Altars (SC)

"The creation of an altar is a sacred act, an act of power and grace. For a few timeless minutes you enter a dimension beyond ordinary reality, where light, sound, and energy merge into an exquisite state of being." The human urge to create physical sacred centers for our lives is so deep that we often create them unconsciously.

A photographic celebration of these sacred places, with 40 images of household altars, interviews, history and how to tips exploring ways to create havens from the everyday world that can inspire, honour or memorialise.

In this handbook on altars, Peg Streep shows readers how to use specific materials, colours, symbols, imagery, scents, crystals, music, and more to create their own personal altars. Streep covers the history, symbolism, and different types of the altar and provides detailed and illustrated guidance for anyone to create and enjoy sacred space.

With over 35 years of combined experience in the field of Vastu Shastra, the Indian science of environmental harmony that predates and forms the basis of the well-known Feng Shui, the Mastro's ability to bring the power and beauty of sacred space to life is unparalleled. This enlightening and informative book demystifies the powerful principles of Vastu with easy, concise instructions to maximize your potential, attract Universal support, and transform your life.

Exactly who are the Ancestors? This book discusses the role and function of the Ancestors in our everyday lives while detailing the proper way to propitiate them. Included are Offerings, Prayers and Reverence as well as the procedure for establishing the ancestor altar.

Ancient spiritual traditions - Goddess, Celtic, African, Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic, Greek Orthodox - are being revived and remade by women who create amazing altarpieces. Kay Turner has been exploring the subject of women's altars for over 20 years. She has found them in the studios of artists in Detroit, New York or San Francisco and kitchens and bedrooms in Mexican-American homes in Texas. The statues, flowers, pictures, photographs, amulets, stones, shells and other things that make the altars represent their makers' histories, beliefs and desires.

Altar (noun): an elevated surface upon which one displays meaningful objects. Any surface can become an altar. Geddes and Cunningham, with beautiful, inspirational photos and text that's both instructive and poetic, show us how. For women, they say, an altar can become a sacred space upon which to place symbols of her true self. Whether indoors or out, permanent or fleeting, an altar helps you to quickly focus on the spirituality inherent in common things the flicker of a candle flame, the heady scent of freshly picked lilacs.

From Angkor Wat to Stonehenge, from Jerusalem to Westminster Abbey, this encyclopedia describes sacred places throughout the world and discusses their meaning and importance to believers as well as their historical and contemporary significance.

According to medievalist Gary Vikan, Graceland is much more than a wildly popular tourist destination associated with a famous entertainer, and Elvis Presley is much more than the King of Rock 'n' Roll. In this fascinating new book, Vikan posits that Graceland, the second-most visited historic house in the United States, is a locus sanctus--a holy place--and Elvis is its resident saint. Thus the hordes of fans that crowd Elvis Presley Boulevard in Memphis are modern day pilgrims, connected in spirit and practice to their early Christian counterparts, sharing a fascination for icons and iconography, relics, souvenirs, votives, and even a belief in miracles.

In contemporary Western culture ritual spaces are preserved, destructed and reconstructed. Examples are the rearrangement of churches, the rise of multi-religious urban ritual spaces, the remarkable vitality of places of pilgrimage and war cemeteries, and the growing popularity of lieux de memoire in general with their accompanying forms of 'topolatry' and 'geopiety'.

In this "stunningly lyrical" (Time) novel, Katherine Mosby weaves a haunting story of a woman trapped in the wrong place and time. "She's not cray, she's just educated, " is how she is described. Abandoned by her husband, the outspoken Vienna Daniels is forced to make a life for herself and her children in a small West Virginia town that neither understands nor accepts her...

Religion, Culture, and Sacred Spaces is a comparative exploration into the nature of the human relationship to physical space advancing the startling thesis that the human capacity for narrative and identity imbues landscapes with meaning and sacredness.