“Icons exist to convey the highest cosmological, philosophical and theological ideas…Vibrations are caught in color and form and can still be heard.”
~ Richard Temple, Icons and the Mystical Origins of Christianity
Icon, or eikon in Greek, means image or likeness. Images are “written” with prayers rather than “painted,” and this figure of Sophia, the Divine Feminine, is depicted as an angelic figure with red wings reigning over the cosmos with earth as her footstool. In one hand, she holds a staff; in the other, a scroll as a symbol of the Word, the Bible. The red, is cinnabar. The background is 23.8 caret gold leaf.
Katriina Fyrlund of Varberg, Sweden, the writer of this icon, gets all her minerals from Russia. She grinds them and then mixes them with egg yolk and a bit of rye beer to make a tempera which is clearer and more transcendent than oil paint. Then she covers the completed icon with a sealer only the Russian monks know how to make. It contains ox gall, crushed black berries, crushed rowan berries and linseed oil among other things to create a safe surface, she says, that will last for 500-600 years!
Icons are not realistic images but deeper stylized fragments of a spiritual reality—a way into the invisible so we can better sense the whole concept. They are codes, painted with great attention to detail as an aid to prayer.
According to iconic legend, Luke, the evangelist painted the first icon of Mary caressing her child. He painted it on a large piece of the table from their home. As a result, icons ever after have been created onto wooden planks.
For years, Luke’s icon was kept in Jerusalem and then it gained a reputation for protecting the place where it resided, so it was taken to protect Constantinople. Subsequent copies were made and one eventually made its way to Russia to protect Moscow from Tamerlane and in 1395 it took up residence in the Dormition Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin. It currently resides in a Russian museum and is called Umilinya Mother of God.
Another very old icon of Sophia hangs in St. Sophia Cathedral in Novgorod, the oldest church building in Russia proper. As you can see, it is very similar to the one Katriina used as inspiration. Iconographers copy. That’s what they do. And they do it with great vigor and care. Katriina wrote my icon after one hanging in Moscow's Sophia Ascension Cathedral.
Icons are called windows into heaven. After they are painted, icons are blessed in a worship setting. My “Sophia” icon was blessed on 7-27-08 in an historical Episcopal church near Randolph, Vermont under brilliant summer light that bathes the sanctuary through its clear 18th century windows. The congregation was a part of the blessing in which the priest said:
O Lord our God, Who created us after Your own Image and Likeness; Who redeems us from our former corruption of the ancient curse through Your human befriending Christ, Who took upon Himself the form of a servant and became man; Who having taken upon Himself our likeness remade Your Saints of the first dispensation, and through Whom also we are refashioned in the Image of Your pure blessedness;
Your Saints we venerate as being in Your Image and Likeness, and we adore and glorify You as our Creator;
Wherefore we pray You, send forth Your blessing upon this Icon, and with the sprinkling of hallowed water
Bless and make holy this Sophia Icon unto Your glory, and grant that this sanctification will be to all who venerate this Icon of Saint Sophia and send up their prayer unto You standing before it;
Through the grace and bounties and love of Your Only-Begotten Son, with Whom You are blessed together with Your All-Holy, Good and Life-creating Spirit; both now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen
Icons can open up the inner senses, unveiling for a brief time the dazzling brilliance of God’s beauty inside everything and everyone.
After the blessing, we sang together a hymn which has as its third verse a reference to God as Mother/Sophia. She is often described as birthing creation out of chaos... “from the nothingness of space, kindling life where all was empty, turning chaos into grace: when we feel confused and fruitless, dawn upon our restless night; give us faith's imagination, hope's renewing, love's delight.” (Carl P. Daw, Jr.)
Kyriacos C. Markides directly addresses the question of how and why some people seem to "worship" icons, kissing them, bowing before them. Isn't this a form of idolatry? In his book The Mountain of Silence, he relays a conversation he had in Cyprus with Father Maximos at the Panagia monastery. I have excerpted and edited Father Maximos' response. You can read the whole conversation in his book, from pages 71-77:
Idolatry means to mistake this icon for Christ Himself...Do you take pictures of people? Relatives you love? Suppose you kissed the picture of a loved one that was no longer in this life. Would that be idolatry?...Suppose Jesus was here today and you took a photograph of Him and you placed that photograph in your home and kissed it every day. Would that be idolatry?...God Himself instructed Moses to create angels out of wood and place them on the Ark of the Covenant. Do you think God would violate His own commandment?...All icons are miraculous insofar as they depict one Person...But it is not the icon that generates the miracle. Neither is it the wood nor the paint. It is the Person represented in the icon...the personal characteristics of the saint are still retained, although in a transfigured form...
The struggle, with the entire being--soul, mind and body--aims at divinization...The perfected individual needs neither icons nor chants nor liturgies. But we are not perfect...Remember, whatever good or bad things happen to us, they have only one single purpose, to awaken us to the reality of God, and help us on the path toward union with Him. There is no other reason for being born on this planet, believe me. It is up to us whether or not we take advantage of these wake-up calls.
I believe Sophia, through this "writing" of her, and through other icons, paintings, and mosaics, reminds us that it's time to wake up. It's time for each of us to help her create beauty out of the chaos surrounding us.
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