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What, after all, is a tie? Why do men wear a piece of cloth around their necks? Is it to hide the buttons? What is the symbolic meaning of a tie? Ties are first of all masculine objects; men wear them. They are also symbols of authority, which is a form of power. World leaders, lawyers, businessmen, men who expect to be taken seriously all wear them. So ties are long narrow objects that hang down in the middle of men's bodies that are symbols of masculine power. They tend to be pointed too. Those flat, cut off ties can be found in the backs of the racks, but they are clearly less popular. Maybe John Bobbitt wears one. And what about bow ties? Aren't they usually associated with a Mr. Peeper's nerdy wimpiness? You get the point.

In Slovakia, where I labored for a year trying to bring American culture to the recently liberated victims of a socially-constructed utopia, I was startled to learn that on the morning after Easter, men and boys carrying home-made whips traditionally visit the homes of women. When the females open the door, the males whip them across the back and then throw perfumed water on them. Then the females, to make the symbolic game complete, hand the guys Easter eggs. And as if that isn't bad enough, the mothers then reward the guys for symbolically impregnating their daughters by handing out candy to the kids and booze to the older guys. When I suggested that this ritual had obvious sexual symbolism, my Slovakian students were outraged. "You decadent Westerners see sex everywhere," I was told. I couldn't deny it. But when asked what the ritual meant, the students told me they did it because their ancestors did it. And why did their ancestors do it, I innocently asked? Because their ancestors before them did it; that's why! They were not ready to admit that this ritual might have arisen with symbolic meanings since lost in the fog of time and kept alive by the enduring power of that unconscious symbolism. They clung to the literal.

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As Jonas was three days in the belly of the whale," says Jesus, "So shall the son of man be three days in the belly of the Earth." A fundamentalist who insists that the story of Jonah is to be read literally will have a hard time explaining this line. But someone who sees that Jonah's experience is a symbol of extreme self-denial, as is the cross, can make the connections. The Children of Israel fleeing Egypt are just one more historical event if read literally. Read symbolically, their escape from Egypt becomes an escape of the soul from any tyranny, political or ideological or emotional. An addict escaping addiction or Thelma and Louise escaping their boring lives can see themselves in the Old Testament text. Symbols tend to be flexible enough to allow us to identify across space and time. But to be open to them, we need to have open minds and to use our imaginations.

That was what Charles Manson did. Whatever may be said about his or his followers' murderous deeds, Manson's interpretation of the Beatles' "White Album" in terms of the Book of Revelations and the racial politics of the 1960s was brilliant. Had he been an English professor at Berkeley, they would have awarded him tenure, a different sort of life sentence than the one he now serves. Manson clearly understood that the imagination needs to leave the literal behind. "The original sin," he said, "was to write it down." Nor was he tied by any narrow adherence to authorial intent. When asked if the Beatles really intended all that he read into their lyrics, his response was as modern as the latest lit-crit theory: "I don't know whether they did or not. But it's there. It's an association in the subconscious. This music is bringing on the revolution, the unorganized overthrow of the Establishment. The Beatles know in the sense that the subconscious knows."

The other lesson of the Manson example is one you already know, that following the threads of one's imagination into the labyrinth of the mind might lead not to the promised land but into the bottomless pit. The wilderness of ideas can be both an exciting and a dangerous place. There are definitely risks there. But if we bravely face the risks, and avoid the pit that Manson fell into, we might even be among those who cross the frontier and break on through to Canaan.