The Secret Life of Statues

Angela Voss

In this paper I want to explore the question of representation, resemblance and identity in
figurative sculpture. By this I mean considering the varying degrees by which a statue may
be seen to be merely ‘standing for’ or imitating the being it portrays, sharing its qualities in
some more dynamic way, or completely embodying it as a living presence. I was led to this
enquiry by the ancient magical texts of the Hermetic and neoplatonic traditions in which
telestike or statue-animation played a major part in theurgic rituals, rituals which were in
aid of the alignment of the human soul with the gods and the eventual realisation of its
own—embodied—immortality. Both humans and statues could become divine through a
process of cultivating an intense form of symbolic perception which brought divine and
human worlds into single focus.
I shall be exploring the theme of theurgy a little later, but first I want to point out
some of the difficulties we have in our age in entering into a relationship with images in the
same way as our pre-Enlightenment ancestors. We are inevitably caught in a Cartesian
duality that distinguishes between thought and action, conception and perception; our
rational mind has been trained to override our intuitive response and we no longer trust in
the ‘marvellous truth’ revealed to the imagination through sense-perception of image. The
claim that a statue could also be a god would not stand up to any empirical investigation.
But to apply this rational mode of perception to a time when artistic representation was a
way of exposing the innate sympathies of an animated cosmos, where images were signs of
a deeper but hidden reality which permeated and ordered the whole of creation, is to risk
gross misunderstanding and distortion of a common human experience. Gary Tomlinson
talks of “the tiresome play of power by which we habitually make others submit to our
ways of knowing”,1 and we must beware of even asking such questions as “how did statue
magic work?” in a technical sense, for this desire for explanation implies a forced
reshaping of an essentially magical world view to fit the literal paradigms and causal
assumptions of our own.

1
Gary Tomlinson, Music in Renaissance Magic (Chicago University Press, ),

1
 I am interested in responses to images in which the distance between the observer,
the observed and its referent closes in, where the distinction between subject and object is
overcome. In the ‘magical’ world view of the practitioners of theurgy and natural magic,
any ritual object or sound was understood to resonate with the deity it invoked through its
participation in chains of sympathy which exist like hidden organising structures
throughout creation. (SLIDE 2) In these vertical series, archetypal principles govern an
unfolding of like qualities from heaven to earth, so for example the principle of Love
reveals itself through the Goddess Aphrodite, the planet Venus, the Venusian individual,
the dove, the lily, lapis lazuli and copper. In a world of sympathetic resonance, like attracts
like, and the magician or the artist knows how to create images that intensified the
attraction between archetype and its representation in stone, paint or sound. The creation of
images then was not simply an artificial activity, but an ontological one, a deliberate
“entering into the play of forces” as Plotinus would put it, to create a power-point which
would, through force of similitude and resonance, bring the hidden life of the cosmos into
the sensory range of the participant or viewer.
In this way, the sign was identical to which it pointed, the resemblance was directly
perceived: it was immanent in the world, it revealed a truth through its presence. It was
already there to be recognised. For us, this is no longer a truth—resemblance is put to the
test of comparison; it is displaced onto the ingenuity of the artist or composer, it becomes a
mere representation of something, something that we can either be “willing to believe” or
not. We can see this rupture between appearance and essence beginning with Plato, for
whom most images of things in this world cannot touch an ‘authentic’ reality and indeed
are opposed to it as merely fictive and illusory; only a philosopher who has seen the true
immaterial Form would have the ability to convey it through art. Through Plato’s analysis
of mimesis, art becomes separated from philosophy and therefore distinctly untrustworthy,
as Iris Murdoch observes: (SLIDE 3)
The artist begins indeed to look like a special sort of sophist; and not the least of
his crimes is that he directs our attention to particulars which he presents as
intuitively knowable, whereas concerning their knowability philosophy has grave
and weighty doubts. Art undoes the work of philosophy by deliberately fusing
knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description.2

Once the sign took on the function of representing the reality that was now separated from
it, how very difficult it became to put aside the autonomy of the rational mind! Hierarchies

2
Iris Murdoch, The Fire and the Sun (Chatto and Windus, 1977), 32

2
of similitude were no longer a source of true knowledge about the world, rather the
identities and differences of things were analysed and categorised. The post-modern
philosopher Michel Foucault has lamented this split between participation and theoretical
analysis: (SLIDE 4)
The simultaneously endless and closed, full and tautological world of
resemblance now finds itself dissociated and, as it were, split down the
middle; on the one side, we shall find the signs that have become tools of
analysis, marks of identity and difference, principles whereby things can be
reduced to order, keys for a taxonomy; and on the other, the empirical and
murmuring resemblance of things, that unreacting similitude that lies
beneath thought and furnishes the infinite raw material for divisions and
distributions. On the one hand, the general theory of signs, divisions and
classifications; on the other, the problem of immediate resemblances, of the
spontaneous movement of the imagination, of nature’s repetitions… the sign
ceases to be a form of the world, and it ceases to be bound to what it marks
by the sold and secret bonds of resemblance or affinity.3

