Sacred space

It's the information that you can write down as concept is secondary to the transmission of the mystery that can partly be transmitted in conceptual ways.

But if they are not riding on a deeper current or wave of a certain type of sacred space that you create with your master or your teacher, it cannot take root the way it must in order that the seed that is planted can take root.

So for me, this is, and also I had colleagues who were Sufi masters.

I was in Turkey to give lectures on Gnosticism in the early 2000s.

Now they're here in, in, in, in Istanbul or other places and wanna be Sufis." Same thing happens though, right? So they, they stay for a while.

They stay around until they feel, "Oh, shit." You know, being a Sufi is not really something where you learn something, and then you get like this super flashy moment where the world collapses, and suddenly you are, like, enlightened.

But the idea of a very slow, gradual shift in consciousness, um, which is dependent also on the sacred space you establish with your master and the tariqa as a kind of, um, a sacred vehicle, right? An organism that, um, facilitates the environment in which teachings can take place on a conceptual but also more importantly on a deeper level.

The seeds grow slowly, but when they grow properly, they take deep roots, and they slowly change how you stand within the world.

felt more significant.

And our sacred space here, of course, is the Tara Loka Shrine.

When we enter, it has spiritual objects, the Buddha Rupa, the other Rupas, the shrine, other devotional objects.

And we may also respond to the supposedly ordinary, the presence of the wooden beams, the beechwood floors, the transparent windows.

a ceremony at a tomb was also a meeting about land labour obligations and conflicts offerings to ancestors doubled as public feasts that reaffirmed who owed what to whom imagine approaching nandaowaz by canoe for a major ritual you pass checkpoints land on a carefully controlled shore climb into a walled court where the bones of past rulers lie in stone crypts just metres away While chants for the dead are recited, living chiefs announce new tribute demands, settle disputes, cement alliances, the dead are listening, but so is the entire audience.

Sacred space amplifies political messages.

In other words, the otherworldly feeling people describe at Nanmaidal today isn't just tourist mystique.

It's baked into the architecture.

Voyaging and trade help explain how that conversation stayed coherent across such huge distances.

By the time Nan Madal was flourishing, the Pacific was laced with sailing routes – people moved between islands with outrigger canoes and navigation systems based on stars swells bird behavior and cloud patterns they weren't doing atlantic style empires but they were absolutely in contact exchanging spouses shell valuables prestige goods stories and technical knowledge architectural ideas can travel on those same canoes not as exact floor plans but as principles.

Things like chiefs should live on raised platforms or sacred space belongs near water or align important structures to certain stars or horizon points.

A navigator from one archipelago might visit another and come home talking about a walled royal compound or a particularly impressive tomb.

And Latter-day Saints will do the same thing.

We have ritual clothing in certain settings to help us transition, create sacred space.

But even when we're just doing our scripture studies, we can create some some ways to create sacred space in just even our little scripture study

table.

Well, if you have listened to this episode and you are wondering like, okay, but I don't know Hebrew.

I mean, yeah, I think that's, you know, now sometimes, you know, churches can have lectures, but there are normally lectures about religious things that can take place in a church.

But the idea of bringing in, you know, I don't know, some singer or some dancer into a church, you know, to do something like that, I think they must have no sense whatsoever of the sacredness of sacred space.

I mean, what are they thinking of? You know, it's crazy.

I mean, it's a total violation of sacred space.

Now, the Catholic Church, you know, we do not only have a blessing of the church, but it's consecrated to worship.

And so maybe, you know, that sense of the sacredness and plus the blessed sacrament being in that.

I don't think it is.

And so maybe they don't even have the Blessed Sacrament preserved.

That's such an unexpected combo.

Right? It's fascinating how they found a way to blend contemporary music with such a historic site.

It makes you think about the role of music in sacred spaces.

Totally.

Like, it's such a contrast.

Exactly.

And Fabric is known for its vibrant club scene.

It's almost like they're challenging the norms of what we consider sacred spaces, right?

The temple dedication ritual at Edfu involved the king and priests circumambulating the building.

This action, explains Egyptologist Robert Rittner, simultaneously purified the site, delimited its sacred space, and protected it from external forces.

The Egyptian verb pekher, to encircle, also came to mean to enchant.

Encircling may be linked to the sun god who goes about the cosmos as he rules it, Magic depends on potential, but operationally seeks to limit it, modulating the infinite field of action and association.

see.

Now, it's very kind of primitive, but this is actually, I think, quite interesting, this little bump out indicating a sacred space.

It's really just a reduced image of the traditional apse.

That would be the curved section behind a chapel or a prairie.

It's kind of your first step out of the city, out of the profane, approaching the sacredness of the church.

Then there would be, you'd enter in and there would be a narthex, So a space where often there are baptisms and the old rite of baptism, you actually begin there.

And then when you bring the pagan child into the sacred space of the name, the priest would actually place a stole over the child and recite the creed.

So there's a rich understanding of moving from the profane to the sacred.