In the practice of religion, a cult image (or idol) is a human-made object that is venerated for the deity, spirit or daemon that it embodies or represents. Cultus, the outward religious formulas of "cult" (meaning religious practice, as opposed to the pejorative term for a potentially dangerous "new religion"), often centers upon the treatment of cult images, which may be dressed, fed or paraded, etc. Religious images cover a wider range of all types of images made with a religious purpose, subject, or connection.
Read more about Cult Image: Ancient Egypt, Classical Greece and Rome, Opposition From Abrahamic Religions, Idols in Mecca, Christianity, Jainism
Famous quotes containing the words cult and/or image:
“The cult of art gives pride; one never has too much of it.”
—Gustave Flaubert (18211880)
“... But all the feelings that evoke in us the joy or the misfortune of a real person are only produced in us through the intermediary of an image of that joy or that misfortune; the ingeniousness of the first novelist was in understanding that, in the apparatus of our emotions, since the image is the only essential element, the simplification which consists of purely and simply suppressing the factual characters is a definitive improvement.”
—Marcel Proust (18711922)