Sacred Sites takes us on a journey through the history of sacred art and architecture to explore the countless ways we imbue our surroundings with deep and lasting meaning. From our early vision of nature and the body as temples to our embrace of future imaginary realms, we travel through the vast and mystical landscapes of myth, religion, and imagination.
In our gatherings we give soul to spaces, we come together around bonfires, we bow before the forest altar, we praise our deities in the temple. In our pilgrimages, we carve indelible routes, we walk our meditative path across continents and, generation after generation, we tread, again and again, sacred grounds. And in our creative offerings to the spirit, we imagine new worlds with tremendously imaginative odes to what we consider sacred: golden temples carved in rock, huge spirals sculpted in sand and earth, or silent sanctuaries hidden in groves. We paint the ancient cave walls, carve petroglyphs to mark the way, place roses in the sanctuary by candlelight.
Slowly, stone by stone, we build monuments to our gods, a cosmic geometry contained within our sacred architecture of worship. These hidden patterns can be found in the mysterious and imposing pyramids scattered across different parts of the world and across an astonishing diversity of cultures, in the marble sanctuaries built to house the Greek and Roman goddesses, in the mountain monasteries of ancient wind-swept Asia, and in the cliff dwellings of the indigenous peoples of the southwestern United States.
Nature, art, beauty—these are the common elements found both in the sacred sites of our ancestors and in the multitude of environments where we strive to transcend and connect with ourselves. Tracing a sacred path from the rugged stone temples to works of modern architecture, the fifth volume of La Biblioteca del Esoterismo pays tribute to the collective history of those whom human worship has transformed into sacrosanct spaces.
