Temple Architecture Quotes

Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on.

Building a temple didn't mean you believed in gods, it just meant you believed in architecture.

We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the idea that a good building can change your life (and a bad one ruin it).

Forests were the first temples of God and in forests men grasped their first idea of architecture.

The first thing you notice about New Orleans are the burying grounds - the cemeteries - and they're a cold proposition, one of the best things there are here. Going by, you try to be as quiet as possible, better to let them sleep. Greek, Roman, sepulchres- palatial mausoleums made to order, phantomesque, signs and symbols of hidden decay - ghosts of women and men who have sinned and who've died and are now living in tombs. The past doesn't pass away so quickly here. You could be dead for a long time. The ghosts race towards the light, you can almost hear the heavy breathing spirits, all determined to get somewhere. New Orleans, unlike a lot of those places you go back to and that don't have the magic anymore, still has got it. Night can swallow you up, yet none of it touches you. Around any corner, there's a promise of something daring and ideal and things are just getting going. There's something obscenely joyful behind every door, either that or somebody crying with their head in their hands. A lazy rhythm looms in the dreamy air and the atmosphere pulsates with bygone duels, past-life romance, comrades requesting comrades to aid them in some way. You can't see it, but you know it's here. Somebody is always sinking. Everyone seems to be from some very old Southern families. Either that or a foreigner. I like the way it is. There are a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better. There's a thousand different angles at any moment. At any time you could run into a ritual honoring some vaguely known queen. Bluebloods, titled persons like crazy drunks, lean weakly against the walls and drag themselves through the gutter. Even they seem to have insights you might want to listen to. No action seems inappropriate here. The city is one very long poem. Gardens full of pansies, pink petunias, opiates. Flower-bedecked shrines, white myrtles, bougainvillea and purple oleander stimulate your senses, make you feel cool and clear inside. Everything in New Orleans is a good idea. Bijou temple-type cottages and lyric cathedrals side by side. Houses and mansions, structures of wild grace. Italianate, Gothic, Romanesque, Greek Revival standing in a long line in the rain. Roman Catholic art. Sweeping front porches, turrets, cast-iron balconies, colonnades- 30-foot columns, gloriously beautiful- double pitched roofs, all the architecture of the whole wide world and it doesn't move. All that and a town square where public executions took place. In New Orleans you could almost see other dimensions. There's only one day at a time here, then it's tonight and then tomorrow will be today again. Chronic melancholia hanging from the trees. You never get tired of it. After a while you start to feel like a ghost from one of the tombs, like you're in a wax museum below crimson clouds. Spirit empire. Wealthy empire. One of Napoleon's generals, Lallemaud, was said to have come here to check it out, looking for a place for his commander to seek refuge after Waterloo. He scouted around and left, said that here the devil is damned, just like everybody else, only worse. The devil comes here and sighs. New Orleans. Exquisite, old-fashioned. A great place to live vicariously. Nothing makes any difference and you never feel hurt, a great place to really hit on things. Somebody puts something in front of you here and you might as well drink it. Great place to be intimate or do nothing. A place to come and hope you'll get smart - to feed pigeons looking for handouts

What are the dead, anyway, but waves and energy? Light shining from a dead star? That, by the way, is a phrase of Julian's. I remember it from a lecture of his on the Iliad, when Patroklos appears to Achilles in a dream. There is a very moving passage where Achilles overjoyed at the sight of the apparition – tries to throw his arms around the ghost of his old friend, and it vanishes. The dead appear to us in dreams, said Julian, because that's the only way they can make us see them; what we see is only a projection, beamed from a great distance, light shining at us from a dead star… Which reminds me, by the way, of a dream I had a couple of weeks ago. I found myself in a strange deserted city – an old city, like London – underpopulated by war or disease. It was night; the streets were dark, bombed-out, abandoned. For a long time, I wandered aimlessly – past ruined parks, blasted statuary, vacant lots overgrown with weeds and collapsed apartment houses with rusted girders poking out of their sides like ribs. But here and there, interspersed among the desolate shells of the heavy old public buildings, I began to see new buildings, too, which were connected by futuristic walkways lit from beneath. Long, cool perspectives of modern architecture, rising phosphorescent and eerie from the rubble. I went inside one of these new buildings. It was like a laboratory, maybe, or a museum. My footsteps echoed on the tile floors.There was a cluster of men, all smoking pipes, gathered around an exhibit in a glass case that gleamed in the dim light and lit their faces ghoulishly from below. I drew nearer. In the case was a machine revolving slowly on a turntable, a machine with metal parts that slid in and out and collapsed in upon themselves to form new images. An Inca temple… click click click… the Pyramids… the Parthenon. History passing beneath my very eyes, changing every moment. 'I thought I'd find you here,' said a voice at my elbow. It was Henry. His gaze was steady and impassive in the dim light. Above his ear, beneath the wire stem of his spectacles, I could just make out the powder burn and the dark hole in his right temple. I was glad to see him, though not exactly surprised. 'You know,' I said to him, 'everybody is saying that you're dead.' He stared down at the machine. The Colosseum… click click click… the Pantheon. 'I'm not dead,' he said. 'I'm only having a bit of trouble with my passport.' 'What?' He cleared his throat. 'My movements are restricted,' he said. 'I no longer have the ability to travel as freely as I would like.' Hagia Sophia. St. Mark's, in Venice. 'What is this place?' I asked him. 'That information is classified, I'm afraid.' 1 looked around curiously. It seemed that I was the only visitor. 'Is it open to the public?' I said. 'Not generally, no.' I looked at him. There was so much I wanted to ask him, so much I wanted to say; but somehow I knew there wasn't time and even if there was, that it was all, somehow, beside the point. 'Are you happy here?' I said at last. He considered this for a moment. 'Not particularly,' he said. 'But you're not very happy where you are, either.' St. Basil's, in Moscow. Chartres. Salisbury and Amiens. He glanced at his watch. 'I hope you'll excuse me,' he said, 'but I'm late for an appointment.' He turned from me and walked away. I watched his back receding down the long, gleaming hall.

Does poetry - or language or philosophy or music or architecture, even that of our temples - really need to dance to the same tune as our political beliefs or our religious convictions? Is the strict harmony of our cultural identities a virtue to be valued above others that may come from the accommodation of contradictions?

The peace within and flowing from sacred spaces and architecture places is clothed in forgiveness, renunciation, and reconciliation.

When we say that the ancestors of the Blacks, who today live mainly in Black Africa, were the first to invent mathematics, astronomy, the calendar, sciences in general, arts, religion, agriculture, social organization, medicine, writing, technique, architecture; that they were the first to erect buildings out of 6 million tons of stone (the Great Pyramid) as architects and engineers—not simply as unskilled laborers; that they built the immense temple of Karnak, that forest of columns with its famed hypostyle hall large enough to hold Notre-Dame and its towers; that they sculpted the first colossal statues (Colossi of Memnon, etc.)—when we say all that we are merely expressing the plain unvarnished truth that no one today can refute by arguments worthy of the name.

Building a temple didn’t mean you believed in gods, it just meant you believed in architecture.

The manner in which the Americans are subdivided into sects also conflicts with any commendable desire that may exist to build glorious temples in honor of the Deity: and convenience is more consulted than taste, perhaps, in all that relates to ecclesiastical architecture. Nevertheless,

we shall be led as much to the street and the cottage as to the temple and the tower; and shall be more interested in buildings raised by feeling,

Stalin gothic was not so much an architectural style as a form of worship. Elements of Greek, French, Chinese and Italian masterpieces had been thrown into the barbarian wagon and carted to Moscow and the Master Builder Himself, who had piled them one on the other into the cement towers and blazing torches of His rule, monstrous skyscrapers of ominous windows, mysterious crenellations and dizzying towers that led to the clouds, and yet still more rising spires surmounted by ruby stars that at night glowed like His eyes. After His death, His creations were more embarrassment than menace, too big for burial with Him, so they stood, one to each part of town, great brooding, semi-Oriental temples, not exorcised but used.

Artists and artisans both demonstrate with perfect clarity that a person is least able to appropriate for himself those things which are most peculiarly his. His works leave him as birds do the best in which they were hatched. In this respect an architect's fate is the strangest of all. How often he employs his whole intellect and warmth of feeling in the creation of rooms from which he must exclude himself. Royal halls owe their splendor to him, and he may not share in the enjoyment of their finest effects. In temples he draws the line between himself and the holy of holies; the steps he built to ceremonies that lift up the heady, he may no longer climb; just as the goldsmith worships only from afar the monstrance which he wrought in the fire and set with jewels. With the keys of the palace the architect hands over all it's comforts to the wealthy man, and has not the least part in them. Surely in this way art must little by little grow away from the artist, if the work, like a child provided for, no longer teaches back to touch its father.

Landscape design theory has been rotting away, peacefully, like a garden temple, since the close of the eighteenth century.

