In our first writing assignment for Wilderness ULLC, we had to write about a sacred place. I decided to choose Teotihuacan, an Aztec City of the Gods whose culture I fell in love with after studying Art History. I found it so interesting the way these people sacrificed so much for the sacred place, and extreme spirituality, their placating highlighted the connection to place and devotion to their Gods. Because of my ethnocentrism, I am amazed, yet petrified by their practices. I could never conceptualize the rationale for ripping out another human’s heart as a gift for place.
The Aztecs felt the sacredness of place by the power of axis mundi, alignment of the heavens and earth to which heaven then revealed by “an opening by which passage from one cosmic region to another is made possible (from heaven to earth and vice versa),” (Lane, 2000, p. 13). Lane references Mircea Eliades definition of axis mundi as the “navel of the earth.” Discussing this topic also in my sociology class, made me question the intensity of sacred ritual in my life, because our society has imposed mans of connection to God through axis mundi by different measures. Climbing a trail and reaching the pinnacle of a mountain is physically gaining a closeness to God and aligning oneself with the three elements that Lane talks about: man, earth and heavens. This geography of the spirit that Lane discusses gives me a new appreciation to the meaning of connection to place.
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