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Sacred Sites and
Sacred Stories Across
Cultures

Transmission of Oral
Tradition, Myth, and
Religiosity
Edited by
dav i d w. k i m
 Sacred Sites and Sacred Stories Across Cultures

“An extraordinary cross-cultural and multi-religious panorama. We encounter

many lesser known but important sacred places and become better informed as to
how the traditions behind them have been passed on. Well selected, well orga-
nized, and a fine cast of scholarly contributors.”
—Garry W. Tromp, Emeritus Professor in the History of Ideas,
University of Sydney, Australia

“The contributors to this book provide valuable theoretical and practical knowl-
edge of specific sites of interest to religious communities, to pilgrims or simply
tourists, thereby helping the reader reflect critically on what makes a location
‘sacred.’”
—James L. Cox, Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies,
University of Edinburgh, UK

“An enlightening multi-disciplinary exploration of sacred sites, primarily in Asia,

and how they are utilized for rituals, for constructing sacred histories, for political
legitimation, and for recreation.”
—Donald L. Baker, Professor in Korean History and Civilization,
University of British Columbia, Canada

“David W. Kim’s book provides an excellent transcultural overview of sacred sites

and this collection of essays encapsulates the inter-relatedness of theory and praxis,
where religion is experienced and transmitted in a multitude of ways.”
—Kevin Cawley, Senior Lecturer in Korean Studies,
University College Cork, Ireland

“What sets this volume apart from previous efforts is its careful attention to what
makes people, places, and things ‘sacred’ as well as its authors’ scrupulous atten-
tion to processes of sanctification. The chapters analyze the religious beliefs of
local peoples with special attention to iconography, syncretism, and material cul-
ture. Collectively, these chapters facilitate the understanding of multi-cultural and
multi-ethnic communities in Asia, the Mediterranean, Australia, and the United
States. An impressive, meticulously researched collection.”
—Stephen D. Glazier, Research Anthropologist,
Yale University, USA
 David W. Kim
Editor

Sacred Sites and

Sacred Stories Across
Cultures
Transmission of Oral Tradition, Myth,
and Religiosity
Editor
David W. Kim
Kookmin University
Seoul, South Korea
Australian National University
Canberra, Australia

ISBN 978-3-030-56521-3    ISBN 978-3-030-56522-0 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56522-0

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
For my father, Jin Sook, Joseph, Sung Jin, and Geun Suk.
 Preface

Sacred Sites and Sacred Stories: Transmission of Oral Tradition, Myth, and
Religiosity is a collection of chapters that take the reader from the
Mediterranean world across Asia to the Coral Sea to Australia’s north.
From different perspectives, it explores the nature of a sacred site; it offers
an account of the ceremonies and other activities undertaken there; and it
gives thought to why such a site might become a destination for pilgrims.
The examples in this volume are drawn from cultures in which the oral
tradition continues to play a vital role.
So what is it that makes a site sacred? First, the site itself must be recog-
nisable—that is, it must be distinctive in some way; and, second, it must
have a story attached. Indeed, without a story a landmark of this kind can-
not be considered sacred. Experience tells us—and this is confirmed by
cognitive psychology—that a distinctive feature in a landscape will almost
inevitably attract a story, a story that will ‘humanise’ and enrich the loca-
tion. That landmark, whether a spring, a rock or another landform, or the
remains of human activity (walls or housing, a temple or a tomb, for exam-
ple), will subsequently prompt its associated story; or, on the other hand,
the story itself will have the capacity to bring to mind the landmark in its
landscape setting.
But, if a site is to acquire special status as sacred, not just any story will
do. What is needed is a story that is connected with the divine. And its
content should be interesting and engaging: for it must be memorable. In
terms of significance, it is possible that such a story will reach beyond its
local audience. That is, the reputation of a site and stories about what is
transacted there may extend beyond its immediate community, appealing