Somewhat paradoxically, an antidote to Plato’s division between ‘seeming’ and ‘being’ is

found in neoplatonic image theory, where for the first time the imagination is granted the
power of philosophy in its ability to apprehend and represent the immaterial world of
divine ideas. “Nothing can stop the imagination” says Philostratus in the 2nd century CE,
“for it proceeds undismayed to the goal which it has itself conceived”. 4This is the
phantasia by means of which classical sculptors such as Phidias and Praxiteles were able to
astound their contemporaries, and which opened a channel to the divine through human
creativity. Through the transforming agency of imaginal perception, images could become
symbols, offering the possibility of an unbroken train of vision from sense-object to noetic
revelation. Now all this is by way of introduction to my chief concern in this paper, which
is with the power of the imagination as a mode of knowledge, and how poetic vision may
be harnessed as an authentic means of research, despite the irrevocable shift in human
consciousness that has occurred in the past four hundred years. Plato’s metaphor of the
cave may still have relevance in illustrating the danger of taking our prevailing mode of
literal vision as the only one. If we are to heal the split between the intuitive imagination
and the rational mind, and to value participatory knowledge as a mode of deep
investigation into the nature of our relationship with image, we must not resist the lure of
the image itself.

3
Michel Foucault, The Order of Things 1966 (repr.Routledge, 2002), 57-8
4
Quoted in Jean-Pierre Vernant, Mortals and Immortals ( ).

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 On that note, let’s consider a poem by the German lyric poet Rainer Maria Rilke,
Archaic Torso of Apollo.5 (SLIDE 5) As Rilke contemplates the statue, he becomes aware
of a life or power with it, an inner brilliance which sees him. This experience of
recognition, of direct contact, makes him realise with a shock that he must change his life.
Why should this be? His reaction raises the question of emotional engagement with an
image that goes far beyond a conventional aesthetic response. Rilke’s relationship with the
statue is no longer ‘I – it’ , as Martin Buber would put it, but ‘I-thou’. His attention to it
seems to allow an inner eye to open and a voice to speak – with rational mind disengaged,
the sturdy defence of common sense subdued, his imagination is free to dialogue with –
well, what exactly?
Most of us tend to strongly resist the emotions aroused in us by images, and deny an
affective response for fear of losing intellectual control over our object of scrutiny, a
reaction explored by the Jungian psychologist Aldo Carotenuto in relation to the supremely
irrational experience of falling in love: (SLIDE 6)
Whenever one rejects the experience of love by rationalising it away, one is
obeying a collective law that has been internalised. We have all absorbed
this law that negates the free realisation of desire in the face of life’s
continual invitations. Thus while life conspires to arouse us, it can – and
does – often happen that we deny our desire in obedience to an external veto
that by now is fatally alive within us without our even being conscious of it.6

In relation to statues, the ‘external veto’ is that matter is inanimate – it is only stone after
all, so it is foolish to feel fear, or desire. As David Freedberg has pointed out in The Power
of Images, “we go into a picture gallery, and we have been so schooled in a particular form
of aesthetic criticism that we suppress acknowledgement of the basic elements of cognition
and appetite, or admit them only with difficulty”.7 Or as James Elkins bluntly puts it,
“when pictures are openly out to move us, we find reasons not to be moved”.8 He laments
the fact that we no longer feel comfortable crying in front of paintings, and partly blames
the deadness and artificiality of the exhibition space with its bland, anaesthetising
information guides and “low-volume emotion”.9 Galleries secularise the sacred, as though

5
Stephen Mitchell (trans.) Ahead of All Parting: Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke
(New York: Modern Library, 1995) at http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15814;
reproduced by permission of Modern Library.
6
Aldo Carotenuto, Eros and Pathos(Toronto: Inner City Books, 1989), 22
7
David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago
University Press, 1989), 17
8
James Elkins, Pictures and Tears (
9
Elkins,

4
creating a comfort zone to minimise the possibility of direct encounter with a power greater
than ours. “Everyone knows more intimate encounters are might be possible”, says Elkins,
“That’s why some paintings are masterpieces. But we also like them safely locked away in
museums”.10
(SLIDE 7) However, Freedberg suggests that sometimes we are confronted with
such a powerful fusion of an image and its prototype – and this is particularly the case with
statues – that mental detachment becomes impossible and a living presence is sensed
which, he says, “disturbs, attracts and threatens to shake the literal foundations of our
reality”.11
We live in an age where the creations of the media continually work to undermine
our capacity for recognising the voice of what writer Ursula Leguin calls the ‘real myths’.
Soul-less, fabricated glamour vanishes as soon as it appears, but Leguin argues that no
reason or cynicism can destroy the power of the timeless truths expressed through our
mythologies. (SLIDE 8) “You look at the Blond Hero”, she says, really look, and he turns
into a gerbil…but you look at Apollo (SLIDE 9), and he looks back at you. When the true
myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message. You must change your life”.12
So we return to Rilke, and the question of how the true myth may work its magic,
given the defences of the conscious mind. At the brink of taking a leap of faith into the
unknown, it will retreat to image-theory, or transfer its attention to historical or cultural
contexts, or the biography of the artist. We can always safely reassure ourselves that we are
only looking at stone or paint and any intuition of living presence is safely relegated to the
domain of superstition or groundless fantasy. But what if the instinctual response were to
be trusted? Something interesting would happen, for we would find ourselves confronting
an insoluble paradox. The statue is undoubtedly made of matter—and yet it also seems
alive. This is an uncomfortable space to find oneself, but the reality of that paradox is
clearly demonstrated by the apparent need to censor images of provocative subjects. After
all, if they were merely inert material, why would they be considered subversive or
corrupting? The ancient Greeks understood Eros to be a daimonic power which threatened
to undermine civilised human behaviour if not safely contained and directed, but we have
no vehicle or channel in our lives to work with this highly-charged, often overwhelming

