Emma Lavinia Bon

THE INNER TEMPLE AND THE CENTER(S) OF LIFE: PSYCHIC, MATERIAL, AND SACRED SPACE

What if, when we enter a temple, we were entering into the very space of our soul as well? What if the path from its threshold to its obscure inner nucleus is the same path that leads us from our normal perceptual field to the very center of our psyche? One might then conclude that, in a sense, the temple and the psyche share a common structure, and are articulated in relation to the same center. This center is the center of life — of all life: subtle and gross, psychic and material, human and animal, astral and mineral.

Emma Lavinia Bon elaborates on this question by referring to examples from ancient architectural traditions, aiming to show how sacred space is the plane where different dimensions converge and influence each other.

ON CENTERS AND POINTS

We move through space like points on a plane. Absorbed in the dizzying spiral of its own mental processes, each one of us experiences an unrepeatable and enclosed inner universe in perpetual struggle with the material world, which, being shared by all, is perceived as objective, inert, and inanimate. Yet only at a very superficial level is there anything like a subject who recognizes himself as the bearer of a psychic interiority opposed to the mere materiality of external things. One’s psyche is nothing but the local intensification of a flow that expands throughout the totality of spatial extension: an effusive nucleus at the center of a pulsating field of forces. The psyche is not a point, but a radiating center within a constantly amplifying circumference – or vice versa, an infinitely expanded circumference converging on its own center.

Psyche ist ausgedehnt, weiss nichts davon¹: as the well-known Freudian statement reminds us, the psyche is extended, but it tends to be aware only of its center – reducing it to an inextended, closed point – and not of its rays expanding through “exterior” space and matter. If the psyche-point is perceived by the individual self as its own, the extended psyche belongs to no one: what we call the subject is but a surface effect of it, a center that cannot see the infinite radius of its own circumference. The space of the world is a psychic continuum shaped by many power centers whose expanding circumferences produce, through their intersections, unceasing interferences, and reverberations – like the circular waves produced by different stones impacting the same water surface. This means that something that happens to another psychic center – person, thing, and so on – distant in space-time can produce direct effects on one’s own psyche, and vice versa: different beings and things, each located in a particular place in space-time and embodied in a specific material form, can immediately communicate and act upon one another, producing concrete effects.

As suggested by the Neoplatonic concept of psychè kósmou or anima mundi, the world itself is an animated being. Everything is full of spirits: every entity, even those that seem inanimate, such as minerals and objects, is penetrated by the same psychic principle, which acts differently in each thing. All the spirits, nothing but centers of invisible power, are in communication, being expressions of a single spiritual flux penetrating every limb of space. That’s why it’s also possible to produce effects on someone’s psyche by organizing “exterior” space into effective structures, like temples or shrines: because there is no “outside” of the psyche or Soul, only different levels of intensification or awareness.

In this view, the concept of center plays a crucial role, indicating an apex of power that – unlike the concept of “point” – concentrates a reverberating and unbroken spiritual flux in a pulsating core.

THE EMPOWERED SPACE

For the religious eye, as Mircea Eliade points out in his essay Le sacré et le profane², space is not the same everywhere. Fractures, discontinuities, points, or even qualitatively denser regions discretize spatial extension, which is by no means reducible to a res extensa made homogeneous by the uniform application of the same physical and mechanical laws at every point. There is a qualitatively discrete flux of spiritual power³ embedded – though invisible to the ordinary field of perception – within the quantitatively measurable space where the gross phenomena that define the boundaries of our action and thought occur.

This invisible flux forms a network of powers that take on different roles, functions, and definitions across spiritual traditions and religions. These powers may appear – and operate – as “spirits”, “demons”, “angels”, “gods”, and so forth. What they share, however, is the capacity to be evoked, summoned, and concentrated in specific points and regions of space, time, and even the human body. To this end, various traditions have developed a range of devices to intensify the presence of these powers at selected points and in specific circumstances. Magical formulas, geometric diagrams, crafted objects, and elaborate buildings – as well as natural elements such as plants and stones – can all serve as catalysts and channels for these powers.

Spiritual forces, of course, are not produced by these tools, but rather evoked, intensified, and conveyed through them. Although always present in space and matter, our field of perception must be expanded and “educated” to perceive them – a task made possible precisely through the use of these instruments. Our attention – the capacity to “see” what is normally invisible – requires the concentration of this stream of power, its visualization, and its channeling into effective structures. As magicians, yogis, ritual performers, and temple builders have long known, these forces are not necessarily “good” in a moral sense: if employed with malicious intent, or channeled through inadequate or ineffective formulas and structures, they can become useless or even destructive. “There is nothing necessarily holy or prayerful”, Arthur Avalon points out, “about a Mantra. Mantra is a power (Mantrashakti) which lends itself impartially to any use. A man may be injured or killed by Mantra”⁴. A magician, Marsilio Ficino observes, can channel the influx of an astral body and direct it through someone, even provoking pain or disastrous (literally “ill-starred”, from the Latin dis-as-trum) consequences in that person’s life, without the star or planet itself being at fault⁵.

In the Indian architectural tradition, the living body of the architect (sthapati) is identified with the structure of the temple being built: the various parts and functions of his body are directly related to those of the building, which in turn are imbued with specific powers or the presence of particular deities. The slightest inaccuracy in temple design or foundation rituals can cause pain in the corresponding points of the architect’s gross and subtle body⁶, as well as the ineffectiveness or even harmfulness of the temple itself. The “outer” space of the building is directly connected to the “inner” life of the builder in a way that makes this distinction superficial, if not entirely meaningless.

A sacred building, like a temple, is a portion of space molded into a structure that empowers it – that is, invokes and concentrates specific powers in it through the efficacy of its form. This empowered space thus possesses a psychic quality and, because of this, is capable of producing concrete effects on the psychic level for those who come into contact with it. “Temple” is the name for a structure that is no more an “external” space than it is an “inner” space. The two spaces – the “inner” temple of man and the “outer” temple in the world – are the same space: an invisible and subtle structure imbued with specific powers and meanings, simultaneously manifesting in different gross bodies – one human, one made of stone or other materials, one cosmic.

Of course, different traditions have used different tools and developed different models to produce different effects on the psychic dimension, and it is crucial not to blur the boundaries between them to the point where it becomes impossible to understand the specificity of these tools and models. However, a transversal comparative approach across traditions may help reveal how and why different ritual, magical, graphical, and architectural patterns can work on subtle and spiritual dimensions. In this sense, the temple – and sacred space in general – can be seen as an extremely powerful device in which ritual, magical, symbolic, and, overall, transformative elements converge, combining in a harmonious design.

