Why Symbolism and Religeon were created

My honours study of jewellery is about Amulets and Talismans - symbolic objects used for the benefit of mankind. They are merely points of focus for the mind. It is the mind that does the work, not the crystal or the object or the symbol. By looking at the object, it serves to remind the person what it stands for and one's own mind does the work.

Dr. Paul Brunton ("The hidden teaching beyond Yoga", 1941) explains why symbolic objects and religeon were created.

"Such views (about Truth and Knowledge of the universe's operation) could not be brought within the reach of immature minds without first throwing them into solid and concrete form. This could be done only by converting them into popular symbols and a system of such collated symbols would constitute a historic religeon. The symbolism would have to appear in the forms of ritual, legend, myth, pseudo-history, simple dogma and so on, but whatever shape it took it would necessarily represent a disappearance of profoundly abstract conceptions and a substitution of crudely concrete ones. Thus philosophy (as verification of Truth) would apparently die only to be reborn in the dwarfed guise of religeon. The true psychological facts could only be imparted in its unabridged plenitude to those who had attained a stage which rendered them fully qualified to grasp it. To all others, it would be tiresomely unintelligable".

Both religeon and symbolism are therefore merely a step toward understanding what they really stand for. It is enough, however, for people to engage with these on a superficial level, for at least they are moving in the right direction. In time people will understand how powerful the mind is and that they can change their picture of the world by their own will. Hence the biblical statement of being created 'in the image of God'. We are the creators of our own destiny.