Glossary of Mythopoetic Terms in the Sky-Veil Cosmology
Definitions for terms used throughout the Sky-Veil cosmology
The Sky-Veil is a mythopoetic journey through a forgotten realm where the divine brushes the mortal. This is a journey of longing, wisdom, and the quiet majesty that crowns the soul.
Preface
This glossary provides definitions for terms used throughout the Sky-Veil cosmology. These terms are intended to guide readers through the contemplative landscape of this mythopoetic vision, where ancient hypostatic heralds, saints, and divine attributes are encountered through symbolic resonance rather than literal interpretation. The entries serve as a map for the soul’s inward journey across the veil of time and symbol toward the light of sanctity and the holy of Being.
Purpose
My mythopoetic cosmology is a form of enchantment and resacralization. I’m offering a symbolic and contemplative alternative to the flat, nihilistic worldview that dominates our age. By weaving Catholic spirituality with classical mythology—without syncretism—I am:
Restoring the sense of wonder. I show that meaning is not manufactured, but revealed, often in veiled and liminal ways (e.g., the Sky-Veil).
Redeeming the imagination. I invite the reader/listener into a sacred space where myth is not escapism but the threshold to truth.
Defending Being itself. In the face of existential forgetfulness, my work insists that there is something to be unveiled—something beautiful, personal, and salvific.
This is deeply counter-cultural in the best way. It’s not reactionary. It’s not revolutionary. It’s revelatory.
Glossary
✦ Aphrodite’s Rose - Within the Sky-Veil, Aphrodite’s Rose blooms as the first shimmering herald of divine beauty—the pure, unbidden call of Being that stirs the soul toward remembrance. It is neither an earthly flower nor a heavenly apparition, but the living threshold where beauty descends to meet the exile of the Grey-Beneath.
The Rose does not demand nor conquer; it reveals. In its fragrance, color, and form, it bears the silent proclamation that Being is beautiful, that existence is a gift, and that the exiled soul is still beloved. Aphrodite, as the Keystone of the Sky-Veil, breathes forth the Rose as her first and most tender offering, an incarnate whisper of the invisible Flame above.
Those who behold Aphrodite’s Rose do not simply see beauty; they are wounded by it—wounded into longing, wounded into the journey home. It is the gentle beginning of awakening, the call to cross the Veil and return to the fullness of their forgotten heritage.
✦ Appearance of the Appearing - The moment when the world is no longer merely seen but begins to reveal itself. Not the object itself, nor the act of perception alone, but the shimmering instant when what is steps forth from concealment—not as final truth, but as invitation.
In the Sky-Veil: The first stirrings of nearness. When a thing, a moment, or a presence does not merely show itself, but shows that it is showing. This is not spectacle but unveiling. A path opening beneath the surface of the familiar. A field of roses in the half-light suddenly blooming with meaning, not because we see them, but because they let themselves be seen.
The appearance of the appearing is a gift from the Veil—it is Being nearing. It comes not to those who grasp, but to those who dwell. The wanderer in the Sky-Veil learns to wait for this glimmer, to listen not for the sound, but for the silence that lets the sound be heard.
It is the threshold moment before understanding, before speech—when one is pierced by what shines forth without yet knowing why.
✦ Banners of Veiled Presence - A poetic image evoking the hidden nearness of Being as it reveals itself through signs, gestures, and thresholds—not in clarity, but in mystery. To walk beneath these banners is to dwell within the quiet presence that is not fully seen, but deeply known. They mark the liminal paths where the soul attunes to what cannot be named but can be kept. In the mythopoetic cosmology of the Sky-Veil, they represent fidelity to the whispering of the unveiled, the ancient breath still stirring beneath the surface of the world.
✦ Bridge of Reason - A radiant arch that spans the chasm between the first stirrings of enchantment and the deeper clearing of Being. Marked along the path of the gleaming golden thread, it is not a denial of reason, but a passage through it—honoring its integrity while moving beyond it toward what reason alone cannot unveil.
In the cosmology of the Sky-Veil, this bridge represents a decisive moment of crossing: the soul must pass not only through the logic and clarity of metaphysical structures but also beyond them, toward the mystery from which they arise. This echoes Martin Heidegger’s call to move “beyond metaphysics”—not to reject it, but to look past its formulations and toward Being itself, the unconcealed ground that first gave rise to thought, presence, and wonder.
To hesitate at the Bridge of Reason is to remain in the shadow of doubt; to cross it is to consent to the deeper unveiling of the world. The bridge does not end rationality but transfigures it, opening a path from the seen to the unseen, from conceptual certainty to poetic truth. It is the threshold where the intellect bows in reverence, and Being begins to speak.