The Greeks had the greatest architectonic gifts. Every art has its climax at some point, and here architecture had its high point. Modeling and painting reached their climax elsewhere. Despite the gigantic pyramids, the most wonderful architecture appears in the Greek temple.

Jahan thought there were two main types of temple built by humankind: those that aspired to reach out to the skies and those that wished to bring the skies closer down the ground . On occasion, there there was a third: those that did both. Such was San Pietro (St Peter's Basilica)

A thousand years from now" Leonidas declared, "two thousand, three thousand years hence, men a hundred generations yet unborn may, for their private purposes, make journey to our country. They will come, scholars perhaps, or travelers from beyond the sea, prompted by curiosity regarding the past, or appetite for knowledge of the ancients. They will peer out across our plain and probe among the stone and rubble of our nation. What will they learn about us? Their shovels will unearth neither brilliant palaces nor temples. Their picks will prize forth no everlasting architecture or art. What will remain of the Spartans? Not monuments of marble or bronze, but this......what we do here, today." Out beyond the narrows, the enemy trumpets sounded.

Every time I am shown to an old, dimly lit, and, I would add, impeccably clean toilet in a Nara or Kyoto temple, I am impressed with the singular virtues of Japanese architecture. The parlor may have its charms, but the Japanese toilet truly is a place of spiritual repose. It always stands apart from the main building, at the end of a corridor, in a grove fragrant with leaves and moss. No words can describe that sensation as one sits in the dim light, basking in the faint glow reflected from the shoji, lost in meditation or gazing out at the garden. The novelist Natsume Soseki counted his morning trips to the toilet a great pleasure, ‘a physiological delight’ he called it. And surely there could be no better place to savor this pleasure than a Japanese toilet where, surrounded by tranquil walls and finely grained wood, one looks out upon blue skies and green leaves.

It is no coincidence that precisely when things started going downhill with the gods, politics gained its bliss-making character. There would be no reason for objecting to this, since the gods, too were not exactly fair. But at least people saw temples instead of termite architecture. Bliss is drawing closer; it is no longer in the afterlife, it will come, though not momentarily, sooner or later in the here and now - in time. The anarch thinks more primitively; he refuses to give up any of his happiness. "Make thyself happy" is his basic law. It his response to the "Know thyself" at the temple of Apollo in Delphi. These two maxims complement each other; we must know our happiness and our measure.

...but there were four things I taught Walter to consider: 1) That it was Cain who built the first City, 2) That there is a true Science in the World called Scientia Umbrarum which, as to the publick teaching of it, has been suppressed but which the proper Artificer must comprehend, 3) That Architecture aims at Eternity and must contain the Eternal Powers: not only our Altars and Sacrifices, but the Forms of our Temples, must be mysticall, 4) That the miseries (If the present Life, and the Barbarities of Mankind, the fatall disadvantages we are all under and the Hazard we run of being eternally Undone, lead the True Architect not to Harmony or to Rationall Beauty but to quite another Game. Why, do we not believe the very Infants to be the Heirs of Hell and Children of the Devil as soon as they are disclos'd to the World? I declare that I build my Churches firmly on this Dunghil Earth and with a full Conception of Degenerated Nature. I have only room to add: there is a mad-drunken Catch, Hey ho! The Devil is dead! If that be true, I have been in the wrong Suit all my Life.

We therefore find that the triangles and rectangles herein described, enclose a large majority of the temples and cathedrals of the Greek and Gothic masters, for we have seen that the rectangle of the Egyptian triangle is a perfect generative medium, its ratio of five in width to eight in length 'encouraging impressions of contrast between horizontal and vertical lines' or spaces; and the same practically may be said of the Pythagorean triangle

THEY bury their dead in vaults, above the ground. These vaults have a resemblance to houses—sometimes to temples; are built of marble, generally; are architecturally graceful and shapely; they face the walks and driveways of the cemetery; and when one moves through the midst of a thousand or so of them and sees their white roofs and gables stretching into the distance on every hand, the phrase 'city of the dead' has all at once a meaning to him.

Gods wanted belief, not rational thinking. Building the temple first was like giving a pair of wonderful shoes to a man with no legs. Building a temple didn’t mean you believed in gods, it just meant you believed in architecture.

When Ovid strolled up to Apollo’s temple on the Palatine, or haunted the shady colonnades raised on the site of Vedius’s palace, or visited the arches of Pompey’s theatre, it was not to admire the architecture. He was scoping out girls.

There indeed under my eyes, ruined, destroyed, lay a town—its roofs open to the sky, its temples fallen, its arches dislocated, its columns lying on the ground, from which one would still recognise the massive character of Tuscan architecture.

The pilgrimage of Italy, which I now accomplished, had long been the object of my curious devotion. The passage of Mount Cenis, the regular streets of Turin, the Gothic cathedral of Milan, the scenery of the Boromean Islands, the marble palaces of Genoa, the beauties of Florence, the wonders of Rome, the curiosities of Naples, the galleries of Bologna, the singular aspect of Venice, the amphitheatre of Verona, and the Palladian architecture of Vicenza, are still present to my imagination. I read the Tuscan writers on the banks of the Arno; but my conversation was with the dead rather than the living, and the whole college of Cardinals was of less value in my eyes than the transfiguration of Raphael, the Apollo of the Vatican, or the massy greatness of the Coliseum. It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted fryars were singing Vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the City first started to my mind. After Rome has kindled and satisfied the enthusiasm of the Classic pilgrim, his curiosity for all meaner objects insensibly subsides.

It should not be by their architecture, but why not even by their power of abstract thought, that nations should seek to commemorate themselves? How much more admirable the Bhagvat-Geeta than all the ruins of the East! Towers and temples are the luxury of princes. A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince. Genius is not a retainer to any emperor, nor is its material silver, or gold, or marble, except to a trifling extent.

There is a tendency to romanticize the abilities of the ancient Egyptians because they produced structures that were miraculous for their time and certainly would pose a serious challenge to ours. They were somehow immensely more talented with sticks and stones than modern researchers have been able to demonstrate using the same implements. When pondering the theories proffered by Egyptologists, one gets the impression that an ancient Egyptian quarry worker was like a maestro playing a complete symphony on a violin made of a cigar box and a stick and producing the quality of a Stradivarius. The argument is pleasing and poetic, but the trouble is that, metaphorically speaking, when modern scholars make a violin from a cigar box and a stick, its results are precisely what you would expect from a cigar box and a stick. So the question persists: From what instruments did the symphonic architecture of Egypt materialize?

When friends come to Rome in early summer to visit me I like to take them to the Pantheon during thunderstorms and stand them beneath the opening of the feathery, perfectly proportioned dome as rain falls through the open roof against the marble floor and lightning scissors through the wild and roiled skies. The emperor Hadrian rebuilt the temple to honor gods no longer worshiped, but you can feel the brute passion in that ardor in the Pantheon's grand and harmonious shape. I think gods have rarely been worshiped so well.

The idea that everyone should have a house of his own is based on an ancient custom of the Japanese race, Shinto superstition ordaining that every dwelling should be evacuated on the death of its chief occupant. Perhaps there may have been some unrealized sanitary reason for this practice. Another early custom was that a newly built house should be provided for each couple that married. It is on account of such customs that we find the Imperial capitals so frequently removed from one site to another in ancient days. The rebuilding, every twenty years, of Ise Temple, the supreme shrine of the Sun-Goddess, is an example of one of these ancient rites which still obtain at the present day. The observance of these customs was only possible with some form of construction as that furnished by our system of wooden architecture, easily pulled down, easily built up. A more lasting style, employing brick and stone, would have rendered migrations impracticable, as indeed they became when the more stable and massive wooden construction of China was adopted by us after the Nara period.

Modern architects and engineers are still trying to understand how the ancient Greeks were able to build the Parthenon in ten years when the restoration of the monument has continued for more than three decades and is still not complete. What they have learned and shared along this arduous path of rediscovery is that the Greeks were highly skilled at building visual compensations into their structures. Columns were crafted and positioned to compensate for how the eye interprets what it sees at a distance. Subtle variances in the surface of platforms, columns, and colonnades provide the appearance of geometric proportion, whereas if they had worked from the perspective of a flat datum surface, the brain would interpret the results as being slightly skewed.

The architecture of the thugs also differs from that of normal societies. It can often be recognized by the megalomaniacal style of their public buildings and facilities. The Moscow subway is a faithful copy of the London Underground, except that its stations and corridors are filled with statues of homo sovieticus, a fictitious species that stands (or sits on a tractor), chin up, chest out, belly in, heroically gazing into the distance with a look of grim determination. The Romans had similar tastes. Their public latrines were lavishly decorated with mosaics and marbles. When a particularly elaborately decorated structure at Puteoli was dug up by archaeologists in the last century, they thought at first that they had discovered a temple; but it turned out to be a public latrine.

