HIEROGLYPHS

Right now I am reading Jean Houston's The Passion of Isis and Osiris. Each chapter has an excersise for channeling the spirituality of ancient Egypt, and the current chapter is about hieroglyphic thinking as opposed to alphabetic. To look at a hieroglyph is to look at a symbol composed of many symbols meaning many things. In English the letter A means you make a certain sound and AND produce a sound that means "as well as" or "not to mention".

Coming to the chapter I thought that what Houston was saying is we have no sense of symbol in the Western World-- especially America-- but now what I see is that we think symbolically all the time. Only our symbols are shortsighted and misguided. I am FINALLY going to a proper driving school and getting licensed. This sounds amazing the many Americans who cannot imagine life without a car. I've noted among friends who have even the crappiest cars what these gas guzzling metal shells mean. To me a car is a great convenience for getting me to places a bus or my feet will not do. To most people I know a car is adulthood, independence, freedom, power.... I have all four, and I can count on one hand the times I've driven a car.

Having your own house or your own place away from your family is pretty much the same symbol as having a car. It says you are grown, you are free. You are your own person and no one elses.

To me having a home means having a roof over your head.

I use America, but to some extent this nation is just a caricature of all the Western world. It is fine and well for people to think whatever they wish to and to associate power with what they like. But when it produces a nation of half asleep, dreamed out twenty-somethings old before their time striving for jobs not worth having and sitting behind desks for several hours told out on a time clock... then we should look at some new symbols.