Aniconism, Images and the Divine: Part 1

Monty Python and the Holy Grail, you know. So it is actually an incredibly an incredibly literal depiction of like an old man with a beard, wearing a crown, sitting in a cloud and saying something angry at people down on the ground. Now that that's probably not the full picture of God in my head, but that was the very first thing that came to mind. And it might be because you specifically asked me to picture God, which I don't normally do when I think about the concept. Yeah,

absolutely me. And I feel like I have a similar situation going on, you know where if you just say all right, think about God, picture God right now? Uh, you know, kind of a gozer moment where you have to just just come up with a mental image. My mind does instantly go to this um old sky Daddy image. I think of the Sistine Chapel. I think of you know, various images of Zeus I guess and uh, and certainly things like like like the Monty Python God are very

much in that vein. Um. There's also a sort of a Sistine Chapel Chapel God gag that Stephen Colbert does on his show, where like God appears on the ceiling of the theater and speaks to him. Um. So those are the images that are kind of initially hardwired into my brain. Though It's interesting because you know, growing up, uh, you know, in a Protestant church, those were not images that we were ever presented with. It's not like that was the illustration in the Bible or on the walls

of the church. That's not what they were trying to inundate us with. But we were exposed to it at some point outside of the church. And then that's just what's dicks and that's what remains unless you know, obviously, like you, if I'm dealing with a more specific example of God or a deeper I think that you know, thoughts about the nature of God. I can go in any number of directions, but that initial gut response that

that initial mental image is the old sky Daddy. Can I tell you the second image that came to my mind after Monty Python and the Holy Grail? And it was like, I don't know what this is from, but it is basically a a very poorly three D animated kind of late nineties c G I face of like a lady with red eyes in a computer background, very lawnmower man. I don't know why that, but that's in there too. Yeah, I mean, and that is kind of that's kind of goes Arian as well, right, because yeah,

lots of corners and the cheeks in the forehead. Yeah, yeah, I'd say that I probably if I'm like my my post gut image, I probably go into like a much more sort of psychedelic kind of zone and abstract zone, and I think of things that are that are certainly not anthropomorphic, and I try to think of things that are just like geometrically based. Um. But yeah, that initial initial mental image is always going to be the sky Daddy, and I guess it's just stuck there. I don't guess.

I guess it's just gonna remain there for the rest of my life. Yeah, you can't escape what gets put there in childhood. But I guess this should be a good indication that for this episode and for the next episode as well, we're going to be talking about the idea of representation of the divine in the history of of the religions of the world. Uh, specifically, we're gonna be talking about the concept of an iconism. Yes, an iconism, uh,

discussing an iconic images. So the icon and there in that word of is referringled like the icon that is like the center of focus in religious ceremony, personal worship, that sort of thing. Right, So what is an an iconic religion or an an iconic cult. If something is an iconic, then it is symbolic or suggestive rather than a literal representation. It's not designed as a likeness. It's not an idol. It is not an anthropomorphic representation. It

is not a humanoid. Uh, it is the opposite of that. Yeah, So this is one of those subjects where actually a lot of the interest can be found in trying to figure out what the definition of an iconic should be. It's one of those things where like just trying to define it actually raises a lot of really interesting questions

about the subject matter itself. Um and I found a really good overview paper dealing with this question of how to define the concept an iconic or antichonicity that was written by a Yale University art historian named Milette Gaffman,

and it was published in the Journal Religion in seventeen. Actually, this specific issue of the Journal Religion, uh is a themed issue that was all about anichonism and it and this paper goes significantly into the problem of how scholars have offered different and sometimes incommensurate definitions of these terms over the years. But this paper is the introductory essay to that themed issue of the Journal Religion, and I think we're actually going to cite several other papers from

that same issue over the course of these episodes. So anyway, this article is called an Iconism Definitions, Examples and Comparative Perspectives. Again, this is from the Journal Religion in TV and it's by Millette Gafeman and uh So, the short simple definition of anichonism given at the beginning of this article is that it is the demarcation of divine presence without a

figural representation. Now I'll get more into the details of that as we go on, but I thought it might be helpful to start with just an example, a concrete example, and this one is cited in Engafeman's paper. So what she looks at is a Cypriot copper coin created during the Roman Empire roughly seventy five to seventy six CE, so this would have been during the reign of Emperor Vespasian. And there's an image on the coin I've got for you to look at here, rob that is definitely not

a human form. It is some kind of geometrical thing. It looks like there's maybe kind of a building or shrine of some kind. And then in the middle of the building or shrine there is just this shape that's not a human it's just a kind of like tapering

or sort of triangular conical shape. And the evidence from the archaeological and historical context makes clear that this coin depicts an object that was worshiped at the shrine of the goddess Aphrodite in Pathos, which which was a city in in Cyprus that was sometimes believed to be the

home and the birthplace of the goddess Aphrodite. Now I think we can agree that this image on the coin does not depict the same kind of Aphrodite that you find in a lot of other Roman art of Aphrodite, of course, was the goddess of love and beauty, and she's been shown in human form as a beautiful woman, often like reclining nude or posing gracefully as in you might find h you know, representations of her and a

bunch of frescoes from POMPEII that you may have seen. Yeah, yeah, that the artistic depictions were accustomed to very much inform. I think in many of us, anyway, that that gut instinct image that comes to mind when we think of the name Aphrodite, right, and in these frescoes from Pompei, for example, afro Aphrodite is not only depicted in human form.

