By Gary King
“Hermeneutics constitutes a particular power over time.”
—Jeffrey Kripal
Semiotics, the academic study of signs and symbols, functions like a kind of dream analysis for waking life. It helps us decode the metaphors, images, and cultural signals we encounter every day, much like interpreting dreams to uncover deeper psychological or social meaning. Just as dream interpretation reveals the unconscious through symbolic imagery, semiotics unpacks the cultural unconscious embedded in our language, habits, and rituals. In this way, we live in a kind of narrative landscape—one shaped by metaphors we seldom pause to examine.
The Heart and the Path: Living Symbols
Take the heart symbol. In many cultures, this shape immediately evokes love, emotion, and intimacy. But it is not the organ itself that we respond to—it is the symbolic container of meaning we have collectively poured into it. Here, semiotics reveals how a simple graphic form becomes charged with emotional and cultural resonance. It is a metaphor, not just a sign, carrying layers of human experience.
Another powerful symbol is the path. Across cultures, a path represents a journey—whether personal, spiritual, or moral. We speak of being “on the right path,” “losing our way,” or standing “at a crossroads.” These phrases aren’t just figures of speech; they’re conceptual metaphors that help us structure the chaos of life into something navigable. Semiotically, the idea of a path points to how we frame purpose, progress, and transformation.
Light, Darkness, and the Emotional Binary
Light and darkness offer another enduring metaphor. Light is often equated with knowledge, purity, or revelation, while darkness suggests ignorance, fear, or the unknown. These binaries shape how we sort experiences into moral or emotional categories. They also uphold cultural norms—casting some experiences or perspectives into the “light” of legitimacy while relegating others to the “shadows” of taboo or denial.
Psychology and the Language of Dreams
These symbolic systems don’t merely reflect our inner lives—they shape them. In psychology, metaphor is central to dream interpretation. Dreams communicate through symbolic language, where objects and events stand in for emotions, beliefs, or memories. Interpreting dreams becomes a way of decoding the metaphorical mind: of bridging conscious and unconscious experience.
Freud and Jung understood waking life as equally symbolic. Our daily choices, habits, and relational patterns often mask deeper psychic dramas. In more contemporary approaches like narrative therapy, individuals are encouraged to see their life stories as interpretive frameworks—metaphors for how they understand themselves.
We Are the Stories We Tell
Psychologists like Jerome Bruner, Michael White, and Donald Polkinghorne have all advanced the idea that humans are storytelling beings. Of these, Polkinghorne’s work is especially noteworthy. He argued that therapists don’t simply apply fixed techniques; instead, they engage in a dynamic act of meaning-making. They interpret clients’ narratives using intuitive, context-sensitive judgment, constantly shaping and reshaping their approach to fit the unique story unfolding in the therapeutic space.
Of course, this narrative-based method is not without criticism. Some argue that relying too heavily on intuition can introduce bias or inconsistency. Without empirical structure, therapy risks becoming overly subjective. These critiques reflect an ongoing tension between symbolic and empirical approaches to understanding the mind.
UFOs, NDEs, and the Mythic Imagination
Beyond the consulting room, we see symbolic meaning at play in how people interpret extraordinary experiences.
UFO encounters often involve symbolic language: lights in the sky suggesting transcendence, or alien beings symbolising cosmic awakening. Through a semiotic lens, these become part of a cultural mythos about transformation and contact with the unknown.
Near-death experiences (NDEs) are rich in metaphor: tunnels, lights, reunions with deceased loved ones. These motifs draw from archetypal imagery to narrate transition, peace, and existential continuity.
Mystical visions use symbols like divine light or sacred space to articulate what words alone cannot.
Synchronicities, those uncanny coincidences, become personally significant through metaphor. A repeated number or a dream symbol appearing in waking life isn’t random; it’s part of a symbolic system we use to understand ourselves.
Semiotics allows us to interpret these phenomena not as anomalies, but as narrative structures that give coherence to human consciousness.
Enter Hermeneutics: Interpretation as Power
This is where hermeneutics enters the picture. Originally developed for interpreting sacred texts, hermeneutics now encompasses the interpretation of any meaningful content: literature, art, dreams, and even social behaviour.
In How to Think Impossibly, Jeffrey Kripal explores a compelling idea: hermeneutics isn’t just a passive act of understanding but an active force that can reshape meaning across time. Drawing from Kabbalistic scholar Elliot Wolfson, he discusses “theomania” or god-madness—a mystical state where interpretation becomes sacred.
Interpretation, Kripal suggests, can travel backward in time. A new insight today can change the significance of a past event.
Reinterpreting a myth, a trauma, or a cultural figure can reshape our understanding of history and self. Interpretation is not just intellectual—it’s existential.
Bending Time, Shaping Meaning
Kripal’s italicised phrase says it all:
“Hermeneutics constitutes a particular power over time.”
To interpret is to alter the timeline of meaning. Through metaphor and symbol, we don’t just understand life differently—we live it differently. In doing so, we invite the impossible: the past bending to the present, and the future unfolding in stories not yet told.
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