Experience of a Devotional Prayer in Front of an Icon, Reflected in the Icon Itself

Abstract

In this paper, icons are understood as holy images in a broad sense, including murals, mosaics and miniatures. An icon is considered as a channel of communication with the sacred reality revealing itself through the icon. The numinous experience of ascetics during their devotional prayers in front of icons is described and conceptualised. This experience is categorised following its increasing intensity: (1) visions of a tunnel extending beyond the icon; (2) gleaming of icons; (3) apparitions of Christ or saints depicted on the icon; and finally, as a climactic point, (4) rapture or ‘energy discharge’. In particular, the images of a tunnel, transcending the icon and extending beyond its surface, can be found in some miniatures, frescoes, and icons of the 13^th – 15^th centuries as well as in some patterns of spatial ornamentation in Serbian and Bulgarian churches. The author argues that images of glowing icons reflect real ecstatic experience evoked when praying in front of icons. Then the paper turns to icons that represent apparitions of Christ or other holy figures to ascetics praying in front of their icons. Finally, the topic of ‘hidden’, i.e., veiled or curtained icons in Cypriot monasteries is explored. This tradition, which implies that a person can be “punished” for looking at or touching a miraculous icon, has, as the paper suggests, a completely different meaning. It is not addressed to all pilgrims, as it was customarily understood, but only to ascetics. According to Gregory Palamas, a true ascetic is able to sense uncreated energies, and this ability is a danger and a grace at the same time.