A theory of sacralization is offered in which the sacred emerges from the collision of temptation and tradition. It is proposed that when innate or acquired desires to behave in one way conflict with socially acquired and/or mediated drives to behave in another way, actors ascribe sacredness to the objects of their action as a means of reconciling the difference between their desired and actual...

Our experience and our reaction to all things beautiful is made possible by our unique ability to subconsciously recognize geometric order from transitory chaos. At this level, the perfection inherent in a Greek temple or a painting by Da Vinci is not simply because it is made of a particular material or hue but because the harmonic proportions contained in their design are bound by the laws of...

This article tells the story of the sacred place named Mata Loko (“River’s Source”) in Karendi on the western end of the island of Sumba. This ethnographic case of an eastern Indonesian society where the traditional religion of Marapu persists sheds light on questions of how local belief systems are part of environmental adaptations. The use of sacred resources is restricted by the belief that ...

Today's mental health system is largely a product of western science. Like a one-eyed giant, it has great power, but it lacks the wisdom which makes life sacred and meaningful. The challenge for today's mental health system is to unite East and West; to integrate wisdom and science; to make room for the sacred as well as the practical. One of the most critical domains for integration-and one of...

This paper considers religion in relation to four recurrent traits: belief systems incorporating supernatural agents and counterintuitive concepts, communal ritual, separation of the sacred and the profane, and adolescence as a preferred developmental period for religious transmission. These co-occurring traits are viewed as an adaptive complex that offers clues to the evolution of religion fro...

From the ancient times, there are three basic approaches for the interpretation of the different psychic phenomena: the organic, the psychological, and the sacred approach. The sacred approach forms the primordial foundation for any psychopathological development, innate to the prelogical human mind. Until the second millennium B.C., the Great Mother ruled the Universe and shamans cured the dif...

This article considers the relationship between architecture, bodies, and custodies in making of Indian urban monuments. Monuments are created through a combination design designation. In this I explore religious architecture that is dynamic iterative at which monumental designation was attempted quickly abandoned. align three issues: what monument looks like, does, how both function connect to...