Sacred Space: An Attempt at Classification and Qualification

 

Kiva at Long House, Mesa Verde, Colorado

Were I to be audacious enough to attempt to classify and qualify sacred space — and I am audacious — I would venture to posit the following terms and definitions. These are conceptions I have pondered and used for myself over many years. I initially conceived of these concepts back in 2013 when I was considering pursuing a PhD in architectural history, but opted to not accrue more student loan debt. These have largely lived in my head, but after my recent post on viewing sacred space through the eyes of Georges Bataille, I feel compelled to share the concepts under this new framework.

While this may initially appear systematic, it should be emphasized that this is neither systematic or final. I am fundamentally anti-systematic. Nor do I believe there is a system to the sacred. Systems are a human conception, a means for us to organize our experiences and understandings of those experiences, which the sublime ultimately surpasses. Certainly the numinous is sublime. We may generalize, but the sacred does not like to be categorized. Categories are little fences in which we put our ideas to inhabit, but the sacred is something that does not like fences and will quickly jump into another pen as soon as we put it in the pen we think it belongs to.

Thus, the following are generals and loose definitions as a departure point, instruments in approaching the varieties of sacred space and the manifestations for us to have more clarity in what is being experienced in the realm of the sacred.

Definitions:
Natural: those undomesticated aspects which remain original and primal as found in the wilderness outside of human society. Examples: mountains, prairies, animals, plants, the weather, seasons, oceans, forests, et al.

Profane: those elements and aspects of human life and society which have been established by taboos, laws, codes, social contracts, &c to set human society apart from the natural world. These include but are not limited to politics, economics, sexuality, personal relationships, business, drug use, et al.

Sacred: that which has been "set apart" from the profane (Eliade). Effectively, this is a means to transcend the profane, which may be viewed in two ways. Firstly, it is a "transgression" of taboos to experience primal nature as experienced prior to societal taboos (Bataille). Second, it is a secondary, substitutional means of experiencing primal nature via setting apart a time, space, persons, and objects for experiencing what Eliade calls "mythic history." This is a process of taking the sacred and setting rules around it to set it apart within the profane. This is usually what we call "religion," or more generally, it is civic-sanctioned sacred.

Divine / numinous: a non-physical objective to experience via the sacred. E.g. one seeks to commune with a saint at the location of their shrine, i.e. a sacred place associated with someone who is believed to be holy and therefore an intermediary with the divine.

Holy: a more general quality that meets certain criteria of religious prescriptions and rules, and are usually useful for accessing sacred experience / the divine.

Sacred Spaces / Places:
Sacred space: a location or area that is is believed to be sacred, i.e. that is not profane. These come into two varieties: primary and artificial sacred spaces.

Primary sacred space: a place that is inherently, a priori sacred. This is the original sacred world of prehistoric humans, which the profane was set apart from, long before human societies were formed. Primary sacred space has two varieties: natural and mythic sacred spaces.

Naturally sacred space: this is the natural world which human society has set itself apart from. This is effectively the raw wilderness, the totality of the natural world, and therefore would be viewed as inherently sacred or sacred a priori. It is already sacred, for who would are call nature anything other than sacred?

Mythic sacred space: this is the specifics in the natural world that have been designated or set apart from the rest of the natural world as particularly sacred. For instance, of all the vast wilderness in ancient Greece, Mount Ida was set apart as the birth place of Zeus and Mount Olympus set apart as the home of the gods. In many regards, mythic sacred spaces maintain their wildness, their raw naturalness, but are nonetheless naturally sacred places with a mythology set upon them and setting them apart from the rest of the wilderness. This is essentially what most religious rites are endeavoring to invoke, what Eliade calls "mythic history."

Artificial sacred space: this is sacred space that is established under profane conditions, i.e. societal taboos created this sacred space. This is a hybrid sort of sacred space, almost liminal, though "liminal" will have a different concept here (see "liminal sacred space"). It is through human interaction and taboos to set this space apart as sacred. There are two main types: historical and built sacred space.

Historical sacred space: this is a sacred space that is a step beyond mythological sacred space, but rather than belonging to mythic history, it belongs to actual history. For example, the Tempietto by Bramante is historically sacred because it serves as a shrine to St. Peter, as it is built upon the site that is believed to be where St. Peter was crucified, and thus serves as a martyrium for the saint. The site is historically sacred because a taboo had occurred, namely the killing of Peter ("thou shall not kill"). His death transgressed into the sacred, i.e. martyrdom, and thus the site of this event becomes sacred. The shrine itself is a built sacred space upon a historical sacred space. The site itself is sacred a posteriori, it is made sacred after the fact of Peter's death. Thus, historical sacred space is sacred a posteriori. There was nothing particularly sacred about the site prior to the saint's death. Further, historical sacred spaces may be an enhancement of mythic sacred spaces. For instance, the fact that Roman emperors frequently built their palaces on the Palatine Hill is an enhancement of the belief that Romulus built his house on the Palatine Hill, thus being their later contribution and engagement with mythic history. The Tempietto is another such example. Sometimes it is a sacralization of profane space, such as the Campo de' Fiori where Giordano Bruno was executed. This was once a civic plaza in the middle of Rome, but because Bruno was executed here, it may maintain a civic function, but then takes on a sacred function in the commemoration of an important person.

Constructed sacred space: this is sacred space that has been arbitrarily set apart from the profane. This is usually a temple, church, or other various religious structures. However, these are set apart within the profane, or more accurately, the profane has set this space apart for sacred functions. It is the sacred predicated upon profane authorization. Thus, the taboos are established to be violated to engage with constructed sacred space. A piece of land is set aside to construct this sacred space, and throughout much of history, civic funds were used to build such structures. King Solomon orders the Temple to be built using funds from the Israelites. Cathedrals of Europe were built using civic funds. And in many ways, built sacred spaces maintain civic functions. For instance, British royalty traditionally have their coronation at Westminster Abbey. This is a civic function occurring in a religious structure. Many churches maintain a civic function in their community, such as being a base of operation for things like food drives, soup kitchens, support groups, et al. A curious example is when crosses and steeples on churches are used to conceal cellphone towers: hiding the profane within a sacred symbol. There are three main varieties of constructed sacred spaces: permanent, temporary, and ad hoc.

