I'm presenting the first of three new profiles this week of modern symbol makers in the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection. Swiss-born Painter and Printmaker Ernst Steiner is associated with the Viennese Fantastic Realism movement, whose followers consciously manipulate details in their art to convey escoteric meanings. He has compared the artist to "a midwife for what wants to be revealed to the world," who uncovers transcendent truths through the language of archtypal images. The author of books of "dream-tales," Steiner invites viewers into the Jungian realm of the collective unconscious, where tangled branches braid into cruciform Trees of Life and numinous figures embrace beside biomorphic time pieces. His study of music theory has also inspired mathematically precise, geometric designs, expressing what he sees as the harmonies ungirding the universe. The four color prints by Steiner in my collection, dating from 1975, are rich in cross symbols and motifs suggesting the Passion of Christ. They can now be viewed in the gallery of the new Ernst Steiner profile page in the Sacred Artists section (John Kohan)