Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick. Joe.
Speaker 1: When I mentioned God, well, what do you imagine in
Speaker 1: your head? What do you see? What's the vision that
Speaker 1: comes to mind? I have to be honest and say
Speaker 1: it's not a great answer, but it is God from
Speaker 1: Monty Python and the Holy Grail, you know. So it
Speaker 1: is actually an incredibly an incredibly literal depiction of like
Speaker 1: an old man with a beard, wearing a crown, sitting
Speaker 1: in a cloud and saying something angry at people down
Speaker 1: on the ground. Now that that's probably not the full
Speaker 1: picture of God in my head, but that was the
Speaker 1: very first thing that came to mind. And it might
Speaker 1: be because you specifically asked me to picture God, which
Speaker 1: I don't normally do when I think about the concept. Yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely me. And I feel like I have a similar
Speaker 1: situation going on, you know where if you just say
Speaker 1: all right, think about God, picture God right now? Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of a gozer moment where you have
Speaker 1: to just just come up with a mental image. My
Speaker 1: mind does instantly go to this um old sky Daddy image.
Speaker 1: I think of the Sistine Chapel. I think of you know,
Speaker 1: various images of Zeus I guess and uh, and certainly
Speaker 1: things like like like the Monty Python God are very
Speaker 1: much in that vein. Um. There's also a sort of
Speaker 1: a Sistine Chapel Chapel God gag that Stephen Colbert does
Speaker 1: on his show, where like God appears on the ceiling
Speaker 1: of the theater and speaks to him. Um. So those
Speaker 1: are the images that are kind of initially hardwired into
Speaker 1: my brain. Though It's interesting because you know, growing up, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, in a Protestant church, those were not images
Speaker 1: that we were ever presented with. It's not like that
Speaker 1: was the illustration in the Bible or on the walls
Speaker 1: of the church. That's not what they were trying to
Speaker 1: inundate us with. But we were exposed to it at
Speaker 1: some point outside of the church. And then that's just
Speaker 1: what's dicks and that's what remains unless you know, obviously,
Speaker 1: like you, if I'm dealing with a more specific example
Speaker 1: of God or a deeper I think that you know,
Speaker 1: thoughts about the nature of God. I can go in
Speaker 1: any number of directions, but that initial gut response that
Speaker 1: that initial mental image is the old sky Daddy. Can
Speaker 1: I tell you the second image that came to my
Speaker 1: mind after Monty Python and the Holy Grail? And it
Speaker 1: was like, I don't know what this is from, but
Speaker 1: it is basically a a very poorly three D animated
Speaker 1: kind of late nineties c G I face of like
Speaker 1: a lady with red eyes in a computer background, very
Speaker 1: lawnmower man. I don't know why that, but that's in
Speaker 1: there too. Yeah, I mean, and that is kind of
Speaker 1: that's kind of goes Arian as well, right, because yeah,
Speaker 1: lots of corners and the cheeks in the forehead. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd say that I probably if I'm like my my
Speaker 1: post gut image, I probably go into like a much
Speaker 1: more sort of psychedelic kind of zone and abstract zone,
Speaker 1: and I think of things that are that are certainly
Speaker 1: not anthropomorphic, and I try to think of things that
Speaker 1: are just like geometrically based. Um. But yeah, that initial
Speaker 1: initial mental image is always going to be the sky Daddy,
Speaker 1: and I guess it's just stuck there. I don't guess.
Speaker 1: I guess it's just gonna remain there for the rest
Speaker 1: of my life. Yeah, you can't escape what gets put
Speaker 1: there in childhood. But I guess this should be a
Speaker 1: good indication that for this episode and for the next
Speaker 1: episode as well, we're going to be talking about the
Speaker 1: idea of representation of the divine in the history of
Speaker 1: of the religions of the world. Uh, specifically, we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about the concept of an iconism. Yes, an iconism, uh,
Speaker 1: discussing an iconic images. So the icon and there in
Speaker 1: that word of is referringled like the icon that is
Speaker 1: like the center of focus in religious ceremony, personal worship,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Right, So what is an an
Speaker 1: iconic religion or an an iconic cult. If something is
Speaker 1: an iconic, then it is symbolic or suggestive rather than
Speaker 1: a literal representation. It's not designed as a likeness. It's
Speaker 1: not an idol. It is not an anthropomorphic representation. It
Speaker 1: is not a humanoid. Uh, it is the opposite of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So this is one of those subjects where actually a
Speaker 1: lot of the interest can be found in trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what the definition of an iconic should be.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things where like just trying to
Speaker 1: define it actually raises a lot of really interesting questions
Speaker 1: about the subject matter itself. Um and I found a
Speaker 1: really good overview paper dealing with this question of how
Speaker 1: to define the concept an iconic or antichonicity that was
Speaker 1: written by a Yale University art historian named Milette Gaffman,
Speaker 1: and it was published in the Journal Religion in seventeen. Actually,
Speaker 1: this specific issue of the Journal Religion, uh is a
Speaker 1: themed issue that was all about anichonism and it and
Speaker 1: this paper goes significantly into the problem of how scholars
Speaker 1: have offered different and sometimes incommensurate definitions of these terms
Speaker 1: over the years. But this paper is the introductory essay
Speaker 1: to that themed issue of the Journal Religion, and I
Speaker 1: think we're actually going to cite several other papers from
Speaker 1: that same issue over the course of these episodes. So anyway,
Speaker 1: this article is called an Iconism Definitions, Examples and Comparative Perspectives. Again,
Speaker 1: this is from the Journal Religion in TV and it's
Speaker 1: by Millette Gafeman and uh So, the short simple definition
Speaker 1: of anichonism given at the beginning of this article is
Speaker 1: that it is the demarcation of divine presence without a
Speaker 1: figural representation. Now I'll get more into the details of
Speaker 1: that as we go on, but I thought it might
Speaker 1: be helpful to start with just an example, a concrete example,
Speaker 1: and this one is cited in Engafeman's paper. So what
Speaker 1: she looks at is a Cypriot copper coin created during
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire roughly seventy five to seventy six CE,
Speaker 1: so this would have been during the reign of Emperor Vespasian.
Speaker 1: And there's an image on the coin I've got for
Speaker 1: you to look at here, rob that is definitely not
Speaker 1: a human form. It is some kind of geometrical thing.
Speaker 1: It looks like there's maybe kind of a building or
Speaker 1: shrine of some kind. And then in the middle of
Speaker 1: the building or shrine there is just this shape that's
Speaker 1: not a human it's just a kind of like tapering
Speaker 1: or sort of triangular conical shape. And the evidence from
Speaker 1: the archaeological and historical context makes clear that this coin
Speaker 1: depicts an object that was worshiped at the shrine of
Speaker 1: the goddess Aphrodite in Pathos, which which was a city
Speaker 1: in in Cyprus that was sometimes believed to be the
Speaker 1: home and the birthplace of the goddess Aphrodite. Now I
Speaker 1: think we can agree that this image on the coin
Speaker 1: does not depict the same kind of Aphrodite that you
Speaker 1: find in a lot of other Roman art of Aphrodite,
Speaker 1: of course, was the goddess of love and beauty, and
Speaker 1: she's been shown in human form as a beautiful woman,
Speaker 1: often like reclining nude or posing gracefully as in you
Speaker 1: might find h you know, representations of her and a
Speaker 1: bunch of frescoes from POMPEII that you may have seen. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that the artistic depictions were accustomed to very much inform.
Speaker 1: I think in many of us, anyway, that that gut
Speaker 1: instinct image that comes to mind when we think of
Speaker 1: the name Aphrodite, right, and in these frescoes from Pompei,
Speaker 1: for example, afro Aphrodite is not only depicted in human form.
Speaker 1: I would say probably that she is aggressively humanoid, aggressively
Speaker 1: embodied in that her human shaped body is a major
Speaker 1: expression of her meaning as a divine presence, you know,
Speaker 1: as the goddess of love and beauty, she is supposed
Speaker 1: to represent beauty. So you might always expect Aphrodite's presence
Speaker 1: to be indicated by a painting or a statue of
Speaker 1: a humanoid female form that was thought, at least by
Speaker 1: the artist to be beautiful, but apparently that was not
Speaker 1: always the case. The object of worship at the cult
Speaker 1: center for the Cypriot cult of Aphrodite and Pathos looks
Speaker 1: more like a weird cone. It's Aphrodite in her dollic form.