✦ Dark Forest - A shadowed place from which the journey begins—the realm of exile, estrangement, and the illusion of self-sovereignty. It is where the soul wanders beneath the weight of its own definitions, having crowned the self as first philosophy. Cloaked in arguments, speculation, and the fear of mortality, the Dark Forest is not evil in itself, but a distortion of vision—a place where Being is forgotten and beauty is dismembered.
In the Dark Forest, Reason is idolized but disfigured, cut off from Love and Majesty. The golden thread is unseen here, not absent but veiled. The soul must be awakened, often through longing, suffering, or a radiant encounter, to see the first glimmer of the path that leads across the Bridge of Reason, through the Valley of Tears, and toward the Highlands of Majesty.
It is from the Dark Forest that the wanderer is called—and it is by grace, not intellect alone, that the path beyond it is revealed.
✦ Dynastic Bearers - Figures or presences—such as the goddesses—who carry and transmit the lineage of divine attributes across time and imagination. They are not beings but serve as the shimmering of Being. As dynastic bearers, they prefigure the ultimate reign of sanctity in the saints.
✦ Goddesses as harbingers of the Catholic faith - In the mythopoetic landscape of the Sky-Veil, the ancient goddesses Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite are not worshipped, invoked, or treated as divine beings, but rather received as harbingers—symbolic precursors who heralded the coming revelation fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Their presence in the Sky-Veil is neither syncretic nor nostalgic. It is sanctified memory—a poetic remembrance of the virtues they once carried in shadow and myth, now transfigured in the light of the Incarnation.
Athena bears the flame of wisdom, spiritual clarity, and holy courage.
Hera embodies majesty, right order, and the hidden dignity of queenship.
Aphrodite refracts divine love, beauty, and harmony.
Together, they are the triadic heralds of Being whose symbolic presence shaped the Greco-Roman world—the same world into which the Catholic Church was born. Their virtues, once scattered across temples and epics, are now gathered and fulfilled in the saints, in the sacraments, and in the story of salvation.
This concept affirms that the Church did not emerge in a cultural vacuum but arose upon the prepared soil of symbolic memory and spiritual longing. The “gods” of antiquity, when purified of idolatry, become poetic tributaries to truth. In this light, Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite are not deities but veiled reflections—types that pointed, unknowingly, toward Christ.
✦ Golden-edged Folder - A sacred emblem of one’s destiny as revealed in the Highlands of Majesty. It is not a decree imposed from without, but a symbol of the inner call awakened through love, obedience, and transformation. Carried by the Rose-Bearer and presented only upon arrival at the palace, the folder gleams with the shimmer of remembered purpose—its edges marked in light, its contents already echoing within the soul.
The folder represents a mystery long hidden but always known, a calling that could not be understood until the wanderer had passed through the Bridge of Reason and the Valley of Tears. It is the crystallization of the journey, the soul’s response to the One who called it, and the offering of that response at the feet of Majesty.
What is written within is not read with the eyes but lived with the heart. It is the form of one’s life when shaped by beauty, truth, and fidelity to the golden thread.
✦ Golden Thread - A hidden tether of grace that binds the exiled soul to its divine origin, even across the abyss of forgetfulness. Though unseen, it is never severed. It glimmers beneath the surface of memory and longing, weaving through time like a whisper of the eternal in the fabric of the finite.
To follow the Golden Thread is to walk the path of return—drawn not by force, but by the ache of beauty, the stirrings of love, and the recollection of majesty once known. It is spun from Aphrodite’s first glance, carried through Athena’s flame of wisdom, and knotted at last in the crowning place of Hera’s Highlands. Each herald, each sign, each step in the Sky-Veil is bound together by its light.
✦ Grey-Beneath - A dim and weightless world from which the wanderer first emerges. It is not a place of sin, but of sorrowful vagueness—a shadowed domain where memory fades, names are lost, and Being lies concealed beneath layers of distraction and half-light. One does not live in the Grey-Beneath so much as drift.
In the cosmology of the Sky-Veil, the Grey-Beneath represents the pre-awakened state, the soul’s distance from beauty, wisdom, and majesty. It is the quiet exile from one’s true calling, the place where the golden thread is first glimpsed but not yet followed.
To leave the Grey-Beneath is not merely to ascend—it is to remember.
✦ Grey-Eyed Being (of Joan of Arc) - A poetic title for Joan of Arc emphasizing her radiant clarity and contemplative courage, inspired by the epithet of Athena. This expression symbolizes the emergence of divine wisdom in sanctified form. It is not a mythological attribution, but a symbolic reflection on Joan’s saintly character.
