Katie Kreisheimer- Landscapes of Sacred pg73

Landscapes of the Sacred “Sacred Places” pg. 73

“The most sacred place to us in invariably that which has been internalized- constituted as an inner beauty, remembered into a being richer even than it had been in reality. We know all the most meaningful places only in retrospect. The sacred center is essentially a non-geographical entity, a created thing, ultimately an illusion, yet paradoxically, also a place more real than real.”
I agree and believe in both parts of this quote Lanes presents in chapter 3. I also think they intertwine. Every person has their own belief in a sacred place depending on what a person thinks to be sacred. The most sacred place to a person is, in fact, internalized; it’s kept within a person’s mind and soul where it is always remembered. It is also always visited, for a person doesn’t have to travel to go there. I also agree with the idea that a sacred place is not a geographical point, because normally the sacredness of a place does not deal with somewhere or some thing tangible. For example, the axis mundi is the “center” that is suppose to be the most sacred of all, away from the chaos. The axis mundi can be a specific place, or center, on earth that a person can think up in their mind, but as for someone else, their sacred axis mundi may be centralized else where. A person can believe it to be a real point somewhere on the globe; however, ultimately, that is still created in their mind where they keep it internalized. Sacred places are created through belief, rituals, and spiritualities, which can have the most meaningfulness to a person making it, as Lane states, more real than real.