The Discernment of Images

Especially (but not only) with regard to pop-culture depictions, modern polytheists often find ourselves needing to distinguish sacred images in which a God is robustly present, from those which are not (literally) inspired in such a way.

This is not a new problem.

In his commentary on Plato’s Parmenides, Proclus offers us some helpful observations:

Suppose someone has seen Athena herself… If, after encountering this vision, [that person] should wish to paint a picture of the Athena he had seen and should do so; and another man who had seen the [statue of] Athena of Phidias, presumably in the same posture, should also want to put her figure into a picture and should do so, their pictures would seem to superficial observers to differ not at all; but the one made by the artist who had seen the Goddess will make a special impression, whereas that which copies the metal statue will carry only a frigid likeness, since it is the picture of a lifeless object.

Proclus, Commentary on the Parmenides, col. 851–852, trans. Morrow and Dillon; brackets and capitalization mine.

We can get a further sense of that “special impression” from Damascius, the last head of the Athenian Academy, a few generations after Proclus. Here Damascius is discussing an Egyptian philosopher named Heraiscus, who had attained the Orphic goal of “becoming a Bacchus”:

Heraiscus had the natural gift of distinguishing between animate and inanimate sacred statues [agalmata]. He had but to look at one of them and immediately his heart was afflicted by divine frenzy while both his body and soul leapt up as if possessed by the God. But if he was not moved in such a way, the statue was inanimate and devoid of divine inspiration.

Damascius, Life of Isidore/Philosophical History, trans. Athanassiadi, §76E; brackets and capitalization mine.

But we shouldn’t think that this is exclusively the gift of some small minority. Elsewhere in the same text, Damascius describes his own experience of seeing a particular statue of Aphrodite:

Upon seeing it, I fell into a sweat through the influence of divine terror and astonishment and my soul was filled with such joy that I was quite unable to go back home. I went away several times only to return to that sight again. The sculptor has blended into it so much beauty—nothing sweet or sensual, but something dignified and virile: clad in armour and as if just returning from a victory, with an expression of joy.

Damascius, Life of Isidore/Philosophical History, trans. Athanassiadi, §63.

I would suggest that something like this exquisite blending of joy and holy terror is available to most of us, differing (if at all) only in frequency and/or intensity from the experiences of Heraiscus and Damascius. I would also be so bold as to suggest that once you’ve had such experiences, they’re quite unmistakable, to such an extent that while I can recall that I’ve had them, I’m unable to “imagine myself into” one of them; I simply recognize them in the moment, as something beyond what my own imagination, left to its own devices, could ever generate all on its own.

(And to be even more bold: If you don’t know from experience what I’m talking about, and need a baseline, you might consider going, reverently and respectfully, to a local Hindu temple, where you can be quite confident that the sacred images have been fully animated through the appropriate and traditional rites, and where visitors are quite often welcomed. Be sure to do this piously, and not voyeuristically, out of respect for the Gods and Goddesses whose homes these temples are.)

Finally, I love the image that comes to us from the Orphic and Platonic traditions (but that I think is much more widely applicable) of the Gods as fountains. They’re exuberant, abundant, constantly gushing up and spilling over, spreading Themselves and Their gifts in all directions. With that in mind, an image (or other representation) that draws me into that exuberant flow is likely to be a place where They’re genuinely, actively working, even if there’s still work for me to do in discerning the details of how and why.