Unurthed

The coinherence symbol designed by Professor Roger Corless (Duke) in 1983, combining the symbols of various religious traditions. As the logo of the Duke University Department of Religion, it combines 7 symbols (circle, taijitu, wheel, hexagram, labarum, crescent, cross); the logo of the University Religious Council (URC) at UC Berkeley adds 4 more (point, atom, chalice, lotus).

I have redrawn the former version here:

The symbol combines its constituents “in such a way as to represent simultaneously the full and autonomous presence of each tradition and their intimate interrelation, each inside the other, in the mode of coinherence” (URC).

Meister Eckhart on coinherence: “There is a difference between spiritual things and bodily things. Every spiritual thing can dwell in another but nothing bodily can exist in another. There may be water in a tub, and the tub surrounds it, but where the wood is, there is no water. In this sense no material thing dwells in another, but every spiritual thing does dwell in another. Every single angel is in the next with all his joy, with all his happiness and all his beatitude as perfectly as in himself; and every angel with all his joy and all his beatitude is in me, and so is God Himself with all his beatitude, though I know it not” (Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, translated and edited by Walshe, vI p50; appearing in Corless’s Many Selves, Many Realities, 2002).