Sorry I haven’t gotten back to this series for so long.  The next thing Lorenzo did was to give us all a sheet of paper that had a number of symbols printed on it, and asked us to say what each symbol represented to us, or what feeling it gave us.  The first symbol was a five-pointed star, drawn without the inner connecting lines as is so often done when drawing the pentagram.  He asked specifically about the points of the star, and I said that they seemed sharp, and that they seemed to concentrate the light that streamed out in each of the five directions (this was just a symbol printed on paper, with no rays of light visible, but we were tapping into our intuition, and giving voice to whatever thoughts passed through our heads).  Lorenzo seemed pleased with my answer.  I’ll have to apologize if I can’t remember what everyone else said… one of the pitfalls of waiting so long to blog about this.

 

Anyway, this five-sided star, or pentagram, was to become the focal point of our discussion of symbols, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

 

The next two symbols were semi-circles… one with the ends pointing upward, and the other with the ends pointing downwards.  Although the others seemed to have difficulty placing a significance on these symbols, to me, it was apparent that these were a smiley face and a frown… product of American culture, I guess.

 

The next symbol was the Om.  Everyone but me recognized this symbol immediately, and said that it represented peace and tranquility and unity with the divine.  Of course, once they said that, I recognized it, but before that, it looked like some sort of Arabic hieroglyphics. 

 

The next symbol was the outline of a diamond shape standing up vertically.  Lorenzo asked us to look at the diamond in conjunction with the next symbol, which was the outline of a square.  He asked us to evaluate their masculine and feminine properties.  For me, the diamond was obviously more feminine… tall, slender, svelte, reaching toward the heavens… and the square was more masculine… short and squat, stocky, if you will… firmly rooted in the ground, stable, attached to the material world.  (Hey, don’t take offense, guys.. these are “just” symbols).

The pyramid was next.  The pyramid symbolizes the spiritual development of the human being.

The next symbol was a drawing of several houses clustered together with a winding path leading out from them toward the viewer… the kind of drawing that is common to real estate clip art.  Lorenzo glossed over this one quickly saying that, of course, everyone associated this symbol with home, family, safety, stability.  I was so angry that he just assumed that would be the association that we all would make.  In fact, my gut feeling when I saw this symbol was one of repulsion and death… terminal normality… something I’ve been running from all my life (I imagine my upbringing has a lot to do with all of that).

 

And the last symbol was the cross.  We are all familiar with the cross as the symbol of Christianity, and because of that, I felt a similar revulsion to that which I felt upon viewing the house… if for no other reason than that was the religion that was forced on my in my youth.  But the cross has a history that predates Christianity by a long shot.  Here’s a reference, if you’re interested in reading more.

 

Lorenzo also made a reference to dream interpretation, and said that, apart from being like an entertaining movie that we see when we sleep, we have to think of dreams as a message written in code, and the symbols that we see in our dreams are the keys to that code.  I’ve talked about some of my dream symbolism in earlier posts, and I’ll be talking about more dreams later, but for now, let’s move on to the pentagram.

 

The pentagram, or five-sided star, in recent years, has come to be associated with the occult or with Satanism, but this is a misconception.  The pentagram is the shape that is inscribed around the human form… if you stand upright with your feet spread apart, planted firmly in the ground, with your arms spread wide, your body will form a pentagram, with your head, arms and legs providing the five points of the star. 

 

According to Lorenzo (but not according to the source that I’ve linked to), the position of the pentagram, as with any other symbol is important.  When the pentagram is positioned upright, with one of its points well centered and pointing straight upward, then, upon inserting the human figure inside of it, the head would be pointing upward, with the feet firmly planted on the earth, and the head closer to the heavens.  This represents Light, Order, Equilibrium, Justice, Love, Beauty, Strength, Life, the Feminine Aspect of the Divine. 

 

When the pentagram is inverted, with the two “feet” pointing upward (or like the horns of a male goat), this represents Chaos, Destruction, Depravation, Death of the Soul.  Hmmm, that was disappointing for me to hear.  I have a special fondness for male goats.  Lorenzo went on to say that it is important, when using a symbol like the pentagram (for example as a necklace) to always have it positioned correctly so that it carries the power that we intend it to carry.

 

The reason for putting so much emphasis on the pentagram is that Lorenzo said that it has the  power to protect us against aggression or disorder, when it is in the proper position, and we know how to use it.  He then asked us to close our eyes and do a visualization of tracing the shape of the pentagram in the air as he described to us how to do it (this is something that every schoolchild knows how to do, almost instinctively).  He described it as being a light, luminescent blue, like the color of the throat chakra, and I imagined it as such.  He described how, when we felt ourselves in need of protection, we could trace this symbol with our index finger, as big as life, finishing it off by drawing a little cross in the middle which would represent ourselves.  If we wanted, we could draw a pentagram for each wall of a room placing “ourselves” inside each one, and then placing that symbols on the wall. 