I would say probably that she is aggressively humanoid, aggressively embodied in that her human shaped body is a major expression of her meaning as a divine presence, you know, as the goddess of love and beauty, she is supposed to represent beauty. So you might always expect Aphrodite's presence to be indicated by a painting or a statue of a humanoid female form that was thought, at least by the artist to be beautiful, but apparently that was not

always the case. The object of worship at the cult center for the Cypriot cult of Aphrodite and Pathos looks more like a weird cone. It's Aphrodite in her dollic form. You almost want to give her an epithet. Remember we talked about the Roman epithets of different versions of God. So you've got you know, Jupiter, Pluvius or Jupiter whatever,

a Jupiter who brings rain. This is sort of Aphrodite dolicus. Yeah, it's almost as if like this is the God in its true form that has arrived, and people are like, whoa, we don't know what to make of this, We don't we don't understand what you're trying to lay out here. And then the God realizes, oh, I need to take on a humanoid form that communicates at a base level

with these humans what I represent. I'm going to have to speak to them through physical appearance and body language and facial expressions and pose and all of this other just sort of the innate communication stuff, as opposed to taking on my true form of the weirdly top comb. Yeah, it's almost like, you know, if they saw the cone form, it would I have the mad Then you know, we've got to represent ourselves. I mean, I want to be very clear. I'm not saying I think that was actually there. Uh,

their their theology, there's no indication of that. But yeah, my mind goes to the same place. Yeah, and part, I mean part of that is, yeah, well, there's this long history at this point in like weird fiction and you know, science fiction and horror where you have the god whose true form you know, is just ineffable or

it is too monstrous to behold. And the weird thing is those traditions they do get into this, maybe accidentally, they get into this idea of an iconism, you know, this idea of of like, well can you can you show what that real god is? Oh no, no, it's too horrible. We have to have some some other things stand in right, paying no attention to the cone behind

the curtain um. But so the Roman historian Tacitus actually describes the shrine in Pathos, and he tells us that the Latin quote is simulacrum day non effigy humana, meaning the image of the goddess was not in human form, and then to quote Gaifman, additionally, he noted that the deity was represented by a circular mass that is broader at the base and rises like a turning post to a small circumference at the top. And it looks like this is the same thing that's depicted on this coin here.

And so Giveman writes that all evidence suggests that what the cult of Aphrodite and path Fosse worshiped was a conical stone. And this is actually not even particularly unusual in its historical context. Apparently, at many sanctuaries and cult centers in first century Cyprus, rituals appear to have been

focused around some kind of large stone. You would have a cult center, it might be a cult center identified with the named god that elsewhere would be represented often in the statue or a painting, is having a human form, but here it's represented by some kind of big rock. And this raises all kinds of interesting questions about, you know, when we want to understand the religion of these ancient people. So I want to read a paragraph here from from

Gaifeman that gets into these questions. Quote, the information we can learn about the Cypriot cult of Aphrodite is illuminating, Yet it also illustrates a fundamental challenge for our assessment of an aniconic cult. Even if we can identify an example of an aniconic object, we may not be able to establish its significance in the eyes of worshippers. In the example of the Cypriot cult of Aphrodite and Pathos, we cannot know how participants in the rights at the

site perceived the conical stone. Did pilgrims to Pathos see the stone as an embodiment of the deity? Did they hold it to be more venerable than the more familiar figural statues of the goddess of Love Like Tacitus, We only have an outside perspective, Baffled by the choice of object for the sanctuary's primary focus. We're reminded of the Roman historians assertion set Razzio in obscure a quote, but the reason is obscure. Uh so, yeah, we were left

with all these questions. I mean, there there is no conclusive explanation for what the people who went to this cult center in Pathos thought this conical stone meant. It's clear that it somehow represented the presence of aphrodite. But yet did they think this is Aphrodite's true form? Did they think that it it indicated some quality of aphrodite? Did they think this is just what we have here? This is the closest we could get to the form of aphrodite. And to be clear, it seems that they

also used other images of aphrodite as well. Right, well, there were other images of aphrodite, like throughout the Roman Empire, but I don't know about at this specific cult center. At this cult center, this might have been all they had. It's not clear. So, yeah, that does raise a number of interesting questions. Yeah, like is this just is this to a certain extent the best they could do. Was this the uh you know? Or was this a deliberate

aesthetic choice based on various like theological concepts. Uh? This is gonna be an rising question for us to keep in our mind as we we look at different um and iconic traditions and values in different cultures. Yeah, and to the point of some of the difficulties in in the job of you know, studying comparative religions, gave mean also emphasizes an important point that I'd like to talk about.

She writes this near the beginning of her essay, quote, what can the historian of religion gain from considering in tandem traditions such as the worship of trees in modern India which we'll get into later in this episode, the Dead Pillar of Osiris, and the biblical prohibitions on depicting the God of the Israelites. Examining together geographically and chronologically divergent religious practices is fraught with methodological pitfalls and intellectual challenges.

At the very least, this exercise risks implying that all phenomena clustered under a single heading have a single meaning. And that's a very good point, because I love the study of comparative religions. I think it's it's great to compare different religions to each other and understand and their their similarities and their differences. But I think it's also important while you're doing that um to follow the standard guiding principles of empirical science, even when you're studying something

like a complex social phenomenon like art and religion. Uh, And those principles would be things like, of course, correlation does not necessarily imply causation. You can't assume that because two different religious traditions share a similar feature that those

features have the same underlying cause. Yeah, like like, for instance, it would be very tempting to just broad strokes to say something like, well, religions or cultures that that have actual anthropomorphic manifestations of their God, they have just more of a physical mindset, and whereas and uh and and iconic traditions have more of a spiritual mindset. Like that's just such a broad statement to make that it it runs a high risk of just being you know, completely

untrue on both sides. You know, you're just everything is going to be a lot more nuanced than that. And also, as we'll discuss, you can't really talk about like, Okay, this religion is is an iconic and this one is iconic, because generally you're gonna see both trends in any given religion over the course of of its of its lifetime. That's exactly right. And you know, as we've already seen, there are clearly, you know, there are both kinds within

