Joseph Rivera: Landscapes of the Sacred 3

In Lane’s Landscapes of the Sacred he mentions three approaches to understanding the medicine wheel as sacred place. These approaches are the ontological, cultural, and phenomenological approaches. From these three different approaches the one I find the most interesting is the cultural approach. The cultural approach in my opinion is the one approach that most people will agree with or understand the most. In this approach it says that sacred place is most readily defined, culturally at least, as a site over which conflicting parties disagree – a place about which people are willing to fight and even die. I think this makes the most sense seeing how there have been years and years of crusades over lands, like Jerusalem. I also think it makes more sense to people to believe that they have influence over sacred places. It might be just a part of human nature to think that they have influence over what they believe in.