What Makes a Place Sacred?

 

After hearing a talk during my zoom Zen meeting recently—a talk which included accounts of pilgrimages that the speaker had taken to Buddhist and Hindu sites such as Mount Kailas in Tibet—I was intrigued by the obvious question: do certain places on our planet actually have a palpable, perceptible “spiritual” presence?  And if so, to what is the alleged “spiritual” feel of a place due: its site, its geology, its appearance, or the simple historical fact that humans have chosen it to be significant?

None of these questions is simple to answer definitively. But a great deal of work has been done over the years to try to answer them. It turns out that I have several books dealing with the so-called “spirit of place,” and so I consulted one in particular, James Swan’s anthology, The Power of Place: Sacred Ground in Natural & Human Environments, (Quest Books, 1991). And what I found on re-reading a few articles there was fascinating. In the introduction, Swan himself gives us some history about the concept of geomancy, an ancient practice first made notable by Pliny the Elder when he supposedly met some Persian magi able to divine the right actions for a specific place by studying the configuration of stones tossed on the ground. As to the term itself, its essential notion is that “some places have more power and presence than others” (1). As examples of such places, Swan cites Chartres Cathedral, Stonehenge, and Mount Fuji. He also mentions the one described by our speaker, Mount Kailas in Tibet, describing it as the “ultimate sacred mountain,” one identified as the cosmic axis of the universe, or axis mundi. Now what’s interesting about this latter concept is that many, if not most traditional, shamanic cultures have designated their own axis mundi—symbolizing the center of the world, where heaven or the sky connects with the earth. According to the New World Encyclopedia, the axis mundi symbol can be a mountain, a tree, a vine, a column of smoke or fire, or even something of human production—a staff, a tower, a ladder, a maypole, a cross, a pillar, a temple and so on. It can be feminine (an umbilical cord) or masculine (a phallus) or neutral (the omphalos or navel.) In Japan, it is Mount Fuji; in China the whole country, but especially Mount Kun Lun; the American Sioux said the Black Hills were the axis mundi; and for the ancient Greeks, both the oracle at Delphi and Mount Olympus were considered sites of the earth’s omphalos. 

So what does this mean? How many axis mundi(s) can our earth have? Is this all based on outdated magic and self-centered hallucination? Perhaps; but perhaps we should not be so quick to dismiss geomancy. In another article in Swan’s anthology, James Beal marshals evidence that, though ancient shamans did not know it, their sense that certain places were special may well have been due to their location at “dipoles,” which he describes as “nodes in the earth’s magnetic fields” (280). Apparently, the ability to “sense” magnetic fields is common among many species of plants, animals and birds. In pigeon brains, scientists have found tiny deposits of magnetite that seem to act as a kind of compass; and such magnetic sensors have been found in “nearly thirty species,” including humans. Beal goes on to say that 

deep within the earth the circuits of subterranean streams had formed a pattern which in turn generated changes in the earth’s local magnetic field, and are associated with improvements in positive electrostatic field strength and negative ion concentration….Shamans did not know these things…But they sensed them in the excited electro-chemical processes at work in their own nervous systems, which in turn triggered inspired firing of neurons and synapses in the circuits of their own brains…the place felt special and magical, spiritual…(280-81).

 

As a side note, Beal’s article asserts that both a positive electrostatic field, and negative ions are associated with positive emotional feelings in humans. In short, it could well be that the feeling of “spiritual” leading to the special-ness of many places had (and still has) an actual material basis. 

Elizabeth Rauscher in a subsequent article, “Working With Earth’s Electromagnetic Fields,” expands on this idea of human sensitivity to magnetic fields. Rauscher focuses mainly on the sensitivity of humans and other animals to magnetic fields set up by planetary activity, such as earthquakes and volcanoes. While human brain wave activity in the range of .01 to 10 Hertz is associated with relaxation and creativity, the onset of volcanism gave off a signal of 2.8 to 4.2 Hertz when measured. Rauscher then connects this to the electrical activity of the human heart:

I like to think of a 3.2 Hertz reading right before a quake or volcano as a little like a heart arrhythmia, following the Hopi idea of the “heart of Earth Mother” as being a viable model of reality (300).