vii
viii PREFACE

to people from elsewhere who are drawn to visit. In a world in which

travel is not always an easy undertaking, the motivation to make one’s way
across country to a particular site must be strong. The power of faith and
the perceived efficacy of ritual performance will drive the visitor’s response.
Once these visitors have reached the site, it is important that they
engage with it in some way, so that they can truly feel that, having experi-
enced something of its sanctity, they have reached their goal. The rituals
and ceremonies that they perform, therefore, must have a meaning: they
must be linked in recognisable ways to both the site and its story. In this
way, visitors experience a satisfying intimate contact with a sacred tradition
that is important both to them and to their wider community. I am talking
here about the beginnings of a tradition of pilgrimage—about people who
come to view the site, who come to hear its story once more and to par-
ticipate actively in the associated rituals and ceremonies, and (indeed, this
is not to be discounted) who come to walk in the footsteps of earlier visi-
tors. Autopsy and engagement together are essential characteristics of a
pilgrimage. Merely visiting a site can be best described as tourism.
In many cultures in today’s world, local signage or Wikipedia are ready
sources of information about a site and its significance. But, for the pil-
grims that I am speaking of, communication is primarily oral; oral trans-
mission plays a crucial role. In their world, in which cultural
memories—memories from a distant past—are shared by word of mouth,
there is an important role for an active network of informants: parents,
grandparents, teachers, storytellers, and, on site, people whom we might
describe as tour guides. Without these tellers of tales, the traditions associ-
ated with a sacred site will die.
Of course, memory is powerful, but it is also imperfect. We know from
our everyday experience that memories are subject to distortion, for all
kinds of reasons: the passage of time, a storyteller’s natural desire to
enhance a story, and new circumstances all individually encourage a subtle
reshaping of a tale. It is rarely the case that memories are preserved abso-
lutely intact. Nevertheless, even as the story adapts itself to a changing
world and to changing circumstances within it, the tradition of sanctity
has the capacity to live on at this distinctive site along with related sacred
practices—as the chapters in this volume demonstrate.

Australian National University Elizabeth Minchin

Canberra, Australia
 Acknowledgements

This project (Sacred Sites and Sacred Stories: Transmission of Oral Tradition,
Myth, and Religiosity) was originally motivated through casual dialogues
with Asian religion and culture scholars at the School of History, the Bell
School of Asia Pacific Affairs, and the School of Culture, History, and
Language (CHL) at the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra.
The creative idea was carried on by hosting an international conference on
the transhistorical legacy of the world culture (Sacred Sites and Sacred
Stories: Global Perspectives) from 5 to 7 April 2018. There were over one-­
hundred scholars, religious leaders, and practitioners at the conference. As
a result of the conference, this volume, in a pioneering perspective, intro-
duces the various studies of religious or mystical spaces in a multicultural
community to enhance the social concept of global heritages in the history
of religions. The study draws from research on archaeology, anthropology,
ethnology, politics, history, and tourism as well as the ideological subjects
of ‘Glyptic arts of Aegean Bronze Age,’ ‘atomic bombing sites of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki,’ ‘walls of Bishnupur’s terracotta temples,’ ‘Yeoju
Headquarters Temple Complex,’ ‘Kerala’s Koyapapa narratives,’ ‘Japanese
characteristics of Ojibagaeri,’ ‘commemorative sites of the Mormon and
Unification,’ ‘Shikoku O-henro Pilgrimage,’ ‘Ayudaw Mingalar garden,’
‘Malabar’s Zheng He,’ ‘Waiet markai,’ and ‘shrines of Laldas.’
This research is financially sponsored by the Korean Foundation and
the Asia-Pacific Innovation Program, ANU. The Coral Bell School of Asia
Pacific Affairs and CHL generously offered their research facilities. This
project would not have been possible without the financial and organisa-
tional assistance of the funding agency and research institution. For their

ix
x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

assistance, I would like to thank Sean Downes, Senior Research

Development Officer (Bell School/CHL), Research Services, ANU
College of Asia and the Pacific. Professor Michael Wesley, Dean of the
College of Asia and the Pacific and Professor Simon Haberle, Director of
CHL, ANU, showed a special interest through the favour of providing
university research sources and research space. Professor Frank Bongiorno
(Head of the History School), Professor Han Seung Kim (Dean of the
College of General Education, Kookmin University, Seoul), and Dr Paul
Kenny (Head of the Department of Political and Social Change, ANU), as
academic advisors, helped me in many ways, including official and admin-
istrative issues as well as university access. Professor Robert Cribb,
Department of Political and Social Change, supported my research work
by advising on internal academic developments. Associate Professor
MaComas Taylor, Dr Peter Friedlander, Dr Barbara Nelson, and Dr Yuri
Takahashi, who together organised the ANU Asian Religion conference,
shared their experiences of India, Nepal, and Vietnam religious studies to
deepen my understanding of the life of the indigenous religions in the
region of South and Southeast Asia. Ms Catherine Fisher, the research
assistant of the university, solved most of the practical issues for my aca-
demic activities.
I am grateful to Professor Iain Gardner, Fellow of the Academy of
Humanities in Australia, and Emeritus Professor Gary Trompf, Personal
Chair in the History of Ideas, the School of Literature, Arts, and Media,
the University of Sydney who are my academic mentors in the History of
Religions and Theology. I also thank Ms Helen Gadie and Garry Breland
in the United States for their involvement in reading the manuscript and
useful comments. Finally, I express sincere gratitude to Susan Westendorf
(Springer Nature), Philip Getz (Senior Editor, Palgrave Macmillan), Amy
Invernizzi (Palgrave Macmillan), Vinoth Kuppan (Project Coordinator),
and Arumugan Hemalatha (SPI Technologies India) for their efforts in
the process of this publication.

