Semna Divinae Puritatis
The external perspective reveals the order that the eye involved in immediate experience cannot perceive.
The desert is the same everywhere, I told myself with resigned conviction, because nothing seemed to change, neither on the horizon nor within me. Until one hot morning, when I saw the shadow of an eagle soaring above me, even though the sky was empty. Then the shadow stopped over a dune, and there I later found a strange rock, with a hollow filled with clear water. I drank and felt a strange energy, as if my body had learned to retain water better. Surprisingly, the shadow disappeared. Without a sound, without a trace. But I knew that the eagle, an unseen messenger of a greater order, was guiding me to a place chosen only for those who do not give up. It was a sign, an unspoken lesson in patience and trust.
At night, I dreamed of the eagle flying over the desert, and, seeing everything as a living map, I felt that I was part of a truth older than myself. Without a word spoken, I woke up with a new clarity: the desert was not an enemy, but a master. Soon, I began to notice the shadows of other creatures, each hiding a message, a kind of symbolic silence of creation. And, just like that, I began to learn the mysterious language of signs, and my story, full of thirst and salvation, seemed to become a living legend, living through those who know how to listen to what is not said.
Perhaps the desert, this vast mass of sand where every dune whispers a verse of creation, called me with a holy silence, like an unspoken "Vox Naturae". Under the killing sun that burns the soul, I walked in the footsteps of the wind, without weapons, without food, only with an empty heart, searching for a message that would give meaning to my journey. And with every step, the question pressed on me like a hot stone: why am I, a lost scribe, called to decipher the mysteries of the wilderness?
How do you redefine your purpose in terms of who you are becoming, when you feel like your vision is aligning with a purpose beyond your control?
Another day, when the mirages disintegrated like the shadows of a shattered dream, a sandstorm rose, enveloping me in a “turbo temporis”. In its heart, I felt the living nature, pulsating like an ancestral heart. The wind whispered to me the approach of the storm, the scorpion showed me the way to the shadow, the scarab revealed a hidden spring – so I found water where others see only dryness. All these signs, and many more, written in the alphabet of nature, spoke to me in a primordial language, calling me to learn survival, healing and purity.
Inspired by the wisdom of the desert, I understood that only the divine perspective reveals the order of signs. We, living within the limits of our senses, are blind to the rules of nature, but the desert, this library "Signorum Divinorum", taught me to read its secrets. Just as in "The Name of the Rose", where the library is illuminated from the outside, the desert held me captive in a living labyrinth of signs, asking myself: am I worthy to become the keeper of this knowledge, or am I just a murmur of the wind?
One thing is certain: the deeper I delve into nature's traces, the more clearly I feel that the signs transform me into a living book.
Lucian Blaga once told a story about a poet gifted with divine grace who, in the past, had described hell and other marginal realms. Walking the streets of his city, passers-by pointed out to him: “Here is the man who has been to hell.” Of course, the poet had only been there in his imagination. However, he never took the trouble to produce evidence of an alibi, to refute the pointing fingers of the street. The explanation for this reluctance lies, perhaps, precisely in the fact that, in a way known only to him and impossible to express, the poet had nevertheless stepped into the forbidden realms.
How would your destiny change if you learned to read the signs of nature as a sacred story, of which you are not the author?
Just as the poet does not feel the need to defend himself against the accusation of having descended into hell, the one touched by the mystery of the desert does not seek to explain the vision that has been given to him beyond all human logic. Rather, he keeps it silent, knowing that some truths cannot be spoken without losing their power. And the more entangled the labyrinth of signs, the stronger becomes the call to become a silent witness to a revelation impossible to translate. After all, I did not know why the signs chose me, and even now I do not know very well why they took me to places where I would not have reached if I had not risked it.
But this is how it is when truth comes not through explanation, but through revelation: the more you accept that it is not you who reads the signs, but they read you, the more you transform into the page on which they are written.
Indeed, it is not the destination, but the transformation that the journey produces that is the testimony that I have been "there". For a long time I had to discern between the voice of the mind and the echo of the soul, to understand that the desert is an open book, but written in a language prior to words, where each dune is an unfinished sentence and each moment of light is a divine syllable. Learning to read this book means not so much understanding as dissolving in the very silence that gives rise to meaning.
In the middle of another day, under the merciless sun, I discovered that my sweat, soaked in the torn cloth, preserves the coolness and salts of life, a “scutum vitalis” gifted by nature. The cacti offered me their healing sap, a natural alchemy that healed my wounds and rejuvenated my body. Once upon a time, a gentle and silent hawk, flying in circles, showed me the way to food – the hidden fruits of a dry shrub. And night after night, the stars revealed to me the secrets of the cold, teaching me to warm my body from the inside, through controlled breathing. Just like a pilgrim lost in sacred texts, I felt that the desert was a “Living Scripture”, its signs rewriting my being, making me stronger, healthier, purer.
How do you redefine your role in the world when you realize that you do not control nature, but are guided by its signs?
Umberto Eco's hero was very right: "This is how God knows the world, from the outside, while we do not know its rules because we live in it."Through the same external gaze, I understood, with each deciphered sign, that it is not I who shape the desert, but it transforms me into a faithful echo of nature.
The storm returned, enveloping me like a living wave of judgment. In its midst, a stray beam of light showed me a safe path, and the tracks of a serpent kept me from a hidden doom. Yet a murmur of the wind shook me like a voiceless judgment: “He who reads the signs becomes pure, for nature rewrites him in My image.”
This unseen message revealed to me that my blood carries the echo of ancient mysteries, and the desert called me to be one with it, heir to these mysteries. And I understood that purity is the virtue of one who survives only through signs, becoming a living transcription of divine creation.
Finally, I gave up writing, my pen, an act of sacrifice without regret, letting the wind carry my words like an offering. It was not renunciation, but consecration, for I learned the sacred order of signs, mastering nature through humility. And with each deciphered sign, I understood that it was not I who wrote the world, but I was written by a divine language that guided my steps without asking my consent.
To walk through the labyrinth of signs means to accept that sometimes you are just an echo of an order that chose you to serve, before you understood it.
Semna Divinae Puritatis teaches us that the desert is a sacred book, read only by the one who renounces himself, letting the signs shape him without resistance. This is what purity means: to let yourself be written by what is above you. And I still do not know if it was me, the one called to read the traces of divine nature. But, under the watching stars, I know that purity belongs to the one who learns the language of the desert, and I am only a silence that learns to listen, a fleeting reflection in the mirror of creation.
To what extent are you willing to become the "living book" on which your deep experiences write their own story?