Greco Roman religion. You know, you have an iconic Greco Roman religion and you have highly iconic Greco Roman religion existing side by side even at the same time, and uh, and that's true of many. I think we're gonna look at some of the spectrum in uh, some of this so worship in India and things. You'll you'll even see the same contrast within within similar branches of Christianity, more an iconic sort of forms of Christian worship versus more

iconic ones. Yeah. Yeah, because again, that's what's so interesting about the sky God thing is because uh, in most like Protestant churches, you have a you know, at least the one I grew up in, it's very uh an iconic inside, you know, and for the most part, there's a there's a large uh shift, in a large trend in an iconism in there. But it's from elsewhere. It's from like the broader culture that you end up getting

these iconic emblems of the sky Daddy. Now to the point of the difficulty in defining these terms and all the interesting questions that raises, uh, Gaifman sort of conducts a review in this essay about the many different ways that the terms an iconic and an iconism have been

used in the history of religious studies. She notes that one of the earliest instances, at least in the modern world of these terms comes from the German archaeologist Johannes Adolf Overbeck, who lived eighteen twenty six to eight, who coined these terms. I think he was writing in German, so it's an ikon niche and an ikonsmas, and I guess those would be based on Greek formulations, but not terms that the ancient Greeks would have actually used too

in the same way that they're being used here. But she says that Overbeck was trying to promote a particular perception of the earliest history of Greek art. So over had a speculative interpretation of what the prehistory of Greek art and Greek religion looked like, and in trying to

describe that speculative interpretation, he used these terms. And his idea was that in prehistoric antiquity, the Greeks believed their gods did not have human forms and could not be represented anthropomorphically, and so as a result, they were not depicted directly, but rather indicated by mediating symbols, including trees, stones, pillars, spears, and scepters. Now not to say that Overbeck was necessarily correct about that, but that was the idea that he

was trying to illustrate with this term. And I think this would be somewhat analogous to how you can't really like show a picture of a person to represent an abstract concept today, for example a nation, so you might instead represented symbolically with the flag. And Gaifman sites other uh much earlier uses of these words, not so much in religious at ease, But for example, she cites the early Christian theologian Clement of Alexandria, who's you know, considered

one of the earliest known Christian church fathers. And and uh. In Clement's writings, he uses an an ancient ancestor of the term an iconic, but with a different meaning, the Greek word and I kissed on, which means basically not representable. It's a word that would mean something in English kind of like undrawable or unrepresentable. And St. Clement is saying there that it is impossible to indicate the nature of

the divine in a representative form. He's essentially just saying, like, there's no way to draw God, you can't do it. I want to drive home something here that well, perhaps uh, elaborating something I said earlier, Like I thought I asked the question regarding the cone um of aphrodite, you know, asking what was this all they had? I don't want to imply that that is a question of is this

all they could do? Because, as we've discussed on the show before, the creation of anthropomorphicum are of creating human and animal likenesses and combinations of the two. These are very ancient trends in in in human culture, in our in our in our crafting of our environment. So if if one is creating something that is abstract that does not embody some version of the human form or an animal form, like that is a that is a deliberate choice.

It's not a situation of someone of a culture being like, well, we'd love to be able to draw the lion man God, but we just don't have the technology yet, so we're going to use a square. That's not how it works. Oh yeah. I mean, both both iconic and an iconic religious imageries appear to go way back into you know,

deep prehistory. So both of these traditions have long been present and um and I could imagine a scenario where, say, for example, if you a cult, a local cult might say like, well, we can't afford to pay an artisan to create this kind of statue, but we have this other kind of statue. But but you definitely want to don't want jump from that possibility to thinking that the that an iconic versus iconic religion, that one is in any way superior to the other, because it's actually been

written about both ways. Like some scholars have written about an iconic religions with a kind of um, a kind of preferential bias towards them, like, oh, they're more spiritually pure because they don't have to, you know, represent things figur eally um. And obviously that's not true. But you also don't want to think like iconic representation of God's is superior because I don't know it it takes more artistic skill or something like that, which it doesn't even necessarily.

So yeah, we're we're not going to be pursuing an idea that one is in any way better than the other. But coming back to the history of the definitions of anticonicity um so, Gifman sites a few other ideas to

illustrate some of the problems here. One is that there was a definition in the nineteen eighties by a scholar named Berkhard Gladigau who defined an iconic cults as cults in which quote no images are known or accepted as objects of worship, especially not in the form of anthropomorphic images. And this this, uh, this one comes in for some criticism here because it complicates things by saying like no images. So you know that's one problem, Like is the conent

Pathos at the Pathos Shrine not an image? I mean it is an image, it's not, but it's not a figural representation of a goddess with like a human or animal body form, So it's not anthropomorphic, but it is an image. So this definition might seem to conflict with some other uses. And also it is specifically specifies objects of worship, which you know, you could get into complications there. In fact, I'll talk about a complication there in a second.

There's another definition that was refined by a scholar named Mettinger in the nineteen nineties to argue that an iconism should refer to cults where quote there is no iconic representation of the deity, either anthropomorphic or theeomorphs it which means an animal form serving as the dominant or central cultic symbol. But here it would mean that for a cult to be an iconic if there is a central cultic symbol, that's the terminology. It can't take human or

animal form. And these definitions are also complicated by what object or symbol you're actually talking about. What what actually counts as a central cultic symbol or an object of worship? Like, there are a lot of religious symbols that I think would be difficult to figure out whether they fit in those categories or not. If you think about a Catholic Church, is the crucifix an object of worship or a central cultic symbol? I think you would get people arguing both

for and against those propositions. Yeah. And and one reality that will touch on again later too, is is it Yeah? These these uh, these framings, these definitions, they often depend on insider versus outsider um analysis. You know. Yes, so somebody within, say like the Catholic Church would probably say, oh, well, of course we don't worship the crucifix, it's just this symbol, you know, etcetera. Where someone outside might say, whoa, look

at this crucifix. Clearly they're worshiping this. And you said, and you also see like more um, I guess sharpened analysis to sometimes where uh, you know, depending on you know, which group is judging the other. Yeah, once again, I mean this is an area where uh, writing about the artistic representations of various religions, especially if you go further back into history, you will sometimes come across analysis that

seems sort of biased or judgmental. You know, it's almost like this is why this religion's UH art is is not as good as I don't know, my my Christian UH denominations art or something like that. Obviously, we want to be careful not to not to fall into those traps. Plus, I think it's it's it's pretty safe to say any humans relationship with a with a deity, with a divine concept, with the idea of a god, it's gonna be complex.