Kookmin University, Seoul, South Korea, and David W. Kim

Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
 Contents

1 Introduction  1
David W. Kim

Part I Visual Arts and Architecture   9

2 Traces of Places: Sacred Sites in Miniature on Minoan

Gold Rings 11
Caroline Jane Tully

3 Reimagining Sacrosanct Sites in the Graphic Arts of Kōno

Fumiyo 41
Roman Rosenbaum

4 Consecrated Journeys: A Torres Strait Islander Space,

Time Odyssey 67
Duncan Wright, Alo Tapim, and James Zaro

5 Art and Cultural Heritage of the Ramayana and the

Mahabharata: A View through the Terracotta Temples of
Bishnupur, West Bengal 99
Supriya Banik Pal

xi
xii CONTENTS

Part II Pilgrimage and Tourism (Asia and New Age) 135

6 Jiba: Returning Home for Tenrikyo Followers137

Midori Horiuchi

7 Blurred Boundaries between Secular Memory and Sacred

Space in Religious Tourism: Cases of Mormon and
Unification Faiths163
Alexa Blonner

8 The Spiritual in the Mundane: The Poetry of the

Shikoku O-Henro Pilgrimage191
Carol Hayes

Part III Competition and Contestation 225

9 Competition and Contestation at a Hindu-­Muslim Shrine:

The Case of the Sant Laldas in Mewat, North India227
Mukesh Kumar

10 Maitreya’s Boundless Gaze: The Religious Implications

of Maitreya Mega-Statues263
Edward A. Irons

Part IV Theory and Method 295

11 Contemporary Creations and Re-cognitions of Sacred Sites297

Eileen Barker

12 Is Sacred Site Discovered? Or Created?: A Case Study of

Daesoon Jinrihoe327
Seon-Keun Cha
 CONTENTS xiii

13 Transformation of Admiral to the Sainthood and

Sacred Stories of Chinese Sanctum Sanctorum from
Malabar Coast355
Abbas Panakkal

Index381
 Notes on Contributors1

Eileen Barker (PhD, PhD h.c., FAcSS, FBA, OBE) is Professor Emeritus
of Sociology with Special Reference to the Study of Religion at the London
School of Economics. Her main research interests are minority religions
(including the so-called ‘cults’) and social reactions to which they give
rise. In 1988, she founded INFORM (www.Inform.ac), an educational
charity providing as reliable and up-to-date information as possible about
minority religions. She is a frequent advisor to governments and other
organisations throughout the world, has over 300 publications translated
into 27 languages and has been invited to give guest lectures in over 50
countries.
Alexa Blonner (PhD, Sydney) currently works as an independent scholar.
She holds a doctorate in Studies in Religion from the University of Sydney
in Australia in 2017. She specialises in new religions with particular exper-
tise in the Unification faith/movement. Other academic interests are phi-
losophy of religion, sociology of religion, religious anthropology,
spirituality, morals and ethics. Her published papers towards the end of
2018 were the following: ‘Update: From the Unification Church to
Unification Movement and Back’ with David Bromley in Nova Religio:
Journal of New and Emergent Religions in 2012; ‘Heaven’s Way in Korea’s
New Religions: A Reinterpretation of Salvation’ in Journal of Koreanology

1
Our contributors reside in eight different nations (the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan,
Korea, Australia, the United States, UAE, and India) and are affiliated with 13 different
institutions.