In other words, Rauscher is suggesting, like Beal, that some humans are sensitive enough to detect electromagnetic signals from deep within the earth, especially concentrated around mountains—possibly explaining the long human predilection for “sacred” mountains. 

Whatever we make of this “scientific” information about what may have influenced human decisions about special or sacred places, it does provide some basis for what might otherwise seem like rank superstition. Which, given the plethora of sacred or special places that appear in almost every traditional culture, with the axis mundi attributed to so many disparate places over the globe, I must confess, activates my innate skepticism. After all, how many world navels could there be? And so, for this writer, the power of place tends to make more sense if viewed as a product of human choice— ‘this place is sacred, so we will name it the center of the earth and surround it with ritual to reinforce its sacredness.’ This is basically the thesis of Thomas Bender in “Making Places Sacred.” Bender begins with several italicized principles:

What is significant about sacred places turns out not to be the places themselves. Their power lies within their role in marshalling our inner resources and binding us to our beliefs (323).

In holding a place sacred, we grant power to a place and acknowledge that power of the place (324).

The inviolability of sacred places is essential (324).

 

In short, whether or not we “feel” something special when we enter Chartres Cathedral or when we circumambulate Mount Kailas may depend more on how many centuries humans have venerated and conducted rituals at such places than on the places themselves. This is not to say that the choosing of such places originally had no basis in material fact. Shamans may well have been people especially attuned to magnetic or other forces present there. But the main reason we now “feel” the “spirit of a place” may be due more to tradition and the culture that held it sacred, than any inherent spirituality. And, we should add, to the long practice of keeping it inviolable. 

This last consideration may be something we should all take into account. For with modern mass tourism—now said to be the largest industry in the world—it is becoming almost impossible to maintain this inviolability. As Bender notes early in his essay, given that “all places live through the reverence with which we hold them,” the fact that masses of  tourists flash their bulbs and gawk without reverence, without giving, with, rather, the desire to acquire something for themselves, constitutes the “root destruction of tourism” so prevalent in our time. In short, nothing sacred—not Delphi, not Yosemite, not Mount Fuji—may be able to withstand the assault of mass tourism which we modern humans have unleashed. Not to mention the weakening of our ability to sense the grand symphony of magnetic resonance to which we were once adapted and attuned, and which may be responsible for more of our well-being than we had thought heretofore. In sum, whether we believe it or not, the places which our forebears have designated as “sacred” may require our best abilities (if we value our sanity, and the genetic endowments not always obvious to our acquisitive cameras) to keep them more or less inviolate. For what would our world be if, as it is so fast becoming (think the ubiquity of shopping malls, fast food outlets), every aspect of our world had the same disneyfied, dismal look as every other; the entire world a street filled with cheesy Las Vegas replicas. That would be a loss, indeed. 

Lawrence  DiStasi

 

The Matter of Matter

We are all, if we’re honest, still mystified by death and what it means. By what the difference is, specifically, between a body that is alive and one that is dead. Indeed, now we have different categories of dead: brain dead, which means that the body may be still alive and functioning, but the brain functions are gone so there’s no voluntary movement; and paralysis or locked-in syndrome, which is the opposite: the body cannot move, but the brain still functions and is conscious. Both of these are variants of the “death” we usually mean: in one case the body, in the other the brain, no longer functions. What makes this even more confusing is that we seem to be told by physics that even when the body is “dead,” the matter that composes it, the meat and bones, still have that irreducible sign of life, movement—the electrons making up these corporeal elements presumably still spin and travel in orbits around some nucleus, and cells are presumably still capable of change. So the matter itself isn’t “dead,” but the organization of the particular matter called a human no longer functions as an independent whole. 

