Pious images, mandalas, objects of piety, are all external occasions of impulse, an internal dynamic allowing the deployment of light.
The confusion consists of believing that these objects are active as such (superstitions linked to the development of a relationship of dependence) when they are only signs, relays, mirrors of energies internal to human consciousness.
Notes & Silence 
All these are symbols.
Symbols have the meanings they are given.
The person deploying, and those observing, a symbol may attach radically different meanings.
Therefore, each symbol merely reflects the changing faces of those who use it, however superficially.
Letters are symbols. The words they spell are symbols.
I’ll leave you to work out the implications of that one.
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