# Symbolism > A symbol is a perspective-specific tool that lets the physical mind approach an underlying idea through a form it can perceive, with meaning living in the relationship between perceiver and symbol. - Canonical: https://sassani.app/topic/symbolism # Symbolism A symbol, in Bashar's teaching, is not a code with a fixed decryption key. It is a perspective-specific tool that lets the physical mind approach an underlying idea through a form it can perceive. The same image — a red saucer, a lunar eclipse, a dragon, a tiger — means different things to different people, and even different things to the same person at different moments. The meaning lives in the relationship between the perceiver and the symbol, never inside the symbol itself. ## Everything is symbolic of something Bashar's starting premise is sweeping: everything is symbolic of something, and everything has some significance to you personally. The corollary is the neutrality principle — everything is fundamentally neutral and has no built-in meaning. The saturnine "dark" associations some traditions attach to Saturn, for example, are not intrinsic to the planet; Saturn reflects different things to different levels of consciousness, and how you relate to it is up to you. The same neutrality applies to the content of dreams and altered states. Sometimes imagery is energetically symbolic — useful, resonant, actionable — without being a literal history. A perceived symbolic possibility should not automatically be read as a literal fact about a planet, a past life, or an event. ## The felt answer is the answer When a dreamer, a meditator, or someone in an altered state asks Bashar to decode a symbol for them, the response almost always points back to the feeling. A meditator who received the name "Princess Shatala" is told: asking whether it has meaning can negate the meaning you could discern with your own imagination. Notice how it felt; if it felt comfortable, explore the symbol and let it reflect a new perspective of yourself. The same answer comes for an emotional language heard in sleep or ceremony: it is not a physiological language with a vocabulary. "It is simply the vibrations that feel right according to what is being felt, what is being communicated. You get entire feelings, entire emotions, entire concepts. The feeling is what the emotional language is for, not for your mind." And again, for the personal significance of a crystal like aquamarine: "the answer is right there in the feeling, in the experience itself… the experience in and of itself is the answer." The aquamarine means what the wearer has imparted to it — for one dreamer, spiritual acceleration. ## Worked examples: how Bashar reads specific symbols Across sessions Bashar demonstrates the method rather than handing down a fixed dictionary. Several examples show the form. A red flying saucer in a dream. The dreamer felt more connected to the stars than to the Earth. Bashar reads the saucer as the root chakra, the connection to nature and Gaia — a call to grounding. "It is not about running away or leaving the earth to connect to the stars. It is about bringing heaven down to earth by acting as the ladder, as the link, as the bridge. You have to be very grounded, firmly grounded, in order to actually reach higher, just like a tree has to have very strong roots in order to grow very tall." A lunar eclipse. The dreamer's lunar body is a representational symbol of the subconscious, of unconscious knowingness. Allowing the planet's shadow to eclipse it forms a more direct relationship with that symbol, letting what is contained unconsciously rise to the surface to be experienced. Recurring lizard, dragon, and cat imagery. "It speaks of transformation and getting in touch with the core essential self symbolized as the dragon. You are starting small with little lizards, using the cat as a symbol of seeing in more than one dimension, and stretching your senses to reach the core foundational place where you can express full power safely without reservation." Tiger energy. Read as maternal rather than paternal — the maternal tiger — and offered as a frame through which other related symbols will start to make sense. An entrance that is also an exit. A filmmaker twice met the same person paradoxically — once while driving out at an entrance, once while going in at an exit. Bashar reframes the polarity as one doorway seen from two sides: the entrance and the exit are one thing, and you are your own best contact to begin with. Surgery on a cat and a chicken in a dream. The cat is the being that bridges realities and sees beyond the ordinary spectrum; performing surgery on it symbolizes healing the part of yourself that can see farther than it has been allowed to see. The body-consciousness signal (chicken now feeling sick) is an invitation to be abundant with yourself and listen to what the body is telling you. ## Symbols are personal, but they are not arbitrary A symbol's meaning is the meaning the perceiver has imparted to it, and so it is real for them — but it is not arbitrary, because the perceiver's own structure (chakras, life themes, beliefs, era, species affinities) constrains what the symbol can usefully mean for them. Bashar locates meaning by relating the image to the dreamer's actual structure: root chakra for a star-struck dreamer; subconscious for an eclipse-watcher; multidimensional perception for someone working with a cat image. The method is interpretive, not oracular. This is why Bashar