It's gonna be it's gonna be the kind of thing where you can have multiple even conflicting ideas at once in your head, kind of like how we're talking earlier about how you can think about God and say, you know, a Christian sense and you're you're at once you're imagining, like, uh, the symbol of light coming out of a cloud that you might be presented with. You're you're also imagining the burning bush. You're also imagining the sky Daddy or sky Granddad,

zeus form of God like all these things. Yeah, they can all sort of compete for your attention at the same time. And there may be the one that you were leaning into when you were engaging in worship, and then there might be the gut instinct the image as well,

and so you can have all these. I mean, we've we've talked about this in terms of say, ideas and concepts of the afterlife before like how you know, any given person within a faith, they may you know, they may have have like three or four different ideas of what happens when you die. Some of them are grounded in like the scripture of a given faith or the doctrine of a given faith, and others are just like purely based on movies you've seen, you know, Yeah, yeah, totally.

So the final definition of of an iconism that Gaveman lands On, I think is a really good one. She argues, this is the better idea, and it comes from a scholar named Alfred gel And it is the term here for what you would be talking about when you're arguing whether something's iconic or an iconic. Is uh, something that is an index of divine presence. Uh, the index of divine presence of is any marker that quote indicates to the worshiper that a divine power is present at a

particular site, at least potentially. And I like this definition because it doesn't necessarily require that the object is the the thing that you're worshiping. But it's a marker that shows you this place is sacred and reminds you of the divine power here. So finally, she says, quote, I propose to deploy an iconic to describe a physical object, monument, image, or visual scheme that denotes the presence of a divine

power without a figural representation of the deity or deities involved. Similarly, an iconism can be defined as the denotation of divine presence without a figural image in both religious practice and an imagery and visual culture. More broadly, so, it's a non figural index of divine presence. It shows you there is the divine presence here, reminds you of it. It says you know, this is a place where you can be reminded of God or the Gods or whatever the

divine presence is. But it doesn't have a body. It's not like a human or like an animal form. So there's this specific religious definition, but obviously it's also important to keep in mind some other distinctions, such as the distinction between an iconism in religion and just general non

figurative art, right uh. And then the other thing would be, UM the difference between an iconism as we've been talking about it here, which just means any kind of religious uh index of divine presence that does not include figural representation, versus what might be called anti iconism or even in some cases iconic classm the explicit prohibition against or condemnation of various kinds of figural representation in a religious context. An Iconism is not necessarily anti iconism. It can be

in some cases, but it doesn't necessitate it. Yeah, and we'll come back. I think we'll get more into two um iconoclasm in the second episode. But but I do want to touch a little bit more about the idea of idols uh and icons UH. Some of the key examples of an iconism that they stem from the the Abrahamic religions, so they are key injunctions against the creation of idols and Judaism. And it also follows in Christianity. Uh, one of the ten commandments is thou shalt not make

under the any graven image. Right. That it's the second commandment, and that uh that it's I remember that was one that I didn't fully understand when I was a kid. But I think that is brawly taken. As you know, it's interpreted actually in a lot of different ways in terms of how far that commandment goes, what all it applies to, but in general it has taken as some form of commandment against the creation of idols. Well, I remember I had had this. I think I've mentioned this before.

I wish I could have to hunt up a copy of it. I had this book of Bible stories and it had illustrations in it, and so the way that tended to explain this to me was just that, Okay, you have these scenes where you know, God is speaking abstractly, like through the burning Bush. That's clearly Bible stories illustrated in there. But then it also illustrates the various stories that involve the idols of rival religions and those the the you know, the idols often took on this kind

of spooky or sinister quality. You know, they were imposing and and you know, cool but also kind of weird. And so I think that's an area where we have to recognize that, um, the term idol often carries a certain degree of negative connotation in some cultures due to uh uh and i uh and iconic tendencies. But the basis, but really the basic idea of a cult image a human created object that is venerated for the deity and

the place of the deity. You know, this again is quite old and it is not universally viewed as negative. So I think it's it's important that we'd be able to sort of step back from that sort of some of this uh often sort of childhood indoctor nation about about idols. And there's also a great deal of back and forth about again what constitutes an idol in the same way we're talking about, you know, what is an

icon and what isn't an icon? Yeah. So, yeah, if if we keep using the words idol or icon in these episodes, remember not to uh, not to automatically apply a kind of stink to it. Right now, we'll we'll get more into Islam in the second episode. But of course an iconism and else it's also an important aspect of Islam and one of the reasons you see so much geometry and abstraction in Islamic art. Though this doesn't mean that there are no depictions of lifelike figures in

the history of Islantic art. And again we'll get more into that into the in the second episode. Now, they're all kinds of interesting questions to ask here, one of them that in many cases is difficult to answer, but it's interesting to think about. Is in an iconic and even anti iconic religions, why the lack of the icon so a few examples. Is it, as a Clement said earlier, that it's impossible to represent God in human form or even impossible to represent God visually at all, meaning that

icons would just necessarily be incorrect and futile. Or is it more a matter of manners and respect as in whether or not you could potentially represent the divine it would be inappropriate for a human artist to do so, you know, the interpretation that icons would somehow be disrespectful or could it be more about the impact of the icon on the beholder? Is you know, is there a belief that somehow picturing the divine presence in a human or animal form would give you the wrong kind of

religious experience. Is it about the person worshiping um? Or sometimes is it just a matter of um of of like local convenience of like you know, what kind of of icon is convenient for you to have at a particular place in time. Maybe it is actually not a figurative icon. So I I started thinking about all this

as as a bidential episode for a couple of reasons. So, first of all, I was, I was reading about undeciphered writing systems, and so I was thinking about the power of words and symbols, and you know, and and what happens if you can't actually decipher ancient examples of this. And then I was I was revisiting the writings of a spiritual teacher at Cartole from his book The Power of Now, And I was reminded of this passage which

