This to me is a rather important and complex matter, Icons. I'll try to give some definition and different ideas about what Icons might mean to us.
My main understanding of an icon is it's an image, picture, scene or sculpture that has come to have a strong emotional mindul effect on a person. Well developed icons become that to whole cultures and help hold them together as a people. Reflecting on such an Icon gives a person a sense of their highest values about life's meaning and supports them through difficulties and disappointments.. These can be actual ' living symbols' that go beyond being describable in words( mean more to a person than can ever be expressed) and one can sense that their spiritual dimension is moved deeply by such an icon. Icons can represent the basis of one's religious type experiences.
With that kind of definition I think the two strongest and most important icons in our Western cultures are still Jesus and the Virgin Mary. It is likely that these have become less positively effective on modern Americans than in centuries past and that we now stand in need of new icons coming into existence for us in our times. We are imo significantly without the needed clear symbolic icons in our age. This can mean a culture is dangerously vulnerable to weaknesses within.
It may be today that movie/sports/music stars or politicians or war heroes are called icons. And these can surely have strong inner effects for good or bad on persons but they don’t rise to be centuries long-lived effective cultural icons such Jesus and Mary. They are more temporary hero figures.
Harlan Hill Chicago Bears football star from Florence and singer Pat Boone were such icons for me. And even my brothers who ‘could do no wrong’ in my eyes. I still carry that childhood emotion for them but am ‘conscious’ that such iconic energy is something primarily ‘ in and from me’ that transcends their actual personal ordinary humanity. So it is with any human we ‘idolize’ or ‘iconize’. We sort of unconsciously ‘do something’ to these persons making them be what some image in us ‘needs’ them to be. That can sometimes be problematic and not a very loving thing to do. We may unintentionally be making them be what we want them to be rather than accepting their actual unique personhood.
So our unconscious ‘projections’ onto others can prevent us from seeing them more for whom they more actually are. We are ‘projecting’ on to them what images were already unconscious inside of us. This is also what happens with our parents and with whoever we much ‘fall in love’ with.
These are powerful important ongoing processes that at first seem to us as coming totally from persons ‘outside us”. We can become to some degree conscious of it and become more ‘objective’ of what and who we are inwardly by such experiences while remaining appreciative of the actual persons, or even things, our unconscious has sort of locked us onto. This in short is how we learn out of our own unconscosciousness according to the depth psychology of C.G. Jung and others.
When Icons have arisen from historical persons like Jesus and Mary the iconic images have over time become even more adorned and exaggerated than were the actual living human beings where the projection started. This unconscious process helps form world cultures in a positive way when these icons are noble, compassionate or emotionally uplifting. But whole cultures can become so adoring of very debasing icons which also began with attractions to humans of much less than noble, and even dangerous, character.
For real persons living ages ago to have become such living culture and religion making icons like Jesus and Mary or political like Hitler they must have been quite extraordinary real life persons for either very good or bad.
Both Jesus and Mary are significantly effective as icons for me. They still emotionally represent to me the values of human/divine love, courage, justice, feminine and masculine principles and personal living sacrifice for the good of others. I can appreciate that such noble qualities must be’ in me’ unconsciously for me to at all project them on to these historic icons.
They are a ‘God and Goddess’ type image that have been mostly helpful and healthy and uplifting for our Western culture. But maybe less so now than in the past 2000 years. So there may be a yearning and need for new icons to appear for us collectively through our unconscious projections for a new culture seeking birth in and from us.
Icons can also be non-human images that come to have strong emotional effect on us for good or bad. Nationally we have many ..the Liberty Bell, our Flag, the Lady Liberty Statue( my favorite), Mt Rushmore, the DC monuments etc. Some natural phenomena have become strong national Icons like the Grand Canyon, Rocky Mountains, Mississippi River and the Oceans and Red Wood Forests. All of these have an iconic strong positive emotional effect on me and many other Americans. So much that we want to seriously preserve them as forever treasures. The list of Icons in these ways is real and limitless. Think of the Bear, Lion, Eagle, the US Constitution, the Bible etc.
Icons when highly valued can give the sense that one's soul is being fed. It is more than a head or thinking experience. 'Numinous' is a good word for the rich effect a living icon can have on an individual, even transforming one's character for better or worse.
Other Icons can be past or contemporary persons who one believes have in their living, work and writings given extremely important knowledge and truth to our world cultures, even revelatory type knowledge that can help us find our way through very challenging times. Carl Jung is one of several of this kind of Icon for me. He is contemporary enough to be fully human and flawed. His work has supported my own path of change and development more than any other contemporary. He died when I was a Jr in high school and I knew nothing of him until my mid life.
The even sided cross has been an iconic symbol since very ancient times and in various religions. Depth Psychogy would consider it a living symbol of wholeness and completion or the Self or of God presented by the Collective Unconscious.
Jung rediscovered that circular shapes around a center called 'mandalas' which pop up in nature, on religious edifices and many other places are living(can have a strong spontaneous emotional effect on persons) symbols of the highest inner meaning for humans and even can be symbolic of the Ultimate God. They can be Icons to us. I've had mandalas come often in my dreams. So such mandalas are supporting Icons for me.
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