We shall never be able to do justice to Indian art, for ignorance and fanaticism have destroyed its greatest achievements, and have half ruined the rest. At Elephanta the Portuguese certified their piety by smashing statuary and bas-reliefs in unrestrained barbarity; and almost everywhere in the north the Moslems brought to the ground those triumphs of Indian architecture, of the fifth and sixth centuries, which tradition ranks as far superior to the later works that arouse our wonder and admiration today. The Moslems decapitated statues, and tore them limb from limb; they appropriated for their mosques, and in great measure imitated, the graceful pillars of the Jain temples.91 Time and fanaticism joined in the destruction, for the orthodox Hindus abandoned and neglected temples that had been profaned by the touch of alien hands.

If you leave off looking at books about beasts and men, if you begin to look at beasts and men then (if you have any humour or imagination, any sense of the frantic or the farcical) you will observe that the startling thing is not how like man is to the brutes, but how unlike he is. It is the monstrous scale of his divergence that requires an explanation. That man and brute are like is, in a sense, a truism; but that being so like they should then be so insanely unlike, that is the shock and the enigma. That an ape has hands is far less interesting to the philosopher than the fact that having hands he does next to nothing with them; does not play knuckle-bones or the violin; does not carve marble or carve mutton. People talk of barbaric architecture and debased art. But elephants do not build colossal temples of ivory even in a roccoco style; camels do not paint even bad pictures, though equipped with the material of many camel's-hair brushes. Certain modern dreamers say that ants and bees have a society superior to ours. They have, indeed, a civilization; but that very truth only reminds us that it is an inferior civilization. Who ever found an ant-hill decorated with the statues of celebrated ants? Who has seen a bee-hive carved with the images of gorgeous queens of old? No; the chasm between man and other creatures may have a natural explanation, but it is a chasm. We talk of wild animals; but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type. All other animals are domestic animals; man alone is ever undomestic, either as a profligate or a monk. So that this first superficial reason for materialism is, if anything, a reason for its opposite; it is exactly where biology leaves off that all religion begins.

We say that the body is a temple, because we know that it’s nothing but mortal architecture without the self-regard of consciousness and conscience. The contemplative moment draws us to our sources; we see inside. We close our eyes, in fact, in order to see with clarity. Indeed, the imagination asks us to see with our eyes closed. So we make connections in the dark and thus we imagine what our bodies can do and be, how the breath of the spirit can come and go with perfection, how the ladder gravity of the spine can soar. Poets speak of rhythm and breath as the lifeline of the poetic line; they speak of form as the embodiment of the poem’s energy, the bodying forth of its meaning and being. To expire is to breathe out, to inspire is to breath in. To aspire is to breathe with the mind, to give purpose to the heart’s rhythm. The spine is an aspiration too, since it lifts us from foundations. To imagine what the body can achieve is to invest it with awareness-to begin to make it twice alive: first as a body, then as an embodiment.

I'd tell her that recovery would be like the temple: built between an enormous boulder and a cliff's edge. The construction would be perilous, with the laying of every stone risking a drop into the abyss. Her trauma would be the boulder, an unforgiving hard ball within her. It can never be removed. It would never yield, erode, soften. It would take time, and respect for the delicate ecosystem, but she would slowly build something intricate around this boulder. The architecture she assembled encased the boulder, protected it from rolling over the cliff's edge. Every time she needed more building materials, she would have to descend the mountain and carry each brick up. It would break her back, turn her hands and feet hard with callouses, crush her spirit. But when the final tile slotted into place, the painstaking years on the brutal mountainside would be worthwhile in the way the far-reaching views of the landscape from the temple made her catch her breath. She would finally take in the sky and the sea, the colourful boats docked at the harbour below, the verdant rice paddies, and the tiny villages dotted in between the valleys. The boulder and the cliff won't be all she sees any more.

His home was a part of him, an externalized expression of his will, for upon his inherited Dutch Manor house he had superimposed the Gothic magnificence which he desired. He had been attracted by the formulations of Andrew Downing, the young landscape architect who lived on the river at Newburgh and whose directions for building "romantic and picturesque villas" were changing the countryside; but it was not in Nicholas to accept another's ideas, and when five years ago he had remodeled the old Van Ryn homestead, he had used Downing simply as a guide. To the original ten rooms he had added twenty more, the gables and turrets, and the one high tower. The result, though reminiscent of a German Schloss on the Rhine, crossed with Tudor English and interwoven with pure fantasy, was nevertheless Hudson River American and not unsuited to its setting. The Dragonwyck gardens were as much as an expression of Nicholas' personality as was the mansion, for here, he had subdued Nature to a stylized ornateness. Between the untouched grove of hemlocks to the south and the slope of a rocky hill half a mile to the north he had created along the river an artificial and exotic beauty. To Miranda it was overpowering, and she felt dazed as they mounted marble steps from the landing. She was but vaguely conscious of the rose gardens and their pervasive scent, of small Greek temples set beneath weeping willows, of rock pavilions, violet-bordered fountains, and waterfalls.

Elephanta caves, Mumbai-- I entered a world made of shadows and sudden brightness. The play of the light, the vastness of the space and its irregular form, the figures carved on the walls: all of it gave the place a sacred character, sacred in the deepest meaning of the word. In the shadows were the powerful reliefs and statues, many of them mutilated by the fanaticism of the Portuguese and the Muslims, but all of them majestic, solid, made of a solar material. Corporeal beauty, turned into living stone. Divinities of the earth, sexual incarnations of the most abstract thought, gods that were simultaneously intellectual and carnal, terrible and peaceful. ............................................................................ Gothic architecture is the music turned to stone; one could say that Hindu architecture is sculpted dance. The Absolute, the principle in whose matrix all contradictions dissolve (Brahma), is “neither this nor this nor this.” It is the way in which the great temples at Ellora, Ajanta, Karli, and other sites were built, carved out of mountains. In Islamic architecture, nothing is sculptural—exactly the opposite of the Hindu. The Red Fort, on the bank of the wide Jamuna River, is as powerful as a fort and as graceful as a palace. It is difficult to think of another tower that combines the height, solidity, and slender elegance of the Qutab Minar. The reddish stone, contrasting with the transparency of the air and the blue of the sky, gives the monument a vertical dynamism, like a huge rocket aimed at the stars. The mausoleum is like a poem made not of words but of trees, pools, avenues of sand and flowers: strict meters that cross and recross in angles that are obvious but no less surprising rhymes. Everything has been transformed into a construction made of cubes, hemispheres, and arcs: the universe reduced to its essential geometric elements. The abolition of time turned into space, space turned into a collection of shapes that are simultaneously solid and light, creations of another space, made of air. There is nothing terrifying in these tombs: they give the sensation of infinity and pacify the soul. The simplicity and harmony of their forms satisfy one of the most profound necessities of the spirit: the longing for order, the love of proportion. At the same time they arouse our fantasies. These monuments and gardens incite us to dream and to fly. They are magic carpets. Compare Ellora with the Taj Mahal, or the frescoes of Ajanta with Mughal miniatures. These are not distinct artistic styles, but rather two different visions of the world.

But when the agricultural villages of the Neolithic expanded into larger towns that grew to more than two thousand inhabitants, the capacity of the human brain to know and recognize all of the members of a single community was stretched beyond its natural limits. Nevertheless, the tribal cultures that had evolved during the Upper Paleolithic with the emergence of symbolic communication enabled people who might have been strangers to feel a collective sense of belonging and solidarity. It was the formation of tribes and ethnicities that enabled the strangers of the large Neolithic towns to trust each other and interact comfortably with each other, even if they were not all personally acquainted. The transformation of human society into urban civilizations, however, involved a great fusion of people and societies into groups so large that there was no possibility of having personal relationships with more than a tiny fraction of them. Yet the human capacity for tribal solidarity meant that there was literally no upper limit on the size that a human group could attain. And if we mark the year 3000 BC as the approximate time when all the elements of urban civilization came together to trigger this new transformation, it has taken only five thousand years for all of humanity to be swallowed up by the immense nation-states that have now taken possession of every square inch of the inhabited world. The new urban civilizations produced the study of mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, history, biology, and medicine. They greatly advanced and refined the technologies of metallurgy, masonry, architecture, carpentry, shipbuilding, and weaponry. They invented the art of writing and the practical science of engineering. They developed the modern forms of drama, poetry, music, painting, and sculpture. They built canals, roads, bridges, aqueducts, pyramids, tombs, temples, shrines, castles, and fortresses by the thousands all over the world. They built ocean-going ships that sailed the high seas and eventually circumnavigated the globe. From their cultures emerged the great universal religions of Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism, Islam, and Hinduism. And they invented every form of state government and political system we know, from hereditary monarchies to representative democracies. The new urban civilizations turned out to be dynamic engines of innovation, and in the course of just a few thousand years, they freed humanity from the limitations it had inherited from the hunting and gathering cultures of the past.

