New Graphical Navigation

I have a customized WordPress template that I have been banging my head against the wall about. I have it 80% complete and have hacked my way through it so far. Here is the URL: http://www.coalescemedia.com/blog. I know this is going to be a fundamental question to the correct person. Keep in mind that I am a graphic designer that happens to try and do some programming in Dreamweaver from time to time. Here is what I am trying to accomplish:

I have a graphical navigation that I want to run down the left side of my template in the “sidebar” div just above the search blank. I have the navigation built out in a separate document named navigation.php. The images are placed in a table inside a div.

I have been trying to add my new “navigation” div into the index.php document in the default themes folder. From what I can tell I should be able to place this piece of code ( <?php get_navigation(); ?> ) above the ( <?php get_sidebar(); ?> ) line. When I upload this to my server I get an error line at the bottom of my template page.

I may be way off base on this one but any help would be much appreciated. Thank you in advance.