Houses of the Holy

I am prepared for the flack I'm going to get for this one so send in your comments but I believe there are three truly sacred places on Earth. I'm not talking about any particular location but rather things that were created that give people divine inspiration.

Number One: Gothic Cathedrals. These cathedrals constructed during the Middle Ages later got named "Gothic" by people who found them garish and vulgar due to their extreme design. Gargoyles made to scare off evil spirits and spires that point to heaven offended later, more "sophisticated" tastes. But the cathedrals were made specifically to make the folks who entered them experience the feelings of awe and majesty. It is hard to teach having faith, which is telling someone to believe what you say without giving any proof, by telling them they can't even imagine what the reality is, so just do as I say. An average person who is at all intelligent and with a good imagination cannot imagine something beyond his or her ability to understand or even imagine so having faith (trust) can be difficult. So the church of the Middle Ages created something that was so incredible that the average citizen would readily admit to never being able to imagine something like it.

The large stained glass windows were designed to allow projected sunlight to illuminate the interior during certain times of day. Projected light and color was something Medieval man had never seen. The art work adorning the walls was meant to be awe inspiring and the very size and height of the buildings were designed to make the visitor feel insignificant inside walls that seemed to stretch up toward Heaven.

By "blowing the mind" of the Medieval Church goer by showing him or her that there are things that have to be seen, that have to be experienced to be believed, the Church was more easily able to convince people that there are things they cannot comprehend and therefore the need to believe the Church and to "have faith".

The basic philosophy of the Gothic Cathedrals was to make people use their imaginations and to recognized the link between the divine and the human imagination. Today there are two other experiences that do a similar thing:

Number Two: Disneyland - I know it now might seem I'm being sacrilegious but the "Magic Kingdom" is one of the few places that forces people to use their imagination. If you don't and you spend all day at Disneyland saying how fake everything looks you're completely missing the point and wasting what is now $139.00. But if you can use your imagination you can enter different lands and time eras and have a totally immersive experience that "you could never have imagined."

Number Three: Psychedelic Rock Concerts - I'm talking here about the old Sixties Psychedelic shows with the great light shows. The entire hall would be filled with abstract, moving and pulsating colored lights, the smell of incense and grass and of course with loud music. The style of Acid Rock with fuzz tone guitars, backwards tracks, extreme reverb and echo effects and the drug influenced fantasy oriented lyrics added to the impression that you were no longer in Kansas. These shows were more sense overload experiences than mere music concerts and again, unleashed one's imagination.

Of course, great art can also be experienced on a religious level although that's a very personal experience. You might ask, "What about movies?" Movies actually leave very little to the imagination. You are removed from the physical experience by being seated in the dark with your vision directed at a very specific location rather than being able to explore, both physically and mentally, the surrounding environment. It is very difficult to place oneself inside a movie as the viewer is always on the outside, a mere observer, although movies are getting better and better at showing us things "we could never have imagined".

Neal Warner is a writer, artist and musician, a member of multimedia rock and roll band The Tooners and founder of Rock & Roll Rehab, for the control of rock and roll.