Permanent sacred spaces: these are sacred spaces that are built to serve as a sacred space in perpetuity, indefinitely. For as long as the profane exists and supports this built sacred space, it will remain sacred. The church in the center of town will remain a sacred space so long as the town survives. So in the case of ghost towns, the churches that were erected fall out of their usual built sacred establishment. They may retain some perception of having once been sacred, and thus may fall into the "liminal sacred space" category. The vast majority of built religious structures belong to this category.

Temporary sacred space: this is space that is erected in perpetuity so long as the profane surrounding it survives to support it, but it is not intended to always serve a sacred function. A great example is Masonic lodges. So long as there is someone there to unlock the door, most Masonic lodges are freely accessible for the public to view. Going into a lodge room is not a sacred occurrence. It is not sacred until the members gather to officially open Lodge and non-members are kept without. The space is only sacred when the Lodge is open. When the Lodge is closed, the space goes back to being a regular profane space.

Ad hoc sacred space: these are spaces that are totally profane or natural, but is temporarily set apart to become a sacred space for whatever sacred function is needed, and then abandoned or broken down after use. Magical rituals usually fall into this category, and the magic circle is a great example. Namely, the magician will use their attic or basement or wherever is convenient and private or even out in the wilderness, and then draw a magical circle in which they will set themselves apart (profane) and conjure spirits outside the circle. This space may continue to be where where the magician will return time and time again, or it may be a one-time event. The rituals themselves usually do not require it to be the same place indefinitely. It is merely selecting a place that is convenient and private from prying eyes, and it can really be done anywhere that meets those criteria. Another instance would be a yoga group that meets in a public park, seeing as yoga has many spiritual associations, and thus the space in the park temporarily becomes sacred for its convenience for the time the yoga group is practicing.

Liminal sacred space: this is a space that may possess some sacred qualities but is neither of the things above, and therefore is marginally sacred. In occult practices, crossroads are sacred conjunction points and therefore sacred, but in a liminal sense, being both and neither of any two or more things. Cemeteries are a great example, as they are where people live, but those people are no longer living; it is where the dead live. The sacred rituals conducted in interring the dead is one predicated on Bataille's notion of the corpse taboo and that the corpse must be put away. Thus cemeteries take on a sacred quality, but ultimately are liminal as a place of habitation for dead people. Liminal sacred space may be a deconsecrated church, in which an atmosphere of sacrality is still perceived, but it no longer serves any sacred function. Since built sacred spaces have a profane function, or at least are civically authorized sacred spaces, ghost towns take on a similar liminal sacred quality. Ghost towns were once places bustling with activity and many inhabitants, and then today some ruins remain and it's still and quiet. These places are viewed as "haunted" and therefore take on liminal sacred qualities as being set apart from the profane. There is a subcategory of liminal sacred space, and that is restored sacred space.

Restored sacred space: this is a space that was once sacred and then fell out of being sacred for some duration of time and then later is restored to a new sacred space. One such example might be a synagogue that became de-utilized as such and then is later bought by a Christian congregation and repurposed as a church. This is more nuanced, as it is no longer liminal though it no longer serves its initial sacred function, but it is restored to a new sacred function. Stonehenge is a good example, as it had a sacred function when it was built, but for a long time became a bunch of curiously placed stones, and now these days neopagans have begun to use it again for solstice and equinox celebrations. It is not the original sacred function, but it has been restored to a new one. Restored sacred spaces were at one time liminal, but become sacred once more. 

The above is very generalized. It does not take into account nuances. For instance, National Parks in the US are these curious natural sacred places, since they have a taboo imposed upon them. The taboo is that the wilderness needs to be preserved and should not be harmed or developed into profane things. However, by placing this taboo upon the wilderness and calling it a "National Park" it becomes profane. But of course, we don't perceive it that way. We may pass the sign that says "You are now entering a National Park" but we don't experience that while standing in a forest glade or on a mountain top, no matter what artificial boundary is put upon it on a map. And at the same time, the taboo still exists. We're not going to cut down a tree or shoot a deer. This is very nuanced to natural sacred space.

Another example is the Ark Experience in Kentucky. It fits the definition of both a permanent built sacred space as well as a mythic sacred space, as it is trying to recreate "mythic history" that can be experienced. Certainly the Ark Experience is sacred space, but which? Or how much is it one or the other?

And spaces may get layered and complicated, like a palimpsest. Caves are natural sacred space, and then prehistoric humans went into them to conduct rites and paint on the walls. This is a constructed enhancement of natural sacred space. But these cave paintings were so long ago that we have no memory and observable understanding of what these paintings were for, so the cave paintings become a mythic sacred space to us today, layered over a natural sacred space.

The US Capitol Building is another example. Is Americanism a religion? Is there not a painting in the Capitol called the Apotheosis of George Washington? Is Thomas Jefferson not enshrined in a Pantheon, and Lincoln enshrined in a Temple and Washington enshrined in an obelisk? Americanism is disputable as a religion, and certainly it throws the above definitions for a loop. Are these civic memorials or are they sacred shrines? Is the Capitol Building a temple on a hill?

When it comes to built sacred spaces, these are predicated upon "religion" (usually), as they are civically authorized to be set apart from the profane. But this opens up the huge problem of what is religion? In the US, civically a religion is vaguely defined by the IRS, and the IRS admits that the definition is deliberately vague. So a televangelist for-profit center preaching to give them money because God said so... is this religion? Is the stage where he preaches sacred? This would be debatable so far as anyone believes him, and many do, but also many do not. This is where Bataille's definition of the profane being set apart from the sacred by setting up taboos, and to transgress those taboos is to enter the sacred. The televangelist's stage is a sacred space, because civically it is defined as such by law and tax codes, i.e. profane taboos are established to set this civic-authorized sacred space to exist. And just as the televangelist uses the convoluted and complex tax codes and laws and definitions to continue what they do, so too is the extent to which we can classify and qualify their studio as sacred space.

