Practical Theurgy -pt 5
Before Temples - Sacred Spaces
My loves,
One of the most persistent distortions in our understanding of ancient religion begins with a simple accident of survival.
Marble survives earthquakes, invasions, neglect, and the steady abrasion of centuries. But other things, more organic but equally if not more central to human spirituality—do not.
Trees die.
Springs dry.
Pathways vanish.
Sacred groves become farmland.
Rivers are cemented and built over. Yes, I am looking at you, Athens!
So the voices that once echoed through valleys, hills, mountains and gorges tend to disappear into silence. Today, when we look backward toward the ancient world, we therefore encounter what time has chosen to preserve rather than what ancient people necessarily considered most important in the practice of their religion.
As a result, many of us unconsciously imagine that religion begins with human architecture, especially in the case of Greece.
One single mention of ancient Greece and the mind immediately fills with marble colonnades rising against a brilliant Mediterranean sky, the Parthenon perched above Athens, the temples of Paestum standing among the grasses of southern Italy, or the great sanctuaries that once drew pilgrims from across the Greek and broader mediterranean world. The temple appears so naturally at the forefront of our imagination that we rarely stop to ask a simple question.
What existed before the temple?
