Just ‘cuz it’s outdoors doesn’t mean it’s sacred

When speaking about sacred places, many people confuse them with edifices that are exposed to the weather and whose originating cultures no longer exist in a form that utilizes or even remembers the function of the site.  Places such as Easter Island, Stonehenge, the Serpent Mound of Ohio, and the Cerne Abbas Giant of Dorset are seen as sacred because they have become part of the geography and are no longer claimed or used by the people who constructed them. The same can be said for various pyramid ruins of the Aztec and Mayan cultures in South America. People in recent times have granted them a mysterious sacrality due to the fact that while much is hinted at through their remains, little is known about them.  Researchers attempt to connect them with sacred places by seeking out ley lines, seeing the correspondences between the structures and astrological phenomena, and granting the peoples who conceived of them unique magical powers, heightened intelligence, and alchemical notions of physics.  But none of this changes the fact that these are, in actuality, religious sacred spaces, created by humans and formed to represent an understanding of the universe that has long since been forgotten.  Like churches, temples, mosques, and synagogues, these places are sacred in function.  They impress us with their age, reminding us of our desire to return to our ageless state and that the numinous too is eternal.  These echoes of eternity hold memories of their sacrality and continue to be imbued with it through new influxes of tourist and people who consecrate them anew through their actions and intentions.  These spaces, while powerful, inspiring, and beautiful are not sacred places.