And I could go on, but this suffices initially for approaching the qualities and types of sacred spaces and the experiences they would provide.

Joe Juhasz: An Interview, Part 1: His Early Life

 

Joseph Juhasz, age 19, Long Island Star Journal, 25 June 1957

I have known Joseph "Joe" B. Juhasz for just over a eleven years. Actually, the exact date I first met him was August 8, 2011. I had just moved to Denver. My friend and roommate Scott Sworts had been a student of Joe's (Joe called his long-term pupils his "children") and first introduced me to Joe's work. About a year prior to meeting Joe, Scott had sent me Joe's writings on Psychology Today, which he would later be removed from posting owing to a controversial post about "better dead than sad." Scott and I had lunch with Joe that fateful day in Boulder. The first thing Joe said to me when Scott said, "This is Patrick and he's like one of my children," Joe would shout, "Goddamn, a motherfucking grandson!" (He has many actual grandchildren, but an intellectual grandchild appears to be rare, I suppose). Over the years I have had the opportunity to get to know Joe better via his "Putty Club" group discussions, we also taught architecture at Community College of Denver together for a couple of semesters, and some off and on conversations throughout the years.

Realizing that Joe is not exactly young, I felt it was necessary to just sit down and have a talk with him. One day Joe will pass from this world — he won't die, he will just go home. Joe is one of those strange souls, someone so original, so inimitable, you don't imagine they will die. He will just move onto something else that isn't this petty mortal coil. He just came down here for a lifetime to slum-it-up. So to interview him on his life and works, it seems time is of the essence. On a cool afternoon at Joe's home in Boulder, Saturday, September 17th, 2022, Joe and I had coffee and we talked. At this time, I was mostly interested in his early life, because one could spend thousands of hours talking with Joe. There is plenty out there on his later life, but it seems more critical to know his early life first. Over the years of knowing Joe, I have gotten tidbits of info about his life in Hungary, escaping persecution, immigrating to America, but I have never really heard his early life narrated. And as is Joe's usual style, he interjects commentary, interpretations, personal perceptions, et al into the overall narrative. You don't just get the facts when you talk to Joe; you get an education in American and European culture, history, and sociology. The following is what Joe told me:

Joe was born Juhászi József Borisz Brúnó Béla Arnold Frigyes. In Eastern Europe, the last name comes first. So his Western name is Joseph Boris Juhasz. All the accents get dropped. His name is as much a part of his identity as any other characteristic about him. As I recall some years ago Joe said the spelling of the name Juhász was a kind of Hungarian shibboleth. Juhász is Hungarian for "shepherd," so the deliberate misspelling of the name called attention to one as an outsider. His father was born Haas Vilmos (Western: William Juhasz). Joe's eldest brother was born Haas Ferenc (Francis Juhasz), his second oldest brother was born Juhasz Laszlo (Lester Shepherd), and Joe was born Juhászi József. The changes in spellings were attempts by Hungarian hospitals and government to designate them as not actually being Hungarian. The reason for this was their Jewish heritage.

Joe's father was of a long line of wealthy German-Hungarian Jewish high bourgeois. His mother (Mary Christianus Juhasz, Eastern: Christiánusz Mária) was quarter-Jewish, with her maternal grandfather being Jewish, and was similarly of high bourgeois background. This is complex for Joe's Jewish identity. Jewish custom is matrilineal, so one's Jewish heritage comes from the mother. Though his father was fully Jewish, to Jewish communities this did not matter. Even his mother was not considered Jewish, as her Jewish heritage came from her grandfather, so neither her nor her mother were considered Jewish. As I remember Joe describing years ago, mother is fact, father is myth. In other words, there were people who saw you come out of your mother, so there are eyewitnesses that your mother is your mother, but there are no eyewitnesses for the father. Even DNA proof is still another "story/myth" without eyewitness account that your father is your father.

However, to gentiles this did not matter, as they collectively considered both the father and the mother in establishing the extent to which one is Jewish. Effectively, Joseph and his brothers (to crib a Thomas Mann book title) was considered five-eighths Jewish, period. The boys were "aware of [their] topsy-turvy status," and "became victims of [their] contradictory identities," Joe says.

Joe is the youngest of three boys by many years. His middle brother, Lester, was born 27 September 1929, whereas Joe was born in Budapest on 30 January 1938. The reason for the gap was that his parents were separated, but not divorced. His father had been in Belgium for "a long stay," and would return to Budapest in late 1936. He and Mary would end their separation and she would become pregnant at the age of 40. They had previously planned to immigrate to Canada, but with Joe on the way, they abandoned these plans. Joe tells me "they felt stuck in Hungary." William had already converted to Catholicism, yet in spite of this, Hungary was becoming more intensely anti-Semitic, and was beginning a process of restricting Jewish civil rights. And let's be clear, Joe Juhasz is a Holocaust survivor. They remained in Hungary throughout the Holocaust, with increasing severity of anti-Jewish legislation, culminating in genocide in 1945.

Public schools in Hungary would not reopen until the fall of 1945. As as result, Joe began his formal schooling a year late (age seven, rather than six). He would complete elementary school in the spring of 1948 and was subsequently admitted into the Piarist Street Gimasium — i.e. Gymnasium, which is term used in Germany, Hungary, Austria, et al to denote higher primary schools that prepare students for university. His elder brothers had attended this school. He was initially eligible to attend a Catholic school, but in the Catholic schools became nationalized in the summer of 1948, so he started secondary school at Piarist Street Gimasium.

In November 1948, Joe's father and eldest brother were smuggled out of Hungary to Vienna. Joe, his middle brother, and mother were "left behind" in Hungary, along with his eldest brother's wife and children. Joe uses the term "left behind." He describes it — in his own words as "paranoid" — as something like a hostage situation. His father and brother were permitted to leave, but someone had to be "left behind" to ensure a tie back to Hungary, and Austria had the father and eldest brother as hostages as well. On December 26th, Joe, Lester, and Mary would be smuggled out of Hungary to Vienna in the trunk of American diplomat Steven Koczak's 1947 Plymouth (this event is actually recounted in Anna Koczak's memoir, A Single Yellow Rose, 2012). Joe is now 10 years old, and he describes this time as being "literally in the Vienna of The Third Man [film, 1949], a city of spies, devastation, and double-dealings." In the spring of 1949, Francis would smuggle his wife and children out of Hungary, and they and the rest of the Juhasz family would successfully reach the American Occupation Zone of Austria. Here, Joe is briefly enrolled in the fifth grade of a Hungarian language school in Salzburg. There in Salzburg, Francis and his family would move into separate quarters, and then later immigrate to America on their own.

