Lane Reflection- Erin Comerford

Lane describes four phenomenological categories or axioms that describe how places are perceived in the process of mythogenesis. Those four axioms are: 1. sacred place is not chosen, it chooses. 2.sacred place is ordinary place, ritually made extraordinary. 3. sacred place can be tred upon without being entered. and 4. the impulse of sacred place is both centripetal and centrifugal, local and universe. Each of these axioms describes sacred place. The first three axioms make sense to me. A place isn't sacred because someone or something makes it sacred, it is sacred because the place itself chooses to be sacred. It is the place that makes it sacred. Through rituals, an ordinary place can be transformed into a sacred or extraordinary place. Without those rituals in that place, the place is not sacred. Also, one can tred upon or be in a sacred place, but not experience because they are either not letting that place choose, or they are not participating in the ritual of that place. The fourth axiom however, is a little harder for me to understand. The concept that physical sacred place is in that place itself but also universal is a little confusing to me. I understand the concept of sacredness that is universal, but a physical place being universal doesn't make sense. It may have something to do with the fact that the sacredness of a place, like the rituals, can be universal or in many places.