This confused her, because she did not see the significance of what she had been shown.

Since this image was so powerful, and so much at the center of her testimony, it seems logical that whatever it was that chose her did so to convey it.

My day alone at the cabin drew to an end. The dark came slipping out of the woods, and at length I went inside and had a. meal. I did not turn on the lights, but rather chose to let the night in.

Sitting in my silent living room on the couch where the visitors left me on the night of December 26, reading through the late night hours, I reflected on the relationship between the innocent and the sublime, the new and the ancient. How is it that Mrs. Andreasson — a middle-aged American housewife with probably no access to the texts that concern themselves with this deep secret-hit upon the very symbol of the complete triad?

What old beast is shuffling toward the surface of human experience — surely not the very eagle, the Phoenix of transformation whose shadow has made me sweat with longing?

Let us turn now toward the rigorous objectivity that might allow a human spirit to take wing, to soar beyond the attractions of life that the Hindu sages have given the wonderful name maya, which P. D. Ouspensky in his more utilitarian interpretation described simply as

"identification" with the illusionary importance of everyday affairs. It seems important to cleave to the things of life, the details of every day, but it is not very important. With care, our obsession with these things can be put aside even while our responsibility for them remains.

We do not even know if there are visitors. We do not know what we are, or why this is happening, or exactly what is happening. The real center of the experience lies not m some facile explanation, it lies in opening. oneself to the question as it really exists, with all its mystery and danger.

To get that particular flower to open a little more, it may be helpful to turn to another enigma: the tarot. First, please set aside any notion of fortune-telling. I suggest that the Major Arcana reveal a hidden symbolic coherence of great purity that has more to do with order than chance. About fifteen years ago I became interested in the tarot when I was studying the rise of monasticism in Europe for a historical novel I never actually wrote. I came to realize that the tarot is much more than a deck of fortune-telling cards; it is a sort philosophical machine that presents its ideas in the form of pictures rather than words.