BUILDING THE CENTER

Even if the invisible psychic flux that permeates all things and dimensions of reality is continuous, there are – as previously mentioned – certain regions where it intensifies into a concentrated force. These special places can either be pre-existing entities – as is often the case with natural elements such as trees, rivers, and stones – or they can be entirely constructed. Yet even when a particular object is perceived as intrinsically imbued with intense spiritual qualities, these qualities must still be summoned, invoked, and urged to manifest and act. This becomes even more evident when sacred space must be created from nothing⁷: not only must the powers be evoked and activated, but they must first be anchored and concentrated within that space, which in turn must be shaped according to rigorous forms in order to retain and preserve those presences. Rituals and magic formulas can serve this very purpose, generating a centripetal movement. A sacred place or entity is always a center: a core where powers expanded in space and located in different dimensions are concentrated.

The Latin word templum indicates, first of all, a sacred space that is defined and delimited through a ritual process, and whose consistency and duration are absolutely liturgical. In the ritual of inauguratio – the divinatory consultation of omens such as the flight of birds – the Roman augur traces, with a staff called lituus, a spatial scheme that delimits the field of consultation. This operation, performed with the necessary use of magical formulas – which vary from place to place – produces a cut in space, a delimitation whose boundaries are invisible but maximally effective. The apex of the ritual consists in the act of contemplatio, by which the four templa or cardinal points in the heavenly dome are gathered and linked in a unique squared scheme⁸. To contemplate originally means to ritually concentrate the spatial coordinates in a specific region of space – a region where something powerful and maximally meaningful manifests or happens.

The material structure of the temple – the one we can see and aesthetically appreciate – is a much later product in the history of civilization. The stone building is nothing but the gross sedimentation of lines, structures, and correspondences whose main consistency is fundamentally ritual, and whose duration in time is solely liturgical, decided by the duration of the ritual itself. After performing its function, the Vedic altar – much more ancient than the Hindu temple – was totally destroyed: the center frees the power concentrated in it by dissolving it into the continuous flow to which it belongs. As noticed by Daniélou, “the temple is above all an abstract structure, corresponding to the power lines established on the plan and in space. Its reality lies in its proportions and measurements”⁹. “Abstract” here means “invisible”, “dematerialized”: sacred space is a field of powers linked by precise astronomical, numerical, and subtle equivalences, and fixed through exact magical formulas. In the “material” temple’s structure, no element has a necessity which is just architectural: everything has a meaning dependent on the general structure and the powers present in it.

The ideas of “center” and “concentration” – from the Latin concentratio: “to bring together”, “to gather” – are thus inseparable from the idea of a sacred space or entity: the temple – each temple – is, without contradiction, the very center of the cosmos. Each “world” – community, civilization, culture, etc. – gravitates around a core which decides its fundamental structure, articulation, distribution of forces¹⁰. As the center of the world it belongs to and produces, the sacred space repeats the primordial cosmogony, the process of creative emanation by which the manifest world is expanded, from a primeval center, through space and time – space and time being inseparable from this outgoing movement itself. This is why the same power penetrates all things: because it is the differential amplification of the same fundamental core in which it was concentrated.

The institution of a temple, consisting in a ritual concentration of powers, means the institution, once again, of the primordial center, and thus the repetition of the cosmogony itself. The ceremony of inauguratio – according to an idea transversal to many different traditions, each with its own specificities – subtracts a place from the influences that normally affect it, in order to insert into the ordinary flow of space-time a primeval, absolute time and space: the space-time of the origin¹¹. Bringing space-time back to its origin, to the moment of its birth, means at the same time giving the origin a duration and extension in the originated, ordinary space-time. Every point in creation, if intensified through the right means, can be its pulsating center. The origin of time is not before time, the origin of space is not a transcendent space, but is their center. A center that can be activated and even “built” everywhere and at any time. The manifest world is not the result of a creative impulse that happened in time immemorial and is forever lost, but the recursive reactivation of its center, always pulsating at its core.

This mechanism of concentration of powers plays a crucial role in the edification of the fire altar (agnicayana) in the Hindu Brahmanical context. The structure of the ritual – and thus of the altar itself – is necessarily bound to Prajāpati, the figure of the universal procreator who dominates the meticulous prose of the Brāhmaṇa. Through the ritual edification of the altar, the dismembered body of Prajāpati – who sacrificed himself to give birth to cosmic differentiation – is reassembled into a unified form to ensure the solidity of the world against destructive tendencies. Prajāpati, the cosmic Person, is the altar of sacrifice¹², because he himself is the sacrifice from which everything derives.

The whole ritual gesture is grounded on a rigorous series of identifications and equivalences. It is not simply a matter of recomposing a lacerated space: Prajāpati is also the year, the fundamental unity of cyclical time. Its primordial fragmentation is also the fragmentation of time: no world could subsist in undifferentiated time, in an eternal, uniform present. However, this fragmentation of time into discrete elements can obstruct the cyclical flow of time: if day is separated from night, how can they pass one into the other? In order for time to have duration, the joints between the parts of the year and the day – the point of suture between one season and another, between day and night – must be firmly sealed. These points are indeed critical: they are the moments when time might end, not prolong itself, falling into the empty interstice separating one time interval from the other.

The ritual performance must join each fragment to the other so as to fill all the voids. The five layers of the altar are, simultaneously, the five parts of Prajāpati’s body, the five parts of the year – that is, the seasons¹³ – and the five spatial directions – east, south, west, north and zenith¹⁴; every day, a brick – representing one day – and one enclosing-stone – representing one night – are added to the building of the altar¹⁵, so that the total process lasts precisely one year: to build the year takes a year. This means that the year (Prajāpati) is inseparable from the ritual process of its edification: ritual action is not added to Being¹⁶, but Being itself is nothing but a universal liturgy. The expansive, centrifugal, lacerating impulse of creation is ritually reversed into a concentrating, centripetal, unifying impulse that converges space and time at its center.

The constructed altar (vedi) is the center: the center of space, the center of time – the solar day or equinox (viṣuvat) – and the center of the Person, that is, the inner and spiritual center of Prajāpati and the sacrificer – the adhyātman¹⁷. The ātman is, itself, a center that emerges through a ritual act of concentration; this act requires absolute focus of the mind: the formulas must be pronounced in the right way, and so must the ritual gestures be made. The act must be thought out as it is performed¹⁸.

The ritual is never performed by the subject: the same structure in whose constraints what we may call subject touches its center which is never “subjective”.

The ritual is never performed by the subject¹⁹: it is something that happens simultaneously in the world and in the psyche, binding them in one and the same structure in whose constraints what we may call subject touches its center which is never “subjective”. Ritual always takes place “before” the subject, in the sense that it operates in a profound space with respect to which the subject is a surface efflorescence. Ritual is not the object of the subject’s action, but rather through it the subject is transformed: by internalizing new patterns of force correspondences, new psychic structures are produced. In other words, sacred space, and the temple in particular, functions precisely as a maṇḍala: it concentrates psychic forces into an effective scheme to cause a reconfiguration of their relations.

THE TEMPLE AS MANDALA

In the Hindu architectural tradition, the invisible scheme of forces upon which the temple’s visible structure is articulated is determined by a specific kind of maṇḍala named vāstupuruṣamaṇḍala²⁰, whose symbolism derives from the Vedic altar. The term vāstu indicates the construction’s site, while the term puruṣa denotes the supreme principle (brahman) in the manifest form it assumes so as to be shared by both the cosmic and the human dimension. In other words, man and the cosmos share a common form, that is, the puruṣa. The latter is the figure of this equivalence²¹ between micro- and macrocosmic manifestation, the powerful diagram that establishes the relations between the elements that constitute the two spheres. This same diagram is transferred into the maṇḍala specifically designed to articulate the magical space of the vāstu, which serves as the basis for its material shaping. The maṇḍala itself is thus a delimited geometrical structure in whose scheme different deities and powers are embedded; it is employed as an instrument – a yantra – of contemplation and visualization that catalyzes and concentrates the psychic flux directed to it, ordering it into specific structures. These structures are the scheme of equivalence of different dimensions, combining astronomical, mythical, mathematical, and subtle elements into one great mechanism.

Even the Roman templum resembles a maṇḍala in the sense that a celestial and temporal structure – the apparent motion of the Sun around the Earth that determines the four basic spatial coordinates – is projected and concentrated in an earthly and spatial structure, thus creating a field of multi-dimensional correspondences. In the case of the Hindu temple, the vāstupuruṣamaṇḍala provides the metaphysical prevision prefiguration of the temple, establishing some exact links between the temple’s physical measures and cosmic and human coordinates. The constructed temple is thus the material concretization of this system of equivalences – more: it is the center of these equivalences, the place where they converge in unity. In other words, the vāstupuruṣamaṇḍala is the plan of the temple in the sense that it provides the invisible structure of the relations of forces and correspondences that are to be used in the building of a temple whose material form is the concretization of the metaphysical structure it generates.

The centripetal structure is typical of maṇḍalas and yantras in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions. These diagrams are generally dominated by some profoundly meaningful and operative basic geometrical elements – although maṇḍalas are often enriched with colorful representations of deities and other characters: the point, the circle (maṇḍala means precisely “circle”), and the square. These three elements are crucial in the visualization of the process of cosmic manifestation. From a Tantric point of view, the latter begins with the expansion of a central point (bindu) that is simultaneously beyond the manifest (parā) and also manifest (aparā)²². This center is a threshold in the cosmogonic expansion of Śakti, Śiva’s creative energy, which unfolds in states of increasing limitation and material sedimentation. When the threshold is crossed, the first trace of manifestation appears in the form of a point of dense energy that needs to radiate into a circumference. The circle – which is necessarily related to the bindu as its circumference – represents the inchoative movement of manifestation, the process of its realization, within which it is maximally unstable and vibrant.

To be fulfilled, the creative impulse must be stabilized by anchoring itself to fixed spatial coordinates, namely the four cardinal points: the final form of the manifested cosmos is a square. The square represents cosmic energy frozen in an ordered, immobile form. It is the perfection of creation, its ultimate structure, and also the fundamental form of Hindu architecture. If the dynamic form of the circle has a temporal quality – being used to symbolize the motions of astral bodies – the square is essentially firm and thus spatial, terrestrial.

The Buddhist temple of Borobudur, in Indonesia²³, is a very peculiar example of this equivalence between the maṇḍala, the psychic and the temple’s structure. The temple’s plan is a built maṇḍala: the centrifugal expansion of the diagram (and the cosmos) from the central bindu to the final square, and at the same time the centripetal reabsorption of the manifest cosmos in its center, are solidified in the material shape of the temple. Its structure is formed by a concentric succession of square plans, one inside the other, followed by circular planes culminating in a central stūpa. For those entering the temple from the outside, the structure is centripetal and ascensional; it must be traversed from the square of cosmic manifestation to its inextended center, from bottom to top, moving from the exterior to the center, each stage being accessible via stairs. The path inside the temple is a spiritual, contemplative ascesis, requiring the utmost concentration of the mind: transiting from a lower to a higher level means moving from a lower to a higher, increasing the level of awareness.

The spheres of meditation are materialized in the temple’s planes, from the grossest – hence “square” – to the most subtle, circular, all the way to the great central stūpa, empty and inaccessible.

It is a path that runs, simultaneously, through the meanderings of the temple and those of the psyche, the articulated space of the maṇḍala being shared by both. Through it, the centrifugal movement of cosmic and psychic manifestation can be reabsorbed by an inverse, centripetal movement from the square to the center, from the gross phenomena to the most subtle point of cosmic and psychic manifestation. The maṇḍala or yantra can in fact always be “read” in both senses, from the center to its ultimate square frame and, vice versa, from this latter to the center.

The expansive, dissipating movement of cosmo- and psychogenesis as well as the concentric, intensifying movement of ritual, magic, and contemplative practice are sealed into one pulsative structure, in whose breath everything is produced, articulated and reabsorbed.

The maṇḍala is alive: it is not just a representation, but the active pattern of a process that takes place simultaneously at the cosmic level, in the material structure of the temple, and in the mind of those who contemplate it.

The maṇḍala is alive: it is not just a representation, but the active pattern of a process that takes place simultaneously at the cosmic level, in the material structure of the temple, and in the mind of those who contemplate it. A process that never ends, but is always recreated through ritual concentration, that is, through the ritual convergence of forces in a center. As a tool for visualization, the maṇḍala compels psychic energy to creatively repeat the same process on the spiritual plane. In this sense, the concepts of maṇḍala or yantra are not restricted within the boundaries of the Hindu tradition but can be extended to various tools that perform a corresponding function – the concentration and “shaping” of psychic energy – in other spiritual traditions. Of course, the efficacy, structure, and purpose in the employment of magical diagrams vary from context to context, so it is impossible to make a rigorous comparison; in any case, the use of these spatial devices or patterns in the articulation of which specific powers are fixed and organized in harmonic resonance is remarkably transversal across cultures.

The fact that a ritually, magically, and graphically organized spatial extension can act on the space of the psyche is a wisdom shared and “acted upon” in many different contexts and in many different ways²⁴; it is a fact that has immediate evidence and power as soon as one crosses the threshold of the “visible” space, the edge of the coarsest layer of phenomena. Through the maṇḍala or the yantra, as they are not two “things” or “objects” but structures of effective relations between forces, dimensions apparently separated are transmuted one into the other by the fact that they are magically impelled to converge in the same structure.

The temple is thus a bridge between spheres of forces, realms of meaning. As Daniélou underlines, “the artist, the architect, becomes a magician. Through the power of magical diagrams or yantras, he reaches the source of being, the divine. The temple built according to the yantras thus allows us to evoke the invisible and communicate with those transcendent beings we call ‘gods.’”²⁵ “The activity of the temple is assured by priests – qualified magicians – who know all the appropriate formulas and rites to evoke the presence of a deity. Here the gods manifest themselves, and from here, prayers and the sacrificial smoke can reach them.”²⁶ Although the divine presence pervades every limb of reality, the manifest cosmos being nothing more than its creative expression and sedimentation, we need bridges, special points of intersection, centers whose highest intensity allows us to go beyond the ordinary psychic frequency, to cross a threshold.

THE VERTICAL POWER

The manifest structure of a sacred place is determined, as already shown, by its peculiar role as a magnetic center²⁷ where different dimensions converge and communicate. There is an invisible, dematerialized structure that anchors and shapes the amorphous magma of matter from which the visible temple unfolds. Although the examples considered so far mostly belong to the Hindu architectural tradition, this does not make this idea any less transversal. A clear example of this is the role of vertical axes as the organizing principle of built sacred space. Pyramids, ziggurats, churches, menhirs, sacred pillars, and shrine superstructures are all shaped, in the vertical plane, according to a formal upward impetus. Once again, this invisible structure – the vertical direction – is a fundamental principle of organization for the invisible field of powers simultaneously present in the human, terrestrial, and heavenly domain.

In the human psychophysical body, it is the energetic and pneumatic axis that rises up to the top of the head (and even beyond); in the terrestrial sphere, it is embodied by sacred mountains, trees, and other entities whose shape is clearly dominated by an ascensional tension, but also by rivers – like the Nile in Egypt or the Ganges in India; in the cosmic realm, it is the axis mundi, the pillar that penetrates the Earth at its center and the heavenly and chthonian dimensions, thus connecting them. As it is the center of the cosmos, the temple or sacred place is the point of passage of the axis mundi, thus the point of convergence of the different dimensions it crosses.

As pointed out by Sigfried Giedion when discussing Egyptian architecture, “one of the great changes from prehistory, with its equal rights of all directions, was the advent of the vertical as an organizing principle to which everything had to be related. This occurred at the beginning of the high civilizations, with the rise of architecture. The pyramid, the ziggurat, and monoliths in the form of steles and obelisks expressed the vertical as the connecting link with the cosmos. The horizontal is the line of repose: the vertical is the line of movement. Yet horizontal and vertical belong together, connected by the angle of ninety degrees, which, together with them, acquired an extraordinarily powerful position. Axis and symmetry are consequences of this new principle of organization”²⁸.

Verticality implies dynamism, and dynamism implies transformative effort. This latter is provided by forms of practice whose aim is precisely to power the connection realized by the vertical force – practices that work to ceaselessly transform and elevate one dimension to another, or, vice versa, to bring down a dimension from above. The ritual effort of the sacrifice culminates in the rising of the vertical column of smoke to the sky, i.e. to the realm of the gods. The kuṇḍalinī, the cosmic creative energy rolled up at the base of the spine must be raised, “straightened” in order to experience different psychic states. All these operations require great ritual and mental effort and have direct transformative effects on the agent of the action.

Through the vertical axis, the different sacred spaces or entities that incorporate it as a structuring principle are synthetically connected, even if distant. The vertical thus becomes a principle of trans-physical and transpsychical equivalence: the temple is the sacred mountain, because both embody in their manifest gross form the same subtle vertical axes. The sacred mountain is a figure of the center transversally present in many different traditions, so much so that it would be impossible to recall all the examples here. Of course, in each tradition it is invested with different meanings and placed at the center of different ritual practices, thus producing, as it becomes the object of devotion, different effects. In any case, the equivalence between the mountain and the sacred building – based on the supremacy of the vertical principle – is surprisingly widespread.

This is also why many Hindu temples are named after sacred mountains, like the Kailāśanātha Temples of Ellora and Kāñcipuram, or the Aruṇācaleśvara temple of Tiruvaṇṇāmalai, located at the foot of the Aruṇācala sacred hill. As reflected in a tradition preserved in local myths, Tamil literature and some parts of the Skanda Purāṇa²⁹, Aruṇācala is considered the remnant of the column of fire – again, the axis mundi – in whose form Lord Śiva manifested himself to demonstrate to Brahma and Viṣṇu his absolute superiority.

In the field of the human psychophysical structure, the principle of the vertical as the powerful line of connection between different centers is at the core of diverse spiritual practices and views, which are in turn reflected by the manifest form of temples and sacred structures

As the transit point of the world axis, Aruṇācala hill – also known as Aṇṇāmalai – is thus the very center of the world, like its built analogue, the Aruṇācaleśvara temple. More generally, the structure of typical North Indian temples is called śikhara, which literally means “mountain peak” – a fact that demonstrates how, regardless of the name, each temple repeats the metaphysical structure of the mountain.

The cosmic center through which the axis mundi passes, and upon which the sacred mountain and the temple are located, are the same spiritual center, repeated in different bodies. The principle of the vertical is, in other words, derived from the principle of the center: the vertical line is nothing but the geometrical expression of the equivalence or connection between centers located in different gross bodies, in different parts of the same body, or in different dimensions. In this case, the “high” and “low” established by the vertical axis apply as principles of metaphysical and spiritual organization and spatialization of forces, not as mere physical locations.

In the field of the human psychophysical structure, the principle of the vertical as the powerful line of connection between different centers is at the core of diverse spiritual practices and views, which are in turn reflected by the manifest form of temples and sacred structures. Within the Buddhist framework, the structure of the stūpa should be understood as the material visualization of the dharma – the “law” taught by the Buddha – beginning with its vertical axis. This latter is in some cases physically represented by a high pillar or yaṣṭi that, standing in the exact center of the empty structure, emerges at the top of it from a hole. This is a crucial aspect, since the stūpa itself is likened to a skull – the Sanskrit stūpa also meaning “the top of the head”³⁰: the hole at its top is the point – the brahmarandhra – through which the release from the vacuous world of conditioned existence and rebirths is accomplished – a world as empty as the stūpa itself.

This idea is akin to the view of certain Upaniṣads, such as the Maitrāyaṇīya. Although these texts start from a quite different metaphysical standpoint, they too insist on the need to free the ātman from the constraints of bodily and cosmic existence by bringing it out of the subtle – and not just physical – center located at the top of the head³¹. The vertical therefore expresses a spiritual direction that must be followed through various yogic practices to unite the soul, by transit through the “intermediate” center of brahmarandhra, with its supreme metaphysical center, which pulses beyond cosmic manifestation. This is not an immanent center – as in the case of the Vedic ātman, the center of the cosmic Person likened to the center of cosmic time and space – but a transcendent center³².

In Tantric doctrines leading to the form of practice known as kuṇḍalinī yoga, the subtle, immanent center of energy enfolded in human bodies is usually multiplied to six³³ centers or cakras, each located in a specific point of the subtle body and carrying specific powers and meanings. The cakras are the nuclei of articulation and concentration enfolded in the energy flow that passes through the spinal axis, the merudaṇḍa – a name that, again, refers to a sacred mountain, Mount Meru³⁴. The term cakra, meaning “wheel” or “circle”, reflects its dynamic nature: each center is an operative diagram or maṇḍala in which are embedded different powers that resonate at specific frequencies, thus producing specific psychic effects.

Each center, when activated, produces a creative reconfiguration of psychic space, thus of the cosmos itself, which is revealed to be transformed and empowered according to the type of forces exhorted to manifest through specific practices. Each cakra is a pulsative core of sound vibrations, a center that irradiates in a qualified circumference and a circumference that reabsorbs into a simple center, the bindu.

As observed by Lilian Silburn, at the periphery of the circumference or wheel “there are the kalā, subtle energies to which correspond, at the level of speech, the phonemes or letters (varṇa and mātṛkā) of the Sanskrit alphabet. Second, there are rays that are the nāda, vibrant resonances, radiating from the center to the periphery or from the periphery to the center, depending on whether the energy is directed outward or, during the ascension of Kuṇḍalinī, directed inward. Third, at the center of each wheel, the bindu, extensionless point, dwells in the suṣumnā or median way. The Kuṇḍalinī practice tends to reunite all the energies of body, thought, and speech in order to blend them into a single current of intense vibrations, which carries them to the center, the bindu. Then, melting in the fire of Kuṇḍalinī and becoming nādānta (end of sound vibration), the nāda converts into an upward flow, the very flow of the suṣumnā. The same is repeated in the next center, whose bindu, awakened in its turn, joins the bindu of the higher center; and this process of unification goes on until there is but one unique bindu”³⁵. The pulsation of each center pushes the energy flow vertically, toward increasing intensification; all centers are connected, and all are connected with different layers of reality, as they incorporate different figures, deities, sounds, and elements, thus creating an inextricable weave³⁶.

THE PERPETUATION OF LIFE

The temple is a living being. Its material shape is not just a “container” for invisible nets of powers; it’s a body. More precisely, a human and cosmic body, whose subtle aspect is inseparable from the gross one, and vice versa. As already seen in the role of the vāstupuruṣamaṇḍala, the plan of the Hindu temple is a maṇḍala expressing the puruṣa, the subtle body of both man and the cosmos; each part of the architect’s body is related to a section of the temple, which is in turn connected with cosmic elements, deities, and other forces. Through the invisible structure of the maṇḍala, that they all share, these plans converge and influence each other according to a system of precise equivalences. As Daniélou points out, “on the temple plan, just as in a person’s body, must be found the crucial points corresponding to the various subtle faculties defined by the Yoga chakras. These are the points where the universal person and the individual person meet. The temple plan is thus conceived as a diagram on which the various energy centers are located and is consequently known as the ‘plan-person’ (vāstupuruṣa)”³⁷.

The cakras are centers of intensification of conscious energy located in the subtle body, the sūkṣmaśarīra. Even if they are linked to specific vital organs and functions, located in the areas of the spinal axes where each cakra is enfolded, it would be erroneous to reduce a cakra to the gross physical plexus it corresponds to. As it is a subtle center, the cakra is primarily and essentially an expression of consciousness, a concentrated and qualified manifestation of Śakti³⁸, combining a vibratory, sound-like subtle “substance” with imaginative, numerical, geometrical, elemental, and other features. Only in a secondary sense – but no less “effective” – the cakra involves physical features, in the sense that its activity influences the corresponding physical region³⁹. The cakras are thus the vital centers through which the flow of conscious manifestation streams and concentrates; as they are present in the temple’s plan, the temple itself is the gross physical manifestation of a subtle structure of multiple vital centers, all dynamically connected.

As observed by Schwaller de Lubicz, the idea that the vital organs of the human body are centers of intensification and radiation of a spiritual force, of the invisible life of consciousness, is also the deepest core of the “pharaonic sacred science”⁴⁰. In the Egyptian tradition, vital organs were considered sacred: not, of course, for their merely physical function, but as nuclei of transmission and articulation – according to various “vital functions” – of a flow of nervous energy. Ancient traditional wisdoms, such as the pharaonic one, hand down a kind of “education” that, by employing these centers of life force articulation, can awaken an intelligence of states beyond mere bodily forms⁴¹.

These centers are all expressions of the Neter, the divine vital force that animates and nourishes the manifest universe, differentiated in many different Neters or principles that embody specific vital functions. They are usually marked with glyphs representing animals or other living beings, gestures, useful objects; each one is the matrix of many different symbols, all belonging, like living beings, to a common lineage defined by the function of that Neter. Each being is rooted in this mechanism of transmission and articulation of life, enclosing one or more vital functions: things are not “just” things, but sacred glyphs, that is, symbols of the One divine life that penetrates everything. Each glyph, being an element of a sacred writing – called Medu Neter⁴² – is imbued with a specific sound, can be pronounced thus provoking the reverberation of the vital centers to which it is related⁴³. Here the term “symbol” indicates the effective figure that immediately – not metaphorically – expresses the particular vital function activated by a specific Neter. Thus, the bird flying in the sky, for example, becomes the embodiment of a living function that is a specific intensification and qualification of the total movement of the universal living force, a modulation of it⁴⁴.

In this sense, the temple is nothing but the pulsating interplay and cooperation among centers of power – not a structure outside of man, but a structure within man, the structure of life. The temple is inner: that’s why we are able to build it in the outer world

This system of germination – a generative impulse that flows through every form, being, and gesture – connects all components of the cosmos into a living, evolving unity that is simultaneously organic, conscious, and symbolic. The temple, in this sense, is a microcosm that intensively repeats the same process: it is the “house of life”⁴⁵, a space articulated by subtle nervous energy, flowing through centers physiologically linked to specific bodily organs and functions, and symbolically expressed through sacred glyphs – sound vibrations made visible as forms. This space is both cosmic and human. As documented by de Lubicz, the plan of the Luxor temple reproduces the human body, including its vital centers, which form the very foundation of the symbolic organization of architectural space⁴⁶. The temple is defined by the dynamic relationships between these centers, connected by a flow of conscious energy that radiates from the nervous center through all other centers according to their specific functions. In this sense, the temple is nothing but the pulsating interplay and cooperation among centers of power – not a structure outside of man, but a structure within man, the structure of life. The temple is inner: that’s why we are able to build it in the outer world.

This idea that the temple is the site of the perpetuation of life is also reflected in the first great stone temple built in Egypt by Zoser, the first pharaoh of the 3rd Dynasty. The temple, in fact, served as a mechanism for the preservation of his ka, a concept denoting the vital force transferred from the gods to the pharaoh and radiated outward to his subjects⁴⁷. The ka hieroglyph, depicted by the two arms raised with open palms, is a very ancient, even prehistoric, symbol indicating precisely this transfer of life force from one being to another. This process extends over time: it is a perpetual gestation, a growth, a development of life that multiplies and expands, differentiating itself without leaving itself. Death is always the death of the single structure, but life is stronger: it returns to its core each time, flows back into its source and expands again in endless rivulets. It is not the form that is transmitted from the open palm of the hands, but it is the permanent moment – the Egyptian ka – which inscribes within itself the experience of the transitory form⁴⁸. This permanent moment is eternal life, or living eternity: āyus, or αἰών⁴⁹, indestructible time. In the Vedas, the terms āyus and āyu denote the quality of time proper to life, the living duration: a time that wraps around itself, sewing together day to night, night to day – the components of the year that, in the Brāhmaṇa, are the components of Prajāpati. Through sacrifice and ritual, man participates in the weaving of this cosmic and liturgical time. The time of life.

Repeating the creation of the cosmos, the temple is a mechanism to generate life, a matrix. The bindu – the nondimensional threshold from which manifestation expands, the center of the manifest, living cosmos – is both nāda, the fundamental vibration, and bīja, the seed of everything⁵⁰. The temple – the cosmos – is the rhythmic propagation of this vibration and the organic development of the primeval seed: it is, like a plant⁵¹, a growing organism. The center of the Hindu temple is a square room called garbhagṛha: the house (gṛha) of the womb or germ (garbha)⁵². It is the place where life begins, the supreme and timeless instant of the animation of the cosmos, its vivification. There is no rational or intellectual understanding of this moment⁵³, for it is eternal and absolute – impossible to organize into intelligible meaning. It must be lived, not understood, because it is life itself. To truly experience it, one must enter the garbhagṛha, returning to an embryonic state, rewinding life onto itself – not to find its chronological beginning, but its center: the living germ that pulses through all life, moving it from deep within. “The Garbhagṛha is not only the house of the Germ or embryo of the Temple as Puruṣa; it refers to man who comes to the Centre and attains his new birth in its darkness”⁵⁴.

Life needs form. It is formless, yet it perpetuates itself through the incessant creation and destruction of finite, dynamic forms. But form can also obstruct the flow of life, diminish its intensity, and mortify it. In human life, this is what happens when the forms of the psyche – that is, of the soul, ψυχή – are in disharmony: when they are not organized into patterns capable of ensuring a virtuous organization of forces. Sacred space, as a maṇḍala, is an instrument that allows these structures to rebalance and shift into new forms that effectively channel – without obstructing – the flow of life. Not all psychic forms remain lastingly effective over the course of an individual existence: structures once beneficial can become the greatest hindrance to the creative propagation of life. It is then necessary to enact their ritual death, so that a spiritual rebirth may occur – a reconfiguration of psychic space that creates new forms. Entering the heart of the temple means accepting that something must die – that which is already mortal and finite – so that life can persevere in its own impulse, giving birth to new structures. Of course, this equivalence between the organization of psychic, subtle space and that of material, gross space does not apply only to the temple: all artifacts, buildings, and artistic creations embody a psychic structure. In the act of creation – the emergence of a new structure – the distinction between a mental pattern and the pattern present in the thing created, or in the instrument employed in a ritual act, such as a maṇḍala, is a later abstraction. Creation is a unique spiritual movement, only apparently split into two directions, one inner and one outer. But the invisible structure itself is neither inner nor outer: it is generative of these spaces, a center that radiates in different circumferences. The center of the psyche is the center of space and time – the center of cosmic life. To reshape the space of the soul means to free life from that which hinders its flow: to reactivate its creative center.

