Index
Arts
Art forms where a tradition becomes visible or audible.
- Icon painting
The sacred image tradition of Eastern Christianity — not paintings that depict holy persons, but windows through which the holy persons are present. Iconographers write icons; they do not create them.
- Islamic calligraphy
The art of writing the Arabic script as spiritual practice — developed in response to Islam's restraint on figurative religious imagery, it became the central visual art of the Muslim world.
- Qawwali
The devotional song-form of South Asian Sufism — poetry of love for God sung in a spiraling ensemble of voices, handclaps, harmonium, and tabla, capable of carrying listeners into ecstasy.
- Thangka
Tibetan scroll paintings used as meditation supports — precise iconographic depictions of buddhas, bodhisattvas, mandalas, and lineage masters, painted by trained masters within ritual constraints.