Joseph Rivera: Landscapes of the Sacred 2

In Lane’s Landscapes of the Sacred he talks about four axioms that are to serve as a guide to understanding the character of sacred place. The first axiom is that a sacred place is not chosen, it chooses. The second being that sacred place is ordinary place, ritually made extraordinary. The third is that sacred place can be tred upon without being entered. The final one says that the impulse of sacred place is both centripetal and centrifugal, local and universal. Out of these I find the third axiom to be the most intriguing. The third axiom simply states that one can be in a place that one individual would consider sacred and not realize it. This makes sense because it explains how different religions hold some sites sacred that another religion would not consider sacred. This axiom also makes me wonder if one individual can re-visit a site and find it sacred that he had originally not realized to be sacred.