Gestures and bodily movements play an important part in religious ritual and in religious conduct. Such behaviour derives its meaning from its relationship to the holy.

In proceeding to and from a holy place, a worshipper generally proceeds according to certain symbolic patterns: rectilineal, circular, and vertical. Rectilineal movement to and from a holy place is intended to gradually prepare the worshipper for the spatial encounter with the holy and after the encounter to remove him from the sacred sphere. Special streets for processions often are marked off or built to a temple or holy place, such as in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China. The great procession from Athens to Eleusis for participants in the mysteries possessed a symbolic meaning. Worshippers not only enter a holy place but may also walk around it. Rectilineal and circular movement thus complement each other. Movement to and from a holy place may also be vertical as well as horizontal, as to and from a holy place on top of a mountain or pyramid. All these various types of movement give expression to the symbolism of the holy way or path.

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The sacred dance combines rectilineal and circular movements and may also include hopping, jumping, and hand movements. Hand and finger movements in temple dances in Indian and other Asian cultures are strictly regulated and have a precise symbolic meaning. The liturgical dance in a rudimentary form was maintained for a long time in Christianity, as has been the procession. Dancing has not only a significative but also a magical function. It seeks to enchant the holy power.

Hand movements are widely used in ritual and liturgical actions; the touching of holy objects, materials, or people is performed according to a canon (rule) that precisely regulates these gestures and their accompanying prayers and blessings. The gesture of blessing may imitate a symbolic form, such as that of the cross in Christianity. Here the position of the fingers is regulated and has a special meaning, as is also true in the Hindu and Buddhist practice of meditation (mudras). Stroking, thrusting, striking, pushing, waving, and hand clapping also can be symbolical gestures. By raising hands in prayer, the worshipper approaches the realm of the heavenly gods; by kneeling, the realm of the underworld. This apparently was the original meaning of kneeling before it became an expression of humility. The bow as an intimated genuflection generally indicates respect. The kiss and the embrace—and sometimes also the actions of breathing or spitting upon someone or anointing a person with spittle—were originally magical manipulations; in later usage, they indicated union with or a strengthening of the community or the transferral or communication of power. The holy kiss, whether practiced or only verbally depicted, plays an important part in many religions. Standing is a posture of respect; sitting expresses the reception and acceptance of the sacred word or teaching. It is also the position for meditation as it is practiced in Buddhist monasteries. Symbolic gestures may be either individually or collectively performed.

Verbal symbolism

Gestures are usually accompanied by words. The spoken and written word in religion generally is not thought of primarily as symbolic but rather as a form of rational communication, of communication of thought. Despite its predominantly rational character in modern times, however, language does develop expressions that extend into the area of the symbolical. In its origin, language most likely was richly symbolical. Linguistic symbolism, however, has always had a certain tendency toward rational transparency and logical coherence, and thus words, objects, and pictures—in their origin as symbols—are very closely related. The visual value of the object and picture is later translated into language and enhanced by it.

Linguistic symbolism generally is metaphorical; the allegory, a particular development of the metaphor, symbolically represents an idea by means of a coherent complex of metaphors. Specific genres of narration and literature, such as myth, belong in this category. In a figurative, interpretative, and cryptic sense, names and metaphors denote the person or thing in question. God sometimes is metaphorically called a “spring” or a “rock”; Christ, “the Beloved”; Mary (the mother of Jesus), “the Rose”; and Mahavira (“Great Hero,” often regarded as the founder of Jainism) and the Buddha, “the Conqueror.”

Individual syllables or sounds may also have a symbolic quality. The om, which is used to introduce the holy texts of Hinduism and is a meditation syllable used in Buddhism, provides one example. Understood magically as an emanation of the divine, the word or a name or a part of a word can become an independent hypostatized (substantial) object, a representation, or even the incarnation of the divine, such as the Logos (Word) in the Gospel According to John or hū (“he”) and al-ḥaqq (“the truth”) in Islamic mysticism or the name Metatron in Kabbala. A holy writing or book in its entirety may represent the divine in the same way, as the Bible in Christianity, the Qurʾān in Islam, and the Adi Granth in Sikhism.

Musical symbolism

Music, like the word, also may have symbolic meaning. The basic elements out of which musical symbolism is built are sounds, tones, melodies, harmonies, and the various musical instruments, among which is the human voice. Sound effects can have a numinous (spiritual) character and may be used to bring about contact with the realm of the holy. A specific tone may call one to an awareness of the holy, make the holy present, and produce an experience of the holy. This may be done by means of drums, gongs, bells, or other instruments. The ritual instruments can, through their shape or the materials from which they are made, have symbolic meaning. The Uitoto in Colombia, for example, believe that all the souls of their ancestors are contained in the ritual drums.

The relationship between religious ideas and music is of special importance when the sacred word is set to music or when the music supports or interprets the sacred word by orchestral accompaniment. Medieval and modern Christianity in the West has made important contributions in this area. The symbolic word may be enriched, intensified, and increased in meaning when it is given a musical form. In the medieval technique of motet composition, different but parallel texts from the Bible or the liturgy would be simultaneously sung in various voices to appropriate but different melodies. This is an example of the structuralization of symbols into a coherent whole, a process that may sometimes also be encountered in the visual arts.

Conjunction and combination of various modes

In ritual, liturgy, liturgical and devotional art, and in religious literature and experience, many different types of symbolical expression are frequently combined. Pictorial art may be symbolically interpreted or its present meaning may be reinforced by the addition of a verbal explanation or possibly even by music. In ritual, symbolical words, tones, noises, gestures, signs, odours (e.g., the odour of the sacrifice or the fragrance of incense as an expression of prayer and offering), colours, and pictures are combined. Pictorial art often depicts religious texts and ideas; in so doing it not only uses the human form but also objects of nature, scenery, sacred architecture, and particular symbols. A picture or sign on an emblem often receives its interpretation by the inscription of a verbal explanation. Conversely, in an illustration of religious texts, the picture or sign interprets the text. Over against verbal and musical symbols stands the sacred value of silence. It may indicate devotion, contemplation, or the presence of God.