Isn’t it interesting how we have to name everything.
It’s as though by naming everything we have control over it – of course we don’t have control but we like the illusion and sense of power it gives us to imagine that we do.
And it reduces that underlying fear. If we don’t have control, who or what does? Of being an effect rather than cause. Of being helpless.
So we name things.
Pareidolia is one of those named things. It’s a phenomena. Some say, of the mind. Isn’t everything? We each view the world through our own unique prism. No One world is the same as any Other. Yours isn’t mine. Mine isn’t yours.
Nevertheless someone had to name it. Pareidolia. To try to make it understandable, diminish it, control it. Pretense at power and authority.
This phenomena of ‘pareidolia’ has appeared all through my life from time to time. Perhaps yours too?
Of course we can discount all manner of things strange. Those ephemeral things that are impossible to control, easy to deny. Like how we ‘know’ some information when logically there is no ‘normal’ reason why we would. Or when we sense something that puts our internal ‘antenna’ up so that we are wary about somewhere, someone or something. We call it our ‘gut’ feeling, giving our stomach the credit for special powers or talent. No Superman here only Supergut. As long as it’s not Us so that we have to own up to our power. Because that really would change the world.
The German philosopher Wittgenstein said: “What cannot be imagined cannot even be talked about.” and “What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.” (Notebooks 1914-1916 https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein )
The mystical world can’t be clearly articulated because of it’s unfathomable nature – it is too big for our current position in what we call ‘reality’. Our minds don’t open by even a crack to allow a glimpse of the light that would give us some different sight.
A blackbird flew into my garden this evening, at twilight. All black birds herald magic, symbolising mystical Otherworlds, Through time and cultures their blackness has suggested a connection to night and its mysteries, the Unknown, the secret, “Unobvious perception” (www.whats-your-sign.com) and to intuition – that gut feeling again. THE Blackbird though has the sweetest voice.
Claire Nahmad writes that it is called the merle in Scotland’s Western Isles “suggesting Merlin, the Prince of Enchanters himself. It stands at the sacred gateway between the two worlds of physicality and the spirit. It is linked with twilight, the earthly symbol of this mysterious doorway.” (Summoning Angels. Yes I know – Angels, there are writings about these ephemeral beings in all religions for as long as there has been writing/religions. It’s only the modern West that has trivialised them.)
That “mysterious doorway” was also written about 800 years ago by the Persian poet Rumi in his poem The Breeze at Dawn…
“…People are going back and forth across the door sill
Where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.”
Seeing the Blackbird tonight gave me the impetus to trust in my intuition, in the magic, the mysterious world and finish writing this post.
I regularly do see faces in and on things and sometimes photograph them. Up in the woodlands where my Dad and my brother were laid I took a photograph of the trees one day, It was the anniversary of my Dad’s passing (see main image above).
I hope you see what I see. It could be the impetus to change your life in positive and unimaginable ways . And if not now, then soon, Through your desire to do so and your connection with your heart. I found mine, connected to it, through simple meditation, reading and contemplation.