Few words disclose such a precise mirror of the human condition as symbolon and diabolos. In their Greek origin lies the drama of creation itself: the movement of union and separation, the pulse of the One divided into the many and forever yearning to return. The symbolic heals that wound and the diabolic widens it. Between the two unfolds the whole story of the soul.
The Greek verb symballein means “to throw together, to bring into contact.” From it comes symbolon, a word that once described a physical token of recognition: a fragment of clay or bone split in two. Each individual kept a half and, when they met again, the pieces were joined to prove identity and renew trust. The symbol was a covenant. It united the visible and the invisible, the human and the Divine, through the act of remembrance. The halves met and formed a whole; the fractured world recognised itself.
The opposite term, diaballein, means “to throw across, to scatter, to separate.” From it arises diabolos, the divider, the one who casts through in order to break relation. In Greek thought, the diabolic was not originally a horned figure, but a function: the principle of disjunction that dismembers meaning. The same root survives in the modern word “devil”, naturally. But, long before theology clothed it with myth and fear, the verb already carried the sense of a wound in the very fabric of being. The diabolic fractures what the symbolic joins. It replaces participation with accusation and relation with opposition.
Through these two etymons, the human world stands between reconciliation and dispersion. Every prayer, every work of art, every act of love repeats the gesture of symballein. On othe other hand, every lie, every act of cruelty, every vanity echoes diaballein. The first builds a cosmos and the second collapses it into fragments.
II. The Symbol as the Language of the Divine
In Sacred tradition, the symbol reveals. It makes present what it names. The symbolic word is a vessel where Spirit and matter coincide. It belongs to what the Neoplatonics called the logoi spermatikoi, the seeds of meaning planted in the world by the Divine intellect. If we read symbolically, we are performing an act of communion. The interpreter receives the meaning through correspondence, allowing the visible to disclose the invisible folded within it.
The symbol is vertical in nature. It connects heaven and earth, Spirit and body, cause and manifestation. For instance, a historical fact moves along the line of time, but the symbol stands outside time. The fact tells what happened but the symbol reveals why it happens and to what it returns. The Cross is not merely a recollection of an execution under Rome; it is the eternal axis where opposites meet, the union of height and depth, Spirit and flesh. It exists beyond wood and nails. It speaks in silence, as the sun speaks through Light.
Symbolic language is Divine because it does not belong to human invention. It is the tongue of creation itself, the rhythm through which the Logos breathes life into matter. If we contemplate a symbol, we take part in that breath; to translate it into intellect without reverence is to choke it. The contemplative mind must stand between humility and fire; too much analysis and the symbol dies; too much emotion and it dissolves. The right attention restores the lost dialogue between the two halves of being.
III. The Diabolic Principle of Dispersal
If the symbol joins, the diabolic separates. Its action is more subtle. It does not deny the divine but rather imitates it, inverting the Light. It multiplies signs until none of them connect. It feeds on confusion, where word and meaning no longer recognise each other. The diabolic speaks fluently but says nothing. It persuades, flatters, explains, never unites. It turns revelation into opinion and prayer into noise.
In the soul, the diabolic begins when the ego forgets its source. Matter detaches from Spirit and becomes object. Once transparent, words turn opaque; the Sacred recedes behind the utilitarian. Knowledge fragments into data and wisdom becomes superstition. The diabolic reigns wherever the image ceases to be symbol and becomes commodity, wherever language loses density and becomes chatter. It is the power of distraction, the Spirit of division that keeps the halves apart.
But, even in that dispersion, the symbolic remains latent. A single recollection of meaning can reverse the fall. The ancient mystics called it anamnesis: the remembrance of the Divine origin within the profane. When the soul remembers, the diabolic chain breaks. The scattered pieces recognise each other and the world breathes again as one body.
To live symbolically is to resist the diabolic nexus of modernity. It is to treat each gesture, object, word as a possible vessel of the Real. The stone, the flame, the letter, the human face: these all are halves of a greater symbolon awaiting reunion. The task of Spirit is to join them without possessiveness, to heal without claiming to own the cure. The language of the gods still speaks beneath the noise of the market, as it waits for ears that can hear.
Κύριε ελέησον