Multiple discourses have been developed around the term 'literacy' in various academic fields (cf. Street & Lefstein 2007; Olson & Torrance 2009). A variety of old and new, particularistic and holistic, (meta-)representational, and (de-)contextualized forms of literacies are being discussed. The plurality of literacies is bundled with concepts like 'multiliteracies' (The New London Group 2000) or 'transliteracies' (Thomas et al. 2007), and it is enhanced be a variety of compound versions from numerical, visual and musical to family and environmental to emotional and sexual literacies. Whereas dealing successfully with ‘multimodal ensembles’ (Kress 2010) is widely accepted as contemporary challenge, epistemic dimensions are often underestimated. In this paper metaphorical enhancements and basic assumptions in current debates on (new) literacies as related to the primacy of text and verbal imagery are questioned. The author seeks to elucidate the epistemic significance of visual imagery, visual thinking, and visual competence. Furthermore, the role of transversal competencies is considered by referring to the theory of "Media and Forms" (Leschke 2010).