Symbols as landmarks along the life journey

As in the painting above, many of the paintings in the "Narrative Landscapes of the Heart" series incorporate a line of symbols. I think of these symbols as landmarks along the life journey, indicating significant phases in the person's life. These phases often involve external events, but the symbols are more about the internal life -- especially, what's happening in the heart. 

When I mark out the life journey on a specific painting, I do it spontaneously, intuitively. I paint the symbols from left to right -- birth to death or to the current phase of life. 

You may notice that the symbols flow mainly along the base of the “Narrative Landscapes of the Heart” paintings. I did this spontaneously, because (I think) I was thinking about the “real story” underneath the surface of our conscious understanding. In my view, our own hearts hold mysteries — mysteries as vast as the cosmos.

Five shapes with universal meaning

In addition to the heart as a symbol, I use the five shapes identified by anthropologist Angeles Arrien (1940-2014) as having universal, cross-cultural meaning. She bases this conclusion on seven years of research into myths and stories across cultures, as well as research tests administered to over 6,000 men and women of varied ages and cultural backgrounds. In brief, here are the meanings almost universally associated with each symbol:

• Circle — wholeness, integration, unity

• Cross — relationship

• Spiral — growth, change

• Square — stability, security

• Triangle — ambition, goals

Some people call the cross symbol -- which was a significant symbol long before Jesus was born -- the "plus sign." I love the layers of meaning that each symbol offers.

"Signs of Life: The Five Universal Shapes and How to Use Them"

“Signs of Life: The Five Universal Shapes and How to Use Them” is a lovely book by Angeles Arrien that still enhances my experience of working with the shapes. This book was published in 1992; I’ve loved it for many years and recommend it wholeheartedly.

In addition to research from many cultures about the five shapes, Arrien pulls together wonderful quotations, illustrations and stories. Any visual artist is apt to find the book a useful source of inspiration.

The book has a wider audience, though; it’s about the entire enterprise of living an inspired, authentic life.  

Angeles Arrien on spirituality, creativity and intuition

In a 1992 talk in Philadelphia (no longer available online), Angeles Arrien is quoted on spirituality, creativity and intuition:

 "Some people think they're not creative, but they want to follow the spiritual path, and if they're on the spiritual path, they end up discovering their creativity," Arrien said.

"Other people who think they're not creative at all and not spiritual at all, they end up trusting their intuition. It's really all the same process. It's the deepest process of our nature that needs to be attended to."

This is exactly how I began learning blacksmithing. I was on the "personal growth path," designing and leading groups on deep listening, self-esteem, vocational development, assertiveness training, natural cycles etc.

I noticed that as a group progressed over several weeks, the participants often became actively creative -- taking up craft and art mediums they'd not made time for earlier.

I began to envy my own group participants! My cure, of course, was to take up a craft of my own, and it turned out to be forging iron. 

The openwork iron bowl pictured here, "This Wild Garden of My Heart" has a heart-shaped base and uses the spiral shape a lot both on the “flowers” and on the base itself, which is a spiral heart. 

More about Angeles Arrien

Earlier I found a wonderful interview with Angeles Arrien, in which she shared some of her personal story. Here are a few tidbits I saved from it:

• She didn’t learn English till she was ten,

• She holds three doctorates (divinity, anthropology, transformational education), and

• She has does conflict resolution work all over the world.

One of the many online videos of Angeles Arrien’s wisdom

Next in this series: The Preferential Shapes Test (by Angeles Arrien)

(This series of articles last revised in August, 2020. This article was originally published March 14, 2014.)

—> Heart Painting Story Index