As I explain at some length in 'The Crystal Sun' this particular angle, which we can call the 'golden angle,' is the precise value of the acute angle of of a right-angled 'golden triangle' that embodies the golden mean proportion .... The Danish art historian Else Kielland established with conclusive and absolutely overwhelming evidence and analysis that this angle was the basis for all Egyptian art and architecture. She did this in her monumental work 'Geometry in Egyptian Art' ..... The King's Chamber inside the Great Pyramid embodies no fewer than eight occurrences of the golden angle, and the coffer in the chamber embodies yet more.

Rome: Did You Know This? Rome is often called the Eternal City. The spirits of ancient civilizations live on in monuments and ruins that are located throughout the city. Yet Rome today is also a vibrant, modern city. Once the capital of a huge empire, Rome has been the capital of Italy since 1871. Rome is located in the central part of the Italian boot along the Tiber River. The city was once defined by the Seven Hills of Rome. Today, these hills are in the center of a sprawling city, which is home to more than 2.5 million people. Palatine Hill is rich in ancient ruins and medieval mansions. Another of the Seven Hills, Capitoline, was the site of the Roman government in ancient times, as it is today. Michelangelo designed many structures on the Capitoline. In a valley among the Seven Hills lies the Forum, the center of ancient Rome, an area surrounded by temples and palaces. Rome also thrived during the Renaissance, when cities all over Italy competed to have the greatest art and architecture. Many of the city’s great churches and fountains were built during the Renaissance.

It has been said that the body is the temple of the spirit and the mind is the altar within that temple. When we practice hatha yoga we allow ourselves to come fully into the temple of the body—not simply as a tourist wishing to admire the fine architecture, but as a seeker on a pilgrimage of deep devotion and reverence. Meditation is the devotional practice of placing on the altar of the mind that which is sacred, holy, and revered. Just as you would not place garbage on the altar of a great temple, meditation allows a yogi to place on the altar of her mind that which is noble, pure, and free from attachment.

​I stood there, on the gatehouse with the floodplain of the Kahan River in front of me and with raindrops softly pocking the stone parapet around my feet, and I looked and I thought.  Pakistan is a complex land, far more complex than its portrayal in the media would suggest, and Rohtas is the perfect example of its convoluted, tangled past.  It was built by a Pashtun hailing from the other side of the subcontinent in order to prevent a deposed fellow Muslim ruler from returning from exile and to keep another Muslim tribe suppressed and docile.  It contains the private residence of a later Moghul Emperor’s Hindu general and an abandoned Hindu temple, all but swallowed up by an encroaching jungle, and was later captured by the Sikhs who ruled over a large swathe of what is now Pakistan from 1799 to 1849; the nearby gurdwara testified to their presence.  Even the style of the fort’s construction told the same story: it contained elements of Persian, Afghan, Hindu and Turkish architectural forms.  The fort is a relic from a previous era, a time before the concept of the nation-state, a time when empires rose and fell, when warlords could carve out kingdoms for themselves which might last for a decade or for three centuries, a time of profound cultural and religious ferment.

The sheer volume of granite, diorite, and alabaster that was cut precisely into statues around Luxor attests to the ancient Egyptians' mastery of their craft. The Greeks and Romans did not sculpt statues in igneous rock. Granite was not fashioned into statues until the development of more modern power tools with steel bits. In "The Materials of Sculpture", Nicholas Penny writes: "Granite had occasionally been worked in shallow relief, for architectural ornament where it was the local building stone, and for the stiff figures of sixteenth-century cavalries in Brittany, but, before the advent of improved metals and power-driven tools in the nineteenth century, the idea of making statues out of it was seldom seriously entertained by sophisticated sculptors.

The residence of the deity in the temple required the recognition of sacred space. This objective is evident in the earliest steps of temple building. The selection of the site was determined by oracle so that the god could designate a sacred site.[22] In the ancient world they believed that certain locations had gained sacred status as portals through which the gods traversed.[23] Thus sacred space was identified even before the temple was built. The construction was then carried out in such a way as to preserve the sanctity of the space. The presence of the image endorsed the sacred status of the space. All of the architecture of the temple was designed to represent and preserve the sanctity of the site, generally through the establishment of sacred zones, barriers between those zones, and limited sight lines.[24] The result of this architecture was that accessibility was limited so that nothing profane could approach. Likewise, the eyes of the curious were prevented from glimpsing the sacred image except as permitted in occasional festival processions. Israel shared in this ideology of sacred space at nearly every point.

Hindu architecture and sculpture achieved their highest perfection in Mysore under the patronage of Hindu kings from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries. The temple at Belur, an eleventh-century masterpiece completed during the reign of King Vishnuvardhana, is unsurpassed in the world for its delicacy of detail and exuberant imagery.

In almost every other usage, tsela refers to the side of a sacred piece of architecture like the tabernacle or the temple. And this meaning informa its usage here in Genesis 2. Adam and Eve's bodies are compared to sacred pieces of architecture, resonating with everything we've seen so far about the image of God. Temples embody God's presence, and so do bodies.

In almost every other usage, tsela refers to the side of a sacred piece of architecture like the tabernacle or the temple. And this meaning informs its usage here in Genesis 2. Adam and Eve's bodies are compared to sacred pieces of architecture, resonating with everything we've seen so far about the image of God. Temples embody God's presence, and so do bodies.

The then-teenager was blown away by the curvaceous, modernist design of Temple’s student-activities center—so much so that it made him want to learn more about architecture.

Why I joined Temple!" Lah would say. "Tea, nice music, decent architecture!" "And the devotion of your life to awe, gratitude, compassion, and respect?" "Yes yes yes - all that stuff too.

Zen is Buddhism made simple again. The robes worn by Zen priests are plain black affairs (unlike the colorful getups favored by the Tibetans and their other Buddhist cousins), and even after receiving Transmission, the Zen master's daily dress is a dull brown robe. You can sit anywhere; Dogen Zenji said that the heart is the real zendo. This informs temple architecture. Plainness here is neither false humility nor a facade. It is true to the bone. Skeletal beams and rafters are seamlessly joined; they are not nailed or screwed into place; they are made to fit together. Inside a zendo, there is mostly open space, dimly lit, with a small central altar and a tan, a two-foot-high wooden platform built around the perimeter, where meditators sit on plain black cushions, facing the wall. There are few ceremonial objects—the teacher's staff, a stick of incense burning in a bowl—and it is rare to run into more than one or two bronze or wooden Buddhas. Zen rituals are spare, too. Music is reduced to an isolated ding or bong of a bell, the flat report of a mallet tapped against a slab of wood, and a thrumming bang from a giant bass drum. Even the chanting is monochromatic; students pitch their voices toward the deep, dark end of the register and grumble in unison.

Every time I am shown to an old, dimly lit, and, I would add, impeccably clean toilet in a Nara or Kyoto temple, I am impressed with the singular virtues of Japanese architecture. The parlor may have its charms, but the Japanese toilet is truly a place of spiritual repose. It always stands apart from the main building, at the end of a corridor, in a grove fragrant with leaves and moss. No words can describe that sensation as one sits in the dim light, basking in the faint glow reflected from the shoji, lost in meditation or gazing out at the garden. The novelist Natsume Sōseki counted his morning trips to the toilet a great pleasure, “a physiological delight” he called it. And surely there could be no better place to savor this pleasure than a Japanese toilet where, surrounded by tranquil walls and finely grained wood, one looks out upon blue skies and green leaves. As I have said there are certain prerequisites: a degree of dimness, absolute cleanliness, and quiet so complete one can hear the hum of a mosquito. I love to listen from such a toilet to the sound of softly falling rain, especially if it is a toilet of the Kantō region, with its long, narrow windows at floor level; there one can listen with such a sense of intimacy to the raindrops falling from the eaves and the trees, seeping into the earth as they wash over the base of a stone lantern and freshen the moss about the stepping stones. And the toilet is the perfect place to listen to the chirping of insects or the song of the birds, to view the moon, or to enjoy any of those poignant moments that mark the change of the seasons. Here, I suspect, is where haiku poets over the ages have come by a great many of their ideas. Indeed one could with some justice claim that of all the elements of Japanese architecture, the toilet is the most aesthetic. Our forebears, making poetry of everything in their lives, transformed what by rights should be the most unsanitary room in the house into a place of unsurpassed elegance, replete with fond associations with the beauties of nature.