10
Elkins,
11
Freedberg, 60
12
Ursula LeGuin, ‘Myth and Archetype in Science Fiction’ in The Language of the Night, Essays on
Fantasy and Science Fiction (New York: G.P.Putnam’s Sons, 1979); at
http://www.polyamory.org/~howard/Poetry/rilke_archaic_apollo.html

5
emotional force – no collective rituals to tame and transform it. We are left confused,
ashamed of the exposure of that raw place, therefore it is best suppressed or eliminated
from our view. (SLIDE 10) Added to which, our Christian-Platonic legacy of the past two
thousand years in the West has left us wary about the nature of sensuality and desire. In
not allowing Eros to reveal his divinity through the arousal of our senses, we have
separated soul from body, sacred love from profane passion, and ultimately divinity from
matter. The virgin Mary inspires devotion, but not desire, whereas classical and
Renaissance sculptors knew that the perfection of the physical body could inspire a
passionate connection that was at once sensual and spiritual. It would seem that just as the
God of Genesis formed man in His own image from the dust of the earth and breathed
divine life into him, so artists knew the secret of exposing this divinity as if through a
mirror-image, enabling humans to recognise in themselves a quality of immortal beauty in
the midst of transient existence. (SLIDE 11) How easy would it be to breathe life into an
ancient Greek goddess—or a Michelangelo? (SLIDE 12). Do we not sense that our desire
to touch these bodies would in some miraculous way allow the marble flesh to soften?
Furthermore, supposing we allowed our attention to focus, our desire to grow, our longing
for contact to intensify? We would then be engaged with what C.G. Jung identified as the
active imagination, the technique of concentrating on an image, either internal or external,
so intensely that it begins to live, or become ‘pregnant’ with possibility. He says: (SLIDE
13)
Looking, psychologically, brings about the activation of the object; it is as if
something were emanating from one’s spiritual eye that evokes or activates
the object of one’s vision. The English verb ‘to look at’ does not convey this
meaning, but the German betrachten, which is an equivalent, means also to
make pregnant…And if it is pregnant, then something is due to come out of
it; it is alive, it produces, it multiplies. That is the case with any fantasy
image; one concentrates upon it, and then finds that one has great difficulty
in keeping the thing quiet, it gets restless, it shifts, something is added, or it
multiplies itself: one fills it with living power and it becomes pregnant.13

(SLIDE 14) The idea that passionate engagement may awake a stony heart is
perhaps nowhere better expressed than in W.B. Yeats’ poem ‘The Statues’,14 and it is at
this point of a radical shift in perception that we enter the realm of telestike.

13
C.G.Jung, Interpretation of Visions, privately mimeographed seminar notes of Mary Foote, 1941,
Vol.6, Lect.1, May 4, 1932,3; quoted in Joan Chodorow (ed.), Jung on Active Imagination (London:
Routledge, 1997), 7
14
At http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/william_butler_yeats/poems/10415

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 In the ancient Hermetic texts we learn how one of mankind’s greatest achievements
was the creation of living statues: “statues ensouled and conscious”, says Hermes
Trismegistus, “filled with spirit and doing great deeds; statues that foreknow the future and
predict it by lots, by prophecy, by dreams and by many other means”.15 Through “holy and
divine mysteries” the priests implanted the souls of daimones or living cosmic spirits into
the ritual statues, using a mixture of plants, stones and spices whose “natural power of
divinity” resonated sympathetically with the god. The spiritual presence was preserved in
the statue by constant sacrifices, hymns and music which conformed to its nature, and it
was heard to speak as an oracle to the celebrants. The neoplatonist Proclus, in the fifth
century CE, tells us that “by means of vivifying signs and names they consecrate images
and make them living and moving things”;16 rites not unlike those of concealing relics of
statues of saints to infuse them with divine potency. Through these devotional acts the god
became present in its own image, which then functioned not only literally as an object but
symbolically as a synthema. It was the power of the symbol that “made the impossible
happen”17 – in bringing the stone to life – but only through the perception of the devotee,
which had ceased to be limited to its outer appearance or form. When a state of
contemplative awareness had been reached, marked by the ritual of consecration, matter
was transfigured and was seen to wake. In Greek the word for this active form of
contemplation is theoria, from which we derive the word ‘theory’, but it is no abstract
conceptualisation. Theoria is productive and dynamic, resulting in efficacious action that
opens a channel for the anima mundi - that all-pervading spiritual energy of the Platonic
cosmos - to infuse the material world. To those outside the sacred space, no doubt stone
remained stone – for the smile or voice of the god would be outside their range of
perception.
(SLIDE 15) The writers of the Hermetic texts were speaking of rituals and
traditions which emerged out of the mysterious depths of ancient Egypt, where one of the
words for sculptor meant “he who keeps alive”. Funeral effigies created in as perfect
resemblance as possible to the dead person would be believed to attract his or her ka or life-
force and provide it with another home or container. (SLIDE 16) In the case of the
Pharoah, this procedure would ensure both his immortality and the continuity of his power
in Egypt. (SLIDE 17) The ka was often given its own representation, such as this ka statue

