Symbolism

The following image was sent to me by a oneClimbs reader. The request was to help interpret the symbols on her ward meetinghouse steeple. I decided to reply to her in the form of a full post since the information…

Ok, all joking aside, I was really intrigued by this new “symbol” or logo that was introduced at the Saturday evening session of General Conference. I can see why they did this though. The Moroni statue has become the de…

One of the things that I enjoy most about God is how he works in patterns; everything is ultimately connected and part of one eternal round. You have the macrocosmos, the universe and everything within it and then the microcosmos…

I love symbolism so much. I spent years buying books and diving deeply into the subject almost obsessively. I found a way to ‘flip a switch’ in my mind to where I started looking at everything differently and it constituted…

If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; it is better for you to enter life crippled or lame, than to have two hands or two feet and be cast…

“Symbolism exists precisely for the purpose of conveying to the imagination what the intellect is not ready for.” – Walter Hooper, ed., The Collected Letters of CS Lewis, Vol. II (San Francisco, 2004), 565 My good friend Rick N. sent…

Zeal isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I think it tends to amplify our actions whether they are misguided or on point. Sometimes we can focus too much on the letter that we miss the spirit, or the weightier matters. Those…

Thanks to my friend Richard Nobbe for bringing this video to my attention. It’s a bit dated in many aspects but the information is very good, and I geek out on just about anything that has to do with symbolism.

“Every man who lived on the earth was entitled to a seer stone, and should have one, but they are kept from them in consequence of their wickedness, and most of those who do find one make evil use of…

There is a lot of repetition in religious life from rituals to ordinances, practices, and even scripture reading. Let’s take scriptures as an example and I’ll let you think about how the metaphor applies to other things. First, imagine you…

The following is a post created from a talk I gave in church this morning. There is an idea in thermodynamics that everything in the universe eventually moves from order to disorder. The Book of Mormon is a window into…

This is a cool video from the Messages of Christ YouTube channel where the garments of the high priest are explored in their connection to Jesus Christ. This guy made this whole thing from scratch which is pretty cool.

A fun idea about how adults, youth, and kids can learn about symbolism and temples with a sketchbook and LDS Symbol Cards.

Junior Ganymede had a great post about Lehi’s Vision and the people pointing the fingers. The post author had been out with the missionaries and the woman they were teaching had some insights that were expounded upon, here’s a small snippet: The…

This quote brilliantly sums up a critically important key to understanding symbols. “One explanation of a symbol that has been given does not preclude someone else seeing beyond that. Symbols were intended to expand our freedom of expression and feelings, not limit…

Picture in your mind’s eye a beautiful stained glass window where light from the sun passes through a collection of colored panes that transform the light into something wonderful. Church is like the window and we are like those colored panes. When we come…

A recent post on Junior Ganymede mentions the ritual bath called a mikveh where Jews practiced ritual immersions in pools of water. The parallels to Christian baptism (which means to dip or immerse) are many. In both rituals the purpose of…

I was looking at this picture of the Salt Lake Temple the other day and had a thought. Typically, the “all-seeing eye” of God is depicted within a triangle and not an oval. This version also has a veil-like curtain…

I created LDS Symbol Cards but didn’t really do much in the way of providing instructions. I thought I’d put together a little video that explains their origins and how I use them personally. Even if you don’t have any cards,…

I have not yet seen the film The Tree of Life although the title alone draws my interest. This particular sequence depicts the creation in a manner that is very similar to the creation sequence in the presentation of the…