The Grammar of Light: On Illumination from the Poetic to the Quantum

“Light is not what we see — it is that by which we see.”— Eva Premk Bogataj

1. The oldest metaphor

Since the dawn of language, light has been our oldest metaphor. We speak of it to describe both revelation and reason, both birth and becoming.

At dawn, when the first light touches the Matterhorn and its reflection shimmers in the lake below, the metaphor becomes visible. The mountain exists twice — in stone and in light — reminding us that truth is always both substance and reflection.

It is one of the oldest dialogues — between matter and meaning, between the visible and the unseen.

Matterhorn at dawn — where stone becomes light and reflection becomes metaphor.

2. The hidden history of light

From fire to fiber optics, humanity’s story has been one long experiment with light.

In ancient Egypt, it was divinity itself — Ra steering his solar boat through the heavens.

For the Greeks, phōs was tied to phronesis — insight, awareness, the spark of mind.

In India, jyoti meant both light and knowledge; in the Upanishads, enlightenment was literally “seeing the Self as light.”

Medieval polymath Ibn al-Haytham transformed optics by showing that vision occurs because light enters the eye, not because it leaves it — an idea that still underpins photography and neuroscience.

In Europe, Newton’s corpuscles and Huygens’ waves fought for centuries until quantum physics revealed that both were true. A photon is neither thing nor rhythm — it is potential, collapsing into form only when observed.Modern physics has only deepened the mystery: light can twist, entangle, teleport information.

It is at once energy, messenger, and metaphor — the connective tissue of reality itself.

Yet even after millennia of science, we still do not truly know what light is.A wave? A particle? A field? A message?

Perhaps, as poets have always known, light resists definition because it is not an object — it is an experience.And every act of knowing, in the end, is a kind of illumination.

3. Poetry and vertical cognition

In poetry, light is never merely decorative — it is a mode of perception, a vertical bridge between the seen and the unseen.

In Gregor Strniša’s cosmic verse, stars do not simply shine — they think. For Nikola Šop, light was the bridge between atom and angel, between infinite tenderness and finite being. To see was to remember — to recall unity before it split into fragments.

As Rumi intones:

“The lamps are different, but the Light is the same.”

Here, light is not the property of a single lamp, but the common essence flowing through all.

The line often quoted as “The wound is the place where the Light enters you” is widely attributed to Rumi, though no definitive source exists in his original works. It can be read as a modern paraphrase carrying the spirit of Sufi thought — that wounds are not only sites of pain, but openings for light. Leonard Cohen, in Anthem, echoed this idea:

“There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in.”

His verse recalls the Kabbalistic image of the broken vessels, where cracks and fragmentation are the very conditions through which divine light flows into the world.

Illumination, then, arises through fracture — through openness, not through perfect surfaces.

Goethe, at life’s threshold, called out: “Mehr Licht! Mehr Licht!” — not merely for brightness, but for clarity, for truth beyond shadow.

As I once wrote: “Every poem is an act of luminous return — a small sunrise within the soul. ”Poetry does not reflect light — it is light in motion, a re-ignition of perception.

This poetic illumination parallels what scientists call emergence — the sudden coherence of relations once dispersed. In that instant, perception becomes generative: light is not only what we see, but how we assemble the seen.

Inside the dome — where stone opens to light, and the visible becomes a passage to the unseen.

4. Science and the invisible architecture of energy

Physics teaches that nothing moves faster than light — and nothing defines our limits more precisely. Einstein turned light into a ruler for the cosmos; Planck turned it into a quantum of energy. But even these equations cannot capture its paradox.

Every biological rhythm — heartbeat, neuron, photosynthesis — is modulated by photons. Light dictates our circadian clocks, our mood, our awareness.

It even governs the internet: every message, image, and video travels as pulses of light through glass threads thinner than a hair.

The world we call “digital” is, in fact, made of light — structured and stored in silicon.

And yet, the more we illuminate the world, the less we pause to notice what illumination means.

5. The economics of light

The story of light is also the story of economy.

When electricity conquered the 19th century, it extinguished entire professions.