In 1950, William, Mary, Lester, and Joe would move to Rome, Italy. During this year in Italy, the family would spend a considerable amount of time with the family of Sándor Márai in Naples. Joe would not attend school or receive formal education during this year. Later in the year, Lester would immigrate to America and eventually receive a full scholarship to attend Fordham University in the Bronx, New York. In March 1951, William, Mary, and Joe would immigrate to the United States.

Joe and his parents would reside for a few weeks on the Upper West Side of New York City and then move to 88-11 34th Avenue, Jackson Heights, Queens. Shortly thereafter, Joe spends the spring of 1951 to the summer of 1952 in Fort Ord, California, where his eldest brother was teaching Hungarian in the Army Language School (today known as the Defense Language School) in Monterey, California. Joe recalls it being a hybrid environment at the "axis" of "Carmel, Monterey, Fort Ord." Fort Ord is a military base, and Monterey was still "a little Steinbeckian," and Carmel was "already an artist colony." Joe and his older brother would wander through this California that included The Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch by Henry Miller, as well as the San Francisco of the Red Diaper Babies.

This is typical of Joe. Films and novels oftentimes frame his description of things. For instance, the first time I interviewed Joe about his friendship with Douglas Darden, I brought him a slow-cooked goat leg from my goat stock. I birthed, raised, slaughtered, and processed this goat myself. So Joe asked if this goat was a Pan or a Satyr (he was a Satyr). When Joe describes his memories of Darden, he described him in terms of the poem in Nabokov's Pale Fire: "I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane; / I was the smudge of ashen fluff—and I / Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky." The name of Joe's discussion group, Putty Club, comes from a Hungarian children's book called The Boys of St. Paul Street, from which the term "putty club" has become a Hungarian idiom for a group that exists to maintain pointless rituals. Such is Joe.

So here in California, Joe is experiencing the end of the Steinbeck era of immigration to California as an agricultural paradise, but also frequently met with hostility to outsiders. But the area is well settled and established at this point, hence the existence of Fort Ord, a military presence. The essence of "paradise" in the area is evident in Miller's book title, namely the oranges that grow in Hieronymus Bosch's Paradise of Earthly Delights. The Steinbeckian essence of the Californian paradise, the immigration of peoples from the Midwest, is indicative of one aspect Miller's book, but also the isolation and solitude felt at Big Sur, which today is still very isolated, not to mention he sent his French buddy away to Monterey. At the same time, there was an entire generation in San Francisco that grew up in households that were sympathetic to communism (red diaper babies). It is a strange mixing of peoples and cultures and politics in the area. It is this mixing and dialectics that Joe is experiencing in formative years of his life as an immigrant himself, but also one that is anti-communist.

In the fall of 1952, Joe would return to Jackson Heights and start sixth grade at St. Joan of Arc Primary School. He would not graduate there due to an intercession of a close family friend, Robert A. Graham, where he would be admitted to Xavier High School in the fall of 1954. Xavier High is a Jesuit military high school in Manhattan. While there, Joe describes himself as "an icon of the successful immigrant." He would be the New York State Debate Champion in his junior year. He letters (i.e. gets his varsity letter) in swimming all four years at Xavier. He was the editor of the school literary magazine. He was an officer in the Xavier regiment. He was a National Merit Scholar and a GM Scholar. Et cetera. His resume there is quite extensive.

Xavier was at the boundary of the Greenwich Village scene of the 1950s. He was a marginal participant in that world, as well as an active member of the Catholic Workers movements on the Lower East Side, while commuting back and forth to the conservative world of Jackson Heights. Through his father he is also closely associated with the vigorous literary and scientific Hungarian community in New York, which at that time was "committedly anti-Communist." There was also an individual of some renown in the New York Broadway scene (Joe could not remember his name), with whom Joe would be in his employment in the summer of 1956, which put Joe at the edges of the Broadway theater scene of the 1950s. Throughout the rest of that man's life, Joe would receive fourth row center tickets to the opening night of most Broadway shows. Joe it appears has kept every single playbill from these broadways, as his bookshelves, which line his entire home, is littered with numerous playbills over many decades.

Joe would become an American citizen during his senior year of high school. At the same time, in October 1956 the Hungarian Revolution would take place. Joe would make patriotic recordings for Radio Free Europe during the Revolution. In the end, in spite of the Truman Doctrine the US did not intervene on behalf of the "liberated" Hungarian government. Effectively, when Harry S. Truman was President, he pledged and Congress would later support that any nations under threat of communist control and was fighting to maintain or institute democracy, the US would provide financial and military aid. This did not happen in Hungary. The revolt would be suppressed and the Soviet Union was able to recapture Hungary. This event was formative to the entire Juhasz family who were and had been committed to Western oriented interventionists. In the spring of 1957 a flood of liberal-minded Hungarian refugees came to the US. As a response, Joe taught an English class — while still in high school — for these newly arrived refugees.

In his senior year, Joe would receive a number of scholarships to university and he makes the decision to not attend a Catholic university. In spite of his disappointment with America's response to the October-November Revolution, he remains a committed assimilated American and in preference to academic scholarships (e.g. a full-ride to Columbia University or MIT) he accepts an ROTC scholarship to Brown University, which he enters in the fall of 1957.

Brown University during the years of his attendance (1957 to 1961) still had much of that "frat boy" culture of the traditional "Ivies" (i.e. Ivy League). In fact, although he didn't hide his Jewish heritage, Joe would become a member of Delta-Tau-Delta Fraternity in his sophomore year. Joe describes Brown at the time as an equal number of "gentleman's Cs" and "overachievers" — albeit the term "gentleman's C" does not carry the same meaning today as it did in the 1950s (back then it designated someone who did not spend all their time getting straight A's, i.e. is not at university just to excel in academics; today the term designates someone who is of wealthy background and as a result gets a passing grade, a C, though they did not earn it).

