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‘…You may as well know now you are far more likely to see the spiritual than you are to read it. The spirit came first and we learned to see before we learned to read. It is nigh on impossible to alter the ramifications of all that and no one really wants to but it is easy to forget. You can look at something for years without seeing it…’
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In the West we are accustomed to regarding pictures as illustrations of the words used to tell stories. Our earliest reading is accompanied by pictures which frame, direct or manipulate the ideas contained within the words we have just read and our judgements about the skills of the illustrator are formed by and depend on just how closely the depicted image comes to how we have envisaged the related story in our minds eye…
But it was not always this way.
Many of the oldest stories, by which we mean the myths, are tales told to elucidate sacred icons and while it is undoubtedly the case that a picture paints a thousand words it may not be possible for a single word to paint a thousand pictures.
This means that many of our oldest stories are in fact no more than interpretations, which is as it should be and really can only ever be, but it also means that in the absence of the icon to which these interpretations refer there is something missing.
The picture itself!
But the picture itself is not the whole story either because even with the icon and the interpretative story or indeed a number of different interpretative stories and their attendant glosses… there is still something missing and that something is known as context and, what is more, that context can only come from individual lookers and listeners which means… you, but only if you do indeed take care to look and to listen.
To listen properly involves being silent.
To look properly involves using more than the eyes.
This ‘set up’ and its corresponding ‘state of affairs’ really is fundamental to most of what passes for our experience here on earth and one of the gravest errors it is possible to make is to let another person define our experience for us.
All the sacred texts teach this by leaving room for interpretation and by using icons or pictures as the sources of their inspiration.
After all one may spend a lifetime considering the arguments of a thousand and one savants on the likelihood or otherwise of, let’s say… reincarnation without ever being convinced one way or the other and yet, alternatively, one may also be lucky enough to catch the merest glimpse of a series of temple panels which taken together accurately depict the same concept… and instantly know it to be true.
But don’t take our word for it… go out and discover it for yourself!
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THE INITIATE
Book One of the Triad of Albion
Stuart France & Sue Vincent
The Initiate is the story of a journey beyond the realms of our accustomed normality.
It is a true story told in a fictional manner. In just such a way did the Bards of old hide in the legends and deeds of folk heroes, those deeper truths for those ‘with eyes to see and ears to hear’.
Don and Wen, two founding members of a new Esoteric School, meet to explore an ancient sacred site, as a prelude to the School’s opening event. The new School is to be based upon a nine-fold system and operate under the aegis of the Horus Hawk.
The trip does not unfold as planned.
Instead, Don and Wen, guided by the birds, find themselves embarking upon a journey that will lead them through a maze of spiritual symbolism, to magical mysteries and the shadowy figure of the Ninth Knight.
As the veils thin and waver, time shifts and the present is peopled with shadowy figures of the past, weaving their tales through a quest for understanding and opening wide the doors of perception…
Now available via Amazon worldwide.
Paperback UK Kindle UK Paperback Amazon.com Kindle Amazon.com
France & Vincent 
I think too that some things are perhaps not meant to be defined or given a specific identity, etc. It is perhaps enough to know that the things exist in some form, but perhaps not necessary to specifically identify or give it shape and content or context. Sometimes we are too anxious to know and give shape and special meaning to each and every thing. Wonderment is an amazing thing in our lives – it is something that keeps us moving forward even though we don’t fully understand it. I think of primitive cultures and how a lot of what they believed likely was not the sculptures or the hieroglyphics or other ways that some things were depicted. It just made them seem powerful or they felt powerful themselves to be able to think they had defined some aspect of the unknown. It is ok for us all to, as you have noted, just be able to see it. And what we know about anything can change in the flash of a moment, or within our consciousness as we learn new things.
As for whether there is reincarnation or some other form of returning to this earth, I am not even certain that we ever really leave it, regardless of how and when we die. I think many times people are anxious to learn about and believe in reincarnation because they have never really fulfilled their existing lives here on earth. And we don’t know if we do return, in what form it will take place. If we already knew everything that is a future event, what a dull world this would be.
Thank you all very much.
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To look properly involves using more than the eyes. Very well said, Stuart.
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And to hear involves more than the ability to hear. It also means you must listen. Anyone with ears that work can hear sounds, but only some know how to listen.
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Reblogged this on Stuart France.
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