Poder y Sacralización del Paisaje en los Andes Centrales: Una aproximación

Este articulo está basado en estudios realizados en los andes centrales, principalmente lo que corresponde a los departamentos de Lima, Ancash y Junín, logrando identificar asentamientos prehispánicos en estrecha relación a los asentamientos actuales, articulados a una geografía sagrada claramente identificada por la gran mayoría de las comunidades actuales. Esta sacralidad del paisaje obviamente se remonta a la época prehispánica y en muchos de los casos tienen su continuidad en la memoria de las comunidades actuales donde se guarda la esencia fundamental de su origen. Para entender esta sacralidad y la sacralización, identificamos los indicadores conceptuales que sostienen lo sagrado en el pensamiento del hombre tomado en cuenta los conceptos ontológicos de lo sagrado y lo profano y su relación con el paisaje socializado. Cuando lo sagrado y lo simbólico es manipulado por los grupos de poder, entonces la sacralidad y la sacralización también son asumidas como mecanismos de control, no solo de lo ideológico, sino también la apropiación territorial, control de los sistemas de producción, de la acumulación de riqueza basada en ofrendas y tributos. Por ello nuestro propósito es de alguna manera aproximarnos a identificar y aislar algunos de los rasgos y factores causales del proceso de sacralización del paisaje tomando en cuenta el segmento de tiempo transcurrido desde su origen. This article is based on studies carried out in the central Andes, mainly in the departments of Lima, Ancash and Junín, identifying pre-Hispanic settlements in close relation to the current settlements, articulated to a sacred geography clearly identified by the great majority of the current communities. This sacredness of the landscape obviously dates back to pre-Hispanic times and in many cases has its continuity in the memory of the current communities where the fundamental essence of its origin is kept. To understand this sacredness and sacralization, we identify the conceptual indicators that sustain the sacred in human thought, taking into account the ontological concepts of the sacred and the profane and their relationship with the socialized landscape. When the sacred and the symbolic are manipulated by power groups, then sacredness and sacralization are also assumed as mechanisms of control, not only of the ideological, but also of territorial appropriation, control of production systems, of the accumulation of wealth based on offerings and tributes. Therefore, our purpose is to identify and isolate some of the features and causal factors of the process of sacralization of the landscape, taking into account the segment of time elapsed since its origin.

Reconstructing Sacred Geographies

The chapter begins with a reflection on historical notions of sacred place and how senses of sacred place are perceived and understood. Pilgrimage networks are constructed from memories of sacred places and ritualized in relationship to holy people or events. In medieval Norway, the notion of sacred landscape emerged as an interweaving of Norse and Christian elements. This sacred geography was transformed by the development of modern energy forms, transportation, and infrastructure projects made possible in part through Norway’s petroleum wealth. Even so, the pilgrimage network sought to re-establish a route network from forgotten and reimagined paths, which slowly was pieced together from the 1960s onward. The chapter ends by asking how notions of landscape, interspecies relationships, and political theologies have reconstructed notions of sacred place, sainthood, and landscape in a secularizing, increasingly multiethnic and multireligious Norway.

Reconstructing Rituals

The final chapter pulls together central threads that characterize this pilgrimage network. Pilgrimage gives a particular ritual form to individuals’ quest to seek recovery, healing, meaning, and connection in their lives. The Norwegian pilgrimage network offers various experiences, narratives, and strategies for pilgrims, hosts, locals, and tourists to engage in rediscovering and reinventing history, making meaning, seeking cultural experiences, reclaiming indigenous history and spirituality, and reconstructing spiritual traditions. The figure of St. Olav provides a prism through which contemporary Norwegians can reflect on the ambivalence of the past, as well as critique present practices and narratives of what it means to be Christian, pushing the boundaries of what it means to be Norwegian, and what saintly lives in the context of climate change might look like. Nidaros Cathedral facilitates such engagement as an adaptable space anchoring widely diverse engagements with both heritage and contemporary society. Thus, these and other ritual practices serve to reconstruct heritage critically in a pilgrimage network that is remarkably open for the transformative reconstruction of spiritual practices and narratives in a shifting sacred geography.

Vikings, Saints, and Pilgrimage

This chapter gives an account of the emergence of pilgrimage in Norway and its intersections with medieval warfare, trade, and travel. Coastal Norway was the main travel and access route before modern travel. Viking raiders encountered Christianity in the British Isles, and Christian communities spread first along the coast. Eventually, baptismal covenants came to replace the increasingly brittle bonds of Viking raiders to their leaders and a different form of social contract, as well as a different faith, is introduced. St. Olav plays a central role in this shift toward greater political and religious unity, though his own overreach eventually resulted in his death, though not in the defeat of the project of unification under one Christian law and crown. The cult around his relics begins shortly after and renders Nidaros/Trondheim a central location in the sacred geography of Norway. During the Reformation, however, pilgrimage and the cult of saints became widely repressed in Norway, and shrines are either destroyed or relics moved to unknown locations.

Songs on the Road: Wandering Religious Poets in India, Tibet, and Japan

This book consists of seven chapters on the subject of poetry and itinerancy within the religious traditions of India, Tibet, and Japan from ancient to modern times. The chapters look, each from a different angle, at how itinerancy is reflected in religious poetry, what are the purposes of the wanderers’ poems or songs, and how the wandering poets relate to local communities, sacred geography, and institutionalized religion. We encounter priest-poets in search of munificent patrons, renouncers and yogins who sing about the bliss and hardship of wandering alone in the wilderness, Hindu pilgrims and opponents of pilgrimage, antinomian Buddhist-Tantric poets from Bengal, and the originator of the haiku. We are led along roads travelled by many, as well as paths tread by few.

Burial Layout, Society and Sacred Geography - A Viking Age Example from Jämtland

ln the Viking Age cotnmunity in the Lake Storsjön district in central Jämtland the landscape, the society and the religion formed a conceptual totality. The political power had religious overtones and was legitimized through the topography of the district, which was comprehended by the inhabitants as god-given. This result has been achieved through structural analysis of two different source materials. One is an analysis of the sacred place-names in the district. The other analysis has used the richly furnished Viking Age cemetery of Röstahammaren, in particular its most well-equipped grave, male grave IV. There are structural parallels between these materials,

A Nation’s Holy Land: Kazakhstan’s Large-Scale National Project to Map Its Sacred Geography

This article focuses on the project Sacred Geography of Kazakhstan, launched in 2017 in Kazakhstan as part of the nationwide program Ruqani Zhangyru (Modernization of Spirituality). The officially stated goal of the project is to cultivate a sense of patriotism in the country’s residents related to places and geographic sites that are important for the historical memory of independent Kazakhstan. The authors assume that the real goal of the project is national territorialization, or recoding of the semantics of space, by selecting, codifying, and articulating some symbols and practices, while leveling and “forgetting” others. The analysis, which is based on expert interviews and official documents, shows that this postcolonial process fits into the tendency toward ethnonationalization of Kazakhstan, in which discourse on the civil nation continues to be reproduced at the official level, while real activity is more focused on reinforcing the idea of Kazakhstan as the state of the Kazakh nation. The institutionalization of organizing and recoding the sacred landscape involves a wide variety of groups and actors. These factors may explain the success of the project in comparison to other projects being implemented under the Ruqani Zhangyru program.