Looking up to and looking down from the skies in the Orthodox sacred geography

Abstract (English)

Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork amongst the Russian Orthodox, this paper will consider how Orthodox Christians relate with the skies as an icon, what the skies are an icon of, and how this informs the way that the Orthodox relate with outer space. This question – how to relate with outer space – is one that has been frequently addressed to Father Iov, cosmonauts’ spiritual father at the Star City Temple, and I would like to focus here on two of the recurrent motifs in Father Iov’s explanations. In these conversations Father Iov would often stress that one should be able to distinguish Heaven from outer space, when looking up at the skies, and strive for the former not the latter. On other occasions, he has also highlighted that spaceflight’s gift is in the opportunity to admire the Earth as God’s creation, when looking down upon it from outer space. I will unpack both of these narratives in relation to the Orthodox sacred geography. Based on Father Iov’s advice with regards to how one should look up to and down from the skies, I will formulate an Orthodox framework for relating with the ultraview (the view of the universe) and the overview (the view of the Earth from space) for Orthodox spacefarers.