  In the first step of the Journey Bonaventure focuses upon the sensible objects of the physical world around us, both taken in themselves and in reference to our sense awareness of them. Like all creatures, sensible things are understood to be signs that ultimately can direct humans to the divine art or wisdom through which all things have been made. Bonaventure’s semiotics distinguishes four sorts of signs. All creatures can be seen as “shadows” (umbra) and “vestiges” (lit. footprints, vestigia): “For a creature is called a shadow based on its properties which point to God in some type of causality in an indeterminate way. But a creature is called a vestige based on properties which point to God as triple cause–efficient, formal, and final cause; for example, the properties: one, true, and  good.”[14]   In addition, Bonaventure posits two higher types of semiosis pertinent solely to rational creatures, which are “images” (imago) pointing to the First Principle through its properly rational powers which have their source and highest object in God and “likenesses” (similitudo) of God to the extent that they are recipients of divine grace and conform themselves to the divine will. All creatures, from rocks to angels, are signs in the sense of shadows and traces of God, for they all bear a relation of causal dependency upon God as their source; but only rational creatures can have the divine as an object of their activities and, for that reason, can conform themselves to the divine will and become likenesses of God.