What’s the Matter with You, Rock?!: What the Study of Daoism Can Say about Religious Images

What is it about?

Talking about what religious objects do is difficult. Part of that difficulty lies in culturally-defined anxieties over how images and objects relate to idolatry. On the other hand, shifting culturally-determined worldviews on images and object potentially shifts the discussion. Here, we paper introduce the relatively under-studied world of Daoist ritual as an alternative model for discussing what images and objects can do. Daoist ritual is filled with images and objects used to frame the performance and express how the effective power of the ritual. By focusing on one ritual scroll of the Golden Portal, this paper seeks new avenues to discuss what images and objects do. To help navigate around the difficulties that anxieties over objects and images present, it discusses the Golden Portal scroll through Nina Simone's version of the song "Sinnerman." Thus, it shifts the focus from a question of what can we say about what images and objects mean, to a question of what can we say about what images and objects do.

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