I'm going to read quote. Even a stone, and more easily a flower or a bird could show you the way back to God, to the source to yourself. When you look at it or hold it and let it be without imposing a word of mental label on it, a sense of awe or wonder arises within you. It's essence silently communicates itself to you and reflects your own essence back to you. Now, this got me thinking about the rather complex web of language and images that we

attached to virtually everything in life. Like, I think one of the things that's that's neat about about Totally's advice there is that, Yeah, when when you think about things like a flower or a bird, there's just so many connections your mind makes, like things that the bird or the flower are used to represent, like sometimes symbolically, other times metaphorically. Um, and those are going to connect to various uh, fears and anxieties in your life, you know,

and it's where it makes it. But then at the base, like why are you why are we dragging all of that in? If I'm looking at a bird, if I'm looking at a flower, and so if you can, if you can just focus on the actual objective reality, the actual sensory information, without dragging all of these associations into it, you can at least, you know, some people uh have expressed this in this feeling of peace that emerges from that experience. And this also brought to mind a quote

from Umburdo Echos the name of the Rose. I don't know if you remember this this part, Joe. But brother Williams says, quote, the order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away because you discovered that even if it was useful, it was meaningless. And I should point out that in this brother William

is is site. Basically this quote is a medievalized quote of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, known as Vitckenstein's Ladder. So it is not a medieval concept exactly, but he has Umburdo Echo has taken it and made it medieval so that it may come out of brother William's mouth in this tale. Okay, So how does this connect to

Anichonism for you? Okay? So, I mean it's not a one to one obviously, because um, you know, an Eichonism is generally more about visual represations and art um though the use of descriptions also becomes important in some traditions. Uh. And the quotes I mentioned are you know, are generally concerned with the the with aspects of objective reality again, birds, flower, stones, et cetera. Things where you can you can behold them and see the thing itself, uh, and strip away potentially

strip away all of these associations. But what happens when we consider supernatural entities and deities, saints and profits or you know, divine places as well, um, Because I think we, you know, can generally agree if we're talking about a god, we're talking about something that does not have an objective reality. It has the subjective reality, you know. Um, though I guess in general they're they're basically three ways you might

approach the concept of a god. Um. So, either our words and images are describing something that does have a reality. You know, you're going with the idea that that that God or God's they have an objective reality. In our word and images are describing something, uh that actually exists. Another way of looking at it would be all of our words and images are describing something that exists purely

in the domain of myth. Uh. So it is, you know, it's it's entirely dependent upon these various depictions, but it has its own important reality as well. But then you could say that you could also look at it and say, well, our words and images are describing or embellishing some feeling or array of feelings or experiences that do have a reality. Um. So you know, I was thinking like if I was just if I was asked draw a picture of your hunger, and I drew a picture of like an angry face goblin.

You know, like that is that is serving as a like you could almost you know, lean into that and say like this is this God represents my hunger, you know. So it's it represents something that has an objective or at least objective reality within me, but it is it is not based on an actual creature or sentient existence somewhere. Oh yeah, I see what you're I think I see

what you're saying. So it is interesting how in all of our human attempts to represent ideas like God's, there's this constant process of bouncing back and forth between some kind of vague sense of meaning that we feel internally subjectively and then some external representation. Um. And so like the uh that that maybe the way of God is depicted, whether figurally or non figure, really represents something people feel, some association they have with the presence of this God

or the idea of this God. But then of course once it is depicted, that feeds back into how people think about the God, and so it creates this feedback loop. Yeah, and it can create all sorts of opportunities, but also all sorts of challenges and and outright problems and depictions of gods and key religious figures like you know, I'm in my mind instantly goes to the various depictions of of Jesus that you see in Christian traditions, because you

really see, you see so many different versions. You see you know, depictions of of of Jesus as a as a Middle Eastern individual. You see depictions of of Jesus in which Jesus has African features, in which he has highly Caucasian features, in which he has Asian features. You

see depictions of of Christ particularly. There's some interesting medieval trends where that lean into the feminine nature of Christ and depict a very feminine uh Christ, which I think has and certainly had to the people who leaned towards that interpretation very positive ramifications for the way they beheld the divine, but clearly for others it was a problem. Uh.

And and they they they took issue with it. Uh. They are also monstrous depictions of Christ where you know, people uh where and especially in the medieval period, they leaned into trying to use uh, fantastic variations on Christ's swarm in order to try to relay information about theological concepts like uh, you know, the Trinity by showing Jesus with three heads or three faces, or there was one I think Jesus had like a bird's knack or a bird's beak, and it had to do with this saying

about about that the time it takes words leaving your heart to reach your mouth, and how you know, Christ would be very um patient in the way that he would express himself, and therefore he has this like long long neck and bird head stuff like that. And then he also today, I mean, on the other side of the feminine Christ, you also will find just at times just laughably masculine Jesus's you know where it's like he's just tremendously ripped, like the like the crib, like the

cross of the crucifixion is some sort of exercise machine. Sorry, I was thinking about a specific example that came to mind when you were talking about images of Christ from the Middle Ages that could look monstrous if if certainly viewed from the outside without the you know, the interpretation. Uh, like when they're supposed to represent a theological concept. And I was thinking about Christ Pentocrat or do you know this one, the one where I do off hand, maybe

I would recognize it if I saw it. Uh, I think you would, because these tend to be the images where not always but in in some depictions, Christ is shown as having a sort of divided face where one side of the face looks different than the other side of the face, like one side of the face the

eye looks different than on the other side. And I think this is sometimes interpreted to um to represent God in in both of his forms, Like it represents a theological concept that God, you know, maybe both fully human and fully divine at the same time. And that's shown by giving him, you know, two different faces smashed together that looked like they're drawn by two different artists. Yeah, it's almost like Christ is is using his Instagram filter for half of the photo and in the other half

is just you know, all natural. Yeah. I think that the specific example I'm thinking of where the face is divided like that is the Christ Pantocrat at the at St. Catharine's Monastery in the Sinai Peninsula. Yes, I think that's that looks to be what I'm looking at right now, And yeah, it's it's a it's an interesting image especially.