Extensive use of copper is made in the construction of the 'tabernacle of Yahweh' (Exod. 27) and the Jerusalem temple (1 Kgs 7). In the latter case, the entrance to the temple is described as being flanked by two large columns wholly made of copper (termed Boaz and Yakhin, 1 Kgs 7.15-22). These two bronze columns are not pillars supporting the roof [of] the Temple. Devoid of any architectural function, their presence should be considered as purely symbolic. By their outstanding dimensions (about 9 meters height and 2 meters in circumference), they were the most prominent symbol of the Temple. (pp. 394-395) from 'Yahweh, the Canaanite God of Metallurgy?', JSOT 33.4 (2009): 387-404

David Jeremiah, in his recent book (What in the World is Going On?, Thomas Nelson, 2008), agrees that the invasion of Israel by Russia and its Muslim allies “will precede the Battle of Armageddon, (and) will be a massive, Russian-led coalition of nations coming against Israel like swarms of hornets against a defenseless child.” Following the details of the aborted Russian/Muslim invasion in Ezekiel chapter 38-39 we find detailed architectural plans for the third Temple in Ezekiel chapters 40-48. That is not a coincidental placement. Once Israel survives the Russian/Muslim invasion, especially in the way she will be protected by what will clearly be seen world-wide as divine intervention, Israel will quickly move to build the Temple. It will be like a ‘world war memorial’ to Israel’s victory.

The priestess stopped at the mouth of the cave. She raised her arms, and an ugly unearthly howl came out of her, as if from the very depths of Sheol. The acoustics of the grotto were astounding. Every sound was amplified. Then she disappeared inside the cave. Jesus walked up to the temple area. Simon saw people appear from inside buildings and tombs, from behind trees, rocks and architecture. They were the local residents, but they were not acting normally. They walked with slight jerks and twitches, stumbling toward Jesus. Some could be heard squealing like swine and making guttural animal sounds. Demoniacs. Hundreds of them. Descending the slope like slow, crouching predators upon their prey, the Son of God.

The twelve with Jesus arrived at the sacred pool, about a hundred yards wide. At its origin, another fifty yards ahead of them, the Springs of Panias gushed out of the Cave of Pan, a large mouth in the red cliff towering a hundred feet over the temple district. A temple of Pan, altars, tombs, and other architecture carved into the very rock, housed a thousand eyes watching Jesus approach them. Inhuman eyes. Jesus held his hand up to the disciples. “Wait here.” They stopped. Jesus walked on. From his position, Simon saw what looked like a high priestess step out of the temple. He could barely see in the waning light, but she wore an elaborate headdress and flowing purple robes. She saw Jesus, turned, and led her entourage of nymphs back into the cave. She was not going to face down her challenger.

The gods were on the cusp of completing their ritual when the archangels hit them. They had swum across the wharf area and slipped up the rocks to assault the gods from behind. All seven burst in through the pillared open-air sanctuary, swords flashing. The gods drew their weapons. Dagon stuck his sword into his lower fishy half and cut it off with a swipe. He would not be hampered in battle. Everyone paused for a moment. The four gods stood facing off against the seven archangels, each waiting for the other to make a move. The mightiest of Yahweh’s heavenly host were here to bind the Watcher gods who would be fighting for their eternities. This was going to be brutal. An earthquake rattled the foundation of the temple. Everyone had to catch their balance. Dust and debris fell from the cracks in the stone above their heads. Asherah and the gods smiled. The archangels realized it had been no earthquake. That was an announcement of the arrival of something. Something very huge. Something from the depths of the sea. The water behind the gods suddenly exploded upward with the form of the seven headed sea dragon of chaos: Leviathan. It burst out of the water and leapt over the manmade jetty that housed the temple. Mikael, now healed, joined his fellow archangels for the fight. He saw the huge four hundred foot long serpentine body fly past them through the air. It landed on the wharf side with a huge splash that drenched everyone in the temple. Its double tail followed, with a swipe at the architecture. It smashed half the structure, wiping it into the water with the force. Gods and angels fell beneath the debris of the other half collapsing on top of them.

Did not pleasure depend on an architecture of perspective—on contrast and delay, withholding and loss? Did not true enjoyment rely on facing the future?

This wonderful hill station in Karnataka, often called the Scotland of India is one of the most alluring places to begin your love. Walk over the rolling hills or just sit and relax at the Alps of nature at Coorg. What should you do at Coorg? • Walk over the bamboo bridge to the island of Cauvery Nisargadhama, located at the heart of the river or enjoy an elephant safari through the 64 acres’ bamboo groves of Cauvery Nisargadhama. • Wash away all stress and be joyful at the Abbey Waterfalls; inhaling the aroma of spice plantations and pepper vines. • Play with baby elephants at the Dubare Elephant Camp, trek through the jungles, boost your adrenaline with river rafting or enjoy fishing. • Witness the beauty of Islamic architecture at the Omkareshwara Temple; the temple is dedicated to Lord Shiva.

Petra became designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site on the 6th December, 1985. UNESCO’s reasons for considering it to be of outstanding universal value to the world were largely focused on the tomb and temple architecture, water management features, and other tangible archaeological remains. The sheer variety of material remains that exist at Petra through its role as a crossroads of culture were viewed as being a prime example of how values can cross national and cultural borders.

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The grand temples of Greece were built either of stone or of marble. As a general rule they are set on a platform to which a long flight of steps lead up, and are enclosed within an outer wall or a continuous colonnade. Their plan is extremely simple: a parallelogram, formed in some cases entirely of columns, in others with walls at the side and columns at the ends only, encloses a second and considerably smaller pillared space known as the cella or naos, that enshrined the image of the god to whom the building was dedicated, and was entered from a pronaos or porch, and with a posticum or back space behind it, sometimes supplemented by a kind of second cella called the opisthodomus or back temple. The front columns at either end are spanned by horizontal beams that uphold a sloping gable called a pediment, the flat, three-cornered surface of which is generally adorned with sculpture in bas-relief, and along the side-columns is placed what is known as the entablature, that consists of three parts, the architrave resting on the capitals of the columns, the frieze above it and the cornice, the last of which sustains the flat roof, usually covered with tiles or marble copies of tiles. Greek architecture is generally divided into three groups or orders: the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian, each of which, though the buildings belonging to them resemble each other in general plan, is distinguished by certain peculiarities of the columns and entablatures. The Doric was the earliest to be employed, but the Ionic, that early succeeded it, was long used simultaneously with it, sometimes even in the same building, whilst the Corinthian did not come into use until considerably later.

The Parthenon was 228 feet long by 101 broad, and 64 feet high; the porticoes at each end had a double row of eight columns; the sculptures in the pediments were in full relief, representing in the eastern the Birth of Athene, and in the western the Struggle between that goddess and Poseidon, whilst those on the metopes, some of which are supposed to be from the hand of Alcamenes, the contemporary and rival of Phidias, rendered scenes from battles between the Gods and Giants, the Greeks and the Amazons, and the Centaurs and Lapithæ. Of somewhat later date than the Parthenon and resembling it in general style, though it is very considerably smaller, is the Theseum or Temple of Theseus on the plain on the north-west of the Acropolis, and at Bassæ in Arcadia is a Doric building, dedicated to Apollo Epicurius and designed by Ictinus, that has the peculiarity of facing north and south instead of, as was usual, east and west. Scarcely less beautiful than the Parthenon itself is the grand triple portico known as the Propylæa that gives access to it on the western side. It was designed about 430 by Mnesicles, and in it the Doric and Ionic styles are admirably combined, whilst in the Erectheum, sacred to the memory of Erechtheus, a hero of Attica, the Ionic order is seen at its best, so delicate is the carving of the capitals of its columns. It has moreover the rare and distinctive feature of what is known as a caryatid porch, that is to say, one in which the entablature is upheld by caryatides or statues representing female figures. Other good examples of the Ionic style are the small Temple of Niké Apteros, or the Wingless Victory, situated not far from the Propylæa and the Parthenon of Athens, the more important Temple of Apollo at Branchidæ near Miletus, originally of most imposing dimensions, and that of Artemis at Ephesus, of which however only a few fragments remain in situ. Of the sacred buildings of Greece in which the Corinthian order was employed there exist, with the exception of the Temple of Jupiter at Athens already referred to, but a few scattered remains, such as the columns from Epidaurus now in the Athens Museum, that formed part of a circlet of Corinthian pillars within a Doric colonnade. In the Temple of Athena Alea at Tegea, designed by Scopas in 394, however, the transition from the Ionic to the Corinthian style is very clearly illustrated, and in the circular Monument of Lysicrates, erected in 334 B.C. to commemorate the triumph of that hero's troop in the choric dances in honour of Dionysos, and the Tower of the Winds, both at Athens, the Corinthian style is seen at its best. In addition to the temples described above, some remains of tombs, notably that of the huge Mausoleum at Halicarnassus in memory of King Mausolus, who died in 353 B.C., and several theatres, including that of Dionysos at Athens, with a well-preserved one of larger size at Epidaurus, bear witness to the general prevalence of Doric features in funereal monuments and secular buildings, but of the palaces and humbler dwelling-houses in the three Greek styles, of which there must have been many fine examples, no trace remains. There is however no doubt that the Corinthian style was very constantly employed after the power of the great republics had been broken, and the Oriental taste for lavish decoration replaced the love for austere simplicity of the virile people of Greece and its dependencies. CHAPTER III

When Europe killed feral and stray cats, the bubonic plague came and wiped away lives. Generations of families ended with the plague. Some say coincidence. Some say divine retribution. Some say killing cats upset the world’s ecological balance. When humans interject themselves in the natural food chain that exists between animals, disaster consumes the earth. Cats have always lived heroically among humans and other animals. We look like we belong in ancient temples and art deco theaters. We go with any architecture,

The greatest of these Hadrianic survivals is undoubtedly the Pantheon. A former temple, inscribed to Marcus Agrippa (the original dedicatee of the first Pantheon to be erected on this spot, which was one of two destroyed by fire), the Pantheon probably survived the demolition which was the lot of many pagan buildings at the hands of the popes because of its early re-use as a church. Built between 118 and 125 CE, it became the Church of St Mary and the Martyrs in the seventh century and is still a Christian basilica today. Inside are two great glories of ancient architecture. The vaulted roof, made of concrete poured into wooden moulds, was the greatest span of such roof ever known

These attacks may have been beneficial for God—but they were not unhelpful to local Christians, either. People built themselves houses from the stones of the demolished temples. Look closely at the buildings in the east of the Roman Empire and you can see the remains of the classical tradition in the new Christian architecture: a pair of cut-off legs here, the top of a handsome Grecian column there.

