Trent Heath- The Four Axioms

Trent Heath

December 1, 2009

The Four Axioms

The four axioms provide a guide for studying sacred place, which is helpful for someone who is not familiar with studying sacred place. To be honest until the course was offered as an option, I would not have thought about attempting to study Wilderness and Sacred Place. The four axioms that Lane discusses lay the groundwork for the study of sacred place.

The Four Axioms Are:

1. Sacred place is not chosen, it chooses.

2. Sacred place is ordinary place, ritually made extraordinary.

3. Sacred place can be tred upon without being entered.

4. The impulse of sacred place is both, centripetal and centrifugal, local and universal.

According to this logic we do not choose a place that we believe to be sacred but the place chooses us. Without knowing the four axioms, one may believe that it would be exactly opposite; because we believe that we choose the places. If someone were to pray everyday by an ordinary lake, or river, and that pattern continued and other people began to do the same, that would make that ordinary place sacred, by using rituals. I believe it is more often than not, we are at sacred places and we do not realize they are sacred, therefore we do not enter them. How often do we pass through a location that may have some significant meaning and we are not aware of this? The last axiom, to me is the most confusing, because it is saying that the meaning of the sacred place is within but also exists everywhere, that the force reflecting, but also spreading.

It is a bit different to study a sacred place, because I believe most of the time a place that we consider sacred, is and only exists that way. We put very little thought to how it became sacred, or really study the special meaning of the place. Learning and understanding the meaning behind something sacred only increases its value and it is beneficial to have a guide, such as the four axioms, to refer to for help.