In Praise of Visual Aids

A beautiful and well-detailed masterpiece of "Mohammad Haji" (early 18th century, late Safavid Persians) on a collectivized pen box that encourages a voyage through three stages of consciousness that human being triumphantly deal with. The circumstances of the lovers in the foreground are an interpretation and essence of the famous Iranian love story "Khusrau and Shirin," which is roughly illustrated as background. As Farsi is written from right to left, the progression of these symbolic lovers would be from the world of Matter; The sensible world, which is the domain of material things, to the world of the soul and souls; the imaginal world, and then to the world of the Logos; the pure intellectual world which supported by symmetrical hugging figure of the lovers and advanced architecture in the background while the two others have the same harvest scene as background. Moreover, these lovers indicate the destiny of man as the essence of the Sufism of Shiite Iran which has roots in Mazdean Iran.