15
Asclepius 24 (trans. B. Copenhaver, Hermetica [Cambridge University Press, 1989]), 81
16
Proclus, In Timaeum 37 c-d, quoted in Freedberg, 88
17
Peter Struck, Birth of the Symbol (Princeton University Press, 2004), 213

7
of King Hor which would originally have been painted and decorated with gold leaf.
Notice how the other worldly presence of the spirit is suggested by the luminosity of the
eyes, which were intended to be as life-like as possible, to emphasise the penetration of
divine vision into this world. We will return to eyes a little later, but I should emphasise
here that for the Egyptians, as for Hindus today, the divine empowerment of matter was
central to religious life and it was the function of the artist and priest, through skill and
appropriate ritual, to endow the figures with the faculty of sense-perception.
In both cultures, such statues were, and are, not art, as we would call it, but serve
the functional purpose of housing divine life. (SLIDE 18) Ceremonies such as the opening
of the mouth and bringing food would ensure the presence of the ka and such statues were
often placed deep within the tombs of their dead counterparts, unseen by human eyes.
(SLIDE 19) In Hindu ritual images of deities are dressed, bathed, put to bed, given sight
and breath in rites of consecration to effect their incarnation into this world. As Diana Eck
observes, because the images of the deities are seen to embody, not merely represent, the
divine presence, they “facilitate and enhance the close relationship of the worshipper and
God and make possible the deepest outpourings of emotions in worship”.18
We may perform a similar ritual when we surround ourselves with images of our
dead, from monumental sculptures (SLIDE 20) to photographs on the mantelpiece; and we
may perhaps ask ourselves whether the sense that the dead live on in some way is
perpetuated not only by the attractive power of their likeness, acting as a ‘bait’ to draw
their life force, but also by the quality of our attention and emotional response, as if our
nostalgia and memory ignites the latent flame of vitality in their images.
Around the mid seventh century BCE the first Greek sculpture emerged under the
influence of the Egyptian style, and with it a new desire to create the perfect human form
with an idealised beauty that conveyed the serenity and perfection of the gods. (SLIDE 21)
The early Archaic statues of kouroi or youths in the full bloom of beauty and strength
reflected this particularly Greek aspiration for immortality. These naked figures were not
hidden way in tombs but placed proudly in shrines, on monuments or in public places for
all to admire. Life-size or more, the legs always in walking posture, their mouths slightly
open as if breathing, they radiated kallos and charis, beauty and grace. The Greeks called
them agalmata, “objects that through their high quality and craftsmanship inspire delight in

18
Diana Eck, Darsan, Seeing the Divine Image in India (Columbia University Press, 1998), 46

8
the viewer”.19 But an agalma affects the viewer precisely because it “prompts” the divinity
it imitates to respond through its charis, the mysterious charm bestowed by the genius of
the artist. Thus the soul of the dead hero, or the god, was lured into its stone form with a
magnetic attraction and could suggest through its gaze an alluring and enticing other world
– a world which was no longer impossibly remote. Such an intimation was fully intended
to arouse desire, the longing to return to a place where such beauty reigned. (SLIDE 22)
The equivalent female figures of korai or young maidens, with their elaborate hairstyles
and colourful garments radiated cosmos or the perfect orderly arrangement of ornament and
dress; never naked, like their male counterparts, their eternal youth and demure self-
containment were surely intended to suggest to the viewer that he or she too may transcend
the earthly limitations of time and decay. Deborah Tarn Steiner has suggested that it is this
other-worldly perfection of beauty to which we aspire in the cosmetic enhancement of our
all-too-human bodies, and even that which inspires our romantic love; “a work of art”, she
says, “does not owe its appeal to its resemblance to a living beloved, but the beloved
instigates passion precisely because he or she displays the properties that belong to finely
crafted objects.”20
(SLIDE 23) As the archaic style developed into the early classical, the monumental
youths and maidens metamorphosed into supple, agile bodies of such vital presence that
they were often bound or chained lest they should escape from their plinths. The mark of a
great sculptor was precisely his ability to infuse his creation with life. Diodorus Siculus,
writing in the first century BCE, tells us that the mythological sculptor Daedalus “in the
production of statues so excelled all other men that later generations preserved a story to
the effect that the statues he created were exactly like living beings; for they say that they
could see and walk, and preserved so completely the disposition of the entire body that the
statue that was produced by art seemed to be a living being”.21
The ideal of human beauty in the classical age took the form of the male athlete at
the height of his powers, and indeed a new genre of statuary – hollow bronze portraits of
champions – gained immense popularity. The aim of the sculptor was to ‘freeze’ the
moment of victory for posterity, and Pindar remarks that such sculptors were continuing
the work of the trainers in their quest to perfect the human body.22 (SLIDE 24) The
inscriptions on the statues’ bases described the heroic status of the athlete, and often

19
Deborah Tarn Steiner, Images in Mind (Princeton University Press, 2001), 116
20
Tarn Steiner, 195
21
Diodorus Siculus, 4.76, 1-3, quoted in Freedberg, 36-7
22
Pindar, quoted in Nigel Spivey, The Ancient Olympics 150 (see ‘Epinikian Statues’, 147-65)