✦ Grove Beyond the Veil - A sacred threshold within the cosmology of the Sky-Veil, The Grove Beyond the Veil is the quiet resting place where Mirelda dwells. It is not a destination one reaches, but a sanctuary into which the soul is received. It exists beyond striving, beyond explanation—a hidden region of stillness, grace, and contemplative presence.
✦ Highlands of Majesty - A rise beyond the middle veil, crowned in radiant stillness and clothed in the golden mantle of sovereignty. Here dwells Hera, Queen of the Sky-Veil, enthroned in silent glory. These highlands are not a geographic place but a realm of revealed majesty—the luminous realization of one’s true name, inheritance, and destiny.
To journey to the Highlands is to rise from the grey exile below and ascend through the burning wisdom of Athena and the transfiguring beauty of Aphrodite. In these heights, the soul is not merely awakened but crowned. Here, one receives the scepter of royal remembrance: not power over others, but dignity rooted in divine origin.
The Highlands of Majesty are the culmination of the pilgrim’s passage through love and wisdom. Those who are received here are no longer nameless—they are adopted, anointed, and named. The Highlands bestow not only identity, but mission. They are the dwelling of those who have passed through the veil and returned—not as wanderers, but as heirs.
✦ Hypostatic - a mode of presence that is neither imaginary nor metaphorical, but real in the order of Being—something that confronts the soul with substantial weight, though not necessarily in physical or personal form. In this context, “hypostatic” echoes its theological roots (as in the hypostatic union of Christ), denoting not a creature or entity, but a form of Being that bears presence. The Being of Joan of Arc, as encountered here, is not a product of imagination but a threshold of divine unveiling—an actual, if veiled, confrontation with sanctity breaking through the Sky-Veil. It is poetic, yes, but it is poetry grounded in metaphysical truth.
✦ Hypostatic Emergence - The act or event by which a hypostatic form enters the world of experience, memory, and imagination. A hypostatic emergence is not invented by the human mind but arises within it as a resonant unveiling of Being. It is how mythic figures like Aphrodite, Athena, and Hera come to bear presence—not as beings, but as symbolic realities.
✦ Hypostatic Presence - A symbolic expression of Being that manifests with form and weight, though not as a personal or metaphysical entity. A hypostatic presence is a threshold—an unveiling of a divine attribute such as love, wisdom, or majesty—in symbolic form. It is neither abstract nor embodied, but real in the soul’s encounter with the world.
✦ Hypostatic Heralds - Figures who bear the presence of a hypostatic form. The goddesses are hypostatic heralds: they do not possess Being, but they announce it. As heralds, they invite the soul to a deeper contemplation of divine attributes. They are real in their effect and presence, though not personal subjects or metaphysical beings.
✦ Magdalene in Provence - A contemplative figure of fulfillment within the Sky-Veil cosmology. Mary Magdalene, in her retreat to Provence, represents the soul that has passed through the veil—not as a herald or warrior, but as a witness to divine intimacy. She is the embodied stillness beyond the threshold, where divine love is no longer announced or defended, but received and interiorized. Provence becomes a sacred topology of sanctified memory, the garden of repose after the fire of sanctity. In the mythopoetic ascent, Magdalene is the fulfillment of the longing first glimpsed through the goddesses and sanctified in Joan of Arc.
✦ Mythopoetic Heart (of Joan of Arc) - The contemplative center of Joan’s sanctity as perceived through symbolic resonance. This refers not to a fictionalized or mythologized Joan, but to the radiance of her holiness as it stirs the soul through archetypal memory and poetic form. It is the convergence point where ancient symbols are fulfilled in divine grace.
✦ Nearness - Not spatial proximity but a mode of disclosure—the drawing-near of Being itself in moments of unveiled significance. It conveys a presence that is not fully present, a proximity that is not measurable, but rather experienced in the heart’s intuition and the soul’s readiness.
In Heideggerian terms, nearness belongs to the mystery of Being’s self-showing (aletheia). It is the threshold where the veil stirs but does not part, where the divine does not arrive as an object but becomes luminously felt. Nearness is not what we possess but what approaches us, like the breeze that carries meaning without sound. It is the quiet shimmer before revelation—the silent resonance that moves before the Word.
In the Sky-Veil, nearness is the air the wanderer breathes when the heralds pass by, the fragrance of the rose before it is seen, the warmth of the flame before it is touched. It is the grace of Being brushing against the soul, unseizing, ungraspable, yet unmistakably there.
