I believe I left the previous blog off with the question of the difference, if any, between an epiphany and a theophany. I'm not sure I've come any closer to a concrete distinction, but I think something might be touched upon, which I will share with discussion of Wind in the Willows.

I re-read the chapter entitled "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" where the Mole and the Rat, searching late into the night for a missing baby otter named Portly, hear this unspeakably beautiful music(at first Mole doesn't hear, saying to Rat "I hear nothing myself but the wind playing in the reeds and rushes and osiers." pg.124). Following the music, they come upon the great god of nature playing his pan-pipes, with the baby otter asleep by his hooves. Rat and Mole are overwhelmed and so joyous that they can hardly bear it. But than dawn finally breaks, and the Vision is gone, and they don't remember what it was they saw.

"For this is the last best gift that the kindly demigod is careful to bestow on those to whom he has revealed himself in their helping: the gift of forgetfulness. Lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow and overshadow mirth and pleasure, and the great haunting memory should spoil all the after-lives of little animals helped out of difficulties, in order that they should be happy and light-hearted as before." pg. 127

They don't remember seeing the great god of nature, but they still can hear the music, even after they've forgotten the encounter. I thought it was interesting how the line form the first section of "Burnt Norton"-- "In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,/And the bid called, in response to/The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,/And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses/Had the look of flowers that are looked at. "

So, really this episode is an example of a theophany, the revelation of a God to mortal beings, like that of Moses seeing the burning bush in chapter three of Exodus; Moses cannot bear to look at Yahweh, just as Job is sorely humbled and cowed by the display of cosmic force when God speaks to him out of the whirlwind in chapter 37 of Job. (I almost wonder if it is any accident that Grahame's great god of Nature is so much more benevolent; really the Yahweh in the Hebrew scriptures is a real bad-ass, which is something which I am sure we will discuss more of later).

So, perhaps the epiphany is what is left over from a theophany, both in the sense of we still hear the sacred music though we no longer know where it comes form, and the understanding that something has happened; there was a moment when I could See, rather than just see. Or I could be just skimming the surface.