Symbolic Inteligence
What it is, and why we need it
You’ve heard of IQ, short for intelligence quotient. The IQ test is considered to be a flawed instrument, widely used to measure one’s smarts. (Say “smaahts” with a Boston accent.) I recall being administered the IQ test in 7th grade. My parents never told me the results. Should I be worried? In the 1990s, Daniel Goleman developed his theory of EI, short for emotional intelligence, sometimes referred to as emotional quotient (EQ). EI is often defined as the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and handle emotions. Those with a high level of emotional intelligence can identify how they and others are feeling, use emotional information to guide their thinking and behavior, differentiate between different emotions, and adapt their own emotions in response to different situations and environments.
These are essential elements in our society, but we also need symbolic intelligence. I did a quick internet search to see if this exists yet, and all I could find were references to symbolic artificial intelligence, a form of computer processing seeking to mimic human use of symbols. That’s not what I’m referencing. I’m referring to our human capacity to understand reality through symbols and metaphors. A symbol is a representation that conveys a meaning beyond what we can consciously see or feel. It could be a visible image, like a sign or an object, or even a word. Symbols allow us to interpret and connect ideas, objects, and relationships that would otherwise appear disconnected.
Symbolic intelligence is the ability, or openness, to engage with sacred texts, religious icons, or holy spaces with an attitude of wonder, curiosity, and willingness. The function is to be moved intellectually, emotionally, even physically by the encounter. In other words, it’s about more than just gaining logical information. It’s about entering an experience of the numinous. As Jason Smith writes in Religious but Not Religious, “The symbol is something to be lived with, not possessed, something to be contemplated, not studied; something to be nurtured, not mined for treasures. Our attitude needs to be one of discovery and not interrogation, of love and not merely logic.”[1]
Several years ago, I traveled to Jerusalem, Palestine, Israel, and the Holy Land. During the tour, our group heard a constant refrain from the guide: well, this might have been the place where Jesus did or said such and such. After several of these, a fellow traveler pulled me aside and said, “I came all this way, and no one seems to know anything. All this might have been the place stuff bugs me. What’s the point of the trip?” We spent several days discussing his dismay. I attempted to help him see the land, ancient buildings, and the stories we read as windows into a beautiful world. I described that world as the intersection of the external reality of people and things with the internal landscape of his soul. What happens at that intersection is the place where the symbols of the faith come to life. He struggled with this idea until years later, when he had a dream involving a walk along the Sea of Galilee. His experience of the dream and the time in waking life where he walked near that sea began to open him up to a symbolic approach to life.
Symbols of transformation are an important part of psychological and spiritual growth, development and maturation, particularly in times of profound transition, threshold, crises and change. Jungian psychology asserts that mental concepts and processes alone often fail to grasp psychological and spiritual realities as a whole, so our psyche is often driven to use symbols, images and metaphors. This is because they speak to our whole person—to our mind, heart, senses, memories, body, experiences and imagination—and have the capacity to engage us more fully than mental concepts alone.[2]
—Julienne McLean
The Hebrew Bible contains the well-known story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. If we read this passage literally, we’d view it as a historically accurate reporting of an event complete with a literal garden, a real live serpent, and two human beings five feet seven inches tall. Huh? How far do we want to go down this road of literalism? What color are their eyes, their skin, and what size shoe? Does the snake talk? In what language? Hebrew, Aramaic, or Norwegian? I hope that few people understand this story as a literal description of an actual historical event.
But what if we read this story with symbolic intelligence? We could take time to explore so much in this story, but let’s look at the setting, which is a garden. The garden represents a sacred space in almost all cultures worldwide, uniting the conscious and unconscious worlds. In other words, the garden is the area where this world and the spiritual world meet to create fertility and new life. But anyone growing a garden knows it’s also an untamed space. One is constantly dealing with weeds, insects, and interlopers. If we do not continue to tend a garden, it quickly returns to a place of wilderness. Exploring the symbolic approach to this story yields much more than mere information.
My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally. They knew what they were doing; we don’t.[3]
—John Dominic Crossan
The term “symbol” has its roots in the ancient Greek symballein, meaning “thrown together.” We can think of the conscious and the unconscious as two circles; symbols incorporate elements from both realms, unifying them when experienced. Symbols appear powerful to us because they evoke ideas that come from a mysterious source—which we refer to as “the unconscious.”
Symbols can help us discover aspects of ourselves and our world. Look for symbols wherever you go. You’ll find them everywhere.
The fountains in our cities evoke ancient springs of renewal. The cross at the top of a church brings up the symbolism of the crucifixion and also the place where the vertical and horizontal, and also heaven and earth, meet. Wedding rings made of gold and diamonds promise union forever. Apples, so common in advertisement, remind us of health and youth but also of The Tree of Good and Evil in the Bible. In a negative form it appears as the poisoned apple of the witch in fairy tales, or it simply indicates bad or rotten character. Fast cars evoke speed and wealth. The independence of the house cat can become a symbol for an inner aspect of someone’s personality. Anything becomes a symbol when it has some hidden quality that moves us in some way. A sunset may just be the ending of the day or imagined as the myth of the hero travelling with the sun into the underworld. The world becomes magical when you begin looking for symbols!
We live in a time when the cognitive, logical, and literal have dominated our approach to most of life. This has enabled great things to happen. We have antibiotics, prepared foods, and insulated homes as benefits of this approach. I’m not disparaging rational thought processes. However, the pendulum has swung so far in one direction that we risk abandoning the sacred, the mystery and wonder of life. Fortunately, we are entering a time when symbolic thinking is returning, not with pre-Enlightenment naïveté, but in a new way that incorporates the knowledge we’ve gained from our modern development of depth psychology, anthropology, and the study of myth. Despite all our progress in modern society, people long for encounters in nature, meditation opportunities, or ways to be creative. Reclaiming a symbolic approach to ancient wisdom can help in these times.
Religious stories are to civilizations what dreams are to individuals. They are symbolically encoded messages from the depths of the human soul. Just as it would be inadvisable to interpret our dreams literally, in which case we would get into all sorts of trouble with the real world and human relationships, so we miss the inner meaning of scriptures by unimaginative readings. They are only loosely related to “reality” as we understand it. They demand reflection, contemplation, and an understanding of symbolic language. If we bring imagination and knowledge to bear on religious stories they can come to life in unexpected ways. At the same time, this metaphorical turn brings with it the advantage that religion loses its arrogant and absolutist sting, allowing us to combat the violence and discord to which literalism gives rise.[4]
This essay is an excerpt from the book Ordinary Mysteries: Faith, Doubt and Meaning, which will be released April 30, 2024 in all the usual places. You can purchase a limited edition hardbound copy now. This includes color artwork, an autographed copy, book mark and sample Table Talk cards for conversation starters around other people’s ordinary mysteries. More information here.
James Hazelwood, author, bishop, storyteller, and spiritual companion, is the author of several books and the new book Ordinary Mysteries. His website is www.jameshazelwood.net
[1] Jason E. Smith, Religious but Not Religious: Living a Symbolic Life (Asheville, NC: Chiron Publications, 2019), 42.
[2] http://www.contemplativespirituality.org/media/jmtalk150313.pdf
[3] John Dominic Crossan, Who is Jesus? Answers to your Questions about the Historical Jesus (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, c1996), 79.
[4] David J. Tacey, Religion as Metaphor: Beyond Literal Belief (New York: Routledge, 2015), 1.
So a woman at church asked the Lutheran pastor, "How can a snake talk?!" The pastor answered, "We have no idea, but what the snake said is really important."
Great read