Sacred Places - Stonehenge, The Great Pyramid, Delphi, The Temple Mount, The Church Of The Holy Sepulcher
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Every civilization has its share of sacred places, that is, geographical locations, buildings, monuments, or environmental features, such as mountains, lakes, rocks, waterfalls, and so on, that are believed to be endowed with intense spiritual qualities. Indeed, such places are frequently thought to possess a variety of supernatural powers that can heal, rejuvenate, or otherwise affect the human beings who visit them, often as devout pilgrims. They are also sometimes thought to be the focal points of creation, the places where deities first manifested themselves or performed some fundamental actions, and are thus typically steeped in mythology and theological dogmas.
Stonehenge. Wiltshire England. Constructed over a span of fifteen hundred years, Stonehenge is one of the oldest sacred places on the planet. The exact function of the stone circles remains unknown, although numerous theories exist. © BOB KRIST/CORBIS
In what follows, we shall consider eight well-known sacred places in several parts of the world, all of which have not only had a profound impact on the civilizations that venerate them, but also, in several cases, on a fair share of the human race. They are England's Stonehenge, the Great Pyramid of Egypt, the Greek oracle at Delphi, the Temple Mount and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacán, the great Islamic pilgrimage site of Mecca, and the Ise-Jingu, the most sacred of all Japanese Shinto shrines.
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Inside the so-called Sarsen Circle the builders erected a horseshoe-shaped structure composed of five pairs of huge sarsen blocks, weighing approximately forty metric tons each, each topped by an equally massive lintel forming a series of trilithons, or three-stone gateways, the largest of which rises twenty-four feet (seven meters). Within the horseshoe, next to the central trilithon, lies the fo…
Like those pyramids and mastabas that preceded it, the Great Pyramid, which originally rose 481.4 feet (146.73 meters) and is composed of approximately 2.3 million blocks, each of which weighs, on average, 2.5 metric tons, was a royal tomb. It was located on the west bank of the Nile. Indeed, all of the sacred places in Egypt that played host to the dead, from Giza and Saqqara to the Valley of the…
Some five hundred-odd miles (805 kilometers) due north of Giza, on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, which looms above the north shore of the Gulf of Corinth in northwestern Greece, is another extremely sacred place: Delphi, site of the famous Oracle of Apollo. Like Stonehenge, the origins of Delphi are lost in the mists of mythology and prehistory; however, we do know that very early on the ancient …
Although Jerusalem is studded with monuments sacred to the three religious traditions that venerate the city, in what follows we shall focus on two locations that loom above the rest: the first is the Temple Mount, which today includes the Dome of the Rock, the al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Western Wall or "Wailing Wall," the last remnant of the Second Temple; the second is the Church of t…
The second sacred site in Jerusalem is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, believed to have been constructed on the site of Jesus' crucifixion and interment. In some respects, as the historian of religion Jonathan Z. Smith points out, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the original version of which was built by Helen, mother of the Roman emperor Constantine, in 330, can be regarded as the succ…
The Pyramid of the Sun at the great pre-Columbian site of Teotihuacán in the Valley of Mexico is an awe-inspiring sight. One of the largest man-made constructions in the Americas—a continent dotted with enormous pre-Columbian pyramids—the Sun Pyramid stands at 489 feet (149 meters) by 551 feet (168 meters) at it base, 148 feet (45 meters) in height. Its graceful volumetric const…
Muhammad lived peacefully in Mecca, managing his wife's business affairs, until he was about forty years of age, when he began receiving revelations from God via the Angel Gabriel. He soon began to preach his new faith, supported by his devoted wife Khadijah and a growing number of followers. But after his wife died, he began to struggle against opposition from several quarters and, in the …
Each year, the emperor is expected to make a pilgrimage to Ise to honor his ancestor and report to her about what has happened to him and the realm since his last visit. But he is not the only pilgrim. A great many Japanese from all walks of life visit Ise annually to worship at its shrines and do honor to the Sun Goddess. Indeed, in the mid-nineteenth century, as Japan began to open up to the out…
These, then, are eight of our planet's premier sacred places. While they are very different from one another in a great many respects, all share at least one common quality: an intense spirituality that makes them special. Some paranormal researchers have suggested that they are inherent "power spots," located at the confluence of what have been called "ley lines,…
Asali, Kamil J., ed. Jerusalem in History: 3,000 B.C. to the Present Day. Rev. ed. London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1997. Ben-Dov, Meir. In the Shadow of the Temple: The Discovery of Ancient Jerusalem. New York: Harper and Row, 1985. Ben Ibrahim, Sliman, and Étienne Dinet. The Life of Mohammad: Prophet of Allah. Secaucus, N.J.: Chartwell Books, 1990. First published in 1918. Bro…
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