Theos-Talk Archives (October 1996 Message tl00252)

I have become obsessed again with the power of images to connect and relate
various levels of  spirit into matter.  I have studied the tarot and see that it
can open doors as can the kabala, astrology and numerology.

I have never understood the power of sigils or stylized names or talisman type
representation to evoke spiritual power throught the paricipation techniqe of
letters, shapes and forms in themself.  The Enochian calls and tablets seem to
be an espectially difficult system of using images, letters and sounds to evoke
hypostasized entities.

Yet my study reveals that these representational systems of correspondences and
substitutions are the essence of compression and communitcation of very
difficult spiritual realities, concepts and energies in the physical form.

Man is said to be made in God's image, a stamping of the Presense of God in the
physical individual man.

The world of eletronic images of TV, computers and the like seem to blot out and
overpower more traditional images like the Greek icon that was stylized and
unrealitic and therefore that more "spiritual" and pointing to the spiritual.

The notion of the spiritual ideal form hovering with the material medium of
painting, music etc.  lead to the larger issues of architecture, city planning
and government systems.

Plato in The Republic and the Greeks in general demanded proportion and
symmetry, grace, poise and a certain cotemplative serenity in the order of
society.   Music in exotic modes were discouraged as too unsettlng to the study
of ideas.

As we increasing depend on computer for transaction and commerce, it would seem
that corporate images and representation such as logos will be more elaborate
and practical in some way.  Money itself is being redesigned, credit cards have
holograms and electronic transfer of funds seem to be demanding a new marker.  I
am sure these ideas are being developed, but when one considers Thomas
Jefferson's Monticello, the city planning of Washington, DC and the esoteric
symbols on the dollar bill.  One must fear that any new attempts to overlay
images and commerce must be careful to bypass traditonal representations as of
the Greeks, Egyptians and such things to more simplified representation of the
principles needed.  In God we trust, the pyramid and the Eye, the eagle etc.
seem quaint, but the motive of exalting "filthy lucre-dirty money" with a higher
energy through art and representation seems to be present from earliest times of
money as not value, but marker, representation of absent value, legitimized by
the referring to entities and institutions from the Presidency, the consitution,
the Federal banking system and religious and philisophical ideals unltimaely.


I have always thought that theosophy demands an intuitive yoking with the
difficult to explore  words  and worlds of say, THE STANZAS OF DZYAN.  The words
and symbols yoke to  underlying unexpressable ideas, feelings and images
regarding the universe or whatever..  These symbols in turn are interpreted and
thrown together (symbolos - to throw with) with what is there waiting in the
viewer or reader to resonate  within the unconscious of each person.  The power
to transform and direct, rinspire and rorient is too great to waste.

Namaste
Keith Price