repeatedly resists being made the authority on someone's symbol. "Asking whether it has meaning can negate the meaning you could discern with your own imagination." The whole point is for the perceiver to build the muscle of reading their own symbols; an external authority short-circuits the very faculty the symbol appeared to develop. ## Symbols used deliberately as permission slips Symbols are not only received — they can be created. Bashar encourages making physical symbolic objects to anchor a vibration. A dreamer sensing connections with Sirius, Pleiades, Arcturus, and Orion is invited to create four objects representative of those four energies, because physiological symbols anchor the vibration to physical reality and ground it. The same principle operates in spontaneous earth symbols like crop circles: they are a dialogue between one's own consciousness and the consciousness of the Earth itself, a synchronicity of symbolic communication rather than a message imposed from outside. ## Don't overdecode A repeated symbol or synchronicity is "setting up your own synchronicities to give yourself the reflections that you need. Take it for whatever reflection it is and apply it in whatever way seems positively appropriate. Do not strain yourself by digging too deeply beyond what is immediately relevant and obvious; you do not need to know everything." This is consistent with Bashar's wider rule that a perceived symbolic possibility should not be automatically promoted to literal history: symbols work energetically, and overdecoding them into fixed factual claims inverts their function. ## Practical implications Read the feeling before the form. When a symbol appears — in a dream, a meditation, a recurring outer event — start with how it felt. The feeling is the meaning's carrier; the image is the carrier's carrier. Relate the symbol to your own structure, not a universal dictionary. Bashar's worked examples read images against chakras, life themes, maternal or paternal energies, multidimensional faculties — features specific to the perceiver. The meaning that fits your structure is the meaning that works for you. Don't make anyone — including Bashar — the authority on your symbol. Outsourcing interpretation atrophies the very faculty the symbol appeared to develop. The felt answer is the answer. Treat symbolic impressions as energetically useful, not literally factual. A possibility that "beings do X" does not mean a specific planet or past-life event is an instance of X. Hold the symbol loosely; let it work on your state without becoming a fixed claim. Don't overdecode. Use symbols for the reflection they obviously offer and stop. Straining past immediate relevance produces noise, not insight. Make symbols deliberately to anchor what you are working with. A physical object can ground a vibration you are exploring — four objects for four star-system energies, a crystal for an acceleration, an image for an intention. The object doesn't fix the meaning; it gives the meaning a handle. This topic is metaphysical exploration of symbols, dreams, and inner experience. It is not psychological, medical, or clinical interpretation; none of Bashar's specific readings should be treated as a substitute for professional support for distressing dream content, intrusive imagery, or mental-health concerns. ## Representative passages Everything is symbolic of something. Everything has some significance to you personally… It can be the representation of the idea of the root chakra, connecting the vibration to nature, the earth, Gaia… It is not about running away or leaving the earth to connect to the stars. It is about bringing heaven down to earth by acting as the ladder, as the link, as the bridge.— Bashar, Dream Symbology Everything Is Symbolic (dream-symbology-everything-is-symbolic#qa-1) It has many meanings. Asking whether it has meaning can negate the meaning you could discern with your own imagination. Notice how it felt: if it felt comfortable, explore the symbol and let it reflect a new perspective of yourself.— Bashar, Making Choices (making-choices#qa-1) The answer is right there in the feeling, in the experience itself. Rather than saying, well, okay, here's this experience, now let me go looking out here somewhere for the answer as to what that all means, when the experience in and of itself is the answer.— Bashar, Be Who And What You Are (be-who-and-what-you-are#qa-2) You are setting up your own synchronicities to give yourself the reflections that you need. Take it for whatever reflection it is and apply it in whatever way seems positively appropriate. Do not strain yourself by digging too deeply beyond what is immediately relevant and obvious; you do not need to know everything.— Bashar, A Private Sessionjameal (a-private-sessionjameal#qa-6) It is simply the vibrations that feel right according to what is being felt, what is being communicated. You get entire feelings, entire emotions, entire concepts. The feeling is what the emotional language is for, not for your mind.— Bashar, Forgetting (forgetting#qa-3) ## Related - [Reflection](https://sassani.app/topic/reflection) - [Synchronicity](https://sassani.app/topic/synchronicity) - [Imagination and Manifestation](https://sassani.app/topic/imagination-and-manifestation) - [Dream Reality](https://sassani.app/topic/dream-reality) - [Permission Slips](https://sassani.app/topic/permission-slips) Markdown twin of https://sassani.app/topic/symbolism. The HTML page is the source of truth.