The Oxford English Dictionary gives us multiple definitions on the word ‘sacred’. These include: ‘Consecrated to; esteemed especially dear or acceptable to a deity’, and ‘Dedicated, set apart, exclusively appropriated to some person or some special purpose.’ Sacred can refer, according to these definitions, to the religious, and the secular. Read makes the following distinction: there is the ‘sacralised’, whereby a site has assumed significance to the ‘soul or mind, of phenomena and conditions apparently outside the domain of physical law’, and the more expansive, not necessarily inspirited but possessing deep meaning, ‘sacred.’
As I progressed through the readings, I realised how broad and subjective the definition of sacred is. As we discussed, to analyse and interpret how sacred places have eventuated and what they mean for people, one needs a working definition. Yet this definition can be one of any number of possibilities. The context and purpose dictates all. As Read states, those Aborigines who feel a spiritual connection to the land on which they live is because of how they have been raised, and what stories have formed their selves through their childhood. One’s religion can make a temple or church of definite sacredness in their own cultural perceptions. Death and suffering are of such emphatic significance that they invest a place with a sense of the sacred. Battle sites and prisoner of war camps are made sacred through the sacrifice that has occurred there; this is revered and honoured in a form of spiritual communion with those departed. Ex POW’s, relatives of lost ones, and members of the Australian public visit sites such as Changi in Singapore, where silent messages are left to the spirits who seemingly linger there:
The men who once did roam here were stronger than will itself… Their spirits will always fly here and thus never die here. Lest we forget. Fight on in memory my friends.
A war memorial to those who died at Changi had been erected in Canberra, yet is rarely visited, whereas the Changi Prison Chapel in Singapore has constant cards and crosses on its grounds. The place itself is invested with that sense of deep meaning; people expunge their grief on its ground; remember the dead in its ambience; feel closer to the departed.
Virginia Woolf had an obsession for her childhood home at St Ives that can be defined as sacred; this was where her mother died and where she sensed her spirit. Her literary career was in many ways fixated on attempts to return there, attempting to re-create in her mind a place that was of the utmost sacredness. It is so sacred, for her, because it is part of her identity: it has helped to create her ‘self’. In her mind, her behaviour, her definitions of herself, of femininity, of peace and love, this time in her childhood looms large. Identity and sacred place is a fundamental connection in all the examples above. Even if a sacred site is communally revered, everyone views it in their own way; it will remain an individual, subjective experience. Place can never be objective, as it is in so many ways a social, cultural, metaphoric, and philosophical construct.
History dealing with sacred place, and place in general, cannot in faithfulness avoid this subjectivity. Read’s introduction sets a scene, delving into his thoughts, his position, his subject. Integrating historical questions into these areas requires one to take into account the full range of the subjectivity involved. Not concerned with history from the top, social history looks through the eyes of individuals out into their world; attempting to analyse sacred place is an examination of a myriad of different outlooks. A definition of ‘sacred’ and sacred place is therefore never static. Too subjective is not a negative issue in these kinds of histories; one can look at Aboriginal- Anglo-Celtic Australian relations and how they have changed (thereby being ‘history’ as such addresses historical questions and/or crises) from the eyes of an Aboriginal, as if we were in their shoes, as if the spirits exist in the ground at their sacred sites, for that is a history in its own right. Instead of limitations, it is “time to take a… stroll” – the diverse, subjective, ways of looking at place and the value therein will ensure that it won’t be the last.
References
Ben-Israel, Hedva, ‘Hallowed Land in the theory and practice of modern nationalism’, in Kedar, Benjamin Z., and Werblowsky, R J Zwi, eds., Sacred Space: Shrine, City, Land, (New York: University of Washington Press, 1998), pp. 278 – 94
Blackburn, Kevin, ‘Changi: A Place of Personal Pilgrimages and Collective Histories’, Australian Historical Studies, v. 30, no. 112, (1999), pp. 152 – 171
Byrne, Denis, ‘Deep nation: Australia’s acquisition of an indigenous past’, Aboriginal History, vol. 20, (1996), pp. 82 – 107
Lee, Hermoine, ‘Introduction’, in Woolf, Virginia, To The Lighthouse, ed. Stella McNichol, (Penguin: London, 1992), pp. ix - xl
Read, Peter, Haunted Earth, (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2003), pp. 15 – 43
Read, Peter, ‘A Haunted Land No Longer? Changing Relationships to a Spiritualised Australia’, Australian Book Review, 265, (2004), pp. 29 - 33
Comments
This is a sweet meditation on the subjective nature of sacred place (and place in general). I’m using the word ‘sweet’ here to mean something positive about your style. The lyrical cast of your sentences reads very sweetly throughout (‘people expunge their grief on its ground; remembered the dead in its ambience; feel closer to the departed’). But I also think ‘sweet’ is the best way to describe this discussion rather than, say, ‘profound’, because in the end you haven’t delivered any particularly compelling insights into this topic.
Your basic point was a good one. Instead of agonising over the fact that it’s difficult to define sacred place (you said), we should embrace its multiplicity and individually specific meanings as something positive. But you needed something more arresting than this to make this discussion linger in the mind once it was finished. In your concluding paragraph, you used that lovely metaphor of taking a stroll past different notions of sacred place, for example, but you didn’t develop it any earlier in your discussion. Given that you included the same metaphor in your title, it would have been a good idea to include it at the start and return to it throughout this piece.
You also need to push some of the points you made further. You noted in passing, for example, that the Changi Prison Chapel is far more sacred to people than the Changi memorial in Canberra. This begged a question which you didn’t go on to consider: that is, is there something about the materiality or ‘ambience’ of certain places which makes them conducive to sacredness? You also mentioned the importance of death and grief to notions of sacredness more or less in passing. That might also have been something that you considered at greater length, particularly given that the idea of ‘taking a stroll’ was itself drawn from Read’s description of walking past graves in the Gore Hill cemetery.
Posted by: Melissa Bellanta | May 25, 2007 06:56 PM
I personally agree with what this essay attempts to prove—you use good examples to prove your points and refer nicely to secondary sources. However, I also agree with the professor’s thoughts regarding the essay’s ordering. It is good that you establish the fact that the term sacred exists in many shades, but you need to prove something more “controversial” or debatable at the start. The point at the start of the last paragraph you make—that history surrounding the field of sacred place—would have been better introduced at the end of your introduction.
I also feel that you could have expanded more upon the examples that you used in your paper. You list off places and showcase the most popular preconceptions that define them, but I think it would be better to show a conflict of interests. You touch on this a bit at the second to last paragraph with the notion that individuals will view a given sacred site in a certain personalized way. Applying this principle to the actual examples would have been good. For instance, you could have talked about Woolf’s home as popularly being conceived as a place that fosters femininity by some, whereas other people would just see it as some house of a famous writer.
Posted by: Justin Yee | June 12, 2007 07:16 PM