Of course, in the old days, the way this situation would be described to nearly everyone’s satisfaction, was to say that the “soul” had left the body. I’m not sure if this same image was used to describe what happens to an animal, say, when it is slaughtered. But the situation, outwardly at least, seems the same. Once alive, and capable of functioning as a whole, integrated organism, a cow when slaughtered becomes only meat, with different cuts serving as different dishes for humans. And then serving as nutrients for those same humans, whose gut breaks down the cow flesh and transforms it into energy and thereupon part of its own matter—its cells, its muscles, its bones and tendons, its hair. 

What this “soul” actually was, was never quite clear, but it was said to be both immaterial and immortal. That is, it did not die with the body. It survived, and could live in eternal bliss in someplace called heaven, or in eternal torment in someplace called hell. The important thing here, though, is that it was seen as the entity that animated flesh, matter (‘soul’ is anima in Latin, hence our word “animate”). And when it departed, that once-animated flesh or matter became “dead,” inanimate, lifeless, meat merely. To be sure, this satisfied the inquiring mind, because when one sees someone pass from being living to being dead, it certainly seems as if some animating spirit has departed. The animation so obvious when living becomes instantaneously changed, as if something vital has gone, fled. And now that we have mostly gone beyond concepts like the immortal soul, we are at a loss—I am, at least—to understand what happens when life changes to death before our eyes. The change is excruciatingly obvious, and anyone can recognize it instantly. But we seem to have no tangible concepts to explain it. 

Except this, perhaps. We, like all other matter and energy in the Universe, are governed by the Law of the Conservation of Energy. No energy or matter (they are said to be interchangeable) is ever lost; the sum total of matter/energy in the Universe remains constant. Therefore, when you die, the matter and energy that you are is simply transformed, or redistributed. As physicist Aaron Freeman has put it, in death According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly (cited from www.futurism.com) To expand on this, Jaime Trosper writes: 

In death, the collection of atoms of which you are composed (a universe within the universe) are repurposed. Those atoms and that energy, which originated during the Big Bang, will always be around. Therefore, your “light,” that is, the essence of your energy — not to be confused with your actual consciousness — will continue to echo throughout space until the end of time (futurism.com, “The Physics of Death”).

 

There we are, then. Physics has our answer. We are immortal, after all. Nothing of us is ever lost. All that happens when we die is that our atoms and our energy are transformed, “repurposed” to be used elsewhere. 

Of course, physics does concede that you are “less orderly.” And for me, there’s the rub. What is meant by “you?” And what is meant by “less orderly?” The answer science seems to provide us is that “orderly” here has to do with organization. When matter and energy are “organized” in certain specific ways, we have life. When that organization is interrupted or lost, we have death. Here is how Ralph Lewis, MD put it in a recent article:

Monism maintains that mind is an emergent property of matter and energy when matter is organized in particular kinds of complex ways. Moreover, matter achieves this immense complexity through spontaneous unguided processes of self-organization, further sculpted in biological organisms by powerful evolutionary forces. (Ralph Lewis, Psychology Today, July 18, 2019, read online). 

He goes on to say that when the brain loses “its exquisitely synchronized organization,” consciousness is lost (brain death, presumably), “and the unique organization of matter that constituted that individual's personhood, self or essence ceases to exist.” So Lewis maintains, with most of the scientific establishment, that “organization of matter” is precisely the essence of consciousness and also of life itself. That organization is what distinguishes living matter from dead matter. 

This is nice. But does it really explain things? Not quite, for me at least. That’s because other things display organization as well—such as  computers, or workmen building a house. We don’t call a computer an organism, nor do we consider carpenters building a house an organism either. They are directed, both of them, from outside—the computer by a program written by a human programmer, and the carpenters by a blueprint designed by an architect. So the organization comes from the outside; it is what organizes random elements into systems, from the outside. But there are systems that are self-organizing, and this seems to be the key. And we should note here that the words ‘organism’ and ‘organize’ are intimately related: organize means “to form into a whole with mutually connected and dependent parts,” while organism means “an organized or organic system.” Therefore, we can deduce that an organism is an organized system. 

