Enter Through the Image: The Ancient Image Language of Myth, Art and Dreams

by L. Caruana

A journey to the primordial language at the source of all dreaming, art & mythmaking... In 1945, on a hill overlooking the Nile, a Gnostic text was accidentally unearthed after having been buried for seventeen hundred years. Within its aged pages there appeared the mysterious enter through the image. Taking this as his starting point, the noted Visionary artist L. Caruana guides his reader through a labyrinth of imagery, exposing the forgotten image-language at the root of all dreaming, art and mythmaking.... Drawing examples from a diversity of ancient cultures (Buddhism, Alchemy, Gnosticism) and from contemporary Visionary art (Dali, Fuchs, Johfra), many beautiful and intriguing symbols are illuminated with crystal clarity. Retracing the steps of 20th century mythmakers (Hesse, Kazantzakis) and scholars (Jung, Campbell, Eliade), Caruana opens our eyes to the ancient mythic patterns underlying our lives. As many fascinating dreams are offered and decyphered (Baudelaire, Descartes), a new key is given to us for the elucidation of dreams. By the end of this richly-illustrated study, we come to see how our own daily experiences are, in fact, heroic adventures culminating in rare moments of epiphany. We discover that our own lives are nothing less than "...a gradual unfolding of the Sacred."

328 pages, Paperback

First published November 11, 2009

Reviews

[Lauren]

This was a ponderous but enlightening work. It was worth the effort of staying with it. I am inspired to revisit it some time in the future with the hope that I can grok it more fully. My biggest problem was a leaning towards western philosophy, in spite of many mentions of eastern and ancient world views. It seems the author has a deep understanding of the underpinnings of Christianity, and his portrayal of Gnostic cosmology is worthy of further exploration. However he gave scant basis for his portrayal of Buddhism in particular, and about meditation specifically. I would be glad to speak to someone wiser than I to explain his hypothesis.

[Sylvain Malfroy-Camine]

This is a book worth re-reading.
The concept is simple, but easy to lose in the wealth of concepts presented. That images can be entered into, and a timeless state can be realized in doing so. I think this book is meant as a starting point into a long meditation on art, and what it means to be a human being in the world.

The author brings in examples from ancient and contemporary sacred art, from the surrealists, from dreams, too. In doinig so, he turned me on to some shining lights of art who I was oblivious to, such as Johfra, and elucidated on some less understood ones, like Ernst Fuchs. Like I say though, he really only opens the door a small creak, and the real "read" is to take this text to heart and enter through a few images, myself.

He discusses various myths, including egyptian myth, and explains how at first, the story of the sun rising, and the sun surviving the night was felt deeply and utterly as cosmological truth. But as the generations wore on, this myth became more and more distant, and the spirit of the myth was all but gone.

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This review is frankly incomplete and deserves to be complete. When I get the time I will work out a sort of distillation of the message of what I read. Mostly, I think, for my own benefit.