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

by L. Caruana (Author)

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 fragment: 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."

Author Biography

L. Caruana is an artist, writer and lecturer who lives in Vienna. He holds a Philosophy degree in Hermeneutics and is presently the director of The Vienna Academy of Visionary Art. He frequently travels in Europe and the USA to teach, hold workshops and exhibit his work. L. Caruana is also the author of The First Manifesto of Visionary Art and The Hidden Passion: A Novel of the Gnostic Christ based on the Nag Hammadi Texts, also published by Recluse.