Liberating Symbols Publishing (LSP) is a non-profit centre in Switzerland, responsible for the publication of the books by Medhananda (Fritz Winkelstroeter, 1908–1994) and Yvonne Artaud (1924–2009), as well as responsible for their translation into other languages.
Topics of the books in brief:
Medhananda’s books unite or integrate the following areas:
– Psychology and Ancient Egypt (as well as other ancient cultures)
– Human consciousness and spirituality
– Personal growth and ancient wisdom
– Paleography, as well as fairy tales and myths from past ages
The books are intended for all who are interested in these subjects, who wish to know themselves better, and who seek to work consciously on their own development.
The 5 principal works are The Way of Horus, Archetypes of Liberation, The Pyramids and the Sphinx, The Royal Cubit, and The Ancient Egyptian Senet Game.
These books provide striking and in-depth insights into the psychology and self-awareness of the ancient Egyptians.
They contain numerous illustrations (black-and-white drawings based on original Egyptian images or other ancient documents), which are explained in a clear and poetic style, with many cross-references to other cultures, myths, fairy tales, and wisdom traditions.
What are the books about?
Today, images from Ancient Egypt are often interpreted solely in historical, mythological, or religious terms. Medhananda explored them from a different viewpoint: a psychological one: “What can the picture show me about myself? Does it express an inner experience that I can still have within myself today?” He did not see the image as something ‘other’ (a ‘counterpart’) but rather as a ‘mirror’ that can reveal something about one’s own nature.
He and Y. Artaud (his long-term collaborator) recognised that ancient Egyptian images and writings contain messages of psychological ‘self-knowledge’, just as do the myths, fairy tales, and parables of other ancient cultures. The sages and ‘seers’ of that time communicated their inner knowledge through symbolic images.
Medhananda presents many such symbolic images in his books and, through his commentaries, helps us “see” the deeper meaning of what is depicted. Behind the many unfamiliar ‘gods’, strange figures, and animals, he perceives archetypes, aspects of ourselves, as well as universal principles. This allows us to gain new insights into the consciousness of the ancient Egyptians and, indirectly, into our own complex being.
Likewise, in ancient myths and fairy tales, one can recognise soul-forces and archetypes in the various figures. There are parts of our being that behave like a giant or a dwarf, a dragon, bird, donkey, or like a king, witch, or princess. All these are to be found within ourselves. It becomes clear that what we call our ‘I’ (our person) is not a singularity, but that countless forces are at work within us, belonging to very different levels of consciousness. Becoming aware of this multiplicity in ourselves is the first step towards transforming our limited ego into a greater, integral Self. This was Medhananda’s concern.
He emphasises that symbols are multifaceted and can therefore take on different meanings for each of us, depending on the developmental phase or level of consciousness from which we approach them. With his interpretations, he aims to inspire us to explore our own forces and energies, so that we become aware of their play within us.
He also mentions that soul-forces and movements of consciousness can be practised (playfully, with lightness, without the heaviness of the ego), and he points to the importance of inner work, which in turn has an effect on the outer world. In this sense, the books are also vivid, practical workbooks.
From a letter by the authors
“….We try to let them [the Egyptian images, the symbols] express themselves in their own symbolic way, as psychological ‘koans’, as messengers of an ancient gnosis, which seem to address themselves more directly to our depth and height and breadth and wholeness (where resides their healing power) than to our intellectual intelligence. Therefore, our interpretation had to be based directly on the symbols and the movements of self-awareness they represent, and not exclusively on Greco-Egyptian dictionaries which have too often replaced the contents of the Egyptian image by notions of Greek philosophy and mythology. We are plunged into a virgin paleography, and are thrilled by our discoveries…”
For more information see: www.medhananda.com
The authors Medhananda (Fritz Winkelstroeter) and Yvonne Artaud
In the foreword to Archetypes of Liberation, the author writes:
The intent of this book (and of the Egyptian pictures in it) is to make us aware of our greater self, and of its eternal principles as parts of ourselves as the threads in the carpet we are. What is called in different cultural environments our true self or our soul—that which remains when we pass from one life to another—is not a simple single entity.
It is like a giant ‘molecule’ built around a centre and made up of many psychological aspects or archetypes which connect, each in its own invisible way, the one with the many, involution with evolution, eternity with time.
Called in Egypt ‘neteru’ and later in religions ‘angels’ or ‘gods’ and imagined outside of ourselves they are possibilities, capacities, and potentialities which man must discover and develop if he wants to be really himself and live in peace with himself.
Some of them, we have already introduced in The Way of Horus and in The Pyramids and the Sphinx—others will find their place in forthcoming studies.
Our choice of forty archetypes of liberation as the subject of this book is far from exhaustive. A text in the antechamber of the tomb of Thutmosis III names 741 of them.
We study them with the help of the symbolism of the hieroglyphs and of the iconography of ancient Egypt, as they were conceived in the Golden Age of psychology: servant stars, helpers and festival makers, all parts of ourselves.
Sleep and death, our soul ship, our vibratory snake nature, our capacity to flower, our vast emptiness, our plenitude, are all psychological archetypes, ways of being and transformation processes, teachers of liberation, powers of self-creation.
To make their acquaintance as such is to free ourselves of many superstitions and prejudices, and to make ourselves and the universe more intelligible, more loveable, and more enjoyable on the long way to our self-unfolding and self-realization.
What was apparently standing outside and above man reveals itself in ourselves as an intimate possibility that we can cherish and aspire to become. As says Sri Aurobindo,
‘What shone thus far above is here in us.’
In the foreword to The Pyramids and the Sphinx, the author writes:
The pyramids and the Sphinx are introduced here not from a religious, mythological, philosophical, or an occult point of view, but as psychological tools with psychological intent, in accordance with the names given them by their builders to illuminate the passer-by. They show that at all times man had the faculty, even in the midst and in spite of primitive surroundings, of transcending his lack of technological means and expressing in a glorious way his humanity. What better proof for this assumption than the majesty of the pyramids!
