/lit/ - Literature

>>23272911
It's how the pre-Kantian mind works, which still lurks in peoples' thinking today, even yours. The ancient mind does not think of metaphors as symbolic, but as bodily relations of identity. When you think of Thor (or a thunder god generally) you imagine him as a god of thunder, with a thunderbolt as his symbol. To the ancient mind Thor *is* the thunder, the thunder *is* Thor. And of course the name of Thor in Old English, when he was worshipped by the English as their thunder god, is literally the word "Thunor" that is now "thunder." The nymph of a river, or the god of a mountain, isn't a god that lives in that place/topos, the river *is* the nymph, the mountain *is* the god and so on. The thunder *is* Thor's body, not a symbol of Thor, the river *is* the nymph's body, not a symbol or mere home of the nymph. The sign is the signified's body.

Ever wonder why a conspicuous brand logo has cachet and can elevate the value of a good, like clothing, above that of other materially similar goods? This cotton t-shirt has the magic power of a name above other cotton t-shirts, and the name is co-identical with the entire brand, and through that co-identity shares the same qualities as the entire brand: the sign is the signified, the logo is the body of the brand, not a symbol of the brand, or so an underlying ancient part of our mind still thinks.