Rotondo e Rotondo

Meaning and symbology of the cirle

Closing the circle, the circle of life, the impossibility to square a circle, to be in circle, the circle’s perfection. A fascinating geometrical figure which recurs in our everyday expressions, in metaphors, that recalls other images as a symbol which meaning has often something to do with the life, the sacredness, the spiritual side of material things, the depth.

Symbol of completeness, of the harmony giving no chance to breakdowns, where the two ends of a line join together again. Just like an expanded point the circle voices homogeneity, union, perfection.
The circle has neither beginning nor end and therefore refers to the unlimited conception of eternity. It’s the par excellence symbol of God and the spiritual soul and it has been associated to the sky and to an intellectual dimension.

Time as the continuous sequence of identical moments has also been represented as a circle. The circular movement refers to the cyclic nature of life and to the constancy of the sky.
The circle recurs in men’s history both in religious and secular spheres. We can find it in the primeval sun worship, in the myth of creation, in the christian symbology in which God is the origin and the end of all things (the Alpha and Omega), in the mandala-motiv of the Tibetan Monks, in the oriental contemplative figures…it reveals itself in architecture as the leading wire in sacred building’s plans and in the foundation of entire towns.

The circle depiction, present in the art of all the ages, has been studied in its complexity in the modern age by Jung who gives a psychoanalytical interpretation in which the circle represents the archetypal self-image, the inner centre organizing our psychic activity. It represents the complex psychic as a whole and in every respect, including the relationship between man and nature.