I wonder what it would be like to look at it if you did not know what was going on there, you know, uh, you know why there appears to be like it's I want to be clear, it's not like a straight up batman's tooth face scenario, like you could easily look at this image of Christ and miss what

was going on there. Yeah. So I guess one of the things I'm trying to to say here is that, Yeah, anytime you depict a god or a goddess or you know, anything from a pantheon like this, anytime you depict them as a human being, is you depict them physically, you lean into an anthropomorphic vision of what they are. Like. There's just so many there's so much stuff that you end up drawing in. There's so much human body language

and and physicality. There various uh you know, cultural associations, um, you know, etcetera like it. There's there's so many ways that you can get it right and get it wrong that you can convey very specific meanings. Uh, some complex theological problem ms while you could also potentially create new theological problems. Um, you can create heresies in the eyes

of others, etcetera. Thank Thank Now, in exploring this topic, one can of course drift towards the absolutes traditions that are very strict um in um an iconism and those that don't seem particularly concerned with it. But uh, ultimately I thought it might be more illuminating to at least first consider a case where both seem to be employed. So we're gonna turn to another paper from that that

same publication. Uh. This is by David L. Haberman titled drawing Out the Iconic in the an Iconic Worship of Meme Trees and go Varden Stones in Northern India, published in the journal Religion. So. Haberman is a professor of religious studies at Indiana University Bloomington's and has long been fascinated by Hindu worshipful interaction UH as he calls it, and an area of particular interest for him is worship

involving an iconic objects, specifically trees in northern India. He even wrote a whole book on this particular topic inten titled People Trees, Worship of Trees in northern India. Okay, so this would be an example of worship of trees that aren't just being uh worshiped as trees, but in some sense stand in for the power of a particular god. Right and in this article he points to the worship of trees, mountains, and rivers as an iconic objects of devotion.

Name Trees in particular are considered to be the embodiment of the goddess Sitala, while the stones of Mount Govarden are the embodiment of Krishna. Now this is of course particularly interesting because both of these deities certainly have have

described and depicted forms anthropomorphic forms in Hindu traditions. Krishna, of course, is a major deity the eighth Avatara New an important figure in the Mahabarata and often described as a blueskinned humanoids, sometimes depicted as a child, even often shown with a flute. Sitalia is an incarnation of pavaty cure of diseases, often depicted as a maiden riding a donkey with a broom to cleanse away the germs and a pot uh full of pulses in cold water to

also help in the In the curing of diseases. So Hindu iconography, of course is very rich, at very detailed, highly symbolic, and also highly anthromorphic, or at least that's where I think a lot of our minds tend to go. Uh, you know, we think of these very ornate depictions of the divine in which there are a lot of symbols, a lot of you know, their multiple arms in many cases holding multiple objects, and they all mean something. Likewise, there may be a vessel a vehicle that they're writing on,

you know, and that also has meaning. And so like the whole image is, it's conveying a lot the information. It's not just mere uh you know, it's not just merely a fantastic other worldly representation, though I guess there's an aspect of it as well. But there's a lot of information in the image. Yeah, that I would agree with that they often feel highly informative, even sometimes maybe

kind of busy. Yeah, But the specifics that that Haberman gets into her fascinating here because he points out that in Banaras, on the banks of the Ganges in northern India, you can find people worshiping Sitala, both in anthropomorphic or iconic form and engaging in an iconic worship of the tree as a focus that name tree that we mentioned earlier, And he describes conversations with devotees here and points out that both are considered important forms of the goddess um

and so this this is one of the things that's really I really liked about this particular particular paper because it was a lot of there are a lot of like interviews fragments in there where he's quoting people that he talked to about it, like asking them, well, how do you relate to the to the god or goddess in this form versus this other form or both? So he just he ultimately touches on these two concepts. One is uh murder rupa and the other is uh proctor rupa.

And the murder rupa as he describes is quote the embodied form of divinity that has been ritually installed in the shrine. So it's anthropomorphic shaped like shaped by human hands, and priests have also invited the divine into it via specific rituals that established the life breath inside of the statue or the form. But then the proc three rupa, however, is the natural form of divinity that appears without the

aid of any human intervention. So the idea is, yes, the the God can be found saying this tree or this mountain, but it is there already naturally, whereas in the in the icon, we have to have somebody create it and then it has to be uh, it has to be made sacred through the intervention of humans, then

by the intervention of priests. This is the picturing of God almost as a kind of liquid substance in a way that can that can pour into different kinds of vessels, and some in the natural world in which the God has poured into already, and there are others in which the God can can pour in once it's been prepared and sanctified. Yeah, so the devotees here that you talked to, he writes that they pointed to, say the tree, for example, as the prior and most important form of the God.

Now and again these are just individuals he talked to. This doesn't mean like this is not like a necessarily universal opinion on the matter. But they were telling him that, yeah, it existed before the temple, before human made images came along. But it doesn't seem to be an either or scenario. You can get engage with these deities in both ways. You can choose to go iconic or an iconic, like depending on you know which route you want to take personally.

