Oleg Krasnov

The dark legacy of Christian teaching Oleg Krasnov

There are two ways of communicating information, verbal and figurative. In the verbal mode, a person receives information through facial expressions, gestures, words or verbally. Figurative perception is characterised by a large amount of information coming in and uses visual constructions. There are irrational and rational visual perceptions. Irrational imagery connects with another reality, and has the purpose of denoting with the help of concepts of our world what is outside it, there is no other possibility. What strikes Noah after the flood? He plants grapes, makes wine and gets drunk. This figurative expression speaks of a change in human thinking. Wine indicates mystical perception, grapes speak of the semblance of irrational visions, and being drunk is a reckless attitude. In order to preserve the Gnostic purpose of Scripture, it employs an abstract-symbolic mode of communicating knowledge, using numerical constructions, alongside images of irrational thinking. The servants of the ancient mysteries were well aware that works composed with the help of images, numbers and abstract constructions do not lose their meaning when translated from one language to another.