ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates how “sacred space” relies on the use of secrecy. “Sacred-secret” sites, whether natural or designed, announce and even advertise the presence of protected enclaves and restricted sources of power not available to the commons, and dramatically accentuate the thresholds and passages that distinguish banal from special positions. The ways these spatial features are marked and ritually exploited varies widely, as this chapter likewise explores. In terms of designed sacred spaces, the chapter considers the unpredictable synergies and disjunctures between spaces, materials, and persons. The fates of sacred spaces never exactly correspond to plans, because they have lives of their own. There are, nevertheless, recurring patterns to be discerned, including visible features of enclosures and spatial divisions that, despite the ways they disrupt the visual field, simultaneously announce and promote the presence of another, more powerful place beyond.
