Apie tradicinį simbolizmą

ENIn this paper the author brings out the spiritual significance of traditional symbolism. According to a Hermetic saying the lowest symbolizes the highest, material existence, i. e. the lowest level, symbolizes and reflects the Intellect or the archetypal essences which represent the highest level. Upon this fundamental law the science of symbols is based. Modern man’s reduction of knowledge to what conforms to logic and to reason is contrasted with the medieval distinction between ratio and the higher plane of intellectus. In all traditional cosmologies there is an Anima mundi or the Universal Soul as the Divide Sophia. The Logos which exists in divinis is the root of intelligence in man and the intermediary through which man receives sacred knowledge. The traditional sciences of the cosmos make use of the language of symbolism. They claim to expound a science and not a sentiment or 'д poetic limage of the domain which is their concern, but a science which is expounded in the language of symbolism based on the analogy between various levels of existence. Tradition means truths or principles of a divine origin revealed or unveiled to mankind. Tradition is inextricably related to revelation and religion, to the sacred, to the notions of orthodoxy, to the continuity and regularity of transmission of truth, to the exoteric and the esoteric as to the spiritual life, science and the arts.Spiritual realization based on the sapiential perspective implies also metaphysical transparency of natural forms and objects. The revelation of God in such cases embraces both men and nature in such a way that would be inconceivable for the exteriorized reason of post- medieval men. Qualitative space is modified by the presence of the sacred. Its directions are not the same; its properties are not uniform. The revival of the study of symbols in modern times signifies the quest of contemporary man for a universality of meaning, but this quest cannot achieve its goal without the help of and without recourse to tradition itself.