Taoist symbols
Taoist symbols are part of a spiritual philosophy that is based on nature, on the essence of nature, its transformations, its changes, its movements. The Taoist artist seeks to reflect, through art, an internal world that experiences totality.
Antonio García Calvente, as an acupuncturist, practitioner of Chi Kung and Tai Chi for more than 20 years, and meditator, gave a personal and abstract meaning to the keys to the aesthetics of Taoist art.
In the art of the Taoist collection, we will find various Taoist symbols.
- The TREE as an essential symbol of both Taoism and the development of the aesthetics of Taoist art.
- We find symbols such as the CIRCLE, TRIANGLE, SQUARE and the CROSS, as the essential movements of the Tao and its manifestation.
- The FISH and the BIRD, symbols that arise from the study of Chuang Tsu and the K’UN fish, the smallest and largest fish at the same time, which transforms into the smallest and largest bird at the same time.
- SPIRAL, symbol of the manifestation, movement, change, expansion and contraction of the Tao.
- The SNAIL, symbol of the initiate, the one who carries the house on his back and walks through life, surrendering to his destiny, without fighting against it.
Taoist art
Taoist watercolor by Antonio Totom
Taoist art is based on a look at the eternal.
Ensō means circle in Japanese. Although it is a Zen concept, it has its origins in Chinese Taoism.
It symbolizes the eternal, the state of the Buddhist and awakened mind, the enlightened mind that manifests in humans at the moment when the body and spirit are at the service of the creative power.
It is emptiness manifesting through the great active force.
It is the pure essence, the silence from which all manifestation arises.
The fish symbol
Chuang Tzu Taoist painting
«In the northern sea there lives a fish. His name is K’un, he is immense; It measures I don’t know how many thousands of miles. This fish transforms into a bird and is called P,eng. His back measures I don’t know how many thousands of miles. Swift is its flight.
Leisure, Chapter 1, Book One (Interiorities) of Chuang Tzu
The fish is one of the aspects of Ying Yang. It is the symbol of the duality of everything that exists in the Universe, the fundamental forces, opposite and complementary, that are found in all things that are born from heaven and earth.
The fish, when it looks up it sees everything blue, when it looks down it sees everything blue. That’s why it lives right in the center, it is the center where all things come together, the heart.
The tree symbol
The tree is growth, expansion. It is the manifestation from the essence.
They are our roots and all the individual and collective processes to achieve totality.
They are the paths that we generate, but also the paths that precede us.
It is the central point and axis of the world, whose roots and branches connect us with the earth and the sky, with the origin and the everything.