Iconic Codes

When I wish to program a computer, I have to write in a programming language. That language is the code that allows me to interface with the machine.
The Icon is an image. We have an Imaging System, which we use for Image consciousness: remembered dream images, thinking in pictures, day-dreaming. The Imaging System relies on a code of images, different from Language, which allows us to be image-conscious and to operate with images.

The Holy cannot enter into our world - except that it does so according to the proper code, just as I cannot program the computer without a proper code. For the Holy to enter, it uses the Iconic Image associated with the spiritual phenomena. It has no other choice. Although the Holy may affect us on the non-conscious level, for us to be conscious of this, we must use one of the various ways we encode things.
We cannot be conscious of the non-conscious. Therefore, we must code it into language, or images, or music, etc. That is why the Holy appears as the Virgin to Catholics, but as Elize Danto to Haitians: the iconic code. By using this iconic code, the Holy participates in our world.
HOWEVER, since the Virgin appeared to Coptic Egyptians, and this was attested by Egyptian Muslims it is clear that belief is not necessary for participation, merely acquaintance with the icon. In essence, if the Holy were to have one Iconic appearance for all the diverse peoples of the world, that would be the nonsense situation, the impossible situation. Diversity does not imply that the underlying truth is unstable. Just as the images of battleships and muskets both represent the concept war, so may different images represent the Holy.