And he writes that there does seem to be a strong preference of some um Hindus for the natural forms. And a lot of this comes down, uh, he writes, to the multiple or even innumerable forms of Hindu deities. So Krishna, for instance, I mentioned you know that sometimes he's depicted as a as a baby. You see this kind of like toddler Krishna, who is is kind of mischievous,

and then you see the adult Krishna. But even the adult Krishna, depending on how he's depicted, he might might be depicted as more of a philosopher, he might be depicted as a strategist or a warrior um. But as Habermin points out, this means that the fixed form of the handcrafted icon limits you to the form it presents, while the an iconic form allows you to engage which with whichever version of that god you want to align with, like which form suits you best in general or at

a given moment. That's interesting. I did not think about that, But yeah, now that seems obvious and introspect that the the aniconic representation of a god would seem to give the God more power to realize different forms. It makes the God more conceptually protean that you know, can can

be a shape shifter of sorts. Yeah. Yeah, And and again I think it touches on like some of these ideas that was expressing earlier about how any version, any depiction of a of a god or a divine being or an important religious figure, like you're going to draw in all of these associations, and and what the one that is attractive to this person may not be attractive to this person, the one the the the like the version of Krishna that is important to you in the

morning might not be the one that you need in the evening. Uh. That sort of thing that seems to

be the point of what he's saying here. Oh and by the way, with in particular when we're talking about Krishna Um, it's the So there's this this mountain, Mount Govardan, and this mountain itself may be seen as an an iconic focus, but also there's a tradition of using stones from the mountain gearage stones and uh and I'll get into a little bit of the details about how uh some people interact with these stones here in just a minute.

But let's turn back to the name trees um so Haybrimamin points out that this is just one of several key sacred Hindu trees uh And there are sacred trees in most cultures, and some scholars think that tree worship might well be one of the most archaic forms of worship. There are important symbols that are trees found in Buddhism as well, and um and and they and even in Buddhism they also have often take on this an iconic focus as well. But the name tree in particular is

long lived. It has medicinal uses and they were that, you know, stuff from the name tree was used in treatments for pox uh. And also they are incarnations of Satalia. And he writes that some sacred trees are said to take on darker qualities at night um, which reminds me a little bit of our discussions of beans, you know, the idea that at night, maybe some sacred trees are not safe to be around. But he stresses that that's not the case with the name. The name is sacred

and positive all of the time. It's the sort of sacred tree that you would want in your yard. You would want it as a kind of protector for you and your family. And this is interesting. Worshippers don't tend to worship all the name tree, so it's not a matter of like that name tree and that name tree, and this one and the one down the road and the one uptown, but rather one or two that they've

forged a relationship with. Now, as for the stones of mount good Varden Habremin points to an account in the the Bakavita Purana in which Krishna takes on two forms at once, both as a boy lifting up the mountain and the mountain itself, and the mountain again is sacred. The mountain is Krishna. The sacred stones of the mountain are Krishna. So you might engage with Krishna or the idea of Krishna through the contemplation of the mountain itself. But as Habren points out, that's kind of it's a

big mountain. You can't that might be a little challenging to really like take it all in. So you have this particular stone from it that you forged a bond with and this is important, like this is your stone, but it is also Chrishna, so you have ownership of it, but it itself is also the divine and so you know it's it's on one level. You know, we're used the point here where we're thinking about. Okay, I can see where like the stone is an an iconic version

of Krishna. I can look at it, and I can I can imagine these various anthropomorphic ideas of Krishna, but it itself is not anthropomorphic. But there's also what Haberman calls the quote intentional anthropomorphism of all of this, and and this seems to be quite literal, not merely leaning into the human like qualities of the stone, but actually adding quote eyes, ornaments, clothing, and sometimes even arms to

the garage stones. The process is is said to give form to the formless, to imbue personality, and above all allow for the growth of relationship, to strengthen this bond between the worshiper and this um, this item that is aiding them in their worship. So I think this is a great example of how the the iconic versus an iconic categories are not always cleanly separated, and they form a kind of spectrum where each tradition can easily blend

into the other one. So here here it sounds like you've got something that begins as a classical an iconic index of of divine presence. It's a object from the natural world that doesn't really take a human or animal form, but just indicates to the believer that somehow the divine is present when you are in the company of this object. But then you can start dressing it up in increasingly anthropomorphic ways, right, yeah, And if if anyone wants to look up an example of this, uh, the garage stones.

The way that it's spelled in this article is G I R I R A J. And yeah, there's there. It's it's beautiful the pmples I was looking at in the photos provided with this this paper, because there's it's not it's not like full on anthropomorphic. It's um like like I don't want to overstate it, like it doesn't look like a little person, but like you can certainly still see the formless in the form, if you know what I mean. You know, it's like it's not like

a straight up Mr. Potato Head or something. And actually there's documentation of not just the stones, but the same thing happening with the neeme trees right right, and with the name trees. This same practice takes the form of first wrapping the trees with fabric and then eventually attaching a face mask of the goddess to the tree as well. And again this is these are quite quite beautiful. You can look up examples of of this. But one of the interesting things with this is that he points out

that there's a process with the name tree. So you don't just add all of these things at once, you kind of you you start with the bear tree, and then you begin to add the wrap and eventually the face. So again Haberman right that this anthropomorphism it serves to

intensify the personal connection with the god or goddess. It brings the worshiper closer, and it's also said to draw the deity out of the stone or in this case the tree more as well, which I find quite interesting and he he From here, he goes on to discuss just the idea of anthropomorphism in general, and he argues that these examples should force us to reconsider anthropomorphism to a certain extent, because, especially in in the modern world, and in the Western world, there are a lot of

negative connotations that are that are thrown at anthropomorphism, especially in the sciences. And and we've discussed this as well, like there's there's this um you know, you shouldn't anthropomorphizes everything, especially if it's a study. You don't want to anthropomorphize your say, experimental rodents, right. That anthropomorphism in the context of the sciences usually is is a pejorative because it

means you are making unjustified assumptions. You are assuming human like qualities of saying animal or something like that when those aren't necessarily actually there. Yeah, and and even in the arts too, you see this trend um Joe, and I assume you encountered this as well. And like creative writing courses and all um. I remember I had a creative writing professor who who who talked about uh, student writers anthropomorphizing like mad gods, which I have always stuck to.

