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Imagine a temporary temple as a sort of mobile, free-form ritual space, wherein qualities of intent and presence count more than number of heads or size of sound system or quantity of drugs--or religious or spiritual imagery, for that matter! Where we can find a common center, hone
and focus our energy, and send it outwards, wherever it needs to go.
A temporary temple is created, for example, when we stop and link hands, form a circle, breathe together. . . and acknowledge we are all connected as one, as all things in life are connected in a greater circle.
(The phrase was invented, by the way, by Genesis P. Orridge of Psychic TV in the early 1980's. It was the title of a live LP and it played a certain role in Orridge's Temple ov Psychick Youth.)
What is a temple? A defined place (and time) in which a connection
to the sacred is made--whether via worship, discipline, trance,
celebration, healing, devotion, . . . And what is the sacred? That which connects us to the world beyond the human-scale: the cosmos which exists for its own purposes, on its own terms, beyond being there to satisfy our little human wants and needs and notions: the broader web of Life within which we exist, and without which we are lost.
In the same manner that bees perhaps exist not just for their own sake, but also to "serve" plants by pollinating their flowers, so we may be here not just "for ourselves" but to serve some larger process(es).
Is it possible that the deepest essence of religion has to do with an energetic exchange of some kind between us and the rest of life? Perhaps we are capable of giving off some special qualities of energy--a nutrient, a "juice"--that other beings (plants? animals? spirits? gods? planets?
stars?) may need.*
Naturally, everything requires energy to function. We need
specialized forms of energy, congealed into air, water, food and
experiences, in order to live--these are provided to us by the sun, the stars, the planet, and all its plants, animals and other beings. So maybe we, in our own peculiar way, can do our part by acting as specialized "transformers of energy" for other parts of Life.
. . . Could this be the origin of sacrifice? Killing an animal to "feed" the gods with its life-energy. . .? Maybe various forms of worship were at their very dawn intentional, focused practices for emitting this "vibe." And could dancing--intensive, exhausting trance-dancing--be the most ancient, most basic, and who knows, maybe most effective way of doing so?
It seems as if aboriginal/tribal peoples managed to hold onto this instinctive activity. But modern day culture has little clue of such a possibility. And its big religions long ago lost any sense of what's what. "Placebo communion." And there's not many of the original tribal dancers left now. Who will do this work?
Think of it in ecological terms, pure and simple: all creatures have roles to play, and this may be one of ours: To consciously radiate certain frequencies of vibration needed elsewhere. At rave parties, with the help of dancing and psychedelics, we've rediscovered something essential about generating vibration through group interaction. (In a
sense, we may already have been creating temporary temples all along.) But this is still largely a hit or miss affair.
Of course the temples (=churches) we're familiar in the West leave no room to dance, but from a global & historical perspective, that's more the exception than the rule. Dance was an integral part of ancient Greek and Near Eastern religions; temple dancers (mainly women) were a basic part of the religious framework throughout India up until the last century. Quite often they were also tantric teachers and "sacred prostitutes,". . .
thus dance and sexuality are not mutually exclusive with the idea of the temple!
Temple dances of all kinds still figure prominently in Balinese and Indonesian culture. Often a whole village will assemble at the temple to witness the traditional dances, which tell in pantomine, drama, music, comedy and spoken word the great stories and ideas of the culture. According to one source, temple dances--often highly formalized and rigorous--were both a means of preserving ancient esoteric knowledge--a kind of book in movements--as well as a key part of spiritual discipline.
Might it be that the most primal mode of celebration is really a form of worship? But the spontaneity, play and freeflow get lost as this primal (& primary?) human activity crystallizes into ritual forms. Then you get what we tend to think of as Religion: something hollow, dogmatic, disconnected from the pulse of life. And yet the celebratory impulse never dies, it just mutates and shifts elsewhere, into hedonism, dance crazes,
partying for pleasure's sake. . .
In the Bay Area, components of this "temporary temple" approach were initiated by Your Sister's House and the New Moon crew, who pretty much started altars at parties; also Friends&Family, who always make a circle and a meditation before starting the party; Ambient Temple of Imagination, NextStep and LightSeed Collective; LA's own full moon gathering, with its unpredictable, magical handholding circles and massive
group hugs; London's Return to the Source and their "Chakra Journey",** not to mention Matthew Fox's experiments with the "rave-mass," have all explored aspects of this direction. . . and much of this happens at other events, but in a haphazard, scattered way that leaves some of us wanting just a little more . . .
--cinnamon twist
*A fuller explanation of this notion can be found on the web at
http://www.duversity.org/archives/rave.html.
** Check out Return to the Source's "Chakra Journey" CD/booklet, if you can
still find it, or their more recent CD compilation, "Sacred Sites."
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