At Brown, just as at Xavier, Joe was a star debater. He and his close fraternity brother Colston Chandler decided to go to a nearby high school, Hope High School, to start a debate club there. Joe and Chandler founded the Hope High School Debating Society, and it is in this club that Joe would meet his first future wife, Suzanne Hecht. Suzanne is a renowned author of dozens of books, and though she and Joe are divorced today, she still goes by Suzanne Juhasz owing to the fact she has published so many books under that name.

Joe initially entered Brown University to study engineering. Freshmen weren't required to pick a specific branch of engineering, but nonetheless at the end of his freshmen year he would switch to psychology.

At this time, Joe began to get tired. We had meticulously talked and combed through his early life over a few hours. I was wearing out and clearly Joe was as well. So we finished our coffees and decided we would pick back up and discuss his young adulthood at a later date.

Sacred Space though the Lens of Georges Bataille

 

Remus jumping the wall of Rome

from Beckett's Comic History of Rome

I have for some time contemplated doing a PhD in architectural history with my dissertation to be focused on sacred space. The sacred is something that has long preoccupied me, and in particular sacred space. What makes it sacred? And how might we define sacred space? What are the different manifestations of sacred space? The spatial aspect of the sacred is something particularly unique, and regardless of whether or not I do a PhD, it still remains an item of serious study for me. Recently I was reading Bataille's Eroticism and a different perspective unveiled itself to me. It really is the implementation of taboo that really distinguishes where the sacred and the profane are divided.

Firstly, the usual working definition of the sacred might be what Eliade expresses: the sacred is that which is "set apart" from the profane. This definition usually works in its simplicity for most aspects of the sacred. When Eliade gives examples and discusses the sacred, it seems implied that the sacred is being gathered into one place, partitioned off, set apart from the profane. Thus, we might usually view the sacred as something "within," something that we "go into," with the profane outside and surrounding the sacred.

And this might very well be our usual view of the sacred, particular sacred space. It is enclosed and set apart, keeping the profane without. We may think of this in the example of the church in a city. The profane is the city and all things occurring within the city: business, politics, economics, family life, drinking with friends, sex, defecating, etc. Then we set apart of place in the city and build an enclosure we say is "God's house" and call it sacred. Here the church is an encasement containing the numinous and divine, with the profane outside surrounding it. Usually this perception of sacred space works for us, but its simplicity is deceiving. Is not the city an encasement of the profane? We build walls around the city to contain the profane things we have generated as a society. Outside the city is the wilderness. Would one ever dare to call nature profane? Would one dare to call nature anything other than sacred?

Certainly Georges Bataille saw it this way. The profane is something we as humans developed. We established taboos, social contracts, laws, codes, et al to set apart ourselves from nature. It is when one transgresses society's taboos and laws that one moves out of the profane, and thus moves out into the sacred. The sacred is a transgression. 

The myth of Romulus and Remus comes to mind. The myth is usually presented as Remus violated the sacred function (contradiction? does the sacred have a utility?) of the wall and leapt over it, and thus Romulus had to kill his twin. According to Bataille, this would not be a sacrilege but rather a violation of taboo. The wall protects the city (profane), and to cross it outside of the gates is a violent gesture of infiltration, laying siege to the wall that so preciously protects the city. This is a profane taboo, a violence against the city; not a sacrilege. The city in this case, Rome, is enclosed, partitioned off by its taboos, and beyond it lays the sacred wilderness. This is what Remus did: he transgressed into the sacred.

Magic circles also come to mind. Ceremonial magicians tend to the think of the magic circle as a sacred space. But the circle sets the magician apart from the spirits outside the circle, and the magician dares not cross the circle or suffer injury by the spirits the magician has called. For the magician, to cross the magic circle is taboo, and like Remus they forfeit their safety if they do. I am thinking of something like Liber Juratus or the Sworn Book of Honorius. The magician will go into the wilderness and construct the circle. Then venture away from the circle, further into the wilderness and call forth the spirits. As the spirits begin to come forward, the magician will continue to call and pray as they proceed back to the circle, and close the circle behind them. The sacred is without the circle, out in the wilderness where the spirits reside. Who would dare call these spirits anything other than sacred? No matter the spirits, be they angels, demons, sprites, etc. Who, indeed, would dare call them profane?

Indeed, to engage in magic in any manner is usually considered taboo, hence the secrecy of conducting magical rituals. Throughout history magic and various magical practices have been taboo. To engage the spirits is taboo. Thus, to call them is already a transgression, and engagement with the sacred. I will confess my own engagements with spirits has been a means to engage the sacred, to commune with the divine, to touch the ethereal plane. And certainly I get weird looks and dismissive remarks from those I discuss these things with (which is rare), because they view magic as a transgression. And really, it is a transgression.

Even under the conception of the sacred being enclosed and partitioned off from and within the profane, one still transgresses the city when one goes into the church to partake in Mass or whatever. They have crossed the boundary of the city to enter sacred space. However, if we are to accept Bataille's conception spatially, the church is not an enclosure of the sacred, but a portal within the city that transgresses the profane and carries (portare, to carry) beyond the the profane into the sacred. The church is a gate in the same way a city has a gate in its walls.

But is the church within the city really a sacred space? Yes... well, kind of. It might be better to call the church "holy," because the sacredness of a church is still predicated on rules and taboos (profane). One should not be having sex on the altar or smoking pot in the nave/sanctuary/&c. There are codes of what one should do and not do. There are obviously rules, and rules are profane. Furthermore, many churches have civil functions, and some are integral to civil life, such as the Church of England at its founding.

Similarly, the magic circle is sacred, kind of. But again, it might be better to call it "holy" or as is more common in grimoires "exorcised" (sworn). There is a process of separation the magician will partake in, namely things like abstinence from sex and masturbation, abstaining from alcohol, limiting one's diet to vegetables and then fasting, secluding from the world (so far as possible for the magician), &c. The film A Dark Song, for all its inaccuracies of the Abramelin rite, is a good illustration of the isolation the magician may endure. So there is a setting apart for the magician and their rituals, but they nonetheless have rules.