To return to self-organizing systems, we should note first that there are many levels of these, from whole galaxies (which self-organize via physical properties alone) to cellular structures (which organize via physical properties plusgenetic ones that have developed over time by means of the evolution of properties that benefit the organism). It is the latter that we are interested in here. So we begin with a  definition of self-organization:

Self-organization is a process in which pattern at the global level of a system emerges solely from numerous interactions among the lower-level components of the system. Moreover, the rules specifying interactions among the system’s components are executed using only local information, without reference to the global pattern. In short, the pattern is an emergent property of the system, rather than a property imposed on the system by an external ordering influence (from www.assets.press.princeton.edu ).

 

The important point here is that self-organization emerges on its own, and often unexpectedly, without outside direction. And it is understood to emerge “using only local information.” A fish swimming in a school, for example, uses only itself and the position of its nearest neighbor as guidance; it does not have information about the overall pattern (the whole school) to which it contributes. And since it is a living organism, it probably is also directed by genetic information about where to go and how to swim in coordination with its nearest fellows. But there is no outside leader fish directing the formation of the school. It apparently self-organizes.

Most scientists now believe that all living organisms are not only exquisitely organized, but that they, and life itself, are self-organizing systems. That is to say, life emerges, according to this view, not via direction from some outside deity, nor by means of a vague entity called a “soul,” but via self-organizing processes that organize cells and organs and whole parts into, ultimately, all the various living organisms, including the human animal. Genetics, to be sure, plays a key part in this self-organization, but not outside controlling entities. Self-organization is the scientific key to understanding many systems, but especially those we call living organisms. 

That brings us back to the dead as opposed to the living. We recognize a dead system, and especially a dead human, instantly and intuitively. Whether we can articulate how we know this is another matter. But with the information we now have, it is likely a matter of organization. We recognize disorder, death, when we see it. Instantly. That we are natural pattern seekers must help. Shakespeare has Othello say in Act 3, Sc 3, “Chaos is come again.” The whole quote indicates that his no longer loving Desdemona is a sign to Othello that ‘Chaos is come again.’ Meaning that his whole world, once orderly and organized and making sense, will no longer when and if his love is gone. Historically, mythically, primal chaos is the image of the world before creation. Now, though, most of us no longer image the world of Chaos as existence before God brought order to it. We image it as the world without order, without organization, without self-organization. What would this be like? I can think of images I’ve seen, electron-microscope images, of plastic. Plastic displays none of  the order and organization of organic matter; the fibers are chaotic, as in these images: 

 

 

Compared to the electron microscope image of any organic structure, or even the orderly  structure of a crystal, this chaotic structure of lifeless matter gives us the idea of non-organization very well. 

Which is to say that Nature somehow self-organizes. And we recognize this self-organization intuitively in living matter (i.e. we don’t need an electron microscope). And we also recognize the absence of organization as the absence of life. What seems to depart, therefore, in death, is organization, pattern. Organized energy, perhaps. And we would surely prefer it if there were something more tangible to hang onto, something we could more easily identify, and identify with. But perhaps that is all we’re going to get, now that the soul no longer seems a viable entity. 

As a writer, I have to admit that I would much prefer thinking of a soul with little wings, than a concept such as “organization,” even “self-organization”—even self-organization that seems more than a little miraculous. Because, after all, how do we imagine a “self” that organizes itself before there is even a self? At least with a soul, we have something to begin with. But that comforting, initiating image, that comforting story, appears not to matter to matter at all. Which seems, according to our best science, to just go about self-organizing from the very beginning—whatever that turns out to be.  

 

Lawrence DiStasi