The lamplighter, once a familiar figure in every European city, disappeared almost overnight. His slow choreography of dusk was replaced by the instant anonymity of the switch.

From divine flame to electric pulse — humanity’s oldest experiment with light.

Illumination became industrial, then invisible.

Today, light consumes nearly 20 percent of global electricity — a silent engine of productivity and pollution alike.The shift to LEDs cut energy use by more than half, yet the total light output of cities has increased dramatically; darkness itself is becoming a luxury. Economists call this the rebound effect: when efficiency rises, consumption rises faster.

The 2022 energy crisis — fueled by the war in Ukraine — made light political again.

Office towers dimmed, factories shut down, and households rediscovered the cost of visibility.

Some cities even reintroduced dark hours to save energy — an ironic return to the rhythm of candlelight.

Too little, and life falters.Too much, and meaning fades.

6. Artificial intelligence and the artificial light

Artificial intelligence lives, quite literally, by light.Every data center is a cathedral of photons — fiber optics pulsing in binary rhythm, silicon gates flickering with electric dawn.Its cognition is luminous, but not illuminated.

AI produces brilliance without revelation, radiance without reflection.Its light is purely external — functional, efficient, unfeeling.

What it lacks is inward refraction: the moral and aesthetic resonance that turns information into insight.

Human consciousness remains the only medium capable of turning photons into purpose.

Machines process data; humans perceive meaning.

7. The Quantum Metaphor

In quantum physics, the act of observation is not passive — it defines the outcome.A photon exists in a cloud of possibilities until measured, collapsing into a definite state.

This observer effect remains one of science’s most profound enigmas.

Does the observer create reality, or merely reveal it?

Experiments like the delayed-choice quantum eraser suggest that even future measurements can influence past events, as if information itself were woven into space-time.

Light, then, is not a simple traveler through emptiness; it responds to relation and context. Some physicists — from John Wheeler to contemporary quantum theorists — argue that the universe is a participatory network, where reality emerges through exchanges of information, not inert matter.

In this sense, consciousness and light share a structural kinship: both act as interfaces between potential and manifestation.

Where physics measures photons, human awareness measures meaning. Both transform uncertainty into form.

8. Toward luminous ethics

We live in an age saturated with light — yet dimmed by fatigue.

Our nights no longer belong to darkness, but neither do our days truly belong to clarity. Screens shine, but they do not enlighten.

To rediscover light is not to perfect its technology, but to refine perception — to ask what we choose to illuminate, and what we allow to remain unseen. Every act of illumination is also an act of selection.

An ethics of light begins here — with the courage to see the whole, not just the useful; to design not only for visibility, but for vision.

To lead “in the light” means to act with awareness rather than acceleration — to bring coherence where there is noise, transparency where there is power, and warmth where there is only speed.

Technology, too, can be radiant when shaped by empathy, humility, and restraint. Light without wisdom blinds; light with intention reveals.

Even the digital can become devotional — a medium not only of data, but of discernment. And just as dawn touches the Matterhorn, turning stone to gold for a fleeting moment, so awareness too can transform the ordinary into revelation.

In Gothic architecture, light was theology made visible — matter transformed into meaning through color.

9. The Luminous Future

Beyond myth and metaphor, light is becoming our new measure of civilization.

In Hindu philosophy, jyoti is both substance and consciousness; in Buddhism, enlightenment means awakening to light; in Islam, nūr is the divine presence; in Christianity, light becomes incarnation — the true illumination of the human.

Across traditions, the lesson converges: illumination is not conquest but communion.

As climate and technology reshape the planet, access to responsible light may define the boundaries of abundance and scarcity. Windows that generate power, metasurfaces that sculpt light, systems that dim what the eye cannot see — these are the prototypes of a luminous ethics made material.

Light is not a resource to exploit but a language we share.

The future will favor those who turn its beams into dialogue, into connection — who embody light not to outshine, but to be seen.

Because in the end, illumination is not merely a triumph of physics, but an attitude of presence — a way of entering relation between energy and empathy, matter and mind.

And perhaps, as poet Janez Premk once wrote, light is “a key that opens every door.”

Even through the hardest matter, light insists. It teaches that every obstacle hides a hidden opening.