Everything about Cult Image totally explained
In the practice of
religion, a
cult image is a man-made object that's venerated for the
deity, spirit or
daemon that it embodies or represents.
Cultus, the outward religious formulas of "
cult", often centers upon the treatment of cult images, which may be dressed, fed or paraded, etc.
Religious images cover a wider range of all types of images made with a religious purpose, subject, or connection.
Cult images in Ancient Egypt
Apis Bull
Cult images in classical Greece and Rome
Statue of Zeus at Olympia
The
Parthenon contains a cult image of
Athena, the Greek goddess of civilization and the noble side of war. This cult image was done by
Phidias, the sculptor and head supervisor of building the
Parthenon. This cult image was used for religious sacrifices at this Athenian temple.
In
Greek and
Roman mythology, a "
palladium" was an image of great antiquity on which the safety of a city was said to depend, especially the wooden one that
Odysseus and
Diomedes stole from the
citadel of
Troy and which was later taken to
Rome by
Aeneas. (The Roman story was related in
Virgil's
Aeneid and other works.)
Opposition from Abrahamic religions
Members of "
Abrahamic religions" identify cult images as "idols" and their veneration as "
idolatry", the worship of hollow forms (Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians make an exception for the
veneration of saints, which isn't considered
adoration or
latria). The word
idol entered
Middle English in the 13th century from Old French
idole adapted in
Church Latin from the Greek
eidolon ("appearance" extended in later usage to "mental image, apparition, phantom"). Greek
eidos means "form"
(External Link
) as used by
Plato.
Idols in Mecca
Towards the end of the pre-Islamic era in Arabian city of
Mecca; an era otherwise known as the جاهلية, or
al-Jahiliyah, the pagan merchants of Mecca controlled the sacred
Kaaba; thereby regulating control over it & thus over the city itself. Innumerable people flocked here to place their idols in the Kaaba & in the process being charged tithes to place their idols in the
Kaaba, thus helping the Meccan merchants to incur substantial wealth.
By the time the
Prophet Muhammad was born, the city was a beacon for the pagan activities that surrounded the Kaaba; attracting countless peoples throughout the
Arabian Peninsula. Some six months before his birth, the Prophet lost his father & by the age of six, tragedy struck again when he lost his mother. Thereon he lived with his grandfather and then his uncle. The Prophet's uncle was a merchant, a profession the young Prophet eventually took up as well. It was on one of his travels that he met Khadijah bint Khuwaylid, the daughter of a wealthy merchant and soon to be his first wife. Theirs was an awkward relationship, for Khadijah was much older than Muhammad (the Prophet is estimated to have been twenty-five years of age and that Khadijah was fifteen years his senior, thus making her at least forty years of age) when, according to the Arab customs of the time, she proposed to him via her relatives.
Although their marriage was more for business than love, it was by all accounts a long and happy one, lasting a good twenty-five years. Yet for all of his wealth, the Prophet was still inclined to contemplative discontent and on a daily basis, he'd go up to a cave on Mt. Hira in order to pray and meditate, reflecting on his life's experiences that had changed him so much. In the year
610 the angel Gabriel appeared before the Prophet and told him that he was the Messenger of God. Soon the Prophet, who was illiterate, began to write down the revelations revealed to him by the angel Gabriel, forming the very first chapters, or
sura of the
al-Quran. Thus he began to preach monotheism (
tawhīd and
wāḥid), of the oneness of
Allah and urging his fellow Meccans to stop worshipping idols.
The Prophet's preaching incurred the wrath of the pagan merchants, causing them to plot against the young Prophet. The opposition to his teachings grew so volatile that the Prophet and his followers were forced to flee Mecca to
Medinah for protection; leading to armed conflict and triggering many battles that were won and lost, a war that finally ended with the
conquest of Mecca in the year
630. In the aftermath, the Prophet did three things. Firstly, with his companions he visited the Kaaba and literally threw out the idols and destroyed them, thus cleansing the Kaaba from the stains of Jahiliyyah. Secondly, he ordered the construction of a mosque around the Kaaba, the first
Masjid al-Haram mosque after the birth of Islam (although Muslim belief holds that the mosque was created by angels before the creation of mankind). Thirdly, in a magnanimous manner, the Prophet pardoned all those who had taken up arms against him. With the destruction of the and the construction of the Masjid al-Haram, a new era was ushered in; facilitating
the rise of Islam.
Cult images in Christianity
Christian images that are venerated are called
icons. Christians who venerate icons make an emphatic distinction between
Veneration and
Worship, though the proliferation of wonder-working images since at least the 4th century shows that the distinction is blurred in ordinary practice: see
Image of Edessa,
Veronica etc.
The introduction of venerable images in Christianity was highly controversial for centuries, especially in
Eastern Orthodoxy: see the
Byzantine Iconoclastic Controversies of the 8th and 9th centuries. In the West, resistance to idolatry delayed the introduction of sculpted images for centuries until the rise of
Romanesque art and the use of the
crucifix. The intensified
pathos that informs the poem
Stabat Mater takes corporeal form in the realism and sympathy-inducing sense of pain in the typical Western European corpus (the representation of Jesus' crucified body) from the mid-13th century onwards. "The theme of Christ's suffering on the cross was so important in Gothic art that the mid-thirteenth-century statute of the corporations of Paris provided for a guild dedicated to the carving of such images, including ones in ivory"
(External Link).
The 16th-century
Reformation engendered spates of cult-image smashing, notably in England and Scotland, the
Low Countries and France. Often the damage was concentrated on three-dimensional cult images, especially images of the
Virgin Mary and saints, but the
iconoclasts ("image-breakers") also smashed representations of holy figures in
stained glass windows and other imagery. Further destruction of cult images, anathema to
Puritans, occurred during the
English Civil War. Less extreme transitions occurred throughout northern Europe in which formerly Catholic churches became Protestant. In these, the
corpus (body of Christ) was removed from the crucifix leaving a bare cross and walls were whitewashed of religious images.
Catholic regions of Europe, especially artistic centres like
Rome and
Antwerp, responded to Reformation iconoclasm with a
Counter Reformation renewal of cult imagery. The cult of the Virgin Mary flourished, in practice and in imagery, and new shrines, such as in Rome's
Santa Maria Maggiore, were built for
Medieval miraculous
icons as part of this trend.
Jainism
The focus for image worship among many
Jains is the icon of the
Tirthankara in either a domestic shrine or temple shrine room. It appears that Tirthankaras can't respond to such worship, but veneration of the image can function as a meditative aid.
Although most worship takes the form of prayers, hymns and recitations, the idol is sometimes ritually bathed, and often has offerings of made to it; there are eight kinds of offering representing the eight
karmas of Jainism.
(External Link)
This form of reverence isn't a central tenet of the faith, and there seems to be debate about the value of this form of worship.
Further Information
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