All in good time my dearest Wendolina…
I have more than enough to be going on with at present with the Ilkley ‘crosses’… It sounds like our little trip has fired you up somewhat… the lion slaying David would certainly have things in common with both Samson and Herakles for starters…I should imagine.
And as for your query relating to Pagan Streams? (Nice phrase) All of them I shouldn’t wonder, ‘iconotropy’… i.e. turning icons to different mythological purposes was something of an occupational hazard for the ‘churchmen’…
The point is though that neither need be correct.
The myths in many cases are derived from the pictures, not the other way around which is how we tend to imagine it works partly because we are so used to reading books which have illustrations.
We shouldn’t be too surprised. We have worked with the Tarot… one only has to consider what bringing different cards into relationship does to the reading…and we are also aware that a lot of the mysteries culminated with the revelation of a sacred icon or picture to be interpreted afresh and anew by each candidate… Were I to ask you for example why the four holy creatures are used to symbolise the four evangelists…without recourse to books or internet… what would you say?
I don’t think we have been too far away from the off really…
‘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. ‘The Initiate’… p3
Amongst other things in the first series of books we get to see how different Medieval Christianity was from the Christianity we know today and in the second series amongst other things we get to see how different Dark Age Christianity was from Medieval Christianity. The tag ‘Dark Age’ is partly a mantle thrown over the past to disguise the fact that there was a healthy, robust, thriving Christianity prior to and totally different from the medieval version…
One does though to my mind have a duty to resist at all cost the power of the gaze of those big pathetic eyes…
Hopeless I know…
Love… Donald x
