The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols

by Alan Gheerbrant, Jean Chevalier, Alain Gheerbrant

Book Overview

This remarkable and wide-ranging book is an inventory of symbols and the symbolic imagination. The editors and their fifteen contributors are drawn from a variety of scholarly backgrounds--including anthropology, ethnology, psychotherapy and art history. This diversity of approach is responsible for the book's unique character, a reflection of the multiplicity of symbols and signs and the phenomenal range of possible interpretations they offer. This...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140512543
• ISBN13: 9780140512540
• Release Date: March 1997
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 1184 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.2" x 5.2" x 7.7"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Newer dictionaries with pictures are great, but this is the one I always return to.

I purchased my first copy 10 years ago and have been working with my dream symbols for nearly 20 years. I've been enticed to purchase newer ones since then with photos and graphics ( I now have nearly a dozen symbol dictionaries) -- thus I am clearly drawn to these things. However, I find there is always a trade off. Publishing costs and space taken up for these visuals means less text and less substance. So while I have an initial pleasure in perusing the ones with pictures I often find these don't really have anything to do with my dream images -- they are indeed usually intriguing works of art but not particularly helpful for serious symbol analysis. Thus the most consistently helpful symbol book, to which I always return when I seriously want to know a range of possibilities for my dream images or concepts is the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols by Chevalier, Cheerbrant and Buchanan-Brown. The authors have done a monumental work bringing so much substance to it, managed to remain relevant for decades even though it was first published in France in 1969 with the second edition in 1982, and by now reading it is like coming home. A another benefit of being all text (seriously the text is not that hard to read, the print is of excellent quality with crisp deliniations between entries, references, etc.) is that the act of researching my dream images does not itself start interfering with the memory of my own visual image, as pictures might. To each his own preference ... but for persons more experienced in working with dreams, I think the substance here will be recognized as highly valuable.

A book full of surprise

My teacher recommanded this dictionary to me (she got a copy of original French version). After I got this book I had a quick check of it. However, I couldn't stop when I started reading it! I found myself being "absorbed" in this book! I read it not as a dictionary but a book full of surprise. Although there ain't so many beautiful pictures in this book, I'd still like to recommand it. But if you want a book full of pictures, just choose the Norton one.

Best esoteric symbol interpretation I have seen

I have about a dozen symbol books... most of the classics. This one is the best for interpreting those strange symbols in your dreams, daydreams, etc. It is not the shallow stupid interpretations "you are going on a journey..." stuff, but true archetypical and esoteric interpretations.

Very Useful

As a resource for referencing symbols (by name not glyph), this book is one of the best I have found. Although more Eesoteric than, say, Archetypal, it provides much good information.

excellent dictionary in scope and depth

i have known this dictionary in the french original for about 20 years now and recommend it again and again to students. i have always hoped that it could become available for non french readers. finally! as a jungian analyst, i find the dictionary extremely helpful: it does an extraordinary job of displaying the breadth of symbolic meanings involved in so many symbols that are still very much alive in people today. the refence to various cultures is especially important in our multi-cultural world.. i am very thankful for this translation into english and hope the german translation will follow soon.