The patient sculptor that was nature turned the region into an uninhabited metropolis of monumental architecture: mountainous arches as breathtaking as rainbows, precipitous bridges sized for city-ships, buttes and spires whose profiles brought to mind the ancient monsters at the end of the Fifth Age of Mankind, lofty hoodoos that rose like the columns of ruined temples erected by larger-than-life heroes for unimaginable gods.

A month later God asks Haggai to address the concern of the older exiles, who had wept when the temple foundation was laid. Remembering the beauty of the great temple of Solomon, they know that its replacement will be smaller and less ornate. God’s words of comfort are perhaps messianic in nature. He promises that, even though the architectural appointments will not compare with those of Solomon’s temple, God will one day fill this new temple with an even greater glory. Perhaps the message alludes symbolically to another temple, or possibly to the fact that the Messiah will personally walk through the very building they are now erecting. TEMPLE’S FUTURE GLORY. [Haggai 2:1–9 (520 B.C.)]

is that every little brick of this temple, every eternal book, every eternal melody, every unique architectural silhouette, bears within itself the compressed experience of this humankind, its thoughts and thoughts about it, ideas about the goals and contradictions of its existence

It begins with the proportions. Architecture is the art of equilibrium; just as the body is ruled by precise laws — length of arms, of legs, position of muscles — a building obeys rules that guarantee its harmony. The arrangement of things is the key to a façade, the beauty of a temple stems from the order, the articulation of the elements with respect to one another.

La nostalgie de l'architecture Dans un paysage de briques La nostalgie des montagnes Là où sont les collines d'eau. Qui est en mesure de comprendre Tout ce qui s'effondre ici ? Sagesse fermentée Dans la bouse et dans la boue Crépie sur des branches encore vivantes Sagesse délirante Tressant dans une même séduction Architraves molles Et colonnes sculptées dans du treillis. Le rêve de pierre rêvé Dans un sommeil de terre Où ondulent des sillons pluvieux. Les dimanches dans les temples Produisent des fruits de culpabilité Des temples courbés Sous les vents qui soufflent. (Systématisation, p. 27)

When religious symbols, idols, legendary people statues, pictorial, built architecture such as temples, churches, mosques, vimanas, important artifacts are created, they are created in a manner of what should be seen and observed and not what is should not be seen or observed. BUST is an example, why some statues are busts while some statues are full, and some depictions are white, while some depictions are black and some other depictions are of other colors, they are to show what the observer or specific observers on specific place and what they are allowed to observe,.,

The church is called 'the pillar and ground of the truth' (1 Tim. 3:15) not because she supports and gives authority to the truth (since the truth is rather the foundation upon which the church is built, Eph. 2:20), but because it stands before the church as a pillar and makes itself conspicuous to all. Therefore it is called a pillar, not in an architectural sense (as pillars are used for the support of buildings), but in a forensic and political sense (as the edicts of the emperor and the decrees and laws of the magistrates were usually posted against pillars before the court houses and praetoria and before the gates of the basilica so that all might be informed of them, as noted by Pliny, Natural History, lib. 6, c. 28+ and Josephus,? AJ 1.70–71 [Loeb, 4:32–33]). So the church is the pillar of the truth both by reason of promulgating and making it known (because she is bound to promulgate the law of God, and heavenly truth is attached to it so that it may become known to all) and by reason of guarding it. For she ought not only to set it forth, but also to vindicate and defend it. Therefore she is called not only a pillar, but also a stay by which the truth when known may be vindicated and preserved pure and entire against all corruptions. But she is not called a foundation, in the sense of giving to the truth itself its own substructure and firmness. (2) Whatever is called the pillar and stay of the truth is not therefore infallible; for so the ancients called those who, either in the splendor of their doctrine or in the holiness of their lives or in unshaken constancy, excelled others and confirmed the doctrines of the gospel and the Christian faith by precept and example; as Eusebius says the believers in Lyons call Attalus the Martyr (Ecclesiastical History 5.1 [FC 19:276]); Basil distinguishes the orthodox bishops who opposed the Arian heresy by this name (Letter 243; and Gregory Nazianzus so calls Athanasius. In the same sense, judges in a pure and uncorrupted republic are called the pillars and stays of the laws. (3) This passage teaches the duty of the church, but not its infallible prerogative (i.e., what she is bound to do in the promulgation and defending of the truth against the corruptions of its enemies, but not what she can always do). In Mal. 2:7, the 'priest’s lips' are said to 'keep knowledge' because he is bound to do it (although he does not always do it as v. 8 shows). (4) Whatever is here ascribed to the church belongs to the particular church at Ephesus to which, however, the papists are not willing to give the prerogative of infallibility. Again, it treats of the collective church of believers in which Timothy was to labor and exercise his ministry, not as the church representative of the pastors, much less of the pope (in whom alone they think infallibility resides). (5) Paul alludes here both to the use of pillars in the temples of the Gentiles (to which were attached either images of the gods or the laws and moral precepts; yea, even oracles, as Pausanius and Athenaeus testify) that he may oppose these pillars of falsehood and error (on which nothing but fictions and the images of false gods were exhibited) to that mystical pillar of truth on which the true image of the invisible God is set forth (Col. 1:15) and the heavenly oracles of God made to appear; and to that remarkable pillar which Solomon caused to be erected in the temple (2 Ch. 6:13; 2 K. 11:14; 23:3) which kings ascended like a scaffold as often as they either addressed the people or performed any solemn service, and was therefore called by the Jews the 'royal pillar.' Thus truth sits like a queen upon the church; not that she may derive her authority from it (as Solomon did not get his from that pillar), but that on her, truth may be set forth and preserved.

The church is called 'the pillar and ground of the truth' (1 Tim. 3:15) not because she supports and gives authority to the truth (since the truth is rather the foundation upon which the church is built, Eph. 2:20), but because it stands before the church as a pillar and makes itself conspicuous to all. Therefore it is called a pillar, not in an architectural sense (as pillars are used for the support of buildings), but in a forensic and political sense (as the edicts of the emperor and the decrees and laws of the magistrates were usually posted against pillars before the court houses and praetoria and before the gates of the basilica so that all might be informed of them, as noted by Pliny, Natural History, lib. 6, c. 28+ and Josephus,? AJ 1.70–71 [Loeb, 4:32–33]). So the church is the pillar of the truth both by reason of promulgating and making it known (because she is bound to promulgate the law of God, and heavenly truth is attached to it so that it may become known to all) and by reason of guarding it. For she ought not only to set it forth, but also to vindicate and defend it. Therefore she is called not only a pillar, but also a stay by which the truth when known may be vindicated and preserved pure and entire against all corruptions. But she is not called a foundation, in the sense of giving to the truth itself its own substructure and firmness. (2) Whatever is called the pillar and stay of the truth is not therefore infallible; for so the ancients called those who, either in the splendor of their doctrine or in the holiness of their lives or in unshaken constancy, excelled others and confirmed the doctrines of the gospel and the Christian faith by precept and example; as Eusebius says the believers in Lyons call Attalus the Martyr (Ecclesiastical History 5.1 [FC 19:276]); Basil distinguishes the orthodox bishops who opposed the Arian heresy by this name (hoi styloi kai to hedraiōma tēs alētheias, Letter 243 [70] [FC 28:188; PG 32.908]); and Gregory Nazianzus so calls Athanasius. In the same sense, judges in a pure and uncorrupted republic are called the pillars and stays of the laws. (3) This passage teaches the duty of the church, but not its infallible prerogative (i.e., what she is bound to do in the promulgation and defending of the truth against the corruptions of its enemies, but not what she can always do). In Mal. 2:7, the 'priest’s lips' are said to 'keep knowledge' because he is bound to do it (although he does not always do it as v. 8 shows). (4) Whatever is here ascribed to the church belongs to the particular church at Ephesus to which, however, the papists are not willing to give the prerogative of infallibility. Again, it treats of the collective church of believers in which Timothy was to labor and exercise his ministry, not as the church representative of the pastors, much less of the pope (in whom alone they think infallibility resides). (5) Paul alludes here both to the use of pillars in the temples of the Gentiles (to which were attached either images of the gods or the laws and moral precepts; yea, even oracles, as Pausanius and Athenaeus testify) that he may oppose these pillars of falsehood and error (on which nothing but fictions and the images of false gods were exhibited) to that mystical pillar of truth on which the true image of the invisible God is set forth (Col. 1:15) and the heavenly oracles of God made to appear; and to that remarkable pillar which Solomon caused to be erected in the temple (2 Ch. 6:13; 2 K. 11:14; 23:3) which kings ascended like a scaffold as often as they either addressed the people or performed any solemn service, and was therefore called by the Jews the 'royal pillar.' Thus truth sits like a queen upon the church; not that she may derive her authority from it (as Solomon did not get his from that pillar), but that on her, truth may be set forth and preserved.