Speaker 1: You almost want to give her an epithet. Remember we
Speaker 1: talked about the Roman epithets of different versions of God.
Speaker 1: So you've got you know, Jupiter, Pluvius or Jupiter whatever,
Speaker 1: a Jupiter who brings rain. This is sort of Aphrodite dolicus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's almost as if like this is the God in
Speaker 1: its true form that has arrived, and people are like, whoa,
Speaker 1: we don't know what to make of this, We don't
Speaker 1: we don't understand what you're trying to lay out here.
Speaker 1: And then the God realizes, oh, I need to take
Speaker 1: on a humanoid form that communicates at a base level
Speaker 1: with these humans what I represent. I'm going to have
Speaker 1: to speak to them through physical appearance and body language
Speaker 1: and facial expressions and pose and all of this other
Speaker 1: just sort of the innate communication stuff, as opposed to
Speaker 1: taking on my true form of the weirdly top comb. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's almost like, you know, if they saw the cone form,
Speaker 1: it would I have the mad Then you know, we've
Speaker 1: got to represent ourselves. I mean, I want to be
Speaker 1: very clear. I'm not saying I think that was actually there. Uh,
Speaker 1: their their theology, there's no indication of that. But yeah,
Speaker 1: my mind goes to the same place. Yeah, and part,
Speaker 1: I mean part of that is, yeah, well, there's this
Speaker 1: long history at this point in like weird fiction and
Speaker 1: you know, science fiction and horror where you have the
Speaker 1: god whose true form you know, is just ineffable or
Speaker 1: it is too monstrous to behold. And the weird thing
Speaker 1: is those traditions they do get into this, maybe accidentally,
Speaker 1: they get into this idea of an iconism, you know,
Speaker 1: this idea of of like, well can you can you
Speaker 1: show what that real god is? Oh no, no, it's
Speaker 1: too horrible. We have to have some some other things
Speaker 1: stand in right, paying no attention to the cone behind
Speaker 1: the curtain um. But so the Roman historian Tacitus actually
Speaker 1: describes the shrine in Pathos, and he tells us that
Speaker 1: the Latin quote is simulacrum day non effigy humana, meaning
Speaker 1: the image of the goddess was not in human form,
Speaker 1: and then to quote Gaifman, additionally, he noted that the
Speaker 1: deity was represented by a circular mass that is broader
Speaker 1: at the base and rises like a turning post to
Speaker 1: a small circumference at the top. And it looks like
Speaker 1: this is the same thing that's depicted on this coin here.
Speaker 1: And so Giveman writes that all evidence suggests that what
Speaker 1: the cult of Aphrodite and path Fosse worshiped was a
Speaker 1: conical stone. And this is actually not even particularly unusual
Speaker 1: in its historical context. Apparently, at many sanctuaries and cult
Speaker 1: centers in first century Cyprus, rituals appear to have been
Speaker 1: focused around some kind of large stone. You would have
Speaker 1: a cult center, it might be a cult center identified
Speaker 1: with the named god that elsewhere would be represented often
Speaker 1: in the statue or a painting, is having a human form,
Speaker 1: but here it's represented by some kind of big rock.
Speaker 1: And this raises all kinds of interesting questions about, you know,
Speaker 1: when we want to understand the religion of these ancient people.
Speaker 1: So I want to read a paragraph here from from
Speaker 1: Gaifeman that gets into these questions. Quote, the information we
Speaker 1: can learn about the Cypriot cult of Aphrodite is illuminating,
Speaker 1: Yet it also illustrates a fundamental challenge for our assessment
Speaker 1: of an aniconic cult. Even if we can identify an
Speaker 1: example of an aniconic object, we may not be able
Speaker 1: to establish its significance in the eyes of worshippers. In
Speaker 1: the example of the Cypriot cult of Aphrodite and Pathos,
Speaker 1: we cannot know how participants in the rights at the
Speaker 1: site perceived the conical stone. Did pilgrims to Pathos see
Speaker 1: the stone as an embodiment of the deity? Did they
Speaker 1: hold it to be more venerable than the more familiar
Speaker 1: figural statues of the goddess of Love Like Tacitus, We
Speaker 1: only have an outside perspective, Baffled by the choice of
Speaker 1: object for the sanctuary's primary focus. We're reminded of the
Speaker 1: Roman historians assertion set Razzio in obscure a quote, but
Speaker 1: the reason is obscure. Uh so, yeah, we were left
Speaker 1: with all these questions. I mean, there there is no
Speaker 1: conclusive explanation for what the people who went to this
Speaker 1: cult center in Pathos thought this conical stone meant. It's
Speaker 1: clear that it somehow represented the presence of aphrodite. But
Speaker 1: yet did they think this is Aphrodite's true form? Did
Speaker 1: they think that it it indicated some quality of aphrodite?
Speaker 1: Did they think this is just what we have here?
Speaker 1: This is the closest we could get to the form
Speaker 1: of aphrodite. And to be clear, it seems that they
Speaker 1: also used other images of aphrodite as well. Right, well,
Speaker 1: there were other images of aphrodite, like throughout the Roman Empire,
Speaker 1: but I don't know about at this specific cult center.
Speaker 1: At this cult center, this might have been all they had.
Speaker 1: It's not clear. So, yeah, that does raise a number
Speaker 1: of interesting questions. Yeah, like is this just is this
Speaker 1: to a certain extent the best they could do. Was
Speaker 1: this the uh you know? Or was this a deliberate
Speaker 1: aesthetic choice based on various like theological concepts. Uh? This
Speaker 1: is gonna be an rising question for us to keep
Speaker 1: in our mind as we we look at different um
Speaker 1: and iconic traditions and values in different cultures. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: to the point of some of the difficulties in in
Speaker 1: the job of you know, studying comparative religions, gave mean
Speaker 1: also emphasizes an important point that I'd like to talk about.
Speaker 1: She writes this near the beginning of her essay, quote,
Speaker 1: what can the historian of religion gain from considering in
Speaker 1: tandem traditions such as the worship of trees in modern
Speaker 1: India which we'll get into later in this episode, the
Speaker 1: Dead Pillar of Osiris, and the biblical prohibitions on depicting
Speaker 1: the God of the Israelites. Examining together geographically and chronologically
Speaker 1: divergent religious practices is fraught with methodological pitfalls and intellectual challenges.
Speaker 1: At the very least, this exercise risks implying that all
Speaker 1: phenomena clustered under a single heading have a single meaning.
