Lightning

Lightning is a sudden discharge from the sky. It is concentrated energy that creates fire (emotions) and light (awareness)—it is the “birth of light”; but also the birth of life, or the creation and fertilization of something in general. Lightning has always been associated with divine, celestial powers that can both create and annihilate. Lightning and rain are interconnected like fire and water. 

Lightning was central to shamanism in many cultures; being struck by lightning and surviving, dreaming of lightning or the thunderbird, etc., were signs of the call to become a shaman.  

Some Buddhist authors liken enlightenment to lightning, which can occur suddenly. It is a symbol of insight from the unconscious; one sees everything in a flash of illumination. This can mean sudden enlightenment and/or a dramatic change in attitude, particularly as part of a storm. (See also Weather and Thunder.) In some contexts, it has a similar symbolic value to fire; passion, obsession with ideas, energy and intensity, and so on—much libido.

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