The article discusses the question of meaning of life, from the point of view of theosophy and religious art, of the art problem and traditions of their reflexion in the Russian icon. World outlook and instructive character of an icon considered as the didactic text reminding of eternal meanings of life has been outlined. The original dialectics of «initial, not personal, church» and «creative, personal, individual», but coinciding with cathedral, points out the hardly perceptible measure. It gives to an icon its adequacy, its coincidence with itself, without possible aesthetic-hedonistic advances with the viewer. The article reveals the fact of difficult, multilevel character of alienation of an icon: meaningful rejection of value and the importance of theological meanings of the icon by an uneducated recipient; substitution of religious meanings of the icon is urgent-optimistic and humanistic ones in the spirit of priorities of a modern society; alienation from the icon of its own meanings. The research updates the questions of spirituality people and a society, opposition of the spiritual and the corporeal in religious art.