Speaker 1: And that's a very good point, because I love the
Speaker 1: study of comparative religions. I think it's it's great to
Speaker 1: compare different religions to each other and understand and their
Speaker 1: their similarities and their differences. But I think it's also
Speaker 1: important while you're doing that um to follow the standard
Speaker 1: guiding principles of empirical science, even when you're studying something
Speaker 1: like a complex social phenomenon like art and religion. Uh,
Speaker 1: And those principles would be things like, of course, correlation
Speaker 1: does not necessarily imply causation. You can't assume that because
Speaker 1: two different religious traditions share a similar feature that those
Speaker 1: features have the same underlying cause. Yeah, like like, for instance,
Speaker 1: it would be very tempting to just broad strokes to
Speaker 1: say something like, well, religions or cultures that that have
Speaker 1: actual anthropomorphic manifestations of their God, they have just more
Speaker 1: of a physical mindset, and whereas and uh and and
Speaker 1: iconic traditions have more of a spiritual mindset. Like that's
Speaker 1: just such a broad statement to make that it it
Speaker 1: runs a high risk of just being you know, completely
Speaker 1: untrue on both sides. You know, you're just everything is
Speaker 1: going to be a lot more nuanced than that. And also,
Speaker 1: as we'll discuss, you can't really talk about like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this religion is is an iconic and this one is iconic,
Speaker 1: because generally you're gonna see both trends in any given
Speaker 1: religion over the course of of its of its lifetime.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. And you know, as we've already seen,
Speaker 1: there are clearly, you know, there are both kinds within
Speaker 1: Greco Roman religion. You know, you have an iconic Greco
Speaker 1: Roman religion and you have highly iconic Greco Roman religion
Speaker 1: existing side by side even at the same time, and uh,
Speaker 1: and that's true of many. I think we're gonna look
Speaker 1: at some of the spectrum in uh, some of this
Speaker 1: so worship in India and things. You'll you'll even see
Speaker 1: the same contrast within within similar branches of Christianity, more
Speaker 1: an iconic sort of forms of Christian worship versus more
Speaker 1: iconic ones. Yeah. Yeah, because again, that's what's so interesting
Speaker 1: about the sky God thing is because uh, in most
Speaker 1: like Protestant churches, you have a you know, at least
Speaker 1: the one I grew up in, it's very uh an
Speaker 1: iconic inside, you know, and for the most part, there's
Speaker 1: a there's a large uh shift, in a large trend
Speaker 1: in an iconism in there. But it's from elsewhere. It's
Speaker 1: from like the broader culture that you end up getting
Speaker 1: these iconic emblems of the sky Daddy. Now to the
Speaker 1: point of the difficulty in defining these terms and all
Speaker 1: the interesting questions that raises, uh, Gaifman sort of conducts
Speaker 1: a review in this essay about the many different ways
Speaker 1: that the terms an iconic and an iconism have been
Speaker 1: used in the history of religious studies. She notes that
Speaker 1: one of the earliest instances, at least in the modern
Speaker 1: world of these terms comes from the German archaeologist Johannes
Speaker 1: Adolf Overbeck, who lived eighteen twenty six to eight, who
Speaker 1: coined these terms. I think he was writing in German,
Speaker 1: so it's an ikon niche and an ikonsmas, and I
Speaker 1: guess those would be based on Greek formulations, but not
Speaker 1: terms that the ancient Greeks would have actually used too
Speaker 1: in the same way that they're being used here. But
Speaker 1: she says that Overbeck was trying to promote a particular
Speaker 1: perception of the earliest history of Greek art. So over
Speaker 1: had a speculative interpretation of what the prehistory of Greek
Speaker 1: art and Greek religion looked like, and in trying to
Speaker 1: describe that speculative interpretation, he used these terms. And his
Speaker 1: idea was that in prehistoric antiquity, the Greeks believed their
Speaker 1: gods did not have human forms and could not be
Speaker 1: represented anthropomorphically, and so as a result, they were not
Speaker 1: depicted directly, but rather indicated by mediating symbols, including trees, stones, pillars, spears,
Speaker 1: and scepters. Now not to say that Overbeck was necessarily
Speaker 1: correct about that, but that was the idea that he
Speaker 1: was trying to illustrate with this term. And I think
Speaker 1: this would be somewhat analogous to how you can't really
Speaker 1: like show a picture of a person to represent an
Speaker 1: abstract concept today, for example a nation, so you might
Speaker 1: instead represented symbolically with the flag. And Gaifman sites other
Speaker 1: uh much earlier uses of these words, not so much
Speaker 1: in religious at ease, But for example, she cites the
Speaker 1: early Christian theologian Clement of Alexandria, who's you know, considered
Speaker 1: one of the earliest known Christian church fathers. And and uh.
Speaker 1: In Clement's writings, he uses an an ancient ancestor of
Speaker 1: the term an iconic, but with a different meaning, the
Speaker 1: Greek word and I kissed on, which means basically not representable.
Speaker 1: It's a word that would mean something in English kind
Speaker 1: of like undrawable or unrepresentable. And St. Clement is saying
Speaker 1: there that it is impossible to indicate the nature of
Speaker 1: the divine in a representative form. He's essentially just saying, like,
Speaker 1: there's no way to draw God, you can't do it.
Speaker 1: I want to drive home something here that well, perhaps uh,
Speaker 1: elaborating something I said earlier, Like I thought I asked
Speaker 1: the question regarding the cone um of aphrodite, you know,
Speaker 1: asking what was this all they had? I don't want
Speaker 1: to imply that that is a question of is this
Speaker 1: all they could do? Because, as we've discussed on the
Speaker 1: show before, the creation of anthropomorphicum are of creating human
Speaker 1: and animal likenesses and combinations of the two. These are
Speaker 1: very ancient trends in in in human culture, in our
Speaker 1: in our in our crafting of our environment. So if
Speaker 1: if one is creating something that is abstract that does
Speaker 1: not embody some version of the human form or an
Speaker 1: animal form, like that is a that is a deliberate choice.
Speaker 1: It's not a situation of someone of a culture being like, well,
Speaker 1: we'd love to be able to draw the lion man God,
Speaker 1: but we just don't have the technology yet, so we're
Speaker 1: going to use a square. That's not how it works.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. I mean, both both iconic and an iconic
Speaker 1: religious imageries appear to go way back into you know,
Speaker 1: deep prehistory. So both of these traditions have long been
Speaker 1: present and um and I could imagine a scenario where, say,
Speaker 1: for example, if you a cult, a local cult might
Speaker 1: say like, well, we can't afford to pay an artisan
Speaker 1: to create this kind of statue, but we have this
Speaker 1: other kind of statue. But but you definitely want to
Speaker 1: don't want jump from that possibility to thinking that the
Speaker 1: that an iconic versus iconic religion, that one is in
Speaker 1: any way superior to the other, because it's actually been
Speaker 1: written about both ways. Like some scholars have written about
Speaker 1: an iconic religions with a kind of um, a kind
Speaker 1: of preferential bias towards them, like, oh, they're more spiritually
Speaker 1: pure because they don't have to, you know, represent things
Speaker 1: figur eally um. And obviously that's not true. But you
Speaker 1: also don't want to think like iconic representation of God's
Speaker 1: is superior because I don't know it it takes more
Speaker 1: artistic skill or something like that, which it doesn't even necessarily.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we're we're not going to be pursuing an
Speaker 1: idea that one is in any way better than the other.
Speaker 1: But coming back to the history of the definitions of
Speaker 1: anticonicity um so, Gifman sites a few other ideas to
Speaker 1: illustrate some of the problems here. One is that there
Speaker 1: was a definition in the nineteen eighties by a scholar
Speaker 1: named Berkhard Gladigau who defined an iconic cults as cults
Speaker 1: in which quote no images are known or accepted as
Speaker 1: objects of worship, especially not in the form of anthropomorphic images.
Speaker 1: And this this, uh, this one comes in for some
Speaker 1: criticism here because it complicates things by saying like no images.
Speaker 1: So you know that's one problem, Like is the conent
Speaker 1: Pathos at the Pathos Shrine not an image? I mean
Speaker 1: it is an image, it's not, but it's not a
Speaker 1: figural representation of a goddess with like a human or
Speaker 1: animal body form, So it's not anthropomorphic, but it is
Speaker 1: an image. So this definition might seem to conflict with
Speaker 1: some other uses. And also it is specifically specifies objects
Speaker 1: of worship, which you know, you could get into complications there.
Speaker 1: In fact, I'll talk about a complication there in a second.
Speaker 1: There's another definition that was refined by a scholar named
Speaker 1: Mettinger in the nineteen nineties to argue that an iconism
Speaker 1: should refer to cults where quote there is no iconic
Speaker 1: representation of the deity, either anthropomorphic or theeomorphs it which
Speaker 1: means an animal form serving as the dominant or central
Speaker 1: cultic symbol. But here it would mean that for a
Speaker 1: cult to be an iconic if there is a central
Speaker 1: cultic symbol, that's the terminology. It can't take human or
Speaker 1: animal form. And these definitions are also complicated by what
Speaker 1: object or symbol you're actually talking about. What what actually
Speaker 1: counts as a central cultic symbol or an object of worship? Like,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of religious symbols that I think
Speaker 1: would be difficult to figure out whether they fit in
Speaker 1: those categories or not. If you think about a Catholic Church,
Speaker 1: is the crucifix an object of worship or a central
Speaker 1: cultic symbol? I think you would get people arguing both
Speaker 1: for and against those propositions. Yeah. And and one reality
Speaker 1: that will touch on again later too, is is it Yeah?
Speaker 1: These these uh, these framings, these definitions, they often depend
Speaker 1: on insider versus outsider um analysis. You know. Yes, so
Speaker 1: somebody within, say like the Catholic Church would probably say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: of course we don't worship the crucifix, it's just this symbol,
Speaker 1: you know, etcetera. Where someone outside might say, whoa, look
Speaker 1: at this crucifix. Clearly they're worshiping this. And you said,
Speaker 1: and you also see like more um, I guess sharpened
Speaker 1: analysis to sometimes where uh, you know, depending on you know,
Speaker 1: which group is judging the other. Yeah, once again, I
Speaker 1: mean this is an area where uh, writing about the
Speaker 1: artistic representations of various religions, especially if you go further
Speaker 1: back into history, you will sometimes come across analysis that
Speaker 1: seems sort of biased or judgmental. You know, it's almost
Speaker 1: like this is why this religion's UH art is is
Speaker 1: not as good as I don't know, my my Christian
Speaker 1: UH denominations art or something like that. Obviously, we want
Speaker 1: to be careful not to not to fall into those traps. Plus,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's it's pretty safe to say any
Speaker 1: humans relationship with a with a deity, with a divine concept,
Speaker 1: with the idea of a god, it's gonna be complex.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be it's gonna be the kind of thing
Speaker 1: where you can have multiple even conflicting ideas at once
Speaker 1: in your head, kind of like how we're talking earlier
Speaker 1: about how you can think about God and say, you know,
Speaker 1: a Christian sense and you're you're at once you're imagining, like, uh,
Speaker 1: the symbol of light coming out of a cloud that
Speaker 1: you might be presented with. You're you're also imagining the
Speaker 1: burning bush. You're also imagining the sky Daddy or sky Granddad,
Speaker 1: zeus form of God like all these things. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: can all sort of compete for your attention at the
Speaker 1: same time. And there may be the one that you
Speaker 1: were leaning into when you were engaging in worship, and
Speaker 1: then there might be the gut instinct the image as well,
Speaker 1: and so you can have all these. I mean, we've
Speaker 1: we've talked about this in terms of say, ideas and
Speaker 1: concepts of the afterlife before like how you know, any
Speaker 1: given person within a faith, they may you know, they
Speaker 1: may have have like three or four different ideas of
Speaker 1: what happens when you die. Some of them are grounded
Speaker 1: in like the scripture of a given faith or the
Speaker 1: doctrine of a given faith, and others are just like
Speaker 1: purely based on movies you've seen, you know, Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: So the final definition of of an iconism that Gaveman
Speaker 1: lands On, I think is a really good one. She argues,
Speaker 1: this is the better idea, and it comes from a
Speaker 1: scholar named Alfred gel And it is the term here
Speaker 1: for what you would be talking about when you're arguing
Speaker 1: whether something's iconic or an iconic. Is uh, something that
Speaker 1: is an index of divine presence. Uh, the index of
Speaker 1: divine presence of is any marker that quote indicates to
Speaker 1: the worshiper that a divine power is present at a
Speaker 1: particular site, at least potentially. And I like this definition
Speaker 1: because it doesn't necessarily require that the object is the
Speaker 1: the thing that you're worshiping. But it's a marker that
Speaker 1: shows you this place is sacred and reminds you of
Speaker 1: the divine power here. So finally, she says, quote, I
Speaker 1: propose to deploy an iconic to describe a physical object, monument, image,
Speaker 1: or visual scheme that denotes the presence of a divine
Speaker 1: power without a figural representation of the deity or deities involved. Similarly,
Speaker 1: an iconism can be defined as the denotation of divine
Speaker 1: presence without a figural image in both religious practice and
Speaker 1: an imagery and visual culture. More broadly, so, it's a
Speaker 1: non figural index of divine presence. It shows you there
Speaker 1: is the divine presence here, reminds you of it. It
Speaker 1: says you know, this is a place where you can
Speaker 1: be reminded of God or the Gods or whatever the
Speaker 1: divine presence is. But it doesn't have a body. It's
Speaker 1: not like a human or like an animal form. So
Speaker 1: there's this specific religious definition, but obviously it's also important
Speaker 1: to keep in mind some other distinctions, such as the
Speaker 1: distinction between an iconism in religion and just general non
Speaker 1: figurative art, right uh. And then the other thing would be,
Speaker 1: UM the difference between an iconism as we've been talking
Speaker 1: about it here, which just means any kind of religious
Speaker 1: uh index of divine presence that does not include figural representation,
Speaker 1: versus what might be called anti iconism or even in
Speaker 1: some cases iconic classm the explicit prohibition against or condemnation
Speaker 1: of various kinds of figural representation in a religious context.
Speaker 1: An Iconism is not necessarily anti iconism. It can be
Speaker 1: in some cases, but it doesn't necessitate it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we'll come back. I think we'll get more into two
Speaker 1: um iconoclasm in the second episode. But but I do
Speaker 1: want to touch a little bit more about the idea
Speaker 1: of idols uh and icons UH. Some of the key
Speaker 1: examples of an iconism that they stem from the the
Speaker 1: Abrahamic religions, so they are key injunctions against the creation
Speaker 1: of idols and Judaism. And it also follows in Christianity. Uh,
Speaker 1: one of the ten commandments is thou shalt not make
Speaker 1: under the any graven image. Right. That it's the second commandment,
Speaker 1: and that uh that it's I remember that was one
Speaker 1: that I didn't fully understand when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: But I think that is brawly taken. As you know,
Speaker 1: it's interpreted actually in a lot of different ways in
Speaker 1: terms of how far that commandment goes, what all it
Speaker 1: applies to, but in general it has taken as some
Speaker 1: form of commandment against the creation of idols. Well, I
Speaker 1: remember I had had this. I think I've mentioned this before.
Speaker 1: I wish I could have to hunt up a copy
Speaker 1: of it. I had this book of Bible stories and
Speaker 1: it had illustrations in it, and so the way that
Speaker 1: tended to explain this to me was just that, Okay,
Speaker 1: you have these scenes where you know, God is speaking abstractly,
Speaker 1: like through the burning Bush. That's clearly Bible stories illustrated
Speaker 1: in there. But then it also illustrates the various stories
Speaker 1: that involve the idols of rival religions and those the
Speaker 1: the you know, the idols often took on this kind
Speaker 1: of spooky or sinister quality. You know, they were imposing
Speaker 1: and and you know, cool but also kind of weird.
Speaker 1: And so I think that's an area where we have
Speaker 1: to recognize that, um, the term idol often carries a
Speaker 1: certain degree of negative connotation in some cultures due to
Speaker 1: uh uh and i uh and iconic tendencies. But the basis,
Speaker 1: but really the basic idea of a cult image a
Speaker 1: human created object that is venerated for the deity and
Speaker 1: the place of the deity. You know, this again is
Speaker 1: quite old and it is not universally viewed as negative.
Speaker 1: So I think it's it's important that we'd be able
Speaker 1: to sort of step back from that sort of some
Speaker 1: of this uh often sort of childhood indoctor nation about
Speaker 1: about idols. And there's also a great deal of back
Speaker 1: and forth about again what constitutes an idol in the
Speaker 1: same way we're talking about, you know, what is an
Speaker 1: icon and what isn't an icon? Yeah. So, yeah, if
Speaker 1: if we keep using the words idol or icon in
Speaker 1: these episodes, remember not to uh, not to automatically apply
Speaker 1: a kind of stink to it. Right now, we'll we'll
Speaker 1: get more into Islam in the second episode. But of
Speaker 1: course an iconism and else it's also an important aspect
Speaker 1: of Islam and one of the reasons you see so
Speaker 1: much geometry and abstraction in Islamic art. Though this doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that there are no depictions of lifelike figures in
Speaker 1: the history of Islantic art. And again we'll get more
Speaker 1: into that into the in the second episode. Now, they're
Speaker 1: all kinds of interesting questions to ask here, one of
Speaker 1: them that in many cases is difficult to answer, but
Speaker 1: it's interesting to think about. Is in an iconic and
Speaker 1: even anti iconic religions, why the lack of the icon
Speaker 1: so a few examples. Is it, as a Clement said earlier,
Speaker 1: that it's impossible to represent God in human form or
Speaker 1: even impossible to represent God visually at all, meaning that
Speaker 1: icons would just necessarily be incorrect and futile. Or is
Speaker 1: it more a matter of manners and respect as in
Speaker 1: whether or not you could potentially represent the divine it
Speaker 1: would be inappropriate for a human artist to do so,
Speaker 1: you know, the interpretation that icons would somehow be disrespectful
Speaker 1: or could it be more about the impact of the
Speaker 1: icon on the beholder? Is you know, is there a
Speaker 1: belief that somehow picturing the divine presence in a human
Speaker 1: or animal form would give you the wrong kind of
Speaker 1: religious experience. Is it about the person worshiping um? Or
Speaker 1: sometimes is it just a matter of um of of
Speaker 1: like local convenience of like you know, what kind of
Speaker 1: of icon is convenient for you to have at a
Speaker 1: particular place in time. Maybe it is actually not a
Speaker 1: figurative icon. So I I started thinking about all this
Speaker 1: as as a bidential episode for a couple of reasons. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, I was, I was reading about undeciphered
Speaker 1: writing systems, and so I was thinking about the power
Speaker 1: of words and symbols, and you know, and and what
Speaker 1: happens if you can't actually decipher ancient examples of this.
