From the Dionysian Artist: A note on sacred art, unique expressions of deity, and the inappropriateness of harassing folks whose images of the gods you don’t like.
I try to conduct myself with a general rule of “don’t piss on someone else’s joy.” The world it hard enough without flamewars over someone having fun wrong.
This is even more true with spirituality. It is not up to us to dictate to the gods how they enter the lives of others, in what forms or by what means. It follows that it’s not up to us to sit in judgement on whether or not someone else is doing it wrong. We’re perfectly free to not worship with folks whose ideas and methods we don’t like. We’re perfectly free to engage in debate with willing folks as to whose methods are better by some standard.
But threats against artists who have a different vision of the gods than one has? That’s right out.
2010 The Bacchae, directed by Staffan Valdemar Holm
In the last week fellow devotional artists have been complaining about criticism directed towards them because of their depictions of gods or for not following ‘proper’ methods of tradition. Ptahmassu Nofra-Uaa has even stated (publicly on facebook) that there has been threats and personal attacks against him for depicting Set…
This is really disturbing, especially in that these criticism and threats are sourced from supposed ‘pagan’ / polytheists. So I thought I’ll put forth some recommendations when dealing with divine art.
1. Foremost anyone who threatens an artist or encourages destruction of divine icons should be ostracised from the community. Iconoclastic behaviour should never be tolerated.
2. Regardless of skill, technique, manner, style, medium – so on, if a devotional artist calls there art that and is intended as a holy icon, it should be treated as such. It does not matter…
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