9
implied an ambiguity between image and living subject . An anecdote related by Pausanias
tells of the statue of a 5th century champion named Theagenes who made various enemies
in his lifetime. When he died, one of them came to Olympia to whip his statue, but it fell
off its plinth and killed the assailant. The statue was then prosecuted, charged with murder,
and ‘drowned’ off the coast of Thasos. Thasos subsequently suffered crop failure, and the
Delphic oracle blamed the abuse of the statue; so it was duly recovered by fishermen and
re-dedicated, thereafter to be venerated respectfully. Pausanias concludes that it was not
only a wonderful work of art, but thaumaturgic or wonder-working, giving health and good
fortune to all who paid it homage, and indeed many copies of it were made for this
purpose.23
To prosecute a statue implies no doubt about its autonomous power. The classical
Greeks may not have yet developed theurgic methods of invocation, but perhaps that was
because they had no need to—life was self-evident, the distinctions blurred between statue,
hero and god. (SLIDE 25) Take also the image of the eromenos, the beloved youth whose
role in the culture of Greek homoeroticism was to arouse the eros or the erastai, his older
male admirer and educator. Could a boy of flesh and blood ever be a match for the
sculptor’s agalma, whose painted lips, bronzed skin and aloof untouchability were in
service to an ideal of androgynous beauty beyond the dreams of the most ardent pursuer?
The Greeks believed that erotic desire radiated from the beloved, kindling the pothos or
longing of the stricken lover which was not to be appeased, but to be led on to ever greater
intensity. In this sense, a statue fulfilled the same function, “just like a beautiful person”
says Tarn Steiner, “a beautiful work of art doubly energised the space between it and the
observer. Radiating grace, it attracted its victim’s glance and held it imprisoned.” 24 Unlike
a reluctant youth, however, whose combination of reticence and modesty would eventually
give way to the lover’s entreaties, a statue denies the physical fulfilment of love forever.
(SLIDE 26) Praxiteles’ stunned the classical world with his Aphrodite. For the first
time, the female form was deliberately given a sexual allure; look at me, desire me, but you
can’t have me is her message. So what is the poor lover to do, ignited with desire? The
famous anecdote of a man who stole into her shrine to make love to the marble goddess
(leaving an indelible stain) graphically demonstrates the irresistibility of her material form
– but where is the origin of her erotic power?25 We may imagine Aphrodite laughing at the

23
Spivey, 164
24
Tarn Steiner, 205-6
25
Recounted in Lucian, Amores 13-17; Pliny, Historia naturalis 36,20-21

10
clumsy attempt of her devotee to consummate his passion with her image – for she knows
that true union with her can only take place on another level, the place where her likeness
beckons. A mortal may only unite with a goddess in the imaginal realm of myth, no matter
how entrancing her earthly counterpart may be. But how we crave these images of
seduction, that prompt perhaps some long-lost memory. (SLIDE 27) In the realism of
photography and film the knife-edge of impossible desire becomes even more sharpened
and refined, for the model or the film-star are living, breathing beings, and yet still beyond
our reach. Plato would say of course that they must be, for the growth of the soul and its
awakening to its own divinity depend on the pain and frustration of unfulfilled desire.
Falling prey to the mighty daemon Eros means touching the quick of desire for possession,
and not stopping until the limitations of mortal existence have been seen through as the
greatest illusion of all. Can a statue be the starting point of such a spiritual journey?
Maybe not as many are seen today, alienated from their temples or shrines,
deformed, pale, unseeing. But how different they would look with their original paint,
even shocking, in their conflation of divine perfection and human warmth. And how
different they would look if they could see us. In both Egyptian and Greek traditions, the
most significant moment of the statue’s creation, the moment of animation, was that of the
painting in or inserting the eyes – and again it is Hinduism that preserves this in the ritual
of darsan. “Not only must the gods keep their eyes open”, writes Diana Eck, “but so must
we, in order to make contact with them, to reap their blessings, and to know their
secrets”.26 This was the moment of consecration, the ‘making sacred’, the point at which
the god entered the image and it became operative in the world, able to meet the gaze of the
onlookers. (SLIDE 28) In Egypt the eyes were often made of polished rock crystal which
imitated the human eye with startling precision. (SLIDE 29) But these eyes do not seduce
or invite the living, they penetrate into unseen realms. (SLIDE 30) The gaze of the Greek
hero however deliberately entices the viewer in the conviction that eros was contagious
through the eyes, and that love was born at the sight of beauty. If the statue can now see
us, we are no longer in control, but rendered vulnerable, less certain of our superiority. A
channel of communication has been opened which makes the question of representation or
identity far more ambiguous. (SLIDE 31) Take the Apollo from the West Pediment of the
Temple of Zeus at Olympia, captured in stone as he arrests the fight between Lapiths and
Centaurs with his indomitable command, a monument to his civilising influence over

