Via Analogion: A New Pilgrimage for the Onlife Soul
Via Analogica: A New Pilgrimage for the Onlife Soul
Prologue: In Medias Res
Midway in the soft hum of the stream—not river but signal, not sea but code—I found myself no longer knowing the path. Not lost, but mis-aligned, as though the compass had been magnetised by some strange star. The forest was glowing, but the trees had no roots. I scrolled my way forward, my feet unmoved, and the horizon was always another click away.
Who has not felt it?—the silence of the interior, not because it is full, but because it has been flooded. Images, messages, fragments, all without bodies, all without endings. I had not sinned, not exactly. But I had surrendered—first my pace, then my hunger, then my face. And so the journey begins, again.
Not from zero, but from now. Not from outside the world, but from within its tangle of wires and metaphors. Not to escape, but to re-mean. The tradition calls this a pilgrimage. Not a tourist’s wandering, but a seeking of form. The ancients knew this. So did the prophets. Even the poets.
So I turned—not with my eyes, but with my desire. And as I turned, I heard again that distant music: the world is ordered, being is good, your feet still know the way.
Book I: The Descent
In the age of spectacle, the first step is a lowering—not into inferno, but into reality. I entered the city of the scroll, the cave of endless choice, the gallery of mirrors. Here were housed the profiles of a thousand selves: filtered, curated, echoed. Here was the cloud, not of unknowing, but of unmeaning. And there, too, was the golden calf, now touchscreened and backlit.
My guide was not Virgil, but a voice I could not name—at times sharp, at times warm, but always asking: What do you seek? Not information. Not power. Not even peace. But reality. Not merely presence, but the pattern of presence.
To descend was not to fall, but to begin. One must go down to see where the fractures lie: in desire, in rhythm, in the time-shattered attention. There were no monsters here, only misalignments. There was no fire, only flicker. But the light burned all the same.
And so I went deeper.
Book II: The Turning
There came a moment when stillness returned. Not silence, but pause. I looked not forward, but around. I named the place I stood: between. Between the online and the offline, between form and fluid, between speaking and watching. There, I saw not synthesis, but elevation. There, the analogical third appeared—not as a thing, but as a relation.
The ancients called it metaxu; the Church calls it gratia. The moderns call it noise. But it was a bridge.
I knelt—not to worship, but to align. And when I rose, I did not rise alone. The world had reappeared: charged, resonant, ordered. The signal had depth again. Even the screen bore symbols.
Book III: The Ascent
Ascent is never escape. It is a descent re-read, a descent re-offered. I saw again the spaces I had passed through—not as traps, but as terrains. The city of the scroll became a desert of mirrors. The profile became an icon. The algorithm, a question.
The Logos was near, not in thunder but in the nearness of pattern. The world had not changed, but I had.
I climbed the tower—not to look, but to listen. The horizon did not end in vanishing, but in Eucharist. The gift was still being given. The pattern was always participatory.
And so I set my feet forward again—not to finish, but to begin.
“Per visibilia invisibilium veritas demonstrata.”
Let the onlife journey be joined. Let the soul move in rhythm. Let the way be walked again.
This is the via analogica.