Speaker 1: And then I was I was revisiting the writings of
Speaker 1: a spiritual teacher at Cartole from his book The Power
Speaker 1: of Now, And I was reminded of this passage which
Speaker 1: I'm going to read quote. Even a stone, and more
Speaker 1: easily a flower or a bird could show you the
Speaker 1: way back to God, to the source to yourself. When
Speaker 1: you look at it or hold it and let it
Speaker 1: be without imposing a word of mental label on it,
Speaker 1: a sense of awe or wonder arises within you. It's
Speaker 1: essence silently communicates itself to you and reflects your own
Speaker 1: essence back to you. Now, this got me thinking about
Speaker 1: the rather complex web of language and images that we
Speaker 1: attached to virtually everything in life. Like, I think one
Speaker 1: of the things that's that's neat about about Totally's advice
Speaker 1: there is that, Yeah, when when you think about things
Speaker 1: like a flower or a bird, there's just so many
Speaker 1: connections your mind makes, like things that the bird or
Speaker 1: the flower are used to represent, like sometimes symbolically, other
Speaker 1: times metaphorically. Um, and those are going to connect to
Speaker 1: various uh, fears and anxieties in your life, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's where it makes it. But then at the base,
Speaker 1: like why are you why are we dragging all of
Speaker 1: that in? If I'm looking at a bird, if I'm
Speaker 1: looking at a flower, and so if you can, if
Speaker 1: you can just focus on the actual objective reality, the
Speaker 1: actual sensory information, without dragging all of these associations into it,
Speaker 1: you can at least, you know, some people uh have
Speaker 1: expressed this in this feeling of peace that emerges from
Speaker 1: that experience. And this also brought to mind a quote
Speaker 1: from Umburdo Echos the name of the Rose. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you remember this this part, Joe. But brother
Speaker 1: Williams says, quote, the order that our mind imagines is
Speaker 1: like a net, or like a ladder built to attain something.
Speaker 1: But afterward you must throw the ladder away because you
Speaker 1: discovered that even if it was useful, it was meaningless.
Speaker 1: And I should point out that in this brother William
Speaker 1: is is site. Basically this quote is a medievalized quote
Speaker 1: of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, known as Vitckenstein's Ladder.
Speaker 1: So it is not a medieval concept exactly, but he
Speaker 1: has Umburdo Echo has taken it and made it medieval
Speaker 1: so that it may come out of brother William's mouth
Speaker 1: in this tale. Okay, So how does this connect to
Speaker 1: Anichonism for you? Okay? So, I mean it's not a
Speaker 1: one to one obviously, because um, you know, an Eichonism
Speaker 1: is generally more about visual represations and art um though
Speaker 1: the use of descriptions also becomes important in some traditions. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the quotes I mentioned are you know, are generally
Speaker 1: concerned with the the with aspects of objective reality again, birds, flower, stones,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Things where you can you can behold them
Speaker 1: and see the thing itself, uh, and strip away potentially
Speaker 1: strip away all of these associations. But what happens when
Speaker 1: we consider supernatural entities and deities, saints and profits or
Speaker 1: you know, divine places as well, um, Because I think we,
Speaker 1: you know, can generally agree if we're talking about a god,
Speaker 1: we're talking about something that does not have an objective reality.
Speaker 1: It has the subjective reality, you know. Um, though I
Speaker 1: guess in general they're they're basically three ways you might
Speaker 1: approach the concept of a god. Um. So, either our
Speaker 1: words and images are describing something that does have a reality.
Speaker 1: You know, you're going with the idea that that that
Speaker 1: God or God's they have an objective reality. In our
Speaker 1: word and images are describing something, uh that actually exists.
Speaker 1: Another way of looking at it would be all of
Speaker 1: our words and images are describing something that exists purely
Speaker 1: in the domain of myth. Uh. So it is, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's entirely dependent upon these various depictions, but it
Speaker 1: has its own important reality as well. But then you
Speaker 1: could say that you could also look at it and say, well,
Speaker 1: our words and images are describing or embellishing some feeling
Speaker 1: or array of feelings or experiences that do have a reality. Um.
Speaker 1: So you know, I was thinking like if I was
Speaker 1: just if I was asked draw a picture of your hunger,
Speaker 1: and I drew a picture of like an angry face goblin.
Speaker 1: You know, like that is that is serving as a
Speaker 1: like you could almost you know, lean into that and
Speaker 1: say like this is this God represents my hunger, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's it represents something that has an objective or
Speaker 1: at least objective reality within me, but it is it
Speaker 1: is not based on an actual creature or sentient existence somewhere.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I see what you're I think I see
Speaker 1: what you're saying. So it is interesting how in all
Speaker 1: of our human attempts to represent ideas like God's, there's
Speaker 1: this constant process of bouncing back and forth between some
Speaker 1: kind of vague sense of meaning that we feel internally
Speaker 1: subjectively and then some external representation. Um. And so like
Speaker 1: the uh that that maybe the way of God is depicted,
Speaker 1: whether figurally or non figure, really represents something people feel,
Speaker 1: some association they have with the presence of this God
Speaker 1: or the idea of this God. But then of course
Speaker 1: once it is depicted, that feeds back into how people
Speaker 1: think about the God, and so it creates this feedback loop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it can create all sorts of opportunities, but also
Speaker 1: all sorts of challenges and and outright problems and depictions
Speaker 1: of gods and key religious figures like you know, I'm
Speaker 1: in my mind instantly goes to the various depictions of
Speaker 1: of Jesus that you see in Christian traditions, because you
Speaker 1: really see, you see so many different versions. You see
Speaker 1: you know, depictions of of of Jesus as a as
Speaker 1: a Middle Eastern individual. You see depictions of of Jesus
Speaker 1: in which Jesus has African features, in which he has
Speaker 1: highly Caucasian features, in which he has Asian features. You
Speaker 1: see depictions of of Christ particularly. There's some interesting medieval
Speaker 1: trends where that lean into the feminine nature of Christ
Speaker 1: and depict a very feminine uh Christ, which I think
Speaker 1: has and certainly had to the people who leaned towards
Speaker 1: that interpretation very positive ramifications for the way they beheld
Speaker 1: the divine, but clearly for others it was a problem. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and they they they took issue with it. Uh.
Speaker 1: They are also monstrous depictions of Christ where you know,
Speaker 1: people uh where and especially in the medieval period, they
Speaker 1: leaned into trying to use uh, fantastic variations on Christ's
Speaker 1: swarm in order to try to relay information about theological
Speaker 1: concepts like uh, you know, the Trinity by showing Jesus
Speaker 1: with three heads or three faces, or there was one
Speaker 1: I think Jesus had like a bird's knack or a
Speaker 1: bird's beak, and it had to do with this saying
Speaker 1: about about that the time it takes words leaving your
Speaker 1: heart to reach your mouth, and how you know, Christ
Speaker 1: would be very um patient in the way that he
Speaker 1: would express himself, and therefore he has this like long
Speaker 1: long neck and bird head stuff like that. And then
Speaker 1: he also today, I mean, on the other side of
Speaker 1: the feminine Christ, you also will find just at times
Speaker 1: just laughably masculine Jesus's you know where it's like he's
Speaker 1: just tremendously ripped, like the like the crib, like the
Speaker 1: cross of the crucifixion is some sort of exercise machine. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about a specific example that came to
Speaker 1: mind when you were talking about images of Christ from
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages that could look monstrous if if certainly
Speaker 1: viewed from the outside without the you know, the interpretation. Uh,
Speaker 1: like when they're supposed to represent a theological concept. And
Speaker 1: I was thinking about Christ Pentocrat or do you know
Speaker 1: this one, the one where I do off hand, maybe
Speaker 1: I would recognize it if I saw it. Uh, I
Speaker 1: think you would, because these tend to be the images
Speaker 1: where not always but in in some depictions, Christ is
Speaker 1: shown as having a sort of divided face where one
Speaker 1: side of the face looks different than the other side
Speaker 1: of the face, like one side of the face the
Speaker 1: eye looks different than on the other side. And I
Speaker 1: think this is sometimes interpreted to um to represent God
Speaker 1: in in both of his forms, Like it represents a
Speaker 1: theological concept that God, you know, maybe both fully human
Speaker 1: and fully divine at the same time. And that's shown
Speaker 1: by giving him, you know, two different faces smashed together
Speaker 1: that looked like they're drawn by two different artists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's almost like Christ is is using his Instagram filter
Speaker 1: for half of the photo and in the other half
Speaker 1: is just you know, all natural. Yeah. I think that
Speaker 1: the specific example I'm thinking of where the face is
Speaker 1: divided like that is the Christ Pantocrat at the at St.