26
Eck,

11
humanity. (SLIDE 32) What happens to our relationship with this statue when his eyes are
restored and he sees? (SLIDE 33) And what happens when his familiar worn and damaged
greyness is bathed in vibrant colours? (SLIDE 34) There is a recognition. In bringing their
statues to life in this way, the Greeks created the perfect conditions for the working of
telestike or statue magic, where the form of the deity resonated so harmoniously with its
divine essence that they became fused. Proclus recognised that in theurgic ritual a superbly
crafted statue became a receptacle for a mysterious transcendent presence, which he called
“divine illumination”.27
This brings us to neoplatonic philosophy and the function of images in the soul’s
journey from the world of multiplicity back to its source in the One, the fount of all being.
We have already suggested that images could be regarded as baits or lures to catch the
spiritual power of the anima mundi that pervades the cosmos, and Plotinus explains how
this can happen: (SLIDE 35)
“I think that the wise men of old, who made temples and statues in the wish that the
gods should be present to them, looking to the nature of the All, had in mind that the nature
of soul is everywhere easy to attract, but that if someone were to construct something
sympathetic to it and able to receive a part of it, it would of all things receive soul most
easily. That which is sympathetic to it is what imitates it in some way, like a mirror able to
catch the reflection of a form”.28
Images then may ultimately be receptacles for the Divine Ideas themselves, as in
Plotinian metaphysics, the properties of the Ideas are sown in the world soul as it mediates
between heaven and earth. If the gods or daemons who inhabit the immortal realm are
given form, they may then act as messengers, contacted in the ritual action of the theurgists
who know how to conform their own souls to the divine. In the famous magical text, the
Corpus Hermeticum, Tat the initiate says (SLIDE 36) “there are reflections of the
incorporeals in corporeals, and of corporeals in incorporeals – from the sensible to the
intelligible cosmos, and from the intelligible to the sensible. Therefore my King, adore the
statues, because they, too, possess Ideas from the intelligible cosmos”.29
The rituals of statue-animation would have formed an integral part of the theurgic
rituals practised by Iamblichus and Proclus. This ‘divine work’ had as its ultimate goal
nothing less than the divinisation of the human soul, as the theurgist used ritual objects as

27
Proclus, In Platonis Cratylum Commentaria 18.27-19.18; quoted in Struck, 236
28
Plotinus, Ennead IV.3.11
29
Corpus Hermeticum 17 (trans. Copenhaver, 62)

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symbols, to move to ever deeper levels of perception not through discursive understanding
but through awakening a sense of primordial participation with the gods, a sense which is
prior to any rational judgement or analysis. As Gregory Shaw explains, “the rituals of
theurgy allow us to move from the periphery of embodied awareness to its divine centre.
Ultimately, [theurgy] allows the gods to appear in embodied life, to reveal themselves in
human form through our mortal existence”.30 He adds that the gods do this not through
our “knowing, calculating or predicting”, but “by the quality and intensity of our longing”.
31
Or in the words of Proclus, symbolic properties of images “move everything towards the
desire of the good and this wanting produced in things is unquenchable”.32
Platonically speaking then, symbolic images engage us not just intellectually but
also emotionally, and crucially, it is the kindling of the desire and longing that allow us to
perceive them as symbols at all. In other words, symbolic perception is a mobile process
which progresses according to the intention and attention of the observer. Let us take this a
bit further now, and consider what the theurgists meant by moving from a condition of
separated knowing to a “unitary connection with the gods”.33 (SLIDE 37) Proclus speaks
of four different levels in which sense objects participate in divine life, and through which
we may respond to them. Firstly, they are quite simply sense-objects, seen literally as just
matter. It’s only stone or wood, we might say of a statue, expertly carved maybe, but the
bottom line is its materiality. Secondly, a statue may be seen as an image or representation
of something, such as a god – but as I suggested at the beginning, this move does not yet
bring the form into single focus as it were with its prototype. It is akin to allegory – it
remains a conceptual exercise. The key move is the next one, where the object is seen as a
reflection or imitation of something beyond it – it resembles and thus reveals a presence
which can only be grasped through an intuitive shift on the part of the viewer. This is the
moment of the shiver down the spine, the catching of the eye, the message to change your
life. Finally, the image is no longer seen as separate in any way from its immaterial
essence; the alchemical transmutation has occurred, the miracle is seen, the god and his
form are identical and the viewer participates in this identity. Not many of us could claim
to know what this means from experience, but Proclus would say that as a symbolic image
partakes of all these dimensions simultaneously, how far an individual proceeds purely

30
Gregory Shaw, ‘Astrology as Divination: Iamblichean Theory and its Contemporary Practice’
(unpublished paper, 2005), 5
31
Shaw, 2005, 6
32
Proclus, In Cratylem 30.19-32.3, quoted in Struck, 237
33
Proclus, In Parmenidem 847 (trans. G.Morrow and J. Dillon, Princeton University Press, 1987)

13
depends on how far he or she can extend his or her normal limits of vision. In this context,
there is no sense at all in asking black and white questions, expecting yes or no answers, or
holding conclusive definitions about truth or falsehood, reality or illusion. In fact what we
call ‘normal’ perception is thrown upside down, for to perceive the outer appearance as
most real is, from this perspective, the most preliminary and deceptive stage of looking, a
mere preparation for the more substantial revelation granted to the imagination. As Henry
Corbin has pointed out, this kind of vision is what turns an idol into an icon.
So to return to our Platonic lover, it becomes clearer why the statue or the beautiful
youth must not respond to his (or her) desire—in the impossible frenzy of unrequited
passion, the extreme tension produced forces the soul away from its imprisonment by the
literal world and impels it towards a condition of liberation, where if finds an affinity and
identity with the immortals. The lover comes to realise that in the contemplation of a
beauty that cannot be possessed, he is being asked to change, to awake to a new and deeper
perception of the world and union with it, for by the laws of cosmic attraction, soul will
always seek to unite with itself.
No one has considered the role of the imagination in this process more thoroughly
than Corbin in his studies of Islamic mysticism, with its Platonic and Hermetic
undercurrents. The mundus imaginalis as defined by Corbin is the very ground in which the
literal becomes transformed into the spiritual, the place of theophany and revelation, the
place where the human imagination may make contact with a creative source and allow it
to flow into the world. This is the active imaginative power that Jung was to explore in the
context of analytic psychology, and is very different from the fantastical meanderings of
human invention. (SLIDE 38) The visionary mysticism of Avicenna, for example,
emphasises the function of the imagination as a place of prophetic inspiration; the images
that are formed in it do not derive from external perception, but arise in the depths of the
soul through the agency of Angelic hierarchies and are then given material presence
through the object of vision. In this way such objects are reflected back to the soul which
transmutes them into symbols. For sages such as Ibn’Arabi, the power of the imagination
at the intersection between physical and spiritual realities becomes primary with an
autonomy and ontology of its own, and its own organ of cognition, the himma or creative
power of the heart. Corbin defines himma as “the act of meditating, conceiving, imagining,

