Ineffable continued
Hans says symbols are ineffable.
‘Symbols and metaphors extend into the realm of everyday language and figures of speech. They also permeate images from the world of advertising, as well as political slogans and emblems, the parables of our religions, the icons
and writing of foreign and prehistoric cultures, legal customs and artworks, poetry and historical figures—wherever a “signifier” communicates anything beyond its own superficial exterior.’
From Dictionary of Symbolism / Hans Biedermann : translated by James Hulber.
Carl says an ineffable symbol points to the sacred.
A symbol is a living image and numinous whereas a sign has exhausted its numinosity and no longer has that vitality.
’The psychological mechanism that transforms energy is the symbol. I mean by this a real symbol and not a sign.. How are we to explain religious processes, for instance, whose nature is essentially symbolical? In abstract form, symbols are religious ideas; in the form of action, they are rites or ceremonies. They are the manifestation and expression of excess libido.. The transformation of libido through the symbol is a process that has been going on forever since the beginning of humanity and continues still.’ Carl Jung, On Psychic Energy. CW8: 88, 91, 92
Jim says the ineffable is experienced as sensation.
Acceptance of the numinous does not suggest a belief in the noumenal archetype. Archetypal philosophy or Image-based psychology ‘rigorously refuses to even speculate about a non-presented archetype per se’ and only recognizes the phenomenal archetype. Hillman UE1, ch. 3 p24