What makes a landscape sacred?
Some of the earliest examples of "sacred places" are found in the heart of the cave systems, in which earth was both symbolically and physically infiltrated. These sites are where the spirits of the earth were first ritualized physically. The continued use of the same sacred rituals and sites as former ancestors did proves the meaning of reinforcing the sacred nature of a belief system. As said in The Landscapes of the Sacred, "a sacred place is an ordinary place, ritually made extraordinary."(19) Thus, we can conclude that many religions have based their rituals and spiritualities originally from their sacred place or landscape.
"(A) A sacred place constitutes a break in the homogeneity of space; (B) This break symbolized by an opening by which passage from one cosmic region to another is made possible (from heaven to earth and vice versa; from earth to underworld); (C) Communication with heaven is expressed by one or another of certain images, all of which refer to the axis mundi: pillar (cf. the universalis column), ladder (cf. Jacob's ladder), mountain, tree, vine, etc.; (D) Around this cosmic axis lies the world (= our world), hence the axis located "in the middle," at the "navel of the earth"; it is the Center of the world."(13) This particular portion of the reading confused me because the center of the cosmic diagram is the I and surrounded by other. Then followed by the subject and object debate. How does one constitute the difference between subject and object? Does this interpretation of the cosmos reflect our individuality or a sacred place specifically? The other being the wholly other or spiritual sense revolves around the I, thus meaning our spirituality reflects the level at which a landscape can be sacred, according to my interpretation of the cosmos diagram. Cosmos is an ordered reality and chaos, being the opposite, but would a reality be ordered without a little bit of chaos? Food for thought.
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