14
projecting, ardently desiring”.34 It is a passionate force which can create changes in the
‘outside’ world, and when practised by initiated mystics, even ‘manifest’ a being external
to itself. Corbin says, “thanks to the active imagination, the gnostic’s heart projects what is
reflected in it (that which it mirrors); and the object on which he thus concentrates his
creative power, his imaginative meditation, becomes an apparition of an outward, extra-
psychic reality.”35 In ths way a theophany can occur, but only perceivable by others of like
consciousness. (SLIDE 38) On one occasion for example, the Angel Gabriel took the form
of a beautiful Arab youth, but only Ibn Arabi saw the Angel – his companions saw only the
youth. It is though the image – whether youth or statue – could provide the starting point
for the himma to create its own, internal image which then fuses with and transfigures the
external one in a dual movement of internalisation and projection. This double-seeing, a
seeing through, is instantaneous, as anyone who has fallen in love at first sight will testify.
It is an initiation, an awakening, and as Rilke discovered, can be life-changing.
We have come a long way from the experience of most of us when visiting an art
gallery, but I hope I have at least suggested that there may be more to visionary experiences
with statues than we commonly assume. I want to end with some examples of myths and
narratives that hold open the possibility that with a little divine help, humans may indeed
wake up the slumbering soul of the world through infusing it with passion. (SLIDE 40) We
all know the story of Pygmalion and Galatea from Ovid – the artist who created a statue of
the most beautiful woman, fell in love with her, and not daring to ask for the statue itself to
come to life, appealed to Venus to send him a wife just like her.36 But the goddess did
more than that, and when Pygmalion returned home from her shrine Galatea’s marble flesh
began to pulsate under his hands and her warm lips returned his kisses; “then indeed, the
astonished hero poured out lavish thanks to Venus; pressing with his raptured lips his
statue’s lips. Now real, now true to life – the maiden felt the kisses given her and blushing,
lifted up her timid eyes, so that she saw the light and sky above, as well as her rapt
lover…”
In Ovid’s story, the combination of Pygmalion’s longing, his invocation to Venus
and her response allow a miracle to happen – she ‘consecrates’ his act of creation by the
firing of Eros’ arrow, and as the goddess of Love, becomes present in Galatea’s image.
The artist’s intense longing for Galatea was not enough to bring her to life, but through his

34
Henry Corbin Alone with the Alone: creative imagination in the Sufism of Ibn’Arabi (Princeton
University Press, 1969, repr Mythos 1997), 222
35
Corbin, 1969/1977, 219
36
Ovid, Metamorphoses Book 10

15
ritual action the goddess gave a sign that she would intervene on his behalf. Perhaps the
message of this tale lies in the surrendering of human will to divine will, suggesting that
when human desire has the backing of the gods it may achieve its end, even in the face of
the impossible.
(SLIDE 41) The story of Eros and Psyche37 further demonstrates this theme.
Although Eros is in love with Psyche, she cannot see him, and in that sense she is like an
unawakened statue. When Eros visits her at night their union is not yet fully conscious, for
she does not know who he is. It is only when she drops burning oil on his shoulder and he
wakes that she recognises him as a god, and falls in love – but he flees, leaving her longing
for his return throughout the tasks set for her by his vengeful mother Aphrodite. When
finally Psyche appears to have failed and lost her life, Eros returns with his mother’s
blessing and revives her to marry him on Olympus. Here Psyche’s initial awakening leads
to separation from her lover – it was safe for her to be in the dark, not seeing her lover for
the mighty daimon he was. But the recognition of his true nature broke through, heralding
the need for profound inner transformation. For Psyche has to become divine—that is,
achieve an inner marriage in herself—before Eros can return to meet her. It is only her
yearning for her lover that keeps her focussed on her tasks, and which eventually softens
the heart of Zeus who orders Aphrodite to return her son to his beloved. Psyche is then
made immortal, and the child of their union is Pleasure. This myth conveys the message
that if Eros is glimpsed before the soul is ready he will flee, but the memory of the
intoxicating encounter is enough to fuel the longing of the soul through trials of strength to
an eventual everlasting union. The 18th century sculptor Canova has here depicted the
moment when Eros arouses Psyche from death with a kiss, and in many stories the kiss
becomes the ritual act of awakening or animating the slumbering soul. (SLIDE 42) After
the kiss, captured for eternity by Rodin, there is no going back to a literal perception of the
world, for it has become pregnant with possibility. This is very obvious in the fairy tale
The Sleeping Beauty, where the princess is sleeping like a statue, waiting to be revived by
the erotic desire of the Prince. (SLIDE 43)
(SLIDE 44) It is also expressed through Christian mythology, where we find the
active, male impulse moving, transforming and awakening the receptive female soul. In
one version of his genealogy, Eros is the child of Mercury – the messenger of the gods –

