Sea - Lurid the thunderstorm lies on the ocean
- Heine, Heinrich - The North Sea - Myself am moved by the secret
- Heine, Heinrich - The North Sea - Shipwreck!
- Heine, Heinrich - The North Sea - Stay thou below in thy ocean depths
- Heine, Heinrich - The North Sea - The sunbeams were playing
- Hesiod - Theogony - 01 Order of creation
- Hesiod - Works and Days - The five ages of man
- Hiroshige - Awa Naruto no fuukei
- Hiroshige - Rough sea at the whirlpools of Awa
- Hiroshige - shunga
- Hokusai - The Great Wave off Kanagawa
- Holmes, Oliver Wendell - The chambered nautilus
- Homer - The Odyssey - Asphodel fields
- Homer - The Odyssey - The Sirens
- Hood, Thomas - The Sea of Death
- How sweet the heavens are
- Huxley, Thomas - Intellectually we stand on an islet
- Hypnerotomachia Poliphili - Boat to the Isle of Venus
- Hypnerotomachia Poliphili - Flying Chariot
- Hypnerotomachia Poliphili - Islands
- Island of the Blessed
- Isle of Man - The Testimony of John Davies, herb doctor and seer
- James, William - The Confidences of a Psychical Researcher - Ego and Personality
- Jami - SALÁMÁN AND ABSÁL – from 05 The Story
- Jami - Since I am hit by slanders
- Japanese Shinto print
- Japanese tea ceremony 2
- Jeans, Sir James - The Mysterious Universe - The ship on the sea
- Jefferies, Richard - The Story of my Heart - The ocean
- Jili, Abd al-Karim - Al-Kahf wa al-raqim - 012 Introduction [Extract]
- Jili, Abd al-Karim - Al-Kahf wa al-raqim - 160 Section 15
- Jili, Abd al-Karim - Henry Corbin - The Higher spirit
- Jude
- Judges and Exodus
- Jung, C G - Mysterium conjunctionis - Visions
- Jung, C G - The personification of the opposites - Salt
- Kabir - I know all the gates of his palace
- Kabir - Inside this clay jug there are canyons
- Karma Dorjee floats to his monastery
- Keats, John - Epistle to John Hamilton Reynolds
- Keats, John - Ode to a Nightingale
- Khan, Hazrat Inayat - The Art of Being and Becoming - On the sea
- Khnopff, Fernand - Abandonned City
- Knut Ekwall - The Fisherman and the Siren
- Krishna receives reflexology stimulation
- Krishna, Gopi - the kundalini experience - on to the gift of moksha and poetic inspiration
- Lalla - For a moment I saw a beautiful moving river
- Lalla - I’m towing my boat across the ocean
- Lamb, Charles - To Anna
- Laubscher, B J F – Gone, gone, gone to the other shore
- Led Zeppelin - Down By the Seaside
- Leighton, Frederick Lord - The Fisherman and the Siren
- Levy-Dhurmer - Méduse 007565
- Lewis, C S - Dawn Treader - Sea horses
- Li Po - To the City of Nan-king
- Li Qingzhao - Year after year, a little drunk
- Lowell, James Russell - For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along
- Lowell, James Russell - Now fold thy wings a little while
- Lowell, James Russell - Still as a city buried ‘neath the sea
- Lowry, L S - Self portrait as a pillar in the sea
- Lowry, L S - The Seaside
- Magritte, Rene - The Friend of War
- Magritte, Rene - L’entrée en scene
- Magritte, Rene - Painting painted
- Magritte, Rene - Son of Man
- Magritte, Rene - The Collective Invention
- Magritte, Rene - The Victory
- Martineau, Harriet - Arise, My Soul And Urge thy Flight 1
- Master Naong - Song of the Pure Land
- Mayan - Popol Vuh - 01 This is the beginning
