Monday, October 21, 2013
Sacred Slums
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), Beyond the Mexique Bay (1934; rpt. New York: Vintage Books, 1960), p. 234:
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A particular patch of ground is holy, possesses mana; therefore it is desirable that as many shrines as possible shall be built upon it, so that the benefits of the supernatural radiation from the soil may be shared by the greatest possible number of images and their worshippers. The sacred precincts at Delos and at Delphi, for example, were, architecturally, just sacred slums—unplanned collections of buildings crowded, higgledy-piggledy, into the narrow enclosures within which the mana was supposed to be active.
