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"Sacred" as a prehistoric adjective...
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tuesday
tuesday
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Re: "Sacred" as a prehistoric adjec...
Aug 08, 2005, 10:08
I should say that, with regard to the use of old St Pauls as a marketplace, it was probably more a case of mediaeval cockney pragmatism and a certain 'vested interest' tolerance than a radically different view of the sacred versus the secular.....

things do seem mainly to become 'sacred' by being ritualised - kids do that all the time. That is also one of the original meanings of 'fetish'. A thing or place having an innate objective sacred quality is possible - but that has to be a matter of faith. Peter Ackroyd's (romantic) belief about London is that the power of its myths become somehow 'embedded' in its places which then affect subsequent behaviour in a kind of feedback loop.

....but every culture inhabits a myth - a myth which it calls 'the truth' - that is, it doesn't perceive it as 'a myth' at all. The earth was previously 'known' to be flat - that wasn't something speculated over because that 'truth' completely matched experience (until the astronomers). Subsequent cultures shake their heads sadly over, smile at, or sentimentalise their predecessors's myth and imagine they have discovered the actual 'truth' of things themselves.

so it's difficult to know whether places were perceived by their makers as actually being 'sacred' in the way they might now seem to me

and I wonder what the current prevailing myth is? technolgical salvation? liberal democracy for all? 'because you're worth it'? and what is sacred/ ritualised now? the lottery, the football match, the summer festival - unquestioned things I suppose.

tuesday
c/o the flat earth society
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