Speaker 1: Catharine's Monastery in the Sinai Peninsula. Yes, I think that's
Speaker 1: that looks to be what I'm looking at right now,
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's it's a it's an interesting image especially.
Speaker 1: I wonder what it would be like to look at
Speaker 1: it if you did not know what was going on there,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, you know why there appears to be
Speaker 1: like it's I want to be clear, it's not like
Speaker 1: a straight up batman's tooth face scenario, like you could
Speaker 1: easily look at this image of Christ and miss what
Speaker 1: was going on there. Yeah. So I guess one of
Speaker 1: the things I'm trying to to say here is that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: anytime you depict a god or a goddess or you know,
Speaker 1: anything from a pantheon like this, anytime you depict them
Speaker 1: as a human being, is you depict them physically, you
Speaker 1: lean into an anthropomorphic vision of what they are. Like.
Speaker 1: There's just so many there's so much stuff that you
Speaker 1: end up drawing in. There's so much human body language
Speaker 1: and and physicality. There various uh you know, cultural associations, um,
Speaker 1: you know, etcetera like it. There's there's so many ways
Speaker 1: that you can get it right and get it wrong
Speaker 1: that you can convey very specific meanings. Uh, some complex
Speaker 1: theological problem ms while you could also potentially create new
Speaker 1: theological problems. Um, you can create heresies in the eyes
Speaker 1: of others, etcetera. Thank Thank Now, in exploring this topic,
Speaker 1: one can of course drift towards the absolutes traditions that
Speaker 1: are very strict um in um an iconism and those
Speaker 1: that don't seem particularly concerned with it. But uh, ultimately
Speaker 1: I thought it might be more illuminating to at least
Speaker 1: first consider a case where both seem to be employed.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna turn to another paper from that that
Speaker 1: same publication. Uh. This is by David L. Haberman titled
Speaker 1: drawing Out the Iconic in the an Iconic Worship of
Speaker 1: Meme Trees and go Varden Stones in Northern India, published
Speaker 1: in the journal Religion. So. Haberman is a professor of
Speaker 1: religious studies at Indiana University Bloomington's and has long been
Speaker 1: fascinated by Hindu worshipful interaction UH as he calls it,
Speaker 1: and an area of particular interest for him is worship
Speaker 1: involving an iconic objects, specifically trees in northern India. He
Speaker 1: even wrote a whole book on this particular topic inten
Speaker 1: titled People Trees, Worship of Trees in northern India. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this would be an example of worship of trees
Speaker 1: that aren't just being uh worshiped as trees, but in
Speaker 1: some sense stand in for the power of a particular god.
Speaker 1: Right and in this article he points to the worship
Speaker 1: of trees, mountains, and rivers as an iconic objects of devotion.
Speaker 1: Name Trees in particular are considered to be the embodiment
Speaker 1: of the goddess Sitala, while the stones of Mount Govarden
Speaker 1: are the embodiment of Krishna. Now this is of course
Speaker 1: particularly interesting because both of these deities certainly have have
Speaker 1: described and depicted forms anthropomorphic forms in Hindu traditions. Krishna,
Speaker 1: of course, is a major deity the eighth Avatara New
Speaker 1: an important figure in the Mahabarata and often described as
Speaker 1: a blueskinned humanoids, sometimes depicted as a child, even often
Speaker 1: shown with a flute. Sitalia is an incarnation of pavaty
Speaker 1: cure of diseases, often depicted as a maiden riding a
Speaker 1: donkey with a broom to cleanse away the germs and
Speaker 1: a pot uh full of pulses in cold water to
Speaker 1: also help in the In the curing of diseases. So
Speaker 1: Hindu iconography, of course is very rich, at very detailed,
Speaker 1: highly symbolic, and also highly anthromorphic, or at least that's
Speaker 1: where I think a lot of our minds tend to go. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we think of these very ornate depictions of
Speaker 1: the divine in which there are a lot of symbols,
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, their multiple arms in many
Speaker 1: cases holding multiple objects, and they all mean something. Likewise,
Speaker 1: there may be a vessel a vehicle that they're writing on,
Speaker 1: you know, and that also has meaning. And so like
Speaker 1: the whole image is, it's conveying a lot the information.
Speaker 1: It's not just mere uh you know, it's not just
Speaker 1: merely a fantastic other worldly representation, though I guess there's
Speaker 1: an aspect of it as well. But there's a lot
Speaker 1: of information in the image. Yeah, that I would agree
Speaker 1: with that they often feel highly informative, even sometimes maybe
Speaker 1: kind of busy. Yeah, But the specifics that that Haberman
Speaker 1: gets into her fascinating here because he points out that
Speaker 1: in Banaras, on the banks of the Ganges in northern India,
Speaker 1: you can find people worshiping Sitala, both in anthropomorphic or
Speaker 1: iconic form and engaging in an iconic worship of the
Speaker 1: tree as a focus that name tree that we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: And he describes conversations with devotees here and points out
Speaker 1: that both are considered important forms of the goddess um
Speaker 1: and so this this is one of the things that's
Speaker 1: really I really liked about this particular particular paper because
Speaker 1: it was a lot of there are a lot of
Speaker 1: like interviews fragments in there where he's quoting people that
Speaker 1: he talked to about it, like asking them, well, how
Speaker 1: do you relate to the to the god or goddess
Speaker 1: in this form versus this other form or both? So
Speaker 1: he just he ultimately touches on these two concepts. One
Speaker 1: is uh murder rupa and the other is uh proctor rupa.
Speaker 1: And the murder rupa as he describes is quote the
Speaker 1: embodied form of divinity that has been ritually installed in
Speaker 1: the shrine. So it's anthropomorphic shaped like shaped by human hands,
Speaker 1: and priests have also invited the divine into it via
Speaker 1: specific rituals that established the life breath inside of the
Speaker 1: statue or the form. But then the proc three rupa, however,
Speaker 1: is the natural form of divinity that appears without the
Speaker 1: aid of any human intervention. So the idea is, yes,
Speaker 1: the the God can be found saying this tree or
Speaker 1: this mountain, but it is there already naturally, whereas in
Speaker 1: the in the icon, we have to have somebody create
Speaker 1: it and then it has to be uh, it has
Speaker 1: to be made sacred through the intervention of humans, then
Speaker 1: by the intervention of priests. This is the picturing of
Speaker 1: God almost as a kind of liquid substance in a
Speaker 1: way that can that can pour into different kinds of vessels,
Speaker 1: and some in the natural world in which the God
Speaker 1: has poured into already, and there are others in which
Speaker 1: the God can can pour in once it's been prepared
Speaker 1: and sanctified. Yeah, so the devotees here that you talked to,
Speaker 1: he writes that they pointed to, say the tree, for example,
Speaker 1: as the prior and most important form of the God.
Speaker 1: Now and again these are just individuals he talked to.
Speaker 1: This doesn't mean like this is not like a necessarily
Speaker 1: universal opinion on the matter. But they were telling him that, yeah,
Speaker 1: it existed before the temple, before human made images came along.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't seem to be an either or scenario.
Speaker 1: You can get engage with these deities in both ways.
Speaker 1: You can choose to go iconic or an iconic, like
Speaker 1: depending on you know which route you want to take personally.
Speaker 1: And he writes that there does seem to be a
Speaker 1: strong preference of some um Hindus for the natural forms.
Speaker 1: And a lot of this comes down, uh, he writes,
Speaker 1: to the multiple or even innumerable forms of Hindu deities.