The church is called 'the pillar and ground of the truth' (1 Tim. 3:15) not because she supports and gives authority to the truth (since the truth is rather the foundation upon which the church is built, Eph. 2:20), but because it stands before the church as a pillar and makes itself conspicuous to all. Therefore it is called a pillar, not in an architectural sense (as pillars are used for the support of buildings), but in a forensic and political sense (as the edicts of the emperor and the decrees and laws of the magistrates were usually posted against pillars before the court houses and praetoria and before the gates of the basilica so that all might be informed of them, as noted by Pliny, Natural History, lib. 6, c. 28+ and Josephus,? AJ 1.70–71 [Loeb, 4:32–33]). So the church is the pillar of the truth both by reason of promulgating and making it known (because she is bound to promulgate the law of God, and heavenly truth is attached to it so that it may become known to all) and by reason of guarding it. For she ought not only to set it forth, but also to vindicate and defend it. Therefore she is called not only a pillar, but also a stay by which the truth when known may be vindicated and preserved pure and entire against all corruptions. But she is not called a foundation, in the sense of giving to the truth itself its own substructure and firmness. (2) Whatever is called the pillar and stay of the truth is not therefore infallible; for so the ancients called those who, either in the splendor of their doctrine or in the holiness of their lives or in unshaken constancy, excelled others and confirmed the doctrines of the gospel and the Christian faith by precept and example; as Eusebius says the believers in Lyons call Attalus the Martyr (Ecclesiastical History 5.1 [FC 19:276]); Basil distinguishes the orthodox bishops who opposed the Arian heresy by this name (Letter 243 [70] [FC 28:188; PG 32.908]); and Gregory Nazianzus so calls Athanasius. In the same sense, judges in a pure and uncorrupted republic are called the pillars and stays of the laws. (3) This passage teaches the duty of the church, but not its infallible prerogative (i.e., what she is bound to do in the promulgation and defending of the truth against the corruptions of its enemies, but not what she can always do). In Mal. 2:7, the 'priest’s lips' are said to 'keep knowledge' because he is bound to do it (although he does not always do it as v. 8 shows). (4) Whatever is here ascribed to the church belongs to the particular church at Ephesus to which, however, the papists are not willing to give the prerogative of infallibility. Again, it treats of the collective church of believers in which Timothy was to labor and exercise his ministry, not as the church representative of the pastors, much less of the pope (in whom alone they think infallibility resides). (5) Paul alludes here both to the use of pillars in the temples of the Gentiles (to which were attached either images of the gods or the laws and moral precepts; yea, even oracles, as Pausanius and Athenaeus testify) that he may oppose these pillars of falsehood and error (on which nothing but fictions and the images of false gods were exhibited) to that mystical pillar of truth on which the true image of the invisible God is set forth (Col. 1:15) and the heavenly oracles of God made to appear; and to that remarkable pillar which Solomon caused to be erected in the temple (2 Ch. 6:13; 2 K. 11:14; 23:3) which kings ascended like a scaffold as often as they either addressed the people or performed any solemn service, and was therefore called by the Jews the 'royal pillar.' Thus truth sits like a queen upon the church; not that she may derive her authority from it (as Solomon did not get his from that pillar), but that on her, truth may be set forth and preserved.

The simple one-line evolution from the primitive hut to the mature Greek temple, which appealed so much to certain eighteenth-century theorists, is today hardly an acceptable pattern.

But the knowledge that Filippo sought to uncover was unique. In calculating the proportions of columns and pediments he determined the measurements specific to the three architectural orders (Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian) that had been invented by the Greeks and then imitated and refined by the Romans. These orders were governed by precise mathematical ratios, a series of proportional rules that regulated aesthetic effect. The height of a Corinthian entablature, for example, is a quarter of the height of the columns on which it stands, while the height of each column is ten times its diameter, and so forth. Numerous examples of these three orders existed in Rome in the early 1400s. The columns in the Baths of Diocletian are Doric, for instance, while those at the Temple of Fortuna Virilis feature the Ionic, and the portico of the Pantheon the Corinthian. The Colosseum makes use of all three: Doric on the lowest level, Ionic on the second, and Corinthian at the top.

That means that however funds are raised for community projects, the highest amount goes to educational facilities and teachers. The curriculum would be based on learning what it means to be a human being, or rather, a spiritual being living in a human body/world. Courses taught would include how to develop creativity, what it means to clear the psychological and emotional self, how to be in relationship with others, what steps must be taken to ensure basic needs are met for all souls in physical embodiment, the study of different soul paths for the purpose of understanding the viewpoints and perceptions of each group, etc. Second, resources would be devoted to scientific research and application. Specifically, funding would be allocated for alternative energy projects, agricultural advances, transportation systems, cleanup of the environment, and exploration of the cosmos. Third, emphasis would be placed on cultural advancement, including creative architecture, community gardens, cooperative building and re-building projects, implementation of new economic paradigms including enlightened currencies, and providing of the latest technological systems in every household that desires them (but not necessarily with emphasis on the latest gadgets for hours of mind-numbing entertainment). The priority here is to enable more efficient communication and awareness of world events for all souls. Also, it is important to be sure and include entertainment and down time. Fourth, opportunities would be provided to help individuals express their spiritual freedom. Encouragement and support will be given for souls to build churches, mosques, temples, synagogues, monasteries, healing retreat centers, therapy and holistic bodywork facilities, and more. The truth may be within, but it is helpful to have an outer environment that reflects the inner truth.

Resting his elbows on a wooden rail, he eagerly breathed in the cool, salty air. It took a few minutes for Fra Armando to notice how odd the southward rushing waters looked. The twilight-colored river had turned to blood. The Friar followed the dizzying rush of lenticular red cells, the size of loaves of bread, the amoeba-like gliding of the white cells, transparent enough to show their darkened nuclei, the snaking spiral worms that must have been malaria germs, the unusual fluorescence of lymph, the currents of glucose and protein. Fascinated and deathly tired, the Friar suddenly sensed that everything was alive, that everything lives, and that the universe does not at all operate like clockwork. Instead, it is a malleable architecture like the human body, a temple of skin, a basilica of scratches, a cenotaph of snot, with no right angles or durable materials, where the person creates his dreams, thoughts, and illusions, his time and his language like a cell secretes a hair or the crystal horn of a nail. And still, the least important cell in the universal body receives, through angel hormones and neural visions, the imperious commandments of God.

At the end of the first century of Christian rule, the Colosseum still dominated Rome and the Parthenon towered above Athens. Yet when writers of this period discuss architecture, these aren’t the buildings that impress them. Instead, their admiration is drawn by another structure in Egypt. This building was so fabulous that writers in the ancient world struggled to find ways to convey its beauty. ‘Its splendour is such that mere words can only do it an injustice,’ wrote the historian Ammianus Marcellinus. It was, another writer thought, ‘one of the most unique and uncommon sights in the world. For nowhere else on earth can one find such a building.’ Its great halls, its columns, its astonishing statues and its art all made it, outside Rome, ‘the most magnificent building in the whole world’. Everyone had heard of it. No one has heard of it now. While tourists still toil up to the Parthenon, or look in awe at the Colosseum, outside academia few people know of the temple of Serapis. That is because in AD 392 a bishop, supported by a band of fanatical Christians, reduced it to rubble.

Wittkower's response - which resonated for decades - to the manifest lack of robustness of modern civilization was to reassert the absolute difference between the past and the present: premodern societies were oriented, and they knew hierarchy. Wittkower argued, on the basis of the texts by Alberti and Palladio, that the architecture of the Italian Renaissance materialized a mathematical program: a system of ratios that pictured the invisible structure of the cosmos. Architecture placed the human body within this system. It is hard to see the difference between this and Sedlmayr's view except that the one believes that man's image was best framed by forms based on the divinely measured proportions of the human body, and the other believes that man's image was best framed by an image of divinity itself. Wittkower recovers a religious conception of architecture but detached from Christianity: the Renaissance church as a Hindu temple, as it were.

