Alan Watts on Religious Geography


Alan Watts said the curious thing about sacred spaces is that they are never entirely about the place. A mountain in Tibet, a river in India, a tree in Nigeria—they are just as physical as any patch of ground. What makes them sacred is not the soil, but the seeing. Human consciousness paints halos on the landscape.

Religion, in this sense, is geography with poetry. And as people move, so too do their altars. They make cathedrals from warehouses, mosques from storefronts, temples in the living rooms of rented apartments. The sacred doesn’t stay behind. It packs a suitcase.

But then again, if the universe is one great dance, every place is a sacred space—if you know how to look. The separation between holy and mundane is merely the illusion of habit. The divine didn’t get trapped in the desert; it followed you to the city.


Comments

  1. David Tyler Rand-McKayJune 20, 2025 at 11:54 AM

    Funny thing about holy places: they only feel holy because you feel holy while you're there. A mountain's a mountain until someone says it's sacred. A warehouse becomes a church the moment someone sings in it. It's not the place that changes. It's you.

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