Up: [[Symbols]] Created: 2024-05-27 Glass, found in symbol dictionaries under ‘Crystal’, typically symbolizes purity, spiritual perfection and knowledge. If there’s a glass means of conveyance such as Cinderella's carriage, a tower, boat, slipper, or the walkway in my dream, The Glass Walk, this represents a change of state, or a transfer from one plane to another, or movement to the inner state. Buddhists say it reflects the five colours that are the five aggregates of body and mind. Shamans see it as celestial power and light, and the ancient Greeks and Romans viewed as sacred to Selene, the moon goddess. > [!Orbit] Juan Cirlot in *A Dictionary of Symbols* > The ‘state of transparency’ is defined as one of the most effective and beautiful conjunctions of opposites: matter ‘exists’ but it as if it did not exist, because one can see through it. As an object of contemplation, it offers neither hardness nor resistance nor suffering. ### Connections to [[Alchemy]] - transparent vessel in which alchemical processes of transformation took place - The raw material of glass suggested the amorphous nature of the [[Prima Materia]] that you begin with - Associated with salt and ash, symbolically the distilled residues of [[Calcinatio]][[Sublimatio]] and purification. - Embodied the [[Albedo]] > [!user] *The Book of Symbols*, ARAS p. 588 ### On the Other Side - Fragile - Isolated, insular, brittle - Glass box high rises have great views and look cold and impersonal - Glass mountain of fairy tales is removed from life, dissociated, the end of the world, the land of the dead. Suggesting loss of soul and the arduous journey to find it. In fairy tales a princess is often captive in the glass mountain which can only be penetrated by her true love.