Signs of Life: The Five Universal Shapes and How to Use Them (PB) (1998)

The soul never thinks without an image, claimed Aristotle. Indeed, as Angeles Arrien displays in this reissued edition of Signs of Life, shapes have significant psychological and mythological meanings embedded in our minds. Understanding the messages they convey and our attraction to them opens up a door to the secret workings of our inner selves and to a fuller appreciation of the art itself.As in her widely popular The Tarot Handbook, Arrien applies her background as a cultural anthropologist to the import human beings attribute to shapes. Examining her results, she has developed an effective tool to determine the connection between a person's preferences for certain shapes and the same person's inner, subjective states. In the course of using Arrien's book, individuals, parents, teachers, and therapists will experience the universal processes of growth embodied in images and myths.

Life, we discover, is art, and through Arrien's fascinating journey in Signs of Life, we gain a new perception of the omnipresent patterns and symbols that surround us.

Illustrated throughout with drawings and photographs