Altar
An altar is a raised place or table where offerings are made or worship is focused. In ancient religion it was the place of sacrifice and incense; in later traditions it also became a metaphor for the inner life.[1]
The historian Susan Ashbrook Harvey describes how ancient writers moved the altar inward. Philo of Alexandria valued the altar of incense because purity of spirit mattered more than costly offerings, and Origen wrote that the altar of a righteous person is their mind.[1] Augustine spoke of prayer offered on the "altar of the heart".[2] Real altars remained central too: by the late fourth century incense was offered at Christian altars, and the ascetic Simeon the Stylite kept an altar and censer in his hut.[3]
Not every tradition used altars. Jenny Rose reports Herodotus's claim that the ancient Persians had no altars or temples; instead, stone fire-holders on stepped plinths appear at the Persian royal site of Pasargadae.[4] In Wicca, Joanne Pearson lists altars alongside candles and incense as part of a sensory style of ritual.[5]
Altar and temple in ancient Greece
In ancient Greece the altar and the temple played different roles. The architectural historian Vincent Scully stresses that the Greek temple was not built to shelter worshippers, unlike the Roman Pantheon or the medieval cathedral; it housed the god's image.[6] Communal worship, including sacrifice, therefore centred on the altar in the open air of the sanctuary, with the surrounding landscape part of the sacred setting. See Greek sacred architecture.
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Harvey, Susan Ashbrook (2006). Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination. University of California Press. pp. 21–24.
- ↑ Harvey, Susan Ashbrook (2006). Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination. University of California Press. p. 81.
- ↑ Harvey, Susan Ashbrook (2006). Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination. University of California Press. p. 76.
- ↑ Rose, Jenny (2014). "The Ancient Persians: Truth-Tellers and Paradise-Builders". Zoroastrianism: An Introduction. I.B. Tauris.
- ↑ Pearson, Joanne (2007). "Rediscovering Ritual". Wicca and the Christian Heritage: Ritual, Sex and Magic. Routledge.
- ↑ Scully, Vincent (2013). "Landscape and Sanctuary". The Earth, the Temple, and the Gods: Greek Sacred Architecture (Revised ed.). Trinity University Press. ISBN 9781595341778.