“There were stones asleep, and one felt that they would awaken at some Judgment Day, stones which had nothing mortal about them, and others embodying a movement, a gesture, which had retained such freshness that it seemed to be preserved here only until some passing child should receive it one day as a gift.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
In our modern age, we seem to have lost the vision to see beyond the surface of things to the numinous beyond. For centuries, the visual Art of the Western world has shown us the numinous in its variety of forms as they are shaped into the beauty of great cathedrals, paintings, sculpture. They tell us of a phenomenological experience of the world we have forgotten, of how the secular is infused with the sacred, of the human in relationship with the world. The older works of art we see today were not intended to be analysed by a small rational part of our brain, thereby reducing us, but were to awaken the senses, the intellect and soul. Ways of seeing and knowing may be revealed altering perceptions and consciousness and helping us meet the complexities of modern living by offering a renaissance of humane and sacred values.