xv
xvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

in 2017; and ‘The New God of Unificationism: Precedents and Parallels’

published in Acta Comparanda, Subsidia VI in 2018. Reimagining God
and Resacralisation, her thesis-based book on emergent directions in reli-
gious thought, was published by Routledge in 2019. Other research proj-
ects in train are a Hare Krishna schism and changes in the Sathya Sai Baba
organisation since the death of the founder.
Seon-Keun Cha is affiliated with the Daesoon Academy of Sciences at
Daejin University in Korea, as senior researcher. His academic interests lie
in new religions, Daoism, shamanism, Daesoon thought, comparative
study on East Asian religions, and method and theory in religious studies.
He is currently working on the research on social conflicts among the East
Asian nations including Korea, China, and Japan and how religion con-
tributes to the resolution of those conflicts in the dimension of religious
perspective. Cha’s publication includes the following: ‘A Comparative
Study on Daesoon (大巡) Thought and Dangun (檀君) Thought’ (2018),
‘Eight-Gate Transformation (奇門遁甲) and Kang Jeungsan’s Religious
World’ (2017), ‘Re-Examining The Concepts of ‘Seeking Out the Original
Root [原始返本]’ as Religious Language’ (2017), ‘An Introduction to the
Study of the View of the Mind in Daesoonjinrihoe’ (2017), ‘An
Introduction to the Study of the View on Death in Daesoonjinrohoe’
(2016), and ‘A Comparative Study on Religious Ethics of Early Folk
Daoism in China and Daesoonjinrihoe’ (2015).
Carol Hayes is Associate Professor of Japanese Language Studies in the
College of Asia and the Pacific and Distinguished Educator at the
Australian National University. Her research interests include Japanese
cultural production with a focus on modern Japanese poetry and Japanese
language teaching methodologies and practice, particularly e-­Teaching
and e-Learning. Her recent publications include ‘Baba Akiko: Intabyū’
(Tanka Kenkyū 2018, in Japanese); Reading Embraced by Australia:
Oosutoraria ni Idakarete (with Yuki Itani-Adams, ANU Press 2016); and
‘Women Writing Women: ‘A Woman’s Place’ in Modern Japanese
Women’s Poetry’ (Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia 2016). She
has translated many works of poetry published in such journals as
Transference and International Tanka.
Midori Horiuchi is Professor of the Oyasato Institute for the Study of
Religion, Tenri University, in Japan. She was a research scholar by invita-
tion of the Indian Government at Banaras Hindu University (1984–1988)
and was conferred a PhD in Philosophy. Her fields are religious studies,
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xvii

especially modern Hinduism, new religions in Japan, gender in reli-

gion and Tenrikyo studies. Midori has published several books,
including Ramakrishna: His Life and Thought, and many articles on mod-
ern Hinduism, and Tenrikyo studies.
Edward A. Irons (PhD) is Director of the Hong Kong Institute for
Culture, Commerce and Religion. He specializes in Chinese new religions
and contemporary Buddhism. Recent areas of interest extend to leader-
ship in new religions, organisational forms of religion, and monumentality
in religious experience. In 2003, he established the Hong Kong Institute
for Culture, Commerce and Religion, and independent research cen-
tre, to promote discussion and research on contemporary Chinese
culture. Some previous publications include the following: ‘Falun
Gong and the Sectarian Religion Paradigm,’ in Nova Religio, The
Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 6: 2, April 2003; and
Encyclopaedia of Buddhism, published by Facts on File, 2008; ‘The
List: The Evolution of China’s List of Illegal and Evil Cults,’ The
Journal of Cesnur 2, 1 January–February, 2018, 33–57; ‘Occupy
Central: Towards A Geography of Presence,’ in The IAFOR Journal of
Cultural Studies 1, 1, Spring 2016; and ‘Chinese New Religious
Movements: An Introduction,’ in Pokorny, Lukas, and Franz Winter,
eds., Handbook of East Asian New Religious Movements (Leiden: Brill,
2018), 403–428.
David W. Kim (PhD, Sydney) is an associate professor at Kookmin
University, Seoul, and a visiting fellow at the School of History, Australian
National University, Canberra. He is the editor for Book Series in East
Asian Religion and Culture. His research and teaching cover the subjects
of Asian Religions (Japan, Korea, and China), new religious movements,
Colonial Studies, Diaspora Studies, Gender, Gnosticism, History of
Christianity, and Coptic Literature. In addition to this volume, he has
written seven books (plus one more book is in the process of publication)
and over 39 peer-reviewed articles including New Religious Movements in
Modern Asian History: Sociocultural Alternatives (Lexington, 2020),
Daesoon Jinrihoe in Modern Korea: The Emergence, Transformtion and
Transmission of a New Religion (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020),
Colonial Transformation and Asian Religions In Modern History
(Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018), Religious Encounters in
Transcultural Society: Collison, Alteration, and Transmission (Lexington,
2017), Religious Transformation in Modern Asia: A Transnational
xviii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Movement (Brill, 2015), Intercultural Transmission in the Medieval

Mediterranean (Continuum: 2012), and Revivals Awaken Generations: A
History of Church Revivals (Sydney DKM: 2007).
Mukesh Kumar (PhD) has completed his doctoral dissertation in the
field of religious studies at the University of Technology, Sydney. His doc-
toral project examined the nature of the changing forms of shared reli-
gious beliefs and popular culture around the shrines of two Bhakti and
Sufi saints, Laldas and Shah Chokha. His research methods included his-
torical and ethnographic approaches. He has published two articles enti-
tled ‘The Art of Resistance: The Bards and Minstrels’ Response to
Anti-Syncretism/Anti-liminality in north India’ and ‘Blended Belief: The
Sacred Cow and the Case of Meo Muslim Community in north India’ in the
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, London, and Economic and Political
Weekly, respectively.
Elizabeth Minchin is a fellow of the Academy of the Humanities
Australia (FAHA) and Emeritus Professor in the Centre for Classical
Studies at the Australian National University, Canberra. Her principal
research focus is on the Homeric epics as poems composed in an oral tra-
dition; her approaches to the epics are largely from cognitive and linguistic
perspectives. Her publications arising from this research were amongst the
first to introduce cognitive theory into Classics: Homer and the Resources
of Memory (OUP, 2001); Homeric Voices (OUP 2007). More recently, her
interests have led to work on landscape and memory: ‘Commemoration
and Pilgrimage in the Ancient World: Troy and the Stratigraphy of
Cultural Memory’ (2012); ‘Heritage in the Landscape: the ‘Heroic
Tumuli’ in the Troad Region’ (2016); ‘Mapping the Hellespont with
Leander and Hero: ‘the Swimming Lover and the Nightly Bride’’
(2017); and ‘Remembering Leander: the Long History of the Dardanelles
Swim’ (2016).
Supriya Banik Pal (PhD) had been a professor of Sanskrit (affiliation to
University of Burdwan), is currently a retired professor and working as an
independent researcher. She is a life member of the Asiatic Society of
Bengal and a member of Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture,
Kolkata. Her research interests include the Mahabharata, gender and
women studies, religion and philosophy of ancient India. Banik Pal
has published widely throughout her career, and some of her contri-
butions are the following: Asian Literary Voices, Amsterdam
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xix

University Press, Amsterdam (2010) (ISBN 978-90-8964-0925);

Archaeologia Zeylanica (2011), vol. I part II Colombo; Asian Art,
Culture and Heritage (ISBN 978-955-4563-09-4) (2013), Colombo;
Sindh through the Centuries-II (ISBN-13:978-969-9874-02-4)
(2015); Aspects of ASEAN Culture and Religion (2017); Vietnam
and Colonial Transformation and Asian Religions in Modern History
(2018); Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK
(ISBN-13:978-1-5275-0559-9). At present, she is associated with a
project on ‘An anthology on Sudraka’s Mrichchhakatikam,’ scheduled to
be published by an international publisher.
Abbas Panakkal (PhD), Director of Ibn Batuta International Centre for
Intercultural Studies (IBICIS) and the editor of Armonia journal, has
been working on Islam, Malabar, Law, Religion, Interreligious and
Intercultural Co-operations. His Islam in Malabar (1460–1600): A Socio
Cultural Study’ was published by the International Islamic University
Press, Malaysia. Panakkal is also Director of International Interfaith
Harmony Initiative, which has been organizing Interfaith pro-
grammes, in collaboration with United Nations Initiatives, Malaysian
prime minister’s Department for Unity and Integration and
International Islamic University Malaysia for the last seven consecu-
tive years. He was awarded a fellowship by the Centre for Interfaith
and Cultural Dialogue, Griffith University, Australia, as well as
KAICIID, Vienna. Panakkal works as the project coordinator of the
G20 Interfaith Summit, is actively involved in co-ordination of the
G20 Interfaith Summits and has co-organized Pre-Conference
Summits in Middle East and South Asia. He was also invited to pres-
ent his research on peace and moderation at the United Nations head-
quarter in New York in 2018.
Roman Rosenbaum (PhD) is a honorary associate at the University of
Sydney Australia. He specialises in post-war Japanese Literature and
Popular Cultural Studies. He holds a PhD in Japanese Literature from the
University of Sydney. In 2008, he received the Inoue Yasushi Award for the
best-refereed journal article on Japanese literature in Australia. In
2010–2011, he spent one year as a visiting research professor at the
International Research Centre for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) to
complete a monograph on the social activist Oda Makoto. He is the
editor of Representation of Japanese History in Manga (Routledge 2013).
His latest edited book is entitled Visions of Precarity in Japanese Popular
xx NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Culture and Literature (Routledge 2015). His latest translation is