1. Sigmund Freud: “Ergebnisse, Ideen, Probleme” in Gesammelte Werke, Bd. XVII, Schriften aus dem Nach-lass, Fischer, Frankfurt a.M. 1999, p. 152.
2. Mircea Eliade: Le sacré et le profane, Gallimard, Paris 1965, p. 25.
3. The psychic continuum of the World’s Soul – the fact that all beings are bearers of a psychic intensity, and thus interconnected – does not imply that psychic power is distributed with the same gradient of concentration and intensity in every being, space, or circumstance. As Eliade remarks in the aforementioned passage of Le sacré et le profane, the role of sacred items is precisely to act as catalysts of power, which thus reveals itself to those who establish a ritual relationship with them. In this sense, the psychic flow is continuous — as it permeates all beings and realities — but also discrete, since it can be intensified and intentionally directed through specific ritual and contemplative operations. Empowering space thus does not mean “filling” it with a psychic intensity that it inherently lacks; rather, it means intensifying this power in specific regions, objects, and living beings so that it becomes more “effective” within the specific context in which it is activated. This idea is close to what Ficino and Bruno maintained: every living being is animated (G. Bruno, La magia naturale in Opere Magiche, ed. by M. Ciliberto, Adelphi, Milano 2000, p. 202) and part of a universal psychic continuum, so that the magician does not create out of nothing but aligns with existing correspondences, acting on the attraction that connects things across distance. This psychic bond, rooted in the Soul that pervades all, allows stars and planets to directly influence the sublunar world. In this way, through the magician’s action, certain objects or beings undergo an intensification of their power to act. The magician draws and channels cosmic energies, directing them toward people or objects to produce effects.
4. Artur Avalon: The Serpent Power, Ganesh & co., Madras 1950, p. 83.
5. Marsilio Ficino: Commentary on Plotinus, Vol. II, ed. by S. Gersh, Cambridge-London 2018, IV, 4, 39
6. Alain Daniélou: The Hindu Temple. Deification of Eroticism, tr. by K. Hurry, Inner Traditions International, Rochester 2002, p. 29; Stella Kramrisch: The Hindu Temple, Vol. I, University of Calcutta, Calcutta 1946, p. 52.
7. In this case, spirits already in the territory often have to be preliminarily removed so as to obtain virgin soil suitable for the establishment of temple deities. This involves a series of rituals meant to expel these forces, as attested in the ritual and architectural traditions of ancient Rome and India. As Joseph Rykwert has pointed out, in ancient civilizations, the rituals for the founding of sacred places were often very similar — and in some cases even overlapped — with those for the founding of cities. As a space for the organization of (human) life, the city itself is, in a certain sense, a templum: a space arranged according to precise cosmic and divine correspondences. See Joseph Rykwert: The Idea of a Town. The Anthropology of a Urban Form in Rome, Italy, and the Ancient World, The MIT Press, 1988, pp. 65-68; Stella Kramrisch: The Hindu Temple, p. 13.
8. Joseph Rykwert: The Idea of a Town, pp. 44-49
9. Alain Daniélou: The Hindu Temple, p. 46.
10. Mircea Eliade, Le sacré et le profane, pp. 43-47.
11. Joseph Rykwert: The Idea of a Town, pp. 90-91.
12. Satapatha Brahmana, VI, I, I, 5; tr. by J. Eggeling: The Satapatha Brahmana, Vol. III, The Clarendon Press, Oxford 1894, p. 144.
13. Satapatha Brahmana, VI, I, II, 17-18; tr., p. 152.
14. Charles Malamoud: Cuire le monde. Rite et pensée dans l’Inde ancienne, La Découverte, Paris 1989, p. 78.
15. Satapatha Brahmana, X, IV, II, 27; tr. by J. Eggeling: The Satapatha Brahmana, Vol. IV, The Clarendon Press, Oxford 1897, p. 354
16. Lilian Silburn: Instant et cause. Le discontinu dans la pensée philosophique de l’Inde, Vrin, Paris 1955, p. 56
17. Lilian Silburn: Ibidem, pp. 71-76. “Originally Prajapati immolated himself to the gods by giving them his own person (atman). When he lay all fragmented and was no more than a heart (hrd), it was for his person that he lamented: ‘ah! my atman!’ he said. Then Prajapati emitted a counterpart of this atman that is sacrifice and, through sacrifice, he redeemed his person. […] The sacrificer likewise redeems his own person through sacrifice and is reborn in the other world with a complete person (atman)”. My translation.
18. Here a remark by Roberto Calasso is particularly relevant: “Why were Vedic men so obsessed with ritual? Why do all their texts, directly or indirectly, talk about liturgy? They wanted to think, they wanted to live only in certain states of consciousness. Discarding all others, this remains the only plausible reason. They wanted to think – and above all: they wanted to be conscious of their thinking. This happens exemplarily in performing a gesture. There is the gesture – and there is the attention focused on the gesture. The attention conveys to the gesture its meaning”. Roberto Calasso: L’ardore, Adelphi, Milano 2010, p. 31. My translation.
19. Lilian Silburn: Instant et cause, p. 57
20. The vastupurusamandala is structured as a square diagram composed of many smaller squares, each carrying specific meanings, dedicated to a star, Vedic deity and other elements, and oriented in a cardinal direction. All the squares are arranged centripetally around the central one, the brahmasthana. There are many types of vastupurusamandala, but the two most widely used and powerful, among an arithmetic series of 32 plants, are those with 64 and 81 squares. See Stella Kramrisch: The Hindu Temple, p. 58
21. Stella Kramrisch: Ibidem, p. 67.
22. Stella Kramrisch: Ibidem, p. 137
23. See Mircea Eliade: Barabudur, temple symbolique, in “Revista Fundatiilor Regale”, IV, 9, 1937, pp. 605-617. It is also necessary here to mention the monumental study by Paul Mus: Barabudur: esquisse d’une histoire du bouddhisme fondée sur la critique archéologique des textes, originally published in the “Bulletin de l’École Française de l’Extrême-Orien” and later, in 1935, by Éditions Paul Geuthner.
24. As Giulio Busi has pointed out in his exemplary study of what he calls “visual Qabbalah,” Qabbalists over the centuries developed refined mechanisms for graphically displaying sacred combinations of mystical letters and signs. Some of these were totally generative, employed as tools for the discovery and production of new meanings previously hidden in the flow of the alphabet. In these diagrams, the letters have deep cosmological value: each is identified with a number, with a divine power, with an angel, with a planet, with a zodiac sign, with a day or month, with an organ of the human body. Orbits of consonants become cosmological maps and tools of meditation: the combinatorial operation requires a resolute concentration of the mind and stimulates a frenetic creativity. New combinations, dictated by strict numerical and symbolic necessities, impose themselves on the qabbalist’s mind, until reaching an ecstatic state. See Giulio Busi: Qabbalah visiva, Einaudi, Torino 2005.
25. Alain Daniélou: The Hindu Temple, p. 3.
26. Alain Daniélou: Ibidem, p. 15.
27. Alain Daniélou: The Hindu Temple, p. 15.
28. Sigfried Giedion: The Beginnings of Architecture, Princeton University Press, 1964, p. x.
29. The Skanda-Purana, Vol. III, Motilal, Delhi 1951. The third part of the first khanda of the Skanda-Purana is called arunacala-mahatmya and celebrates the holiness of the mountain Arunacala, which is here regarded as the transformation of Siva himself into a hill.
30. Monier Monier-Williams: A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, Motilal, Delhi 1899, p. 1259.
31. Maitrayaniya Upanisad, VI, 20-22; tr. by E.B. Cowell: The Maitri or Maitrayaniya Upanishad, The Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta 1935.
32. Both Lilian Silburn and Mircea Eliade couple Vedas and Brahmanas on the one hand, Upanisads and Buddhism on the other. Whereas the first two develop a thought of the liturgical gesture committed to ensuring the prolongation of the life of the cosmos, the second two, on the other hand, focus on a set of practices whose purpose is to free oneself from the manifest world, realizing its ontological inconsistency: the cycle of rebirths, the alternation of day and night become tremendous, something that must be overcome. See Lilian Silburn: Instant et cause; Mircea Eliade: Le sacré et le profane, pp. 95-96.
