ABSTRACT
We use all our senses to produce worthy images of Him, and we sanctify the noblest of the senses, which is that of sight. For just as words edify the ear, so also the image stimulates the eye.1
It is obvious from these words that an ikon is not something vaguely or sentimentally ‘religious’, but, quite the contrary, very definitely incarnate. One of the problems in speaking of religion and the arts at all, but especially of religious mysticism and the arts, is that one is constantly subjected to a confusion between a genuine aspiration towards the sacred and mere romantic sentimentality: the word ‘spiritual’ is often used misleadingly and quite wrongly in this context. It is for this reason that I quote the words of St John of Damascus, and bearing this incarnate conception of religious mysticism in mind, pose the question: can music also be a vehicle for mysticism in a similarly incarnate way?