- Mayan - Popol Vuh - 02 Sky-earth, lake-sea
- Mayan - Sacbeob or White ways
- Michaux, Henri - Miserable Miracle Mescaline - Mescaline and Hashish compared
- Michaux, Henri - Towards Serenity
- Mircea Eliade - Belet
- Mircea Eliade - Eskimo initiation
- Mircea Eliade - Mount Sumeru
- Mircea Eliade - On Sacred springs
- Mircea Eliade - On stones
- Mircea Eliade - On the Gardens of the Hesperides
- Mircea Eliade - The stone ones
- Mircea Eliade - Water
- Morrells, Luce and crystal eggs in a viscous sea
- Morrells, Luce and flying on a magic carpet
- Morrells, Luce and the Amazing airy house
- Morrells, Luce and the domes
- Morrells, Luce and the horseshoe shaped island
- Morrells, Luce and the house boat
- Morrells, Luce and the large house surrounded by water
- Morrells, Luce and the lovely hotel
- Morrells, Luce cliffs and sheep
- Mount Agung Bali
- Mount Athos
- Munch, Edvard - The Lonely Ones 1935
- Neiye - Verse 02
- Neruda, Pablo - If you were to come into being suddenly
- Nietzsche - Daybreak - We aeronauts of the spirit
- Nietzsche - Thus spake Zarathustra - LIX The Second Dance Song
- O'Reilly, John Boyle - The faithful helm commands the keel
- Ovid - Metamorphoses - The Story of Daedalus and Icarus
- Ovid - Metamorphoses - The Story of Phaeton 1
- O’Keeffe, Georgia - Sky above clouds
- Palenque - Mayan - Overview
- Panic with unexpected rebirth
- Paul Devereux - The realm of the dead
- Peake, Mervyn - I, while the gods laugh, the world's vortex am
- Plato - Critias - Atlantis and Athens
- Plato - Phaedo - Energy recycling, streams and rivers
- Poe, Edgar Allen - The City in the Sea
- Poe, Edgar Allen - To One in Paradise
- Porphyry - On the Soul of Plotinus
- Quincey, Thomas de - My mind tossed upon the billowy ocean, and weltered upon the weltering wave
- Rachmaninoff - Isle of the Dead, Op. 29
- Ravel - Miroirs III
- Redon, Odilon - Les Noirs 4
- Rene Magritte and J H M Whiteman
- Revelations 21 - The New Jerusalem
- Reverdy, Pierre - Entre deux mondes
- Rig veda - Boats, Birds and Chariots
- Rig Veda - Gone to the other shore
- Rig Veda - Spirit travel
- Rimbaud, Arthur - I know skies split by lightning, waterspouts
- Rosicrucean - Thor Kiimaletho - 02 The fundamental beliefs
- Rudd, Xavier - The Letter
- Rumi - Love poems - Silence lies in the ocean
- Rumi - Mathwani - Thou knowest not where is the Ocean of thought
- Rumi - Misc - Every image you see
- Rumi - Misc - God has made existence magnificent
- Rumi - Rubaiyat - Are you searching for your soul
- Ruzbihan Baqli – The Unveiling of Secrets – The Ocean of Wine
- S'RÎMAD BHÂGAVATAM – Canto 10, Chapter 20 – Autumn in Vrindâvana
- S'RÎMAD BHÂGAVATAM – Canto 10, Chapter 20 – The Rainy Season and Autumn in Vrindâvana
- Saadi - A Drop of Rain was falling from forth a summer cloud
- Saint Brendan - 02 The Voyage of Saint Brendan
- Saint Brendan - 09 The Voyage of Saint Brendan
- Saint Brendan - 12 The Voyage of Saint Brendan
- Saint Brendan - A summary of his 'voyage'
- Saint Teresa of Avila - Water
- Samavedas – Book 09 Chapter 02, XIII Vena
- Samyutta Nikaya - Wheel of life
- Schopenhauer, Arthur - The World as Will and Idea - Power, nature and contemplation
- Schwabe, Carlos - Destiny
- Schwabe, Carlos - L'Homme et la Mer