In reality, these may be more thought of as liminally sacred. They are sacred, kind of. They are not raw nature and wilderness. But they are also not profane politics, economics, sexuality, &c. The church, the magician, &c are liminal in their sacredness.

Masonic lodges are an interesting example. The members purge the Lodge of non-members, close the door, do things in secured secrecy, &c. Having opened the Lodge, the members proceed to do degree work and conduct business. I remember once talking to a former Mason who went on to join the OTO and Golden Dawn, and he said of all the ritual openings he has ever seen in these esoteric secret societies, the Masonic opening ritual is the most sacred and powerful, and then it is immediately ruined by conducting business (voting on bills, election of officers, et al). And that is true. Masons go through great ritual lengths to create a sacred space, only to smash it all by conducting profane business. The ritual to set the Lodge apart from the outside profane world is then made profane once more. So, what is this? Is it liminal? Kind of sacred?

Well, there are still rules within the Lodge, taboos that cannot be transgressed. So something in the Lodge is still being set apart, something is still sacred: the Bible upon the altar. In Colorado and other jurisdictions, no one is allowed to cross between the Worshipful Master and the altar when the Bible is opened. No one is allowed to touch or mess with the altar except the Senior Deacon. All the taboos and restrictions in the Lodge concern the Bible — all other "taboos" are just codes of conduct, courtesy, and manners. The true taboos of the Lodge are around the Bible on the altar. The altar is the sacred space set apart from even the Masons in the Lodge. Square and Compasses upon the Bible upon the altar surrounded by the three lesser lights is the fetish object, narrowly around which is the space that is set apart from the profane dealings of the Masons in the room, though the Lodge itself is liminal in its sacrality.

All this is more of a modification, or at least a clarification of my old classifications of sacred space. Previously I had considered things like forest glades, mountains, &c to be "found" or "naturally" sacred spaces. They were already sacred. Things like shrines and churches are "constructed" sacred spaces with some nuances to that overall classification. However, now that I have this perspective from Bataille, I view these as just "sacred" (nature, wilderness), with those sacred spaces we construct as "liminal" sacred spaces. This, at the very least, is a better step forward for me in distinguishing the types and qualities of sacred spaces.

Disputing Douglas Darden: A Retort

 

"When are you going to do real projects?" note from project files

I recently was rereading the dialogue between Darden and Keith Loftin III (whom I casually knew while doing my Masters at CU Denver), which was published in Installations Two (Fall 1993), a student run journal of architecture, of which only 500 copies were printed, and the only one I can find is in the special collections at the Auraria Library. This was a three "track" piece, in which the first "track" was Darden talking to himself, the second track a dialogue between Darden and his student James Trewitt on Laughing Girls, and the third a dialogue between Darden and Loftin about the reality of architect (more or less). These three tracks are presented interlinearly (kind of), so we have to read chunks of each track along side the others.

I really appreciate the Darden-Loftin conversation, especially their discussion of the client and the architect. Too often, when it comes to Darden, we are looking at a man who views architecture as a high ideal, something that works far abstractly than is really practical, and that the client is some byproduct — or worse, some Randian subservient entity that finances the architect's ambitions. And really, Darden's clients are all fictions. He invents clients, they are fictions, and strangely subservient to his whims. In reality, the client in Darden's allegories (designs) are afterthoughts, something invented to add substance to his work, and aren't necessarily an agent that was driving the design at any one time. It is literature, ideas, other things that drive his designs, and a client is later invented to corroborate the work. Darden has specifically stated: "literature has thus been my inspiration and, effectively, my sponsor," and again, "a novel could be the veritable client for a building design."

And this all tracks with Darden, namely that the reality of the profession does not entirely concern him, or at least he had no actual experience in the professional field of architecture to full appreciate the reality of making buildings. He even wrote late in his life while travelling in Japan giving lectures, on a little piece of writing paper: "When are you going to do real projects?" And this is something he struggled with near the end. In an interview I had with Peter Schneider in 2015, Darden regretted near the end of his life that he had never done a real building. According to Schneider, Darden actually tried to work for David Tryba, but his illness had so far progressed that it became difficult to meet the demands of professional architectural practice, and nothing became of it.

Darden only ever had one real client. I know next to nothing about this project or the client, except having seen the final presentation drawings and that it was for the "Fords." The Ford House is... amateur. I remember Schneider calling it "pedantic." It looks like a postmodern house par excellent. But there is nothing "real" about this house. As usual, Darden does not provide scale, north, site... just plans and a couple of elevations and sections. Nothing tells us how it is to be built, and there aren't even labels that tell us what the rooms are for, or any data or anything meaningful to the architectural profession. And it certainly was never built. One might as well count the Ford House as another theoretical design.

The only other "real" project Darden had was called "The Construction of Demolition" in collaboration with Bob Curtis. This was an installation project for Nature Morte Gallery in New York City (204 East Tenth Street), of which the only drawing is dated 15 January 1987. The only other "real" project was also an installation project for I-Club in Fuku-oku, Japan, of which some Polaroids of the model and a single drawing dated 19 January 1991 survive. That is about as "real" as Darden ever got.

Too often, Darden's view on the client and the reality of the architecture profession as a whole is restricted to his time in academia. I think his dialogue with Loftin is worth quoting at length:

DD: ... As the architect, if you bring to the table a higher sense of what is possible through engaging the Work, you might begin to have the client yield, in turn, to a deeper substratum of feelings which would engender a more satisfying architecture.

K3: Why yield? Why not compassion? Why not empathy?

DD: Why yield? Because the client must yield to a whole different level of understanding, of existence, than square footages or profit margins suggest. I believe it was e.e. cummings [sic] who said that to be fully human within our society is the most difficult vocation we face.

