Taking us on a collective history of sacred spaces made sacrosanct through human worship, of art and architecture, from petroglyphs to great pyramids, verdant gardens to mountain-top temples, we create evolving shrines to our gods and goddesses and our own imagination. From our early designation of nature and the body as temple to our futuristic embrace of imaginary realms, we travel the vast and mystical landscapes of myth, religion, and imagination. Through gathering, we ignite our spaces with spirit, we circle the bonfire, bow down at the forest altar, build rough-hewn stone circles and give praise at the temple to our chosen divinities. Through pilgrimage, and through our creative offerings to spirit we envision new worlds, wildly imaginative odes to what we deem as holy; golden temples hewn of rock, enormous spirals sculpted from sand and soil, silent sanctuaries hidden among wooded groves. We paint the ancient cave walls, carve petroglyphs to mark the way, place roses in veneration at the candlelit shrine. Slowly, stone-by-stone, we build monuments to our gods, a cosmic geometry held within our sacred architecture of worship. These hidden patterns can be found in the mysterious, towering pyramids found across the globe and throughout an astounding diversity of cultures, in the marble sanctuaries built to house the Greek and Roman goddesses, and in the windblown mountain monasteries of ancient Asia and the indigenous cliff-dwellings of the American Southwest. Nature, art, beauty, these are the common elements found both within the places made sacred by our ancestors and in the multitude of environments where we strive to connect to source, and to ourselves. Packed with colour images and historical reproductions. 17 x 24 cm, 520 beautifully designed heavy pages. New from Taschen.
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