5.14: Shrines and Other Sacred Spaces

Shrines and other Sacred Spaces

The practice of turning profane, secular, or ordinary locations into sacred spaces where worship activities may transpire is commonplace. The process by which a location becomes sanctified or ordinary spaces become hallowed or holy is not as easy to understand. Holy persons, such as priests, may perform a consecration ceremony upon buildings or grounds. Buildings or spaces can also be deconsecrated through a ritual. The aggressive destruction of a holy or sacred site by vandals, or sometimes by rival religious groups, is known as desecration.

Clearly though, there are many sacred sites that have become holy through a less formal process. In areas where Catholicism is prevalent, small folk-art shrines, generally dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and enclosed in an artificial grotto are easily spotted. These shrines are sometimes fashioned out of old bathtubs, prompting some to humorously label such a shrine a “Bathtub Mary”, or a “Madonna on the Half Shell”. Similar are the impromptu, and frequently temporary, shrines erected to victims of car crashes or other accidents. Mourners often place candles, crosses, crudely painted bicycles (ghost bikes) and other memorabilia at the site of an accident, temporarily creating a sacred space for mourners who may have known the victim.

Figure: Los Angeles, CA - This house in a residential neighborhood also serves as a temple for these Buddhists who are celebrating the end of a fasting period. It also violates several zoning laws.

Figure Chicago, IL - The Saint Patrick's Day Parade mixes ethnic, religion and civic functions into a single event, blurring the lines between church and state; public and sacred space.

Other examples of the uneasy intersection of church and state occur when public funds are used to promote, organize or otherwise regulate large religious festivals. Mardi Gras, a celebration preceding the start of the Catholic Lenten fasting season, attracts huge crowds, many of whom are tourists, to New Orleans each year. Many other towns in the Gulf Coast regions have public celebrations, frequently including a parade that costs taxpayers a great deal of money. St. Patrick’s Day parades, Halloween festivals and many other such celebrations require significant public endorsement, but seem to pass without controversy.

Cemeteries:

Cemeteries are common landscapes that function often as religious or sacred space, though they too are often regulated and maintained by the public. How a society treats corpses, and how they treat the places where the dead are buried (if they bury their dead) may reveal a great deal about the religion of the people who build them.

Figure : Prague, CZ: Very old cities, like Prague, struggle with how to balance religious practice with pressing needs for living space.

The Abrahamic faiths generally have a similar set of beliefs about the “end of time” in which humans, and the remains of humans, shall reconcile with the divine. For this reason, it is tradition for people in these religions to bury their dead so that the remains of the deceased may be brought back to life, or resurrected in some form at the end of time. Muslims tend to bury their dead facing their holiest city, Mecca. Christians tend to bury people facing east, so that the dead may rise to face Christ on Judgment Day. Burying millions of people in perpetuity has multiple implications for geographers, not the least of which is the amount of territory given over storing the remains of the dead, especially in large cities like New York; or very old cities like Cairo. Some cultures hold these grounds inviolable. Other traditions are more flexible, allowing for the removal of remains from gravesites so that the space may be re-used or recycled. Some burial sites may add new corpses to existing mausoleums, or crypts; particularly when a family “owns” a particular site.