Icons of Power: Ritual Practices in Late Antiquity (review)

Abstract

The first goal Naomi Janowitz sets for this study "is to illuminate how ancient practitioners understood their rituals to work" (xviii). These practitioners include pagan theurgists, Neo-Platonic philosophers, alchemists, Jewish rabbis, and early Christians. Janowitz focuses on the "theories of efficacy" underlying the conviction held by these widely variegated groups that their rituals work. "The second goal is to demonstrate that the semiotic vocabulary developed by modern anthropologists and philosophers of language offers us precise tools for analyzing the Late Antique ritual texts" (xviii). Janowitz achieves both of these [End Page 579] goals admirably. She successfully utilizes the complex notion of "icon" as the key to unlocking perceptions of ritual efficacy. In light of this semiotic tool, sounds, actions, and objects—in combination or alone—are seen as sources of power employed to achieve ends that range from impressing friends by filling a room with smoke to attaining divinization.