Becoming Orthodox: Transcendental pathways as intimate structures of subjectivity

Abstract

What is it about Orthodoxy that helps the worshipper build the “right” interiority? It is shown here how the transcendental may be perceived as a sonorous cosmology. The chanting of a semi-intelligible, liturgical language that can appear at times as more signs than words can be endowed with a transcendental appeal. Orthodoxy is a sensorium and the commingling of the senses is conducive to a semiotic ambiguity. This article, which weds the anthropology of the senses with the anthropology of religion, claims that the transcendental appeal of chanting can be explained by this ambiguity and liminality. This reflexive self-ethnography of conversion to Orthodoxy shows how God might appear as accessible through stimulation of the senses. A transcendental pathway does not tend to emerge from dogmatic prescription or doctrine, but is instead a subjective, experiential phenomenon.