I think I know what you mean, But do you do you have like an example in mind, like um, just in the way you describe everything, Like if you're setting the scene where instead of saying, you know it was it was a dark and stormy night, you might just go overboard and say like the you know, like the storm clouds were battering and assaulting the castle. Um,

clouds were angry. Yeah, the clouds were angry, etcetera. And if you you know, it's one of those things where I get it's like spices and something right, and certainly you can overdo it and and uh, and I think that's what my teacher was, it was criticizing in that case. Yeah, I know what you mean. Now, I think it's especially true of a lot of like younger writers who are trying to find ways to write expressively. One of the easiest ways to do that is to imbue non human

objects with human characteristics. That that's just like one of the easiest places to go to if you're trying to find a way to say something in a creative way, right, But then, yeah, ultimately it ends up overbalanced. And that's ultimately not how we interact with the world usually though, as we'll get to I mean, anthropomorphism is something that our brain easily does, so a case can also be

made that we we do live in a highly anthropomorphic world. Um. In this paper, though, Habrman points to eighteenth century philosopher David Hume, who argued that anthropomorphism was a cognitive strategy for coping with insecurity about the world and that it was an aspect of quote vulgar religion and ignorance. And these attitudes also influenced Edward B. Tyler, who's regarded as the founding father of anthropology, who also had a negative

view of the anthropomorphism of non living things. So for a while, anthropomorphism was just looked down upon, almost as a kind of insult to human personhood at times, like you know, we're the only well we're the only persons, you know. Don't don't turn everything else into a person

as well? It reduces what we have. But Habrmin points out that the more we learn about, say, facial recognition, and the human brain and its role and how we function, that this casts a different light on anthropomorphism, especially the sort of anthropomorphism on display in the prior examples. Here, He charges, quote anthropomorphism creates an empathetic connection with non human agents, So what's wrong with this if it benefits

the human involved? Right? Uh? And Haberman argues, you know what's wrong with it if it benefits some targets of anthropomorphism as well. Such as Mother Earth and environmental campaigns. You know, the idea that well, you know, maybe somebody doesn't care as much about about helping out the environment if they're thinking about it is just place and setting. And you know, this, this this unpersoned world we live in.

But if you start calling it mother nature, if you start sort of dragging the you know, basically the rough idea of the goddess into it, then uh, then it makes people maybe care a little bit more because you're not just hurting the planet, you're hurting a person. You're hurting an individual. I can totally see that. But I can also actually see the exact reverse, where you know, you've probably heard people say things anthropomorphizing nature in a

way that's like, uh, we don't need to worry. You know, mother Nature can take care of herself. You know, we we don't need to. It doesn't matter what we do, She'll take care of herself. Right. And then well, of course also there are examples of people saying, oh, mother Nature strikes back, you know, the wrath of mother Nature.

And I don't know, I guess you could you could probably make a case for their situations like that, where you start talking about things as just an act of God as opposed as to an active environment or uh, you know. A part of saying, um, you know climate change, etcetera, you you can sort of take human responsibility out of the scenario by saying, well, clearly the gods are at it. Again,

what can you do? So in closing Hyman Rights quote with regard to the cases under consideration, the anthropomorphic adornment of a name tree or govarden stone brings forth its divine personality. It is always there, but the ornamentation makes it more fully perceptible. The anthropomorphic appendages, then are key to the development of a close relationship with divinity in these forms, and as we have seen, intimate relation reality is the very goal of the religion associated with Govardin

stones and certain trees. I conclude by hypothesizing, then that the transformation of an iconic objects into anthropomorphic icons, what Michael Actor calls anthropomorphic iconicity, most commonly occurs and in increasing degrees in a religious cultural context wherein relationality is highly valued. Now, obviously this is again it is a particular case within a particular culture, and we do have to be careful about drawing, you know, universal aspects of uh,

an iconism out of these examples. But I think this is very interesting to consider, you know, the the idea, this sort of interplay between um, the aniconic and the iconic, and and even engaging with with concepts of deities by

utilizing both of these. Yeah, yeah, And I do wonder that does raise a good question like, yeah, is um would anthropomorphizing or iconic representations be more common uh in religions or interpretations of religions that highly value the idea of a personal relationship with the God or an intimacy between the believer and the God. Yeah. So I think this whole scenario does it raises a number of questions, you know, like what happens when we give God a face?

What happens when we we work to prevent that face from manifesting or we limit or prohibit the ways in which that face is manifested? Is there a tendency to give God a face anyway, even if you know, through mental images, if visual images are prohibited, and so what's and also what sort of things can happen when someone

else gives God a face? For you? Uh? You know, I again that comes to mind when I think about these various visual representations of Jesus that you see in different modes of Christianity, Like what happens when someone says, hey, here's your here's your big muscle Jesus. Uh. You know that that may not be the version of of Jesus that really resonates with you the most. It might be a form that scares you a bet and it's is you know that you get into a lot of these

complications with specific imagery like that. I think some of the questions you just raised will really be illuminated by some examples we look at in episode two. I was gonna talk in this episode about the concept of divine emptiness, but I think we need to call part one here and we can come back to that in the next episode. Now, in the meantime, you know, obviously there's more that we want to unpack on this topic, but feel free to

go ahead and right in with with your thoughts. Um. Sometimes those are those are really interesting emails where they come in sort of halfway between a conversation. So sometimes you bring up something that we're going to get to in the next episode, um, but sometimes not. So you know,

it's it's always great to hear from our listeners. In the meantime, as you would like to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you can find them in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed, which you can find wherever you get your podcasts and wherever that happens to be. We just ask the rate, review and subscribe if the platform allows you to do so. Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer Seth

Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.