Professional Documents
Culture Documents
In the Sacred Places, the mythic breaks through into our present world, embodying the very kinds of boundary crossing that are so central to all mythological thinking.
They are actual places where we can stand and hear the echoes of longago battles or imaginary places shaped by the requirements of mythic vision.
They are the repositories of national or ethnic identity or the site of supernatural revelation or visitation.
Sacred places serve to teach and remind us of who we are and how we ought to behave in our day-to-day lives.
The murder of two young Puerto Rican separatist in Cerro Maravilla (1978).
10
Jerusalem
11
13
4. Altars.
14
16
7. Ancestral ruins.
Parthenon, Greece
17
18
Auschwitz, Austria
19
20
21
22
23
24
They dramatize our fears of and resistance to the inevitable facts. Aging, Weakness, Disease, and Death. Ex. Juan Ponce de Leons fountain of eternal youth.
25
An existing site that somehow embodies imaginary or abstract or mythological meanings that are still important to us and to our sense of belonging to a culture.
26
27
Locations that continues to be sacred today, mainly by the symbolic meaning to the faith and reality that our cultural surroundings authorize for us would cause.
28
29
Which sacred places are more valuable? Those considered entirely mythic or those in the real world?
Even when empirical proof or faith based, they should be understood as a continuum, not subject to a hierarchy of values.
30
In the Eden story, humans were placed in a perfect setting by a beneficent God, but they rejected lives of perfect ease and became estranged from the Higher Power through an act of disobedience.
31
The human race then lives in an ill world, marked by disharmony, broken relationships, suffering, and death, all because of the actions of the primal pair (and the snake, of course).
32
We have, especially in the Christian era, a promise of future healing, a return to harmony and perfect existence, but we must struggle through childbirth, ceaseless labor, and a constant state of emptiness, yearning for lost fullness in the here and now because of those first human decisions.
33
In this story we move from perfection and harmony to imperfection, struggle, and disharmony.
34
Which sacred places are more valuable? Those considered entirely mythic or those in the real world?
Whatever the answer, culture had a great weight in our response. Those cultural values ultimately become our own sense of what is real and right and normal.
35
37
38
Controversy often surrounds removal of a sacred object from a sacred place, such as artifacts removed for research, preservation, or public display.
39
Human conceptualization of the object may change when the object is placed in a different context, such as in a museum or on auction.
40
Often mythological beings carry objects, also called attributes and talismans.
May be animals, weapons, or tools that symbolize components of their character
41
42
43
44
Islamism: Crescent
45
46
Reference: www.britannica.com
47
Circle: wheel of life, celestial bodies, and eternity Spiral: growth, discovery, evolution, and connectivity Equal-armed cross: four seasons, four directions, and four limbs Hand: protection, good luck, and healing Apple: forbidden fruit or sexual seduction
48
Rosenberg, D. (2006). World mythology: An anthology of great myths and epics (3rd ed.). Chicago, IL: McGraw Hill.
49