Document Type
Article
Abstract
Pilgrimage begins with a vision of place. Look down! The holy is here beneath your feet. The boundary of heaven and earth is not the distant horizon, ever out of reach. It shimmers on the surface of the water. As Thoreau ponders the sky reflected in Walden Pond, he sees the earth encompassed within the spiritual realm. The concept of ‘sacred geography’ also suggests such an embrace. Through the recognition of a pattern in the landscape or the orientation of a temple in the holy city, sacred geography claims that the landscape is a map of the divine order, the shape of the city is a key to the structure of the cosmos. These ascriptions of meaning may be as public and contentious as the land claims of competing religions, or as particular and personal as the anchoring of ideals in iconic places. Sacred geography asserts that our beliefs are revealed in the landscape, and suggests that our experience of place can transform the perception of the sacred.
Recommended Citation
Ackerman, Joy "A Politics of Place: Reading the Signs at Walden Pond." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture, vol. 5, no. 3, 2025, pp. 1–14.https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol5/iss3/2
Included in
Nature and Society Relations Commons, Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons