Sacred Sites. The Library of Esoterica - Jessica Hundley

Sacred Sites takes us on a journey through the history of sacred art and architecture, exploring the countless ways in which people give profound and lasting meaning to their surroundings. From perhaps our oldest spiritual practice—the worship of the womb with the body as a temple—to the belief in imaginary worlds, we traverse the vast landscapes of mysticism, religion, and fantasy.

We gather for worship, circle the campfire, bow before the forest altar, and praise the deities we have chosen in the temple. Through pilgrimages, we carve indelible paths, on which we walk our meditative journey across continents, and new generations of feet tread upon this sacred ground. Through our devotion to the spirit, we design new worlds—wild, imaginative odes to what we hold sacred: golden temples carved into rock, massive spirals shaped from sand and earth, silent sanctuaries hidden in wooded groves. We paint cave walls, mark the way with rock art, and lay roses in reverence by candlelight at the shrine.

Slowly, stone by stone, following a cosmic, sacred geometry and architecture, we erect monuments for our gods. These hidden patterns are found in the mysterious, towering pyramids that appear across the world and in a remarkable variety of cultures; in the marble sanctuaries built for Greek and Roman goddesses; in the wind-swept mountain monasteries of ancient Asia; and in the cliff dwellings of the indigenous peoples of the American Southwest.

Nature, art, beauty—these are the common elements found both in the places our ancestors regarded as sacred and in the myriad environments where we modern humans strive to connect with the source and with ourselves. The fifth volume of the *Library of Esoterica* traces the path from rugged stone temples to transcendent works of modern architecture, honoring the collective history of spaces that have been made sacred through human reverence.