Cathedrals of Utopia

I love cathedrals. Old ones.

I love the smell, the art work and architecture. The gaudy opulence... Whenever I get the chance to be in Europe I spend most of my time roaming from one church to another. But more than that, I like the feeling that most have. A sensation that I have found in sacred spaces belonging to various religions in so many different parts of the world.

Its the feeling of quiet. The sense of being in a place where mindfulness, reflection and connectivity lives.

But like anything, when you prepare to be in a mindset of spirituality, the very atmosphere of the space changes.

Do you need a temple or a cathedral for it? I don't think so. but its easier to make the switch in thoughts when you have one.

Anytime I travel it is always about the architecture. Most recently, Italy, where we experienced countless structures dedicated to the human need to express the sacred. My Master's research concentration was on the philosophy of architecture and so also my continuing studies. Currently, of particular interest, are the memorial sculptures of Serbian, Bogdan Bogdanovic (1922-2010), which are scattered throughout the former Yugoslavia. These are not enclosed buildings but rather are sculptures commemorating specific events which are sited in open areas. My philosophical interpretation regards the relationship of memory and place.

Memorial to the Victims of the Concentration Camp in Jasenovac, Croatia.

Alan wrote: I will gather with these somewhat 'touched in the head' persons for another raising.

I hope I'll be able to join you some day, that sounds wonderful!

Stones Rising is the name of the event which can be found at the church's web site 4qf.org.

Each stone is raised by hand. Ropes and rollers, levers and blocks. There are few concessions to modern technology. Two stones a year. One time we raised three stones and it quite nearly 'killed' us. One year we raised one 14,000 pound stone. The shape of the 'circle' is elliptical and we raise the stones sequentially moving around the ellipse with each stone next to the previous.

It would make a wonderful place to hold a Jedi Conference.

The church property is 120+ acres and is a full camp with excellent facilities. Camping is preferred but there is a dorm, a full institutional kitchen, dining pavilion, comfort facilities (showers and toilets). A river runs through it.

The Stone Circle is magical.

As Gothic catherals were the expression of the values of late Medieval Christian Europe, so today office buildings express 21st century values. Technology companies are commissioning the construction of new office buildings, some of which have an innovative design intended to improve productivity and creativity. In the business of technology these principles are valued and the buildings express this value. A campus style office building of humane proportions and environmental sustainability are other values that are expressed in the architecture.

"NBBJ architects are working on Google's extended campus HQ in Mountain View, California. (NBBJ) technology clients have made their money by capitalising on the digital human networks created by the rollout of the internet. This same principle of harnessing the power of human networks, according to Ward, is now being made manifest in the buildings of technology giants themselves. They want the online social network made physical - as an authentic projection of what they do, but also to increase productivity. This is something which could not be done in the brutal, vertical, segregated, hierarchical skyscrapers of the past." (source http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28641205)

Below Telenor office building in Fornebu, Norway.

tzb wrote: In the absence of gods, we still retain a longing for calm, for community, for grandeur, for sweetness, for perspective – all of which can be found and celebrated through architecture.

We need secular buildings that can also, like the temples and cathedrals of old, create feelings of awe, gratitude, wonder, mystery and silence. We need those abstracted sonorous spaces that take us out of the everyday and encourage contemplation, perspective and (at times) a pleasing terror.

All of the feelings and experiences mentioned here are precisely what the religious experience has traditionally been intended to engender. Often times I feel that when someone is explaining to me why they reject the idea of God they are really explaining why they reject the puppet image of God that their society has presented to them. Religion for its own sake is routine, and routine is only a useful tool as long as we remain willing to break it. Religious institutions concerned with the perpetuation of their own authority rob the spiritual value of all that they touch by insisting on dogma, both in the congregations and the structure of the temples. Inspiration comes from spiritual experience and inspiration is always recognized and appreciated in any field including architecture; that has nothing to do with doctrine.

I do think that architecture with these characteristics is absolutely possible outside of the context of any formal religious doctrine. There are a great many examples in the world already. I think really any building that moves you into a different frame of consciousness (than what you live in on a day to day basis) when you enter and/or leave serves the purpose of a temple. I live in a part of the United States where there are 5 churches along every mile of road, most of the Protestant Christian churches. But none of them has ever moved me in terms of the structure itself. I have had many deeply religious experiences in them but I never developed an association between those and the building in which I was in. I would love to have a building that brought that potential out in me simply by its composition.

I do think as well that an online location could serve the same purpose, i.e. move you into a headspace very much out of the realm of the domestic and the mundane and into a place of awe and gratitude based on the contemplation and immensity of reality. This place has been a little bit of that for me already and I've only been around a few days.

For me much of the inspiration I get comes from the history of the architecture. I like and appreciate modern buildings but they don't have the same effect on me. I recently went to St. Paul's Cathedral in London and when you stand under that dome and look up you can't help but be filled with wonder. The amount of effort and skill it took to create that which was started in 1675 and finished in 1720. History also gives a building character which can't be achieved in any other way.

From the garden of Eden,to the temple of Solomon,pyramids...and lately,cathedrals,
the union with the sacred and the human is a way accept the structure of the divinity,
or the divinity, structured.

* The cherubims and the sacred sword ,delimiting ,as door.


* The ark of salvation, where the planetary species was saved.


In our ancestral memory,woods,trees,stones,caves,represent protection
...And pillars are union with sky. Some times lights ascendent or descendents
activate our mistic feeling.

Our emancipation,freedom and growing are involved in structures. (enter and exit)
Roma build a empire,bridges...way ...and in the conquest of religion also did use of
building...

The feeling that who enter are receiving the light that enter by the stained Glass...

Le Mystère des Cathédrales (The Mystery of the Cathedrals)
(Fulcanelli)
is a good example about how the initiates in art occult of the stones , share many
teachings.

Humans, searched , sometimes, the great feel in the outer.

Is alchemical work and open book,

(many old buildings)

for those who understand his language

I was feel a great inspiration in a Shintai space,simple place,
when I did practices martial arts...

humble room but in deep inner mind-spirit- conection

Sounds of train was very close, but,in one moment, in the end of practices,
when all are in front of the altar,with incense and candle,in silence,waiting for
some words that break the colective mind union and, in same moment , each
individual thinking...in serenity...and next step of ceremony of close...
some parfume divine,I did smell


In middle of pillars of lodges ,time after,
I did meet the powerful egregores...

Today,many symbols are in past. I discover a very acceptable ceiling in the stars,
a luxury in grass if I can to be barefoot...sun in the morning is my window to the
sacred meet...trees are great priests...birds sing the song to the creation.

I can to feel admiration for some buildings,but nothing compares to the communion
in nature...today is a good church for me.Without cherubims, without sword, without eden,
with the heritage of the survivors of the ark.