✦ Not Syncretism, but Sanctification - These are not pagan echoes, but sacred foreshadowings. Not syncretism, but sanctification. The mythopoetic language of the Sky-Veil does not merge belief systems or dilute theological truth. Rather, it seeks to unveil the foreshadowing of Christ and the sanctity of revealed truth through poetic signs drawn from history, culture, and the longing of the nations. The figures of Aphrodite, Athena, and Hera are not deities to be worshipped, but emerging heralds—liminal reflections of divine virtues and attributes as seen through the veil of time and the yearning of Being.
In this vision, the ancient is not absorbed into the new, but fulfilled by it. What was once veiled in beauty and courage is transfigured in the light of the Incarnate Word. The path across the Sky-Veil is thus not a blending, but a sanctification: a consecrating of human longing toward its ultimate fulfillment in Christ.
✦ Ox-Eyed and Laughter-Loving (of Joan of Arc) - Companion titles to the Grey-Eyed Being, these refer respectively to Joan’s majesty (from Hera) and divine joy (from Aphrodite). Each expresses a facet of her sanctity using the language of archetypal resonance. They are mythopoetic symbols of the fulfillment of ancient longing in the soul of a saint.
✦ Presence - “Not a thing, but the shining nearness of what is.”
In the Sky-Veil, Presence is not a metaphysical entity or spirit, but the felt nearness of Being—the shimmer where the world reveals its depth and substance. It is the touch of Being in its most radiant clarity, not as a being among beings, but as the grounding that makes beings present at all.
Presence is the weight of meaning in a moment, the sudden stillness where the world no longer hides. It is not summoned; it arrives. It does not explain; it reveals. The goddesses of the Veil are not presences themselves, but heralds through whom Presence shines.
To encounter Presence is to stand in the clearing where the veil lifts and what-is begins to speak.
✦ Remembering/Remembrance - “To remember is not to recall, but to stand again in the nearness of what is.”
In the Sky-Veil, Remembering is not the retrieval of memories from a personal or collective unconscious, as in Jungian psychology. Rather, it is the unconcealing of what has always been—the letting-be of Being—in the manner of Heidegger’s Ereignis, or the event of disclosure. To remember is to dwell where Being has touched us and where the truth of one’s path begins to shine through the fog of exile.
The wanderers of the Grey-Beneath do not lack information; they lack remembrance. And when a herald (such as Caelia, Aphrodite, or Athena) calls, it is not a call to new knowledge, but to ancient presence. One does not learn the truth of the Sky-Veil; one remembers it. That is to say, one stands again in the unveiling light of what was always there, waiting.
To remember, in the Sky-Veil, is to step beyond the calculative metaphysical and into the poetic, where the world is no longer a stockpile of objects to be explained but a revealed place of meaning. It is to be gathered once more into the harmony of Flame, Chalice, and Banner.
✦ Resonances of Being - Subtle unveilings of presence that shimmer across the landscape of experience—traceless traces where Being once passed near. These are not psychological memories or fragments of archetypal consciousness, but events of nearness, moments in which the hidden truth of one’s life quietly resounds through presence.
✦ Rose-Bearer - A luminous guide, often aligned with Aphrodite in the cosmology of the Sky-Veil, who initiates the wanderer’s first awakening upon the path of the gleaming golden thread. Joyful, radiant, and full of grace, she dances ahead of the procession, scattering unseen petals of invitation toward the Veil. Her rose is not merely a flower, but a sign—fragrance of the divine, image of love’s first light, and a herald of Beauty that beckons from beyond.
She is the one who calls the wanderer to cross the threshold between forgetfulness and remembrance. With mirth and clarity, she does not command but delights, drawing the soul not by force, but by the joy of her presence. In the cosmology of the Sky-Veil, Aphrodite is not a goddess of myth alone, but a harbinger of divine love—she who makes the soul beautiful so it may be loved by Beauty Himself.
To follow the Rose-Bearer is to consent to the first echo of grace—to risk wonder, to pause in the hush before reason, and to remember the path home.
✦ Sacred Topology - The interior landscape of the soul as it is shaped by its encounter with mythic symbols, saints, and divine presence. Sacred topology describes the spiritual terrain through which the pilgrim-soul journeys, marked by veils, thresholds, memory echoes, and contemplative ascent. It is not a geography of space, but of meaning.
✦ Shield-Warrior with Aegis - The luminous figure of wise defense and discerning might who appears in Aphrodite’s Dance as a guardian of the threshold. Bearing the radiant aegis and a polished shield, she is not merely a protector, but a revealer—one who sees clearly through illusion and stands at the liminal edge where discernment must precede ascent.
