The double function of representation as “standing for” and “making present again” is explored in two case studies of ancient Egyptian cult statues and medieval Christian eucharistic transubstantiation. The experience of the “real presence” of the transcendent accomplished by ritual action is, in both cases, mediated by regimenting metasemiotic texts that proclaim and justify sacramental ontologies of transcendent realities that provide, in turn, models for their very representability in perceptible semiotic mediators. The concept of the “circle of semiosis” is proposed as a counter to scholarly efforts to anchor the variability of solutions to the paradox of representing the nonrepresentable in terms of their positioning relative to an “axial breakthrough” or to analyze metasemiotic texts as being primarily post hoc interpretations of universal psychological tendencies to see beyond the here and now.

There is a very general problem of representing transcendence in different culture: how to make present what is by definition beyond human experience. Many cultures forbid it, other as the Christian one allow representations of some divine presence in the world. Jewish tradition is in general strongly anti-iconic and especially forbids any representation of divinity. But in the most sacred place of Judaism, the Holy of Holies, the book of Exodus prescribes the presence of two statues of “cherubim,” which are identified with a class of angels. This article follows the motif of cherubim in the biblical and postbiblical literature, showing that they are not representations of transcendence, but rather indirect representatives of the Jewish people as they provide a device for realizing the state of the people and its relation with the divinity, a metapragmatic sign for the paradoxical presence of the transcendence in the midst of it.

After pinpointing the semiotic mechanism of relics, this essay highlights the danger of their being turned into fetishes with reference to the Tractatus Garsiae, a hilarious medieval parody that wittily uncovers the semiotic proximity between the collection of fetishized relics and that of fetishized money. In subsequent sections I point out how reliquaries have been adopted as an antidote to the fetishizing of relics and explain how that works through a theoretical analysis of the human anthropology of wrapping. After indicating some possible directions for further analysis (in order to deepen the typological and comparative knowledge of reliquaries), I conclude the essay by focusing on a case study of a pragmatically felicitous instance of a reliquary: the semiotic “open work” of Francis Xavier’s seventeenth-century reliquary in Goa.

What is more vivid and earthly than death? A dead body does not involve problems of representation of transcendence. If death is meant not as an ending point but as a transition between life and afterlife, the theoretical problem is more complex. The Triumph of Death (1336–41), frescoed by Buffalmacco inside the Camposanto of Pisa, shows a personification of Death, half human and half devil, that connects two different semantic fields: /life/ and /nondeath/. Its terrible figure acts as an agent of transformation from the earthly life to the new life, hellish or heavenly. Several scrolls, mostly along the frame, underline this interpretation: words and images establish a new level of communication, acting as a guide to the beholder to look inside himself and get ready for the consequences of dying.

Much has been written about the life and work of Meher Baba (1894–1969), a spiritual master who gave up speaking at age thirty-one. Despite observing silence for the rest of his life, about forty-four years, Meher Baba remained highly eloquent and prolific. He continued to communicate both colloquially and metaphysically, which included giving detailed explanations on the origin and nature of existence. During most of his life he used a series of nonverbal systems that culminated in a sui generis gestural language. This progression of semiotic modalities is inseparable from the meaning of Meher Baba’s message. We look at this unfolding semiosis from the angle of a transcendental experience—the state of awakened deep sleep, turiya, that Heinrich Zimmer calls simply the silence.

Memorial tablets (ihai) and memorial portraiture (iei) are important parts of Japanese funerary ritual, serving as focal points during the wake, funeral, and subsequent ritual observances. Far more than static material representations of the deceased or the social relationships they inhabited, these memorial objects display a complex and complementary relationship with the deceased and serve to ground the persistent spirit of the departed (known as hotoke), which is simultaneously of this world and transcendent to it. Furthermore, I demonstrate how both everyday and ritual interactions with ihai and iei reveal a dynamic and decades-long semiotic process that guides this entity through its transformation from a living human being through a “lifetime” as a hotoke and, ultimately, into a household ancestor.

The Quyllurit’i (Shining Snow) pilgrimage is the most important of the Southern Peruvian Andes. The shrine is located at the bottom of a glacier and currently attracts all the sociocultural diversity present in the regional society of Cuzco. During the main days of the pilgrimage this usually quiet place is inundated by innumerable groups of musicians and dancers and by tens of thousands of pilgrims. These particularities also attract foreign New Age pilgrims, as well as researchers and film crews. I claim, discussing Durkheim’s elaboration on “collective effervescence,” that the strong emotional experiences of the pilgrimage are functional to the reproduction of coexisting heterogeneous ways to experience and understand the pilgrimage. Most pilgrims are vocal in expressing their experience of transcendence in Quyllurit’i, though they have different ideas about who the transcendent agents addressed by the rituals are, what their relation to the materiality of the shrine is, and how to recognize their agency. The article analyzes the different ways in which New Age pilgrims, Catholic priests, and pilgrims of a highland Quechua community frame and experience the pilgrimage through different assumptions about the nature of society and how signs function in the world.

Tōru Takemitsu (1930–96), dean of Japanese composers, wrote scores for 100 films. In many cases, he faced the task of giving presence to an unseen, suprahuman force or being. This article deploys musical semiotics and topic theory to examine a gesture I call “distorted iconism,” in which an aural resemblance is altered so as to suggest transcendence. I analyze distorted iconism in Takemitsu’s film work, looking initially at Kwaidan, Hi-Matsuri, and Woman in the Dunes. In these films, Takemitsu needed to indicate that what we see is insufficient, and used such devices as delayed sonic cues, distorted instrumental sound, and strongly marked static music to create a sacred space in which the unseen and transcendent manifests. I use these examples to set up a close investigation of Ran, in which Takemitsu effects complex layers of meaning that both enrich and subtly contradict the director’s vision.