Symbols hide, don't reveal!
by Athos A. Altomonte
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Dear friend, here we are again talking about method. Indeed, only method can guarantee the quality of research.

The first letter had excellent cues, improved in the second. But cues and imagination should be left to ‘improvisers', because analysis is not only an art but a science as well.

Let's omit the obvious improvisations that cancel themselves out; let's go back to the topic of cues which, although brilliant, are not a method. On the contrary, in analysis method is everything.

Cues are ok to produce ‘limited accelerations'. But they have the fault of fragmenting the idea, separating the fragment examined from the rest of the body. So all you said appears as a ‘scenario' of many small ideas which, although adequate, distract you from the ‘whole meaning' of the symbolic sense. Therefore, even when proceeding with method, we must not forget that the only possible result is the whole.

A while ago I used to attract the attention of students by decrypting the elements of heraldic symbols, like the following one.

Starting from the global view, we penetrate individual details, bringing them back to the surface in order to translate them into literal meanings. These translations are not made up, guessed or imagined, as it happens with amateurs; they are built ‘according to school'. After that, in the second stage, we go back to the whole view, pasting the individual meanings into one big collage that ends in a global view; for the researcher the latter is the only acceptable answer.

Therefore, if we really want to venture in the charming mental world of ‘symbolic meanings', I suggest you follow a method. Especially because, as you probably know, symbols don't show but protect and preserve meanings, hiding them from the eyes of the ‘passers-by', who will understand only what they can. That is, only the mere pictorial representation, without understanding the meaning of ‘colors' and ‘inner spaces', but most of all without seeing the meanings of the ‘geometrical relations' (see sacred geometry).

Therefore, take a nonconformist position in relation to the ‘thus do they all' and don't give in to temptation of ‘doing it yourself'. Start your observation all over again with method. Don't rush towards generic solutions. Study the whole symbol; don't divide it but in observation. Use analogy and compare among similes. Then ask yourself questions and express them logically.