Twice-Molded Symbols: Mary as Air
I have not had time for much translating recently, but I have time for a short post about an interesting note I found in my research. At its most basic, semiotics--the study of signs and symbols--splits a symbol into two: the signified and the signifier. If I say "my love is a rose," then rose becomes a symbol for love : rose is the signifier (the object that stands for something else, that signifies something else), while love is the signified (what the symbol stands for, what it signifies). We could divide further: we could separate the signifier object in itself from the object as symbol . Thus the simple rose and the symbol love-rose would be distinct. We could also bring in the perspective of the one interpreting a symbol: the uninitiated sees the fish in the catacombs as just an odd drawing, while the initiated can rightly interpret it as the Christ-fish . Drawing on the original meaning of the Greek symbolon (συμβολον) as a piece of ceramic, shattered in two