Once the relation of science and metaphysics with “intellectual intuition” is misunderstood, Kant has no difficulty in showing that our science is entirely relative and our metaphysics wholly artificial. Because he strained the independence of the understanding in both cases, because he relieved metaphysics and science of the “intellectual intuition” which gave them their inner weight, science with its relations presents to him only an outer wrapping of form, and metaphysics with its things, an outer wrapping of matter. Is it surprising, then, that the first shows him only frameworks within frameworks, and the second phantoms pursuing phantoms? He struck our science and metaphysics such rude blows that they have not yet entirely recovered from their shock. Our mind would willingly resign itself to see in science a wholly relative knowledge and in metaphysics an empty speculation. It seems to us even today that Kantian criticism applies to all metaphysics and to all science. In reality it applies especially to the philosophy of the ancients, as well as to the form—still ancient—that the moderns have given most often to their thought. It is valid against a metaphysics which claims to give us a unique and ready-made system of things, against a science which would be a unique system of relations, finally against a science and a metaphysics which present themselves with the architectural simplicity of the Platonic theory of Ideas, or of a Greek temple. If metaphysics claims to be made up of concepts we possessed prior to it, if it consists in an ingenious arrangement of pre-existing ideas which we utilize like the materials of construction for a building, in short, if it is something other than the constant dilation of our mind, the constantly renewed effort to go beyond our actual ideas and perhaps our simple logic as well, it is too evident that it becomes artificial like all works of pure understanding. And if science is wholly the work of analysis or of conceptual representation, if experience is only to serve as the verification of “clear ideas,” if instead of starting from multiple and varied intuitions inserted into the movement proper to each reality but not always fitting into one another, it claims to be an immense mathematics, a single system of relations which imprisons the totality of the real in a mesh prepared for it, it becomes a knowledge purely relative to the human understanding. A close reading of the Critique of Pure Reason will show that for Kant this kind of universal mathematics is science, and this barely modified Platonism, metaphysics. To tell the truth, the dream of a universal mathematics is itself only a survival of Platonism. Universal mathematics is what the world of Ideas becomes when one assumes that the Idea consists in a relation or a law, and no longer in a thing.

Strands of straight, damp hair fell across her face, and he brushed them away gently and thought how beautiful she was. He could not recall when or how the change had taken place, or even that he had ever thought her plain. It was as though her features had come to take on a special meaning and unfold their beauties one by one. They had lost their individual identity as nose, or mouth, or lashes spread against a cheek. The tender sweetness of each had become intimately familiar to him. He had explored them all, experienced their texture, discovering new enchantments of human architecture in the gentle flare of a nostril, the smooth surface of brow or temple, the innocent and touching gallantry of the spot where her head and neck were joined.

The first age of pyramid building – the half-century from Djoser to Sneferu – had seen an intellectual revolution conducted in architecture and stone images. And part of that took place within this limestone temple, with the dust of pyramid making rising from the desert plain behind them, as some of Sneferu’s courtiers and craftsmen created images personifying the various aspects of the kingdom, from the rhythms of the river and the order of the state to the gods themselves; and all of them identified, drawn and situated as elements of the economic engine, natural and man-made, that would fuel the pharaonic state till its ending.

In addition, Sultan Iltumish, for all his rhetoric of being India's sole legitimate Muslim ruler, continued to issue coins with the old bull-and-horseman motif and a Sanskritized form of his name and title: 'Suratana Sri Samsadina', the latter referring to his given name, Shams al-Din. He also enlarged Delhi's Qutb mosque by three times in order to accomodate the many immigrants from beyond the Khyber who had flocked to Delhi during his reign. And he added three storeys to the city's famous minaret, the Qutb Minar. Notably, he placed a seven-metre iron pillar in the centre of the mosque's oldest courtyard, on a direct axis with its main prayer chamber. Originally installed in a Vishnu temple to announce the military victories of a fourth-or-fifth century Indian king, the pillar was now associated with Iltumish and his own victories. In transplanting the pillar in this way, the Sultan broke with Islamic architectural conventions while conforming to Indian political traditions. For in 1164, within living memory of Iltumish's installations of the Vishnu pillar in Delhi's great mosque, Vigraharaja IV Chauhan (r. 1150-64) recorded his own conquests on the same stone pillar on which the emperor Ashoka had published an edict back in the third century BC.

from what our official accounts allow.28 Schwaller too recognized that whoever built the Sphinx, the Great Pyramid, and the temples at Luxor and Karnak was mathematically and cosmologically astute. From 1936 to 1951, Schwaller and his wife, Isha, herself the author of a series of novels about ancient Egypt (Her-Bak: Egyptian Initiate is the best known), studied the ancient Egyptian monuments. Schwaller found evidence in them for pi, but also for much more: a knowledge of the precession of the equinoxes, of the Pythagorean theorem centuries in advance of Pythagoras, of the circumference of the globe, as well as evidence of ϕ (phi), known as the Golden Section, a mathematical proportion that was again supposedly unknown until it was discovered by the Greeks. As John Anthony West makes clear, the Golden Section is more than an important item in classical architecture. It is, according

from what our official accounts allow.28 Schwaller too recognized that whoever built the Sphinx, the Great Pyramid, and the temples at Luxor and Karnak was mathematically and cosmologically astute. From 1936 to 1951, Schwaller and his wife, Isha, herself the author of a series of novels about ancient Egypt (Her-Bak: Egyptian Initiate is the best known), studied the ancient Egyptian monuments. Schwaller found evidence in them for pi, but also for much more: a knowledge of the precession of the equinoxes, of the Pythagorean theorem centuries in advance of Pythagoras, of the circumference of the globe, as well as evidence of ϕ (phi), known as the Golden Section, a mathematical proportion that was again supposedly unknown until it was discovered by the Greeks. As John Anthony West makes clear, the Golden Section is more than an important item in classical architecture. It is, according to Schwaller, the mathematical archetype of the universe, the reason why we have an “asymmetrical” “lumpy” world of galaxies and planets, and not a flattened-out, homogenous one, a question that today occupies contemporary cosmologists.29 In his writings, Schwaller linked phi to planetary orbits, to the architecture of Gothic cathedrals, and to plant and animal forms.

In Latin the word ‘museum’ once indicated ‘a temple of the Muses’; in what respects is the modern museum the right place to preserve treasures from a classical temple? Does it only look the part? The issues raised by Bassae provide a model for understanding Classics in its widest sense. Of course, Classics is about more than the physical remains, the architecture, sculpture, pottery, and painting, of ancient Greece and Rome. It is also (to select just a few things) about the poetry, drama, philosophy, science, and history written in the ancient world, and still read and debated as part of our culture. But here too, essentially similar issues are at stake, questions about how we are to read literature which has a history of more than 2,000 years, written in a society very distant and different from our own.

This meant various things, but two stand out. First, obviously, was that a church or a temple should look like a church or a temple, a house like a house, and not vice versa. But the Adam brothers would also assert that an architectural style must be flexible enough to compose and decorate any type of building. Therefore any building could be made to be beautiful, not only a town house or a commercial building, but even a warehouse—or a factory.

Nandprayag is a place that ought to be famous for its beauty and order. For a mile or two before reaching it we had noticed the superior character of the agriculture and even some careful gardening of fruits and vegetables. The peasantry also, suddenly grew handsome, not unlike the Kashmiris. The town itself is new, rebuilt since the Gohna flood, and its temple stands far out across the fields on the shore of the Prayag. But in this short time a wonderful energy has been at work on architectural carvings, and the little place is full of gemlike beauties. Its temple is dedicated to Naga Takshaka. As the road crosses the river, I noticed two or three old Pathan tombs, the only traces of Mohammedanism that we had seen north of Srinagar in Garhwal.   Little

With colored sand, Buddhist monks create mandalas—intricate geometric and cosmic diagrams that can take weeks to craft—and then destroy them in minutes, to reflect the transitory nature of material life.4 The colossal Buddhist temple on the island of Java at Borobudur and the Hindu-Buddhist temple complex at Angkor in Cambodia are believed by some to be three-dimensional architectural mandalas and are still among the largest religious structures in the world.

There is no evidence to suggest that people of these more fertile times went about warring upon each other, nor did they possess child-abuse practices…The female principle was held in high status, or possibly revered. Where rock art was the dominant form, the female is seen to have occupied an equal, or even central place in society, and was not viewed with anxiety by the artists. Royal tombs, excessive grave wealth, female grave murder, temple architecture, fortifications, weapons technology and a fully-blown nomadism were absent from these early cultures, as were male gods and phallic imagery – James De Meo (Saharasia)

It can be rightly said that Christianity was the first non-temple-based religion ever to emerge. In the minds of the early Christians, the people—not the architecture—constituted a sacred space. The early Christians understood that they themselves—corporately—were the temple of God and the house of God.[