The Waking Dream: Unlocking the Symbolic Language of Our Lives

Draws from mystical traditions, quantum physics, astrology, and Jungian psychology to examine the forgotten language of symbols

Symbolism, Grasse claims, is "the forgotten language." He does not mean only literary symbolism but also what Baudelaire called life's "correspondences" --the sense that everything means something, that all of life is a dream and can be interpreted as such. Drawing from mystical traditions and quantum physics, from astrology and Jungian psychology, Grasse offers us a virtual dictionary of symbolisms and the finding that contemporary culture is almost unique in its disregard for symbolist ways of thinking. His well-presented argument should open eyes and, perhaps, minds. Patricia Monaghan