What is a symbol?
Symbols represent ideas, and can take many forms:
- Written text,
- A paint in church or other spiritual place,
- Icon on a smartphone's screen,
- Sound played from some device,
- etc.
Why we need symbols?
Why we need graphic icons on a smartphone's screen, if text would be enough?
Why we need green/yellow/red street lights?
Also, symbols are used in rituals performed by various religions, without symbols and rituals, religions would not work.
Why we need religions?
Religions, despite all their faults and wars waged in their names, allow many people to unite, to cooperate, to work together.
Without religions, civilizations would collapse, and world would revert to the times when people were divided between small tribes.
Collective Unconscious by G.C. Jung and his Psychology.
As humans evolved, our brains evolved too.
We inherited from our ancestors tendencies to think certain ways when confronted with something happening around, often represented by a symbol.
We have, for example, tendency to think of snake or dragon as the symbol of great danger, and tendency to think of water as of chaos, and possibly as disaster, as in great flood myth.
Religions use this wisdom, and common thinking patterns to help understand each others, to communicate and unite people.
There's reason why in Myth of the Flood and Noah's Ark, the God destroys it's creation by Flood, instead of for example - by Fire and Wind.
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See also, if You wish: [ Importance of Symbols & Religions on Karmic Way blog ].