ISHIBUMI: A Memorial to the Atomic Annihilation of 321 Students of
Hiroshima Second Middle School; Tokyo: Poplar Press (ポプラ社), 2016.
Caroline Jane Tully (PhD) is an honorary fellow in the School of
Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne,
Australia. Her research interests include religion and ritual in the Bronze
Age Aegean and East Mediterranean, Reception of the Ancient World,
and Contemporary Paganisms. Caroline’s publications include the
following: The Cultic Life of Trees in the Prehistoric Aegean, Levant, Egypt
and Cyprus (2018); ‘Thalassocratic Charms: Trees, Boats, Women and the
Sea in Minoan Glyptic Art’ (2018); ‘The artifice of Daidalos: Modern
Minoica as religious focus in contemporary Paganism’ (2018);
‘Egyptosophy in the British Museum: Florence Farr, the Egyptian Adept and
the Ka’ (2018); ‘Virtual Reality: Tree Cult and Epiphanic Ritual in
Aegean Glyptic Iconography’ (2016); and ‘Walk Like an Egyptian: Egypt as
Authority in Aleister Crowley’s Reception of The Book of the Law’ (2010).
She is also the guest editor for Pomegranate: International Journal of
Pagan Studies special issue on Pagan Art and Fashion.
Duncan Wright (together with Alo Tapim and James Zaro) is a senior
lecturer in Australian Archaeology at the Australian National University.
Wright was a research fellow at Monash University and Griffith universi-
ties and has developed a long-term collaboration with remote communi-
ties in far north Australia, including Torres Strait. His research
adopts a partnership approach, guided at all stages by the communi-
ties who initiate each project. Most recently, this has involved archae-
ological excavations at important initiation sites in Western and
Eastern Torres Strait. His interests include the history of ritual activ-
ities on Australia’s northern border and the extent to which these
activities, and underlying belief systems, survive within collective
memories and the ritual architecture of sacred places. His works
include the following: ‘Ritual pathways and public memory’ (2018);
‘The Archaeology of portable art: South East Asian, Pacific and Australian
Perspectives’ (2018); ‘Exploring ceremony: archaeology of a men’s
meeting house on Mabuyag, western Torres Strait’ (2016); and
‘Convergence of ceremonial and secular’ (2015). As part of the team,
Alo Tapim is an elder for the Murray group of islands. He belongs to
Daurareb and Magaram clans and is custodian of Waiet places on
Waier, Dauar and Mer. He completed schooling on Thursday Island
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxi

and Townsville before working on the railways near Townsville.

Hired as a ‘temporary clerk,’ he advised the Department of Aboriginal
Island Affairs on Thursday Island before returning to Mer to focus
on his own community. Alo became a respected Dauareb elder, with
interests in language and heritage. He regularly advises government
and cultural organisations (including National Museum of Australia
and World Health Organisation), with expertise recognised through
appointment as a member of the Torres Shire Council Cultural
Committee and Torres Strait and Northern Peninsula Health
Council. His outputs include media appearances on ABC, NITV, and
SBS, and has co-authored publications including ‘Indigenous
Australians’ knowledge of weather and climate’ (2010) and ‘Dancing
with the stars’ (2016). James Zaro is a knowledge custodian for the
Murray group of islands. He belongs to the Daurareb and Zagareb
clans and speaks for important Waiet initiation places on Waier (Ne),
Dauar (Teg) and Mer (