ABSTRACT
As you enter an Orthodox church, your vision is often overwhelmed by the extraordinary amount of icons decorating the walls of the church.2 In front of the icons you see churchgoers making more or less the same gestures of crossing and prostrating themselves, kissing the icons and mumbling low prayers. The objects of these acts are “dead” artefacts that by their very nature are unable to heed or reciprocate the actions performed by the person before them. If you are invited to an Orthodox Christian’s home, you are very likely to be shown his “icon corner,” the domestic altar or “little church” in front of which the same actions one sees in the “real” church building can be performed.