She is the figure aligned with Athena, not in her classical militancy, but as a hypostatic herald of wisdom in service of love. Where the Rose-Bearer awakens desire and joy, the Shield-Warrior tempers that desire with clarity, protecting the path from disordered longing. She does not wage war in the worldly sense but guards the journey of the soul from false light and hidden snares.
Her aegis, emblazoned with the sign of divine presence, is both a warning and a shield—a symbol that dazzles and defends. She teaches the dancer in Aphrodite’s circle that joy must be fortified by virtue, and that enchantment without courage will falter at the Veil. Her appearance marks a pivotal moment in the dance: the awakening of holy vigilance and the call to heroic memory.
To receive the Shield-Warrior’s gaze is to be known in truth. To follow her is to walk the narrow path of noble ascent, where wisdom is aflame with love, and courage is guided by luminous discernment.
✦ Silent Revealing - A moment of alethic unveiling in which truth does not arrive through declaration, logic, or argument—but through presence, gesture, and stillness. It is not announced; it is recognized. The silent revealing is how Being steps forward—unforced, unspoken, yet undeniably there.
✦ Sky-Veil - The threshold of Being in this mythopoetic cosmology, representing the veil between time and eternity, symbol and reality, longing and fulfillment. It is across the Sky-Veil that hypostatic heralds of Being—embodied symbolically by the goddesses—shimmer, and through which the soul journeys in mythic contemplation toward divine encounter. The saints dwell beyond the veil; the goddesses, as “hypostatic emergences” foreshadowing divine virtues, herald from its edge. St. Joan of Arc guides the pilgrim across the Sky-Veil of transformation in Christ to Magdalene’s contemplative grotto on the far side in the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
✦ Thinking of Being - A mode of attentive, poetic reflection that stands outside metaphysical systems and listens instead for the silent, unconcealed presence of what is. It is not an explanation, but a letting-be—a dwelling near the mystery of Being as it reveals itself. In the Sky-Veil cosmology, this thinking unfolds along the liminal paths where the seen and unseen brush against one another. It is the contemplative posture through which truth (aletheia) emerges—not as a proposition, but as a presence.
✦ Twilight Folds of the Sky-Veil - A liminal space between the Dark Forest of forgetfulness in ordinary life and the shimmering realm of silent hypostatic presence where we sense the shimmering concealment of the Being-ness of beings. To be summoned in the Twilight Folds of the Veil is to be captured by the light of the alethic emergence of Being—captivated by the gift received, not a metaphysical concept constructed. It is akin to appearing at the threshold of the Dark Forest that opens onto a clearing where the saints are beckoning us as represented in the tetralogy, Aphrodite’s Dance. The poetic expression for this summoning through alethic emergence in the middle-space is the embodiment of hypostatic heralds as Aphrodite, Athena, and Hera. They are the summoning heralding the summoners—the saints. Otherwise, we fall back onto the scaffolding of metaphysical concepts, and the Sky-Veil, with its golden thread to the Highlands of Majesty, dissipates like mist in the heat of the rising sun.
✦ Valley of Necessity, also called the Valley of Tears, is the solemn terrain encountered after crossing the Bridge of Reason in Aphrodite’s Dance. It marks the soul’s descent into the weight of reality—not as punishment, but as purification. Here, joy yields to sorrow, and freedom is no longer ecstatic but sacrificial.
Guided still by the rose-bearing Aphrodite, the pilgrim enters a realm where beauty is clothed in sorrow and courage is woven through suffering. The valley is not an abandonment but a sacred deepening—a place where necessity reveals the soul’s limits and latent strength, and where the veil begins to shimmer with truth born through trial.
Storm-laden and dimmed in light, this valley represents the kenotic passage of the heart, where false freedoms are unmasked and the call to authentic love takes root through tears. It is the baptismal crucible of the Sky-Veil—a paradoxical threshold where the divine herald does not promise comfort but leads the soul into a deeper echo of the Cross.
Only by dancing through this valley does one begin to understand Aphrodite not merely as the bearer of love’s delight, but as the harbinger of love’s cost.
✦ White Banner - A radiant, unspeaking standard carried by Caelia at her first appearance within the Sky-Veil. It bears no crest, no motto, no nation, no ideology—only light in the shape of silence. The White Banner is not a symbol of belonging, but of remembrance. It is not a call to follow, but a summons to return.
Finally! A glossary of Walter's philosophical landscape! 😂🎉