Symbolism (Metapsychical)
Symbolism (Metapsychical)
A term used by psychical researcher Ernesto Bozzano in relation to:
"… cases in which, by subconscious or mediumistic methods, an idea is expressed by means of hallucinatory perceptions, or ideographic representations, or forms of language differing from the ideas to be transmitted, but capable of suggesting them indirectly or conventionally. In other words, there is metapsychical symbolism every time an idea is transmitted by means of representations which are not reproductions."
F. W. H. Myers included one instance of such symbolic communication in his book, Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death (1903): A botanical student passing inattentively in front of the glass door of a restaurant thought he saw "Verbascum Thapsus" printed on it. The real word was "Bouillon," and that happens to be the trivial name in French for the plant Verbascum Thapsus. The actual optical perception was thus subliminally transformed.
Symbolism often occurs in occultism, particularly in prophetic dreams, which are sometimes represented in visual or etymological puns. Sigmund Freud drew attention to such symbolic imagery in his psychoanalytical theory of dreams. Many psychics find their visions of future events occur in symbolic form. Traditional astrological predictions used to be presented in symbolic pictures called hieroglyphs.