Speaker 1: So Krishna, for instance, I mentioned you know that sometimes
Speaker 1: he's depicted as a as a baby. You see this
Speaker 1: kind of like toddler Krishna, who is is kind of mischievous,
Speaker 1: and then you see the adult Krishna. But even the
Speaker 1: adult Krishna, depending on how he's depicted, he might might
Speaker 1: be depicted as more of a philosopher, he might be
Speaker 1: depicted as a strategist or a warrior um. But as
Speaker 1: Habermin points out, this means that the fixed form of
Speaker 1: the handcrafted icon limits you to the form it presents,
Speaker 1: while the an iconic form allows you to engage which
Speaker 1: with whichever version of that god you want to align with,
Speaker 1: like which form suits you best in general or at
Speaker 1: a given moment. That's interesting. I did not think about that,
Speaker 1: But yeah, now that seems obvious and introspect that the
Speaker 1: the aniconic representation of a god would seem to give
Speaker 1: the God more power to realize different forms. It makes
Speaker 1: the God more conceptually protean that you know, can can
Speaker 1: be a shape shifter of sorts. Yeah. Yeah, And and
Speaker 1: again I think it touches on like some of these
Speaker 1: ideas that was expressing earlier about how any version, any
Speaker 1: depiction of a of a god or a divine being
Speaker 1: or an important religious figure, like you're going to draw
Speaker 1: in all of these associations, and and what the one
Speaker 1: that is attractive to this person may not be attractive
Speaker 1: to this person, the one the the the like the
Speaker 1: version of Krishna that is important to you in the
Speaker 1: morning might not be the one that you need in
Speaker 1: the evening. Uh. That sort of thing that seems to
Speaker 1: be the point of what he's saying here. Oh and
Speaker 1: by the way, with in particular when we're talking about
Speaker 1: Krishna Um, it's the So there's this this mountain, Mount Govardan,
Speaker 1: and this mountain itself may be seen as an an
Speaker 1: iconic focus, but also there's a tradition of using stones
Speaker 1: from the mountain gearage stones and uh and I'll get
Speaker 1: into a little bit of the details about how uh
Speaker 1: some people interact with these stones here in just a minute.
Speaker 1: But let's turn back to the name trees um so
Speaker 1: Haybrimamin points out that this is just one of several
Speaker 1: key sacred Hindu trees uh And there are sacred trees
Speaker 1: in most cultures, and some scholars think that tree worship
Speaker 1: might well be one of the most archaic forms of worship.
Speaker 1: There are important symbols that are trees found in Buddhism
Speaker 1: as well, and um and and they and even in
Speaker 1: Buddhism they also have often take on this an iconic
Speaker 1: focus as well. But the name tree in particular is
Speaker 1: long lived. It has medicinal uses and they were that,
Speaker 1: you know, stuff from the name tree was used in
Speaker 1: treatments for pox uh. And also they are incarnations of Satalia.
Speaker 1: And he writes that some sacred trees are said to
Speaker 1: take on darker qualities at night um, which reminds me
Speaker 1: a little bit of our discussions of beans, you know,
Speaker 1: the idea that at night, maybe some sacred trees are
Speaker 1: not safe to be around. But he stresses that that's
Speaker 1: not the case with the name. The name is sacred
Speaker 1: and positive all of the time. It's the sort of
Speaker 1: sacred tree that you would want in your yard. You
Speaker 1: would want it as a kind of protector for you
Speaker 1: and your family. And this is interesting. Worshippers don't tend
Speaker 1: to worship all the name tree, so it's not a
Speaker 1: matter of like that name tree and that name tree,
Speaker 1: and this one and the one down the road and
Speaker 1: the one uptown, but rather one or two that they've
Speaker 1: forged a relationship with. Now, as for the stones of
Speaker 1: mount good Varden Habremin points to an account in the
Speaker 1: the Bakavita Purana in which Krishna takes on two forms
Speaker 1: at once, both as a boy lifting up the mountain
Speaker 1: and the mountain itself, and the mountain again is sacred.
Speaker 1: The mountain is Krishna. The sacred stones of the mountain
Speaker 1: are Krishna. So you might engage with Krishna or the
Speaker 1: idea of Krishna through the contemplation of the mountain itself.
Speaker 1: But as Habren points out, that's kind of it's a
Speaker 1: big mountain. You can't that might be a little challenging
Speaker 1: to really like take it all in. So you have
Speaker 1: this particular stone from it that you forged a bond
Speaker 1: with and this is important, like this is your stone,
Speaker 1: but it is also Chrishna, so you have ownership of it,
Speaker 1: but it itself is also the divine and so you
Speaker 1: know it's it's on one level. You know, we're used
Speaker 1: the point here where we're thinking about. Okay, I can
Speaker 1: see where like the stone is an an iconic version
Speaker 1: of Krishna. I can look at it, and I can
Speaker 1: I can imagine these various anthropomorphic ideas of Krishna, but
Speaker 1: it itself is not anthropomorphic. But there's also what Haberman
Speaker 1: calls the quote intentional anthropomorphism of all of this, and
Speaker 1: and this seems to be quite literal, not merely leaning
Speaker 1: into the human like qualities of the stone, but actually
Speaker 1: adding quote eyes, ornaments, clothing, and sometimes even arms to
Speaker 1: the garage stones. The process is is said to give
Speaker 1: form to the formless, to imbue personality, and above all
Speaker 1: allow for the growth of relationship, to strengthen this bond
Speaker 1: between the worshiper and this um, this item that is
Speaker 1: aiding them in their worship. So I think this is
Speaker 1: a great example of how the the iconic versus an
Speaker 1: iconic categories are not always cleanly separated, and they form
Speaker 1: a kind of spectrum where each tradition can easily blend
Speaker 1: into the other one. So here here it sounds like
Speaker 1: you've got something that begins as a classical an iconic
Speaker 1: index of of divine presence. It's a object from the
Speaker 1: natural world that doesn't really take a human or animal form,
Speaker 1: but just indicates to the believer that somehow the divine
Speaker 1: is present when you are in the company of this object.
Speaker 1: But then you can start dressing it up in increasingly
Speaker 1: anthropomorphic ways, right, yeah, And if if anyone wants to
Speaker 1: look up an example of this, uh, the garage stones.
Speaker 1: The way that it's spelled in this article is G
Speaker 1: I R I R A J. And yeah, there's there.
Speaker 1: It's it's beautiful the pmples I was looking at in
Speaker 1: the photos provided with this this paper, because there's it's
Speaker 1: not it's not like full on anthropomorphic. It's um like
Speaker 1: like I don't want to overstate it, like it doesn't
Speaker 1: look like a little person, but like you can certainly
Speaker 1: still see the formless in the form, if you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. You know, it's like it's not like
Speaker 1: a straight up Mr. Potato Head or something. And actually
Speaker 1: there's documentation of not just the stones, but the same
Speaker 1: thing happening with the neeme trees right right, and with
Speaker 1: the name trees. This same practice takes the form of
Speaker 1: first wrapping the trees with fabric and then eventually attaching
Speaker 1: a face mask of the goddess to the tree as well.
Speaker 1: And again this is these are quite quite beautiful. You
Speaker 1: can look up examples of of this. But one of
Speaker 1: the interesting things with this is that he points out
Speaker 1: that there's a process with the name tree. So you
Speaker 1: don't just add all of these things at once, you
Speaker 1: kind of you you start with the bear tree, and
Speaker 1: then you begin to add the wrap and eventually the face.
Speaker 1: So again Haberman right that this anthropomorphism it serves to
Speaker 1: intensify the personal connection with the god or goddess. It
Speaker 1: brings the worshiper closer, and it's also said to draw
Speaker 1: the deity out of the stone or in this case
Speaker 1: the tree more as well, which I find quite interesting
Speaker 1: and he he From here, he goes on to discuss
Speaker 1: just the idea of anthropomorphism in general, and he argues
Speaker 1: that these examples should force us to reconsider anthropomorphism to
Speaker 1: a certain extent, because, especially in in the modern world,
Speaker 1: and in the Western world, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: negative connotations that are that are thrown at anthropomorphism, especially
Speaker 1: in the sciences. And and we've discussed this as well,
Speaker 1: like there's there's this um you know, you shouldn't anthropomorphizes everything,
Speaker 1: especially if it's a study. You don't want to anthropomorphize
Speaker 1: your say, experimental rodents, right. That anthropomorphism in the context
Speaker 1: of the sciences usually is is a pejorative because it
Speaker 1: means you are making unjustified assumptions. You are assuming human
Speaker 1: like qualities of saying animal or something like that when
Speaker 1: those aren't necessarily actually there. Yeah, and and even in
Speaker 1: the arts too, you see this trend um Joe, and
Speaker 1: I assume you encountered this as well. And like creative
Speaker 1: writing courses and all um. I remember I had a
Speaker 1: creative writing professor who who who talked about uh, student
Speaker 1: writers anthropomorphizing like mad gods, which I have always stuck to.