- Schwabe, Carlos - Spleen et Idéal 1896
- Schwabe, Carlos - The Virgin of the Lilies 1899
- Sefer ha-bahir – Para 51 – One, Two, Three
- Segantini - Mermaid
- Seneca – Agamemnon - Fortuna
- Shabistari, Mahmud - The Gulshan-i raz - Look at the drops of rain rising up from this sea
- Shabistari, Mahmud - The Gulshan-i raz - The sea is being and speech its shore
- Shakespeare, William - When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
- Silesius - The Cherubinic Wanderer – 06 Self abandonment 154
- Sorolla, Joaquin - 1903 Bulls in the sea
- Sorolla, Joaquin - Children on the beach
- Spilliaert, Leon - The Posts
- Spilliaert, Leon - Femme au bord de l'eau
- Spilliaert, Leon - The Crossing
- Sri Aurobindo - Ocean Oneness
- Sterry, Peter - Imagine this Life as an Island, surrounded by a Sea of Darkness
- Sting - Love is the Seventh Wave
- Sting - The Lowest Trees have Tops
- Suhrawardi - Hikmat al-ishriq - Human forms of extreme beauty who speak to them
- Sumeru
- Surdas - Fatephur Sikri manuscript - NPS 56
- Tennyson, Alfred Lord - Morte d’Arthur - Lyonesse
- Tennyson, Alfred Lord - The Lotus Eaters - A land of streams! Some, like a downward smoke
- Tennyson, Alfred Lord - Will - O well for him whose will is strong
- The Big Ship Sails
- The Book of Taliesin - Caer Sidi
- The Cinematic Orchestra 'Breathe' - Live At The Barbican
- The lighthouse of Alexandria
- The Lotus Sutra - 18 Benefits of the Teacher of the Law - 5 The benefits of becoming a 'seer'
- The Owl as the Vahana of Lashmi
- The Papyrus of Ani – Spell 84 - From How to Assume the Form of a Heron
- The Song of Great Dao - Gao, Lian - Ming Dynasty
- The Sutra of Hui-Neng - Paramita
- The tunnel and the light in the NDE 07
- Thompson, Francis - Daisy
- Thoreau, Henry D - Walden - The landscape of soul
- Through the Looking Glass - Ch 04 - 2 The Walrus and the Carpenter
- Through the Looking Glass - Ch 06 - 6 In Winter when the fields are white
- Tranströmer, Tomas - Under Pressure
- Tulsidas - Vinaya Patrika 19
- Unusual cards - 16 The Tower
- Verlaine, Paul - Je ne sais pourquoi
- Vision of Timarchus
- W.Y. Evans-Wentz - The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries - The Celtic Otherworld and the Sidhe
- Wadsworth Longfellow, Henry - Becalmed
- Warner Allen, Herbert - The Timeless moment
- Washington, George - A vision and a prophecy
- Waterhouse, John William - Miranda
- Waterhouse, John William - The Mermaid
- Watson, Lyall - Fountains and snakes
- Wilcox, Ella Wheeler - A Lover's Quarrel
- Wilcox, Ella Wheeler - As you go through life
- Wirth, Oswald – 10 Wheel of Fortune
- Wordsworth, William - Are yet the fountain light of all our day
- Wordsworth, William - Elegiac Stanzas - I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile
- Yaqui Myths and Legends – collected by Ruth Warner Giddings - The first fire
- Yassawi - 15 from HIKMET 48
- Yassawi - 25 HIKMET 128
- Yeats, W B - Collected poems - My mother dandled me and sang
- Yeats, W B - Collected poems - That crazed girl improvising her music
- Yerka, Jacek and M Kathleen Casey – The Promise of a New day
- Ynglinga saga - 08 Chapter Eight
- Yoga Vasistha - Troubled or still
- Zhang Guolao - Secrets of Embryonic Breathing
- Zosimos of Panopolis - The Letter Omega - 01