When used in conjunction with the words esoteric or mysticism, the word symbolism suddenly becomes laden with hidden meaning and an aura of mystery begins to coat it, people begin to hunch for fear or they worship it.

But symbolism is nothing else than, “the applied use of symbols: iconic representations that carry particular conventional meanings“(1).

We use symbols in our day to day life without even thinking about them: the cart icon when you do some online shopping; the sign that points to the restrooms in a public building. But also the hand gesture for “peace” or the street signage to merge… they are all symbols.

A symbol helps to put a lot of words into one single thing. And as people agree that this is what a particular symbol means, understanding can occur and the symbol can be of use.

But not everywhere the same means the same!

What an open smile tells you, in another place on this planet the showing of teeth would be something else entirely and the sign of opposition and aggression, similar like a dog bares his teeth.

I mainly like symbolism because it is like using shorthand. And, you can design a cute little icon yourself which will represent the one or other symbol if you so wish. Or, when you start doing some layouts and want to take notes, you will be happy to be able to use symbols instead of having to repeatedly write the same things.

As much as symbols are intended to contain meanings people all agree with that this IS what the symbol represents, when it comes to “psychological” symbols it no longer holds true. This is when time era, education, ethnicities and many other factors come to play and intermingle and change a possible single meaning into several possibilities. Then again, some symbols are always meant to be ambiguous and not easily to grasp.

A good example for the fluid boundaries of meanings you can see when you get into the field of colors, for example, you can find that the color red can have opposite meanings: love and/or hate. To show as an example how the assignment of meanings are influenced by time and education you can look at Freud who lived in a very sexually repressed time and his interpretation that anything oblong shaped in dreams represents a phallus.

When I talk about symbolism, I will use meanings I found in my studies which I feel are best suited and to the point but do leave room for interpretation. In no means will an entry be extensive nor absolute.

To get your own understanding of what a specific symbol means, you will need to study it, look what others have to say, look at different sources and then look at the symbol again and discern what it is to you.