33. Among the numerous texts that describe the cakras, their number can vary widely, each one possessing different features (Arthur Avalon: The Serpent Power, pp. 151–152). The six cakras referred to in the title of the treatise Satcakra-Nirupana – namely muladhara, svadhisthana, manipura, anahata, visuddha, and ajna – are tendentially considered the principal ones: the first five are associated with the gross elements – Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Ether – while the sixth is linked to a subtle tattva, the manas (see Satcakra-Nirupana, verse 33; tr. by Arthur Avalon in The Serpent Power, p. 398). To these must certainly be added the sahasrara, the “thousand-petaled lotus,” which is the seat of Parama Siva-Sakti, the state of pure consciousness (ibidem, p. 103). Unlike the others, this center is totally unqualified. Its gross location is generally identified with the top of the head, close to the brahmarandhra, while between ajna and sahasrara there are said to be additional centers that correspond to tattvas specific to the mental sphere (ibidem). The human body, as a microcosm, mirrors the process of cosmic creation (and dissolution) as a progressive solidification and materialization of the vibratory stream of consciousness.
34. It is clear, Arthur Avalon points out, “that the Merudanda is the vertebral column, which as the axis of the body is supposed to bear the same relation to it as does Mount Meru to the Earth”. Arthur Avalon: Ibidem, p. 147
35. Lilian Silburn: La Kundalini. L’Energie des Profondeurs, Les Deux Océans, Paris 1983, p. 49; tr. by J. Gontier: Kundalini. The Energy of the Depths, SUNY, New York 1988, p. 32. As Stella Kramrisch observes, “Nada, the principial vibration, is the immanent cause (upadana), the primary substance of the world” (Stella Kramrisch: The Hindu Temple, p. 136). Each letter radiating from a center is connected to a lotus petal, and is a powerful mantra that must be resonated in order to activate the particular qualities it embodies.
36. The view just expressed, by which the verticality of the susumna culminates in the highest center, progressively “draining” the other centers of their energy to concentrate it all at the highest point, is at the basis of specific practices that emphasize the univocity of the vertical movement of subtle energies from below to the top. However, this is only one among diverse understandings and methods. As witnessed by the work that Adrian Navigante and Amanda Viana de Sousa are carrying out at Interstices: Center for Transversal Thinking in collaboration with the Fondation Alain Daniélou, there is also what could be called a “shamanic” approach to the universe of cakras. According to this perspective, based on comparative fieldwork in different cultural settings as well as a particular reading of early sakta elements of Hindu Tantra usually subsumed in the canonical Saiva understanding of such practices, each cakra should be activated and worked on according to its own energetic frequency or world-configuring conditions, and the key does not lie in the deities of the Hindu pantheon but rather in the nature (usually deemed “fierce female”) forces which the canonical interpretation confined to the realm of bhutavidya. The aim is not a vertical piercing of the cakras but a full and structured ritual disclosure of the different animistic potentialities related to the practitioner, as presented in that pluriverse of personified forces. Here the goal is not to focus all energies on a higher, absolute center, and to get this energy out of the body by producing a final liberation from the magma of life and experience, the dissolution of this changing and eternally forming cosmos. The purpose is to achieve energetic reconfigurations as the cakra work (mainly consisting of ritual performance) unfolds, facing the challenges involved in that practice, which are not minor ones. In September 2024 and March 2025, I had the wonderful opportunity to participate in two workshops organized by Navigante and Viana de Sousa at the Labyrinth, the headquarters of the Fondation Alain Daniélou, which turned out to be inspiring for my reflection on some aspects treated in this essay. The first workshop focused on the issue of ecosophy (based on research and practices carried out in South Asia, West-Africa, and South America), which is central to the activities of the Interstices Center through a transversal and animistic approach; the second, entitled Field Perception and the Relational Unconscious: A Transversal Approach to Traditional Cultures, combined field-related research material and analysis of important (oral and written) sources an intellectual framework with collective and individual practice sessions.
37. Alain Daniélou: The Hindu Temple, p. 15.
38. Arthur Avalon: The Serpent Power, p. 109.
39. Arthur Avalon: Ibidem, pp. 161-162
40. The idea that physical organs are the gross manifestation of subtle functions and cosmic correspondences is transversal to many traditions, and endowed with an important role in alchemical, magical, and divinatory thought and practices. One example is the divinatory role played by the liver in many ritual cultures, from Mesopotamia to ancient Greece to the Etruscans.
41. René Adolphe Schwaller de Lubicz: Le Temple dans l’Homme, Editions Dervy, Paris 2001; tr. by P. Lucarelli: Il tempio nell’uomo, Edizioni Mediterranee, Roma 2003, p. 16.
42. The Greek translation of the term, hieros glyphos, loses some essential elements of the original Egyptian meaning, such as the reference to the Neter, which does not simply correspond to the Greek concept of “sacred”, but carries a well-defined significance and role within Egyptian ritual, magical, and iconographic culture.
43. René Adolphe Schwaller de Lubicz: Le Miracle Egyptien, Flammarion, Paris 1963; tr. by P. Crimini: La scienza sacra dei faraoni, Edizioni Mediterranee, Roma 1994, p. 214.
44. René Adolphe Schwaller de Lubicz: Il tempio nell’uomo, p. 29.
45. René Adolphe Schwaller de Lubicz: La scienza sacra dei faraoni, pp. 23-26.
46. René Adolphe Schwaller de Lubicz: Il tempio nell’uomo, pp. 21-22.
47. Sigfried Giedion: The Beginnings of Architecture, pp. 89-94, 275-292. “As a further assurance of the afterlife, the soul was split into seven species. Each had a special function. Among them two had the leading roles: the Ba and the Ka. The Ba comes nearest to our Christian individual soul. In the New Kingdom, the Ba soul was represented as a sinister bird with a human face and often with human hands. At the moment of death, this soul left the body in the form of a bird. It is depicted sitting on a tree and pecking at the fruits of the earth. The notion of the Ba soul played a secondary role in Egypt. It is typical of Egypt that in the foreground should be not the personal, individual Ba soul but the Ka, which had a much wider cosmic significance. […] It is a cosmic, divine force—a force which emanates from the god and which was serviceably built into the new social hierarchy. The king, at the summit of the hierarchy, received the Ka from the sun-god. He was the possessor of the Ka, which he then dispensed to the people. Through the Ka, the king was the human manifestation of the god” (ibidem, pp. 89-91). The ka does not have an autonomous and free existence (ibidem, p. 292), but needs a form in which to appear: after Pharaoh Zoser’s death, his ka was “transferred” to the temple complex, where he could move from room to room. Its permanence was also ensured by periodic rituals whose purpose was to vivify the ka, to intensify and renew its strength. Of course, the notion of ka formulated in this way is specific to the Egyptian mindset and it would be pointless trying to compare it here with similar – but not identical – notions from other traditions. Instead, it is far more relevant to note that the Egyptian tradition elaborated complex ritual gestures, magnificent edifices and powerful formulas to ensure the perpetuation of a divine life in the human and, more generally, organic cosmos, and that this life expands through transmission from one mortal form to another.
48. René Adolphe Schwaller de Lubicz: Il tempio nell’uomo, p. 129.
49. The Sanskrit and the Greek term seem to be etymologically related. See Émile Benveniste: Expression indo-européenne de l’“éternite”, in “Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris”, XXXVIII, n. 112, 1937, p. 103-112.
50. Stella Kramrisch: The Hindu Temple, p. 137.
51. On the definition of the temple as a living organism and, more specifically, as an organism that generates life, see also Vasilij Rozanov: Da motivi orientali, tr. by A. Pescetto, Adelphi, Milano 1988.
52. The Sanskrit term for “pregnant woman” is garbhini. It is no accident that the archetype of the sacred mountain, to which the temple is assimilated, is complementary and inseparable from the equally powerful and transversal archetype of the sacred cave, which is precisely the womb containing the embryo and the innermost chamber of the temple, the sanctum sanctorum. The vertical axis embodied by the mountain is grounded in the center of life, embodied by the cave-womb.
53. René Adolphe Schwaller de Lubicz: La scienza sacra dei faraoni, p. 26.
54. Stella Kramrisch: The Hindu Temple, p. 163