What is sacred? - Spencer Beeson

Sacred, in reference to nature, is when a place converts from topos to chora. These are the Greek words for place. Topos is “a mere location, a measurable, quantifiable point, neutral and indifferent,” and chora means “an energizing force, suggestive to the imagination, drawing intimate connections to everything else in our lives.” (Lane 39) Sacred is also when the individual is able to experience the sublime, which is “the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.” (Redick 40) When a place becomes sacred the individual and the environment becomes filled with the sublime. In “Landscapes of the Sacred”, Lane gives an example when he experienced sacredness. “Half anticipating some peculiar experience of the holy in walking around the circle myself, I saw nothing unusual – only a woman I noticed on the opposite side of the wheel as I made my way halfway around it. She stood facing my way, looking toward me but seeming so deeply entranced by something in the middle distance between us that I wondered what she saw that I had missed. Her rapt attention to some mystery in turn captured me. …But the circle joined us in that brief moment, making us part of a connectedness that the entire place seemed to share.” (Lane 40) There is a lesson to be learned in this passage. It is that a sacred place chooses the individual; the individual does not choose the sacred place. With this said, almost any place has the potential to be sacred and produce the feeling of sublime.