 K3: Of course, but I think of building as an event. As you well know, ‘building’ is actually a verb used as a noun. So, it is fundamentally an action, a play whose curtain never comes down. I remember reading that Christo [and Jeanne-Claude] spoke of his “running Fence” project, during one of the many hearings before it was constructed, as if the work of art was right then and there, in the process of negotiation, that everybody was part of the art. For him the political, social, legal process was part of the work. From this perspective, a building is merely the physical product of a complex and never ending conversation, one with many speakers. The (seldom used) adjectival cliché for this interchange is civility.

I think that helps illustrate Darden's perception, and I appreciate Loftin's counterpoints, in many ways challenging Darden to consider the reality of the profession. And Darden does seem to be... not ambivalent... but definitely less sympathetic to the demands of the profession. I don't believe there is a conclusion to their dialogue. Darden and Loftin make a resolution, but it feels soft... maybe contrived. It is as if they were cognizant of the fact they were running out of page space and needed to wrap it up. That said, both make valid points, but as a professional, I do side more with Loftin than Darden on the reality of the architectural profession.

As Loftin points out, sometimes things like the client's restrictions and the building department and neighborhood meetings can be excellent driving factors to good design. I have seen these things degrade my lovely designs, but I've also see these things become challenges that created some clever resolutions and elegant design decisions. The Pullman in Denver is a project I worked on that we came up with some clever and elegant decisions that were actually driven by the client, the building department, etc, and I think it came out nicely. But I do recognize Darden's point that the profession can really destroy an architect's love of the profession. Here is a quote by Darden from Looking After the Underbelly:

I got into architecture because of my dreams. And from friends of mine, as architects, that would not design so much as a doorknob for themselves, now that have been so extraverted in their concerns had to be of the building department, the client, the budget, dealing with the contractor; they don’t even have any dreams anymore. And what I mean by having dreams as an architect is making something from your dreams or making a dream out of architecture. And, you know, again, dreams — when I mean dreams, I don’t mean aspirations, like Martin Luther King saying, “I have a dream.” I mean what happens to us when we go to sleep.

Darden iterates this same idea about dreams in his conversation with Loftin. But I will agree, the reality and demands of the profession can be a dream-killer. I remember recently I was sketching some details on my notepad, because sometimes it's easier and quicker to work things out by hand than to spend forever trying to do it in the computer. One of the senior architects saw what I was doing and told me that I need to get with the times and do that stuff in the computer, no one does that stuff by hand anymore, and I told her: "I'm sorry architecture is dead to you." And really, doing things by hand sometimes helps maintain my dreams in the professional field, and for this coworker, architecture was dead, and only the reality of construction and bureaucracy of building departments remain. When at a party or something and I tell people I work in architecture, they tend to ask if I get to do "creative stuff." I tell them that the "creative" is a very small part of the job, and most of my time is spent trying to ensure we keep the creative stuff, not lose the valuable parts of the design to "value engineering" or letting the reality of construction destroy its aesthetics. Hand sketching details is a part of that effort to keep the "archi" (chief, principal, high) in architecture.

And I've used Darden's words before in the office. There was a time when our office was split. We were in an old brick warehouse building, which had thick brick demising walls and one opening between the sides. One side of the wall was the planning and conceptual personnel, and on the other was the construction documents and production personnel. If you were me going over to the CD side of the wall, they would start shouting, "Hey! Stay over there in imagination land! Over here is the real world! Over here you can't take 7 and 7 and get 13." And when they would come over to the planning side, I would say, "Do you have a passport? Because this isn't the real world anymore. Over here I expect you to design a doorknob for yourself without first checking with fucking building department and the code book!"

On the one hand, I agree with Darden: maintain your dreams; never stop dreaming architecture. My studies on Darden, as well as Lequeu are one means to not stop dreaming architecture. I also like to do reconstructions of the architectural descriptions from the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. And there is my side project of designing the Tomb for God. I understand that the demands of the architectural profession can be a dream-killer, and I have to find ways of maintaining those dreams. However, I also agree with Loftin. I recognize the fact that architecture is meant to be built; it is meant to become real, to be inhabited, to be used, to be personalized by its inhabitants. Architecture must also be safe and accessible: you can't design a tinderbox with no means of escape, nor can you design something that a person in a wheelchair can't use. There is a consequence of architecture becoming real: it must follow the rules.

I think Darden understood that architecture should become real. I'm thinking of Ken Burns's documentary on Frank Lloyd Wright, the part where (Vincent Scully?) says that a painter can sit in their attic producing paintings and convince themselves that the outside world doesn't understand, but an architect needs a client, needs a commission; it is just the reality of being an architect. I believe Darden understood this deficit in his portfolio, and there was a desire to produce a real project, so see something he drew become real.

I recently was on the construction site of the Academy on Mapleton Hill. I have been on this project for almost eight years, and the first four years were spent getting the project approved by the City of Boulder. There was much heartache, late nights, rushing to meet deadlines, a lot of compromises, but also a lot of clever arguments to get the City and neighborhood to buy-into the design... it has been a journey. But the other day, standing on site, the gloomy autumn clouds erasing the tops of the mountains, watching the earthmovers dance around each other, seeing the concrete poured onto the rocks, hearing the hammers banging, witnessing the guts being piped and wired into the buildings... I understood what that yearning for one's architecture to become real. There is nothing like seeing one's designs come alive. It is almost like watching an autopsy in reverse. To see the world you designed become inhabitable, walkable... too walk through the spaces that you already know in your head, to see the rough forms the workers are building and knowing what the final product will be. For years I have longed to see this project become real. I even have swallowed my pride and sucked some stuff up that I might have quit over, but I really wanted to see this project built with me on the team. I sympathize with Darden's desire to build something real. I really do.

At the same time, I'm not sure Darden would bend to the professional world of architecture. I'm sure he could handle it, and if he were programmed differently he may have thrived, as he was a very intense individual. But what the profession expects of an architect is very different from his general nature. Perhaps he could have succeeded as Thom Mayne or Frank Gehry did, but there would have been a period where he would have needed to bend to the demands of the profession before he could do what he really wanted. Or maybe he would have been more like Lebbeus Woods, who worked for some notable starchitects and did a few built works, but mostly remained theoretical.

