Book review: Symbols, Meaning, and the Sacred Quest

I don’t claim to be very “spiritual,” so I’m hoping not to butcher an explanation of this book. But here’s the gist: The Octave, do-si-la-sol-fa-mi-re-do, is an ancient and universal symbol, a blueprint for the sequential stages of change. “Do,” for our purposes, may be thought of as God, the beginning of the journey and the end. The bottom of the scale and the top. The fully-enlightened and the fully-unenlightened. Each step up the scale, then, is a stage of the journey of enlightenment from God to God.

Cort instructs us how to read the Bible and the Qur’an in all their symbology, awakening our spiritual self. Over and over, through the stories of our sacred pages, Cort points out the steps to enlightenment until we are finally able to read the Bible for ourselves. The Law of the Octave hides in the plagues upon Egypt; in crossing the wilderness; in conquering the Promised Land, and much more. Indeed, it’s the Old Testament stories in all their gory detail that I found Cort’s manner of reading most interesting. Read literally, parts of the Bible can be distasteful, so it could use a little surface-scratching.

“Every time that you find in our books a tale the reality of which seems impossible, a story which is repugnant to both reason and common sense, then be sure that the text contains a profound allegory veiling a deeply mysterious truth; and the greater the absurdity of the latter, the deeper the wisdom of the spirit”. –Moses Maimonides.

I confess, when I reached the New Testament I felt less need for a spiritual translation, since the stories there are generally beautiful enough without going in search of a deeper meaning. Cort plunges on, though, leaning heavily (as we would expect) on John’s Gospel, the most mystical of the four Gospels, and when he gets through the N.T. he tackles the Qur’an.