Speaker 1: I think I know what you mean, But do you
Speaker 1: do you have like an example in mind, like um,
Speaker 1: just in the way you describe everything, Like if you're
Speaker 1: setting the scene where instead of saying, you know it
Speaker 1: was it was a dark and stormy night, you might
Speaker 1: just go overboard and say like the you know, like
Speaker 1: the storm clouds were battering and assaulting the castle. Um,
Speaker 1: clouds were angry. Yeah, the clouds were angry, etcetera. And
Speaker 1: if you you know, it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: I get it's like spices and something right, and certainly
Speaker 1: you can overdo it and and uh, and I think
Speaker 1: that's what my teacher was, it was criticizing in that case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know what you mean. Now, I think it's especially
Speaker 1: true of a lot of like younger writers who are
Speaker 1: trying to find ways to write expressively. One of the
Speaker 1: easiest ways to do that is to imbue non human
Speaker 1: objects with human characteristics. That that's just like one of
Speaker 1: the easiest places to go to if you're trying to
Speaker 1: find a way to say something in a creative way, right,
Speaker 1: But then, yeah, ultimately it ends up overbalanced. And that's
Speaker 1: ultimately not how we interact with the world usually though,
Speaker 1: as we'll get to I mean, anthropomorphism is something that
Speaker 1: our brain easily does, so a case can also be
Speaker 1: made that we we do live in a highly anthropomorphic world. Um.
Speaker 1: In this paper, though, Habrman points to eighteenth century philosopher
Speaker 1: David Hume, who argued that anthropomorphism was a cognitive strategy
Speaker 1: for coping with insecurity about the world and that it
Speaker 1: was an aspect of quote vulgar religion and ignorance. And
Speaker 1: these attitudes also influenced Edward B. Tyler, who's regarded as
Speaker 1: the founding father of anthropology, who also had a negative
Speaker 1: view of the anthropomorphism of non living things. So for
Speaker 1: a while, anthropomorphism was just looked down upon, almost as
Speaker 1: a kind of insult to human personhood at times, like
Speaker 1: you know, we're the only well we're the only persons,
Speaker 1: you know. Don't don't turn everything else into a person
Speaker 1: as well? It reduces what we have. But Habrmin points
Speaker 1: out that the more we learn about, say, facial recognition,
Speaker 1: and the human brain and its role and how we function,
Speaker 1: that this casts a different light on anthropomorphism, especially the
Speaker 1: sort of anthropomorphism on display in the prior examples. Here,
Speaker 1: He charges, quote anthropomorphism creates an empathetic connection with non
Speaker 1: human agents, So what's wrong with this if it benefits
Speaker 1: the human involved? Right? Uh? And Haberman argues, you know
Speaker 1: what's wrong with it if it benefits some targets of
Speaker 1: anthropomorphism as well. Such as Mother Earth and environmental campaigns.
Speaker 1: You know, the idea that well, you know, maybe somebody
Speaker 1: doesn't care as much about about helping out the environment
Speaker 1: if they're thinking about it is just place and setting.
Speaker 1: And you know, this, this this unpersoned world we live in.
Speaker 1: But if you start calling it mother nature, if you
Speaker 1: start sort of dragging the you know, basically the rough
Speaker 1: idea of the goddess into it, then uh, then it
Speaker 1: makes people maybe care a little bit more because you're
Speaker 1: not just hurting the planet, you're hurting a person. You're
Speaker 1: hurting an individual. I can totally see that. But I
Speaker 1: can also actually see the exact reverse, where you know,
Speaker 1: you've probably heard people say things anthropomorphizing nature in a
Speaker 1: way that's like, uh, we don't need to worry. You know,
Speaker 1: mother Nature can take care of herself. You know, we
Speaker 1: we don't need to. It doesn't matter what we do,
Speaker 1: She'll take care of herself. Right. And then well, of
Speaker 1: course also there are examples of people saying, oh, mother
Speaker 1: Nature strikes back, you know, the wrath of mother Nature.
Speaker 1: And I don't know, I guess you could you could
Speaker 1: probably make a case for their situations like that, where
Speaker 1: you start talking about things as just an act of
Speaker 1: God as opposed as to an active environment or uh,
Speaker 1: you know. A part of saying, um, you know climate change, etcetera,
Speaker 1: you you can sort of take human responsibility out of
Speaker 1: the scenario by saying, well, clearly the gods are at it. Again,
Speaker 1: what can you do? So in closing Hyman Rights quote
Speaker 1: with regard to the cases under consideration, the anthropomorphic adornment
Speaker 1: of a name tree or govarden stone brings forth its
Speaker 1: divine personality. It is always there, but the ornamentation makes
Speaker 1: it more fully perceptible. The anthropomorphic appendages, then are key
Speaker 1: to the development of a close relationship with divinity in
Speaker 1: these forms, and as we have seen, intimate relation reality
Speaker 1: is the very goal of the religion associated with Govardin
Speaker 1: stones and certain trees. I conclude by hypothesizing, then that
Speaker 1: the transformation of an iconic objects into anthropomorphic icons, what
Speaker 1: Michael Actor calls anthropomorphic iconicity, most commonly occurs and in
Speaker 1: increasing degrees in a religious cultural context wherein relationality is
Speaker 1: highly valued. Now, obviously this is again it is a
Speaker 1: particular case within a particular culture, and we do have
Speaker 1: to be careful about drawing, you know, universal aspects of uh,
Speaker 1: an iconism out of these examples. But I think this
Speaker 1: is very interesting to consider, you know, the the idea,
Speaker 1: this sort of interplay between um, the aniconic and the iconic,
Speaker 1: and and even engaging with with concepts of deities by
Speaker 1: utilizing both of these. Yeah, yeah, And I do wonder
Speaker 1: that does raise a good question like, yeah, is um
Speaker 1: would anthropomorphizing or iconic representations be more common uh in
Speaker 1: religions or interpretations of religions that highly value the idea
Speaker 1: of a personal relationship with the God or an intimacy
Speaker 1: between the believer and the God. Yeah. So I think
Speaker 1: this whole scenario does it raises a number of questions,
Speaker 1: you know, like what happens when we give God a face?
Speaker 1: What happens when we we work to prevent that face
Speaker 1: from manifesting or we limit or prohibit the ways in
Speaker 1: which that face is manifested? Is there a tendency to
Speaker 1: give God a face anyway, even if you know, through
Speaker 1: mental images, if visual images are prohibited, and so what's
Speaker 1: and also what sort of things can happen when someone
Speaker 1: else gives God a face? For you? Uh? You know,
Speaker 1: I again that comes to mind when I think about
Speaker 1: these various visual representations of Jesus that you see in
Speaker 1: different modes of Christianity, Like what happens when someone says, hey,
Speaker 1: here's your here's your big muscle Jesus. Uh. You know
Speaker 1: that that may not be the version of of Jesus
Speaker 1: that really resonates with you the most. It might be
Speaker 1: a form that scares you a bet and it's is
Speaker 1: you know that you get into a lot of these
Speaker 1: complications with specific imagery like that. I think some of
Speaker 1: the questions you just raised will really be illuminated by
Speaker 1: some examples we look at in episode two. I was
Speaker 1: gonna talk in this episode about the concept of divine emptiness,
Speaker 1: but I think we need to call part one here
Speaker 1: and we can come back to that in the next episode. Now,
Speaker 1: in the meantime, you know, obviously there's more that we
Speaker 1: want to unpack on this topic, but feel free to
Speaker 1: go ahead and right in with with your thoughts. Um.
Speaker 1: Sometimes those are those are really interesting emails where they
Speaker 1: come in sort of halfway between a conversation. So sometimes
Speaker 1: you bring up something that we're going to get to
Speaker 1: in the next episode, um, but sometimes not. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's always great to hear from our listeners. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, as you would like to check out other
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Speaker 1: Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
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