Sasha ChaitowPhdc., MA Western Esotericism, MA Eng. Lit.

Phoenix Rising Academy Director

www.phoenixrising.org.gr

ΣΥΜΒΟΛΑΑThe Hidden

and the Visiblesilent languages and ways of seeing

Symbolic Perception

1. Literal interpretation: Obvious references or metaphors and historical/cultural context.

2. Allegorical interpretation: We know the object represents something else, regardless of whether it may have an esoteric dimension or not. 3. Moral/Tropological interpretation: Demands the participation of the observer: causes change on an intellectual level

4. Anagogical interpretation: Identification of perception with the object being perceived. Internalization of the symbol and perception of correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm.

St. Thomas Aquinas , (1265-1274) Summa TheologicaHenri Corbin, Mysticism and Humour

Angela Voss, Symbolic Perception

The imagination permits the use of intermediaries - symbols and images, to develop Gnosis, to penetrate the hieroglyphs of Nature and actively apply the theory of correspondences. It is an organ of the soul, thanks to which humanity can know and visualise the mesocosm.

Antoine Faivre, Accés de l’ésotérisme occidental, p. 12

The intellectual faculty of the Imagination allows the establishment of Gnosis and frees us from the banal, dualistic and rationalist dilemma: either 'matter' or 'spirit'.Henri CorbinThe Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn-Arabi

What the eye is in corporeal things […] that very thing is the mind in the realm of the spirit.Girolamo Pico della MirandolaHeptaplus

1. True knowledge was a contemplation of Platonic ideas in visual form.

2. this had been made possible in Egyptian hieroglyphs.

George BoasIntroduction, The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo

...there must exist a grammar of thought independent of language,’ key to understanding

‘the Renaissance Eros, the Art of Memory, theoretical magic, alchemy, and practical

magic...Ioan P. Couliano,

Eros and Magic in the Renaissance

The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo(5ος c. CE, disc. Patmos, 1419)

If a common myth that haunts the minds of poets and initiates, it is the myth of Prometheus: the man who wins divine powers

and achieves his own salvation, and the salvation of the entire universe, through his own efforts. Humanity is thus its own

mediator.

-Albert Beguin; Robert G. Cohn: Poetry and Occultism

Sophia Babylon

Eros Lethe (oblivion)

Mnemosyne

Demeter-Persephone

Athena

Hermes

Sasha Chaitow

www.phoenixrising.org.grphoenix@phoenixrising.org.gr