 

When we were finished with the visualization, Lorenzo asked us to describe what we had seen.  I told him I had seen the pentagram drawn in blue flames.  He nodded with approval.

 

“It is made of blue flames,” he affirmed. 

 

Next, he told us we were going to create a special tool to help with the pentagram.  Again, we closed our eyes and visualized a special rod that we could use to trace the pentagram whenever we needed it.  The rod should be made of some sort of healing substance.  Then, we were to imagine the ends of the rod as some other material… something durable, that would finish it off.  My rod was made of white light, and the ends of some sort of metal in the shape of a hexagon. 

 

Finally, we were to tap the rod three times on the ground, sharply, and reduce it to a size small enough so that it would fit inside our index finger.   That way, we could use it to trace a pentagram whenever we needed it, and the power of the rod would be incorporated into our tracing.

 

Afterward, I told Lorenzo how my rod had looked.

 

“Ah, a hexagon… like this?” asked Lorenzo tracing the inside of a Star of David that he had lying on the table. 

 

“Yes,” I said, surprised.  “Exactly like that.” 

 

“How appropriate that you chose to cover both sides of your rod with this symbol,” said Lorenzo.  “This is a very powerful symbol, representing the alpha and the omega… the beginning and the end.”

 

I was a bit surprised to have had such an appropriate result, because my mind had been wandering for a good part of the meditation.  Some of my classmates were having a harder time with their rods.  Lolita’s boyfriend had visualized his as a cane, like people use for walking, and when he had tapped it on the ground, he had tapped the top part of it on the ground, so the energy was inverted, and Lorenzo had to walk him through the process again to get his rod straightened out.  He said it was like tapping against the ground with your head instead of your feet.

 

Lorenzo also mentioned that, any time we felt in need of protection but didn’t feel at ease tracing a huge pentagram in the air, it worked just as well to trace a small pentagram on our left hand, using our right index finger, and making sure that the “head” of the star pointed toward our left thumb.  We could do the same thing in the air, just making sure that the point was up.  I remembered Lolita telling me how she usually traced the little pentagram in the air when she had to pass by a neighbor whose energy she found particularly toxic.

 

In the final part of the lecture on symbols, Lorenzo held out a set of cards, face down.   We were each to ask a question silently, choose one, and wait our turn to turn it over.  Lolita’s boyfriend went first.  He overturned a card showing a black cat, arching its back with its tail hairs standing on end.  Lorenzo asked each of us to give our interpretation of this symbol before he said anything.  I said that it represent magic.  That was my first impression.  Of course, cats mean a lot more to me than that, as you all know, but that was my first impulse on seeing that simplified drawing on the card.  And knowing Lolita’s boyfriend, it probably wasn’t far off the mark.  He’s a Reiki master, and very involved in a number of other esoteric practices.  I think he is even involved with the Kabbala.  So sorry, I wish I could remember what Lorenzo and everyone else said about the cat symbol.  I can’t even remember which symbols everyone else picked, so I’ll skip on ahead to … me!

 

When it was my turn, I flipped my card over and saw a circle with lines emanating out from it like rays… the sun!  A huge smile broke out on my face, and I gasped with pleasure.  I immediately thought of how Lolita had shown up as the sun in my tarot reading. 

 

“What did you ask?” Lorenzo inquired.

 

“I asked where I was going to end up.”

 

“And what does that mean to you?”

 

“I’m going to get burned,” I joked.  “No, it represents light, and clarity.”

 

Lorenzo nodded in approval.  He said something about the connection with my spiritual progress and then asked me why the symbol represented light and clarity to me.

 

“Well, it’s the sun,” I said.

 

“Is it?”

 

“Of course.”

 

“I could just as easily say that it was a button lying on top of a buttonhole.”

 

“Well, for me, it’s the sun.”  I refused to let my spirit be crushed. 

 

Lorenzo smiled.  “I know it is.”

 

“But wait a minute,” said one of the others.  “She said, ‘I’m going to get burned.  What does that mean?”

 

“The truth hurts,” said Lorenzo.

 

I hugged my little sun to my chest before returning it to the pile.  However painful and burning the truth might be, I felt ready for it, because the light and clarity that came with it would be worth the suffering. 

 

I didn’t know it at the time, but this sun symbol would become increasingly significant to me in my journey and would lead me to the first step in changing my life.