Importance of Shrines

throughout the whole history of Humanity, the existence of various religions has made the human being You need to create spaces from where you can perform ceremonies to your gods and contact them. Among the constructions that are dedicated to this type of activity we find the sanctuaries, a place that fulfills a very important function within the framework of the religion because its main utility is to allow devotees to come to worship their gods or saints.

A religious look: the perpetuation of a belief

It is essential to point out that the sanctuary is one of the most important forms of temple in the religious world, whatever the religion we seek to talk about. In this sense, we can describe the sanctuary as a building of a very varied type whose main objective is receive all believers to worship an image or form of those gods or figures in which they are believe.

The sanctuary should not be confused with a church but it has similar functions since prayers and religious ceremonies are held in both spaces. They can be extremely rich or extremely simple, depending on who built them and also on their religion. In some cases they are informal, that is, the same people build them in a particular place based on events. specific (such as the place where the god is believed to have appeared or where a person who is canonized as holy). In the latter case, the sanctuaries are usually visited by thousands of people devoted to that figure.

A historical look: the relevance of the sanctuary for human culture

If we observe the religious phenomenon from a historical point of view, we will understand that all forms of ceremony and religious practice are useful and very important to know more about the culture of a town.

A Christian sanctuary is not the same as a Buddhist or Jewish sanctuary. In any of the cases, this type of building allows us to learn not only from the artistic or architectural aspect of it construction, but also and especially about all the practices, rites, rituals and symbols that a religion as part of human culture can bequeath.

In some cases, for example, they are simply monuments or objects that are located in the nature and that they explain to us the importance that it has for that religion. In other cases, they are huge buildings in the middle of the city, spaces of great architectural richness that build cultural identity from a much more public and massive place.

Images: Fotolia. Sean Pavone – Alex_black