One wonders if Darden would have done any built works had he not developed cancer. Perhaps he only began to desire to do a built project because he knew his time was short, but if he had another few decades to keep working, he would keep doing theoretical work. At the same time, one wonders what he may have done if he were given the opportunity to a real project.

All this is to say, I am uncertain how Darden would have been as a practicing architect, but from his academic background, he does not express anything that would have made him compatible with the profession as it functions, except maybe as a strange rebel figure doing very little real built works. Still, his desire to do a real project is a little heartbreaking when one reads his note to himself so late in his short life. Yet, the value Darden brings to the profession is a stern and harsh reminder to never let the profession destroy your dreams of architecture.

Dis/continuous Genealogies: Revisiting Darden's Genealogies

The "discontinuous" illustrations of the Dis/continuous Genealogy of Night School

I have said it before and I will iterate it again, that Georges Bataille probably had a considerable impact on Darden, and maybe more so than the Marquis de Sade. Early in Darden's career he would be introduced to Bernard Tschumi's essay "Transgression and Architecture," which he read at least prior to his last year at Harvard GSD when he designed Saloon for Jesse James, in which Darden cites this essay in some draft descriptions of the project. Tschumi's essay was heavily inspired by Bataille's Eroticism, and it is cited and quoted several times. Darden would also meet Tschumi some time in the summer of 1986 (mentioned in a letter to Valerie Smith of Artists Space, dated 8 June 1986) while Darden was teaching at Barnard College (affiliated with Columbia University, where Tschumi would later become the Dean of the Graduate School of Architecture). This may have been Darden's introduction to Bataille. Darden would go on to read Eroticism and would cite it a few times in his essay "The Architecture of Exhaustion." Vidler's The Writing of the Walls was a book that impacted Darden's work on Sex Shop, and Vidler was likewise influenced by Bataille. All this I have discussed before. That said, the most I can confirm is that Darden did read Eroticism: Death and Sensuality, but I cannot confirm he read anything more by Bataille.

I recently read Bataille's Eroticism, as well as a few other works by Bataille, and more and more I'm fully realizing the impact Bataille had on Darden. These aren't things he opening acknowledges, and maybe he even moved away from Bataille, but there were ideas that stuck and continued to bleed into Darden's writings and work. I have previously written about the Dis/continuous Genealogies, but there I focus more on the "genealogy" part and its narrative applications to his projects. I did not at the time fully expound upon the "dis/continuous" aspect of the term, as I don't think I fully comprehended why he used that term. I copped out and said that they are a part of the narrative of the project but not part of the design process. Which I guess may still be true, but I think that Bataille's theories of eroticism, death and sensuality, are more the key to this "Dis/continuous" in the Genealogies.

Very early in Eroticism, Bataille describes our lives, our being as "discontinuous." We are discontinuous beings. We solidify our discontinuousness when we have children. Our "continuation" only occurs when we die. It seems like the opposite would be true, but not for Bataille. Like Darden, Bataille views things from the unusual side of things. For instance, when he contemplates the nature of the economy, up until Bataille economists had always viewed the economy in terms of production. Bataille would look at the economy in terms of consumption, and more so than consumption, waste. For Bataille there is always waste within any system, and waste tells us more about the structures of power in economics. Human sacrifice, potlatch, launching cars into space, building an eighth mansion, et al, power is demonstrated by wasting resources; the powerful accumulate resources only to waste them to illustrate how much wealth they possess, and by wasting it on useless things they flex the power they have.

Similarly, sex for pleasure is a waste. We don't need it biologically. It does nothing for the preservation of the biological machines we are. Masturbation is an obvious waste, as that was supposed to go towards the continuation of the species, and it was flushed down the toilet. And even sex for procreation is an act of discontinuation: we split off a part of ourselves to form a new life. Bataille initially uses the single-cell organism as an example: in mitosis the cell divides to become two cells. The process of dividing the cell cause the original cell to end and begin a state of two cells. The cell did not necessarily "die," but it was discontinuous until it divided. Upon dividing, ending itself to become two, it continued. In a sense, it was discontinuous until it could continue as two cells. That might be one way of rewording Bataille's analogy.

However, the principle does not change just because we are more complex organisms that reproduce via sexual procreation. For Bataille, we are nonetheless discontinuous beings until our deaths. With our deaths, our continuation is through what we leave to our children. We would usually think of this as a legacy of inheritance, wealth that is bequeathed, pretty much anything that can go in a will. However, there is always the problems of life, our genetic deficiencies, our generational traumas, &c that we pass on to our children. Basically, any issues with wasting of resources is always going to be a problem we kick down the road for our children to inherit. In other words, our continuation is the baggage we leave to our children as discontinuous beings. It fundamentally never goes away.

These ideas of Bataille's may seem superfluous, but this may be part of what Darden is thinking when he produces his Genealogies. After all, they are called "genealogies," which implies discontinuous entities procreating and generating new discontinuous entities. In the case of Darden's Dis/continuous Genealogies, there are a few illustrations, each discontinuous, that when overlain (incubare: to lay upon, usually sexually, such as the incubus, but also incubate newborns, the result of sexual procreation) upon each other to generate (generation) the Ideogram. The Ideogram is the offspring of the original illustrations.

Sometimes the illustrations that generate the Ideogram are pairs, like male and female. For instance, in Melvilla, the Iroquois meeting hut is paired with the upside-down New England meeting house, and the Iroquois hand loom is paired with the locomotive (both industrial mechanisms of indigenous and European cultures), which is reminiscent of Ishmael and Queequeg's "marriage" as "husband and wife." Sometimes pairing/duality is imbedded into the original illustrations themselves, such as Da Vinci's teeter-totter in Saloon for Jesse James, or the Temple of Roma/Amor and the Janus coin in Temple Forgetful, and the Coliseum in Night School (an amphi-theatre or "both"-theatres), &c.

There is something sexually procreative (and consequently erotic) in Darden's Genealogies, and at the same time something continuous-discontinuous in a Bataillean sense in their generation.

Certainly there is a lot to play with under this framework, but nonetheless, it appears Bataille is useful in further exploring Darden's Dis/continuous Genealogies.