37
In Apuleius, The Golden Ass. See translation and Commenary by Erich Neumann, Amor and Psyche:
The Psychic Development of the Feminine, a Commentary on a Tale by Apuleius (Princeton University
Press, 1971)

16
and Venus. In the Annunciation, Gabriel takes on the role and announces the birth of the
divine child to Mary. Here, as in Apuleius’ story of Eros and Psyche, the awakening of the
soul leads to its pregnancy, and we return to the Jungian theme of pregnancy as a metaphor
for the new life that is born through the passionate engagement of the soul with the images
that arise from deep within the unconscious.
(SLIDE 45) Botticelli’s famous painting Primavera depicts yet again the firing of
the arrow of love, in the context of the neo-platonic spiritual agenda we touched on earlier.
Here we find the soul, personified as the Grace Chastity, inspired with love for Mercury
and fixing him with her gaze – but in true Platonic style, he is not interested in her, for he
looks towards the heavens, piercing the clouds with his caduceus, directing the force of her
love onwards and upwards. Instigating the whole procedure is Venus herself, presiding
over the operation of her blindfolded son whose action sets in motion the regeneration and
salvation of the soul. The mythological imagery here was undoubtedly inspired by the new
Renaissance Christian-Platonic vision of Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, for
whom the union of the divine feminine with the Mercurial logos signified the sacralisation
of nature; as indeed the woodland grove is deliberately intended to convey with its columns
of trees, central alcove and fusion of pagan and Christian symbolism.
(SLIDE 46) And finally, there can be no more dramatic example in art of the identity of
spiritual and sexual eros than Bernini’s The Ecstacy of St Teresa, setting in stone the saint’s
mystical experience of an angelic visitation of the most intense physicality:
“I saw in the angel’s hand a long spear of gold” writes Teresa, “and at the iron’s point there
seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to
pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave
me all on fire with a great love of God.”38
In all these narratives, it is the erotic encounter that transforms the soul through
impregnation, through the action of the divine masculine in the form of Eros, the Prince, or
the Angel. In all cases there is recognition,a seeing. Rilke sees Apollo, Psyche sees Eros,
Beauty sees the Prince, Galatea sees Pygmalion, Mary sees the Angel, Chastity sees
Mercury and Teresa sees God. Such seeing of Eros by the soul has ancient mythological
origins: (SLIDE 46) In the Corpus Hermeticum, the divine Hermes describes the
incarnation of humans on the earth as the result of a mutual contemplation between Nature
and Man, which results in their union:

38
St Teresa of Avila, The Life of St Teresa of Avila trans. David Lewis (London: Burs and Oates, 1962)
ch.29, para 17

17
 When nature had seen the beauty which never satiates of him who had in
himself all the energy of the powers and the form of God, she smiled with
love, because she had seen the image of the most beautiful form of Man in
the water and his shadow upon the earth. He, seeing a similar form to his
own in the water, fell in love with her and wished to dwell there. No sooner
wished than done, and he inhabited a form without speech. Nature, having
taken her beloved, enfolded him completely, and they united, for they loved
each other.39

(SLIDE 47) Our imagination is still gripped by the fascination of living statues. There are
many circus and entertainment companies who provide ‘living statues’ for celebratory
events, a mode of entertainment that has its roots in the European theatre tradition of mime
and tableaux, but which has now become part of corporate culture and even street life. The
advertising language used by these organisations plays on a secret desire that perhaps
statues should be able to spring to life: “Ancient white stone figures actually begin to
move” says one, “You draw near, suddenly YOU are the subject of interest”, and “with
elegance and grace, they come alive”40 (SLIDE 48). The paradox is reversed; these statues
really are alive, and yet convince the viewer that they are not. These party acts, in literally
bringing statues to life, breaking the taboo as it were, provide a kind of ‘quick fix’ in that
the imagination no longer has to do the work. The transformation from literal to symbolic
vision is never made, the divine is reduced to the human, nobody has to confront any life-
changing emotions. (SLIDE 49) And yet, what do the living statues themselves
experience, standing motionless for hours under peoples’ intense scrutiny? Do they find
themselves undergoing a kind of initiation into the world of the inanimate statue waiting to
be brought to life by human attention? Do they find out what it feels like to be made of
marble, knowing that at any moment someone may glimpse a flicker of life and see them
for who they truly are?
(SLIDE 51) Nor is the world of advertising immune to the power of telestike as a
bait for custom. In 1990 the Italian company Fendi brought out an advertisement for their
perfume called La Passione di Roma, in which a beautiful young woman is seen kissing an
ancient statue with an expression of intense longing. (SLIDE 52) Two years later, the same
young woman is seen in another advertisement, this time for a perfume called La Passione
Viva (living passion). But now the statue has metamorphosed into a handsome young man,
at whom she gazes rapturously – although in true Platonic spirit, his eyes do not meet hers,

39
Corpus Hermeticum I.
40
World Gate Entertainment, The Living Statues at
http://www/worldgateentertainment.com/The%20Living%20Statues.htm

18
but contemplate, like Botticelli’s Mercury, higher realms. The message is loud and clear –
if you use the right ritual substance and kiss passionately enough, you will indeed animate
your statue who will lead you to another world.

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