As I was reading chapter two of
Belden Lane’s Landscapes of the Sacred
I came across a word that I have never read (or even possibly could pronounce)
in my lifetime: chthonic. In context, “A sacred place is not simply a unique
site “possessed” by chthonic forces” (Lane, 2001). After reading this sentence
about four times I finally consulted my resource for all things vocabulary:
Shannon Farrow. Shannon immediately rattled out the original Greek definition
and implications, saying it meant to be physically underground, and is used in
the discussion of deities of the underworld. She also said it has a dual
meaning: simultaneously invoking feelings of abundance and the grave.
So
thinking about this in relation to what Lane is saying, a place being possessed by an underworldly,
otherworldly source of both plenty and death can contribute to its sacredness, but is not necessarily the only
factor. Lane argues that the place itself also is a reason for the attributed
holiness. For example, “gateways” to the underworld—like Pluto’s Gate in the
ancient city of Hieropolis in Turkey—is not made sacred just by ritual
sacrifice to the supposed underworld deities that lived in the cave, but
because it also emitted toxic gas that suffocated passing birds, livestock, and
humans. Because humans were not aware of the gas at the time of its discovery
in 190BC, they attributed the death surrounding the place to chthonic deities,
when it was really the place itself. Instead of the Pluto’s Gate and other
sacred places being a blank slate where religious and divine beings inhabit and
make holy, the environment and ecology of the place provides a specific importance
to its sacredness as a whole.
Lane,
B. C. (2002). Landscapes of the sacred:
Geography and narrative in America spirituality. Baltimore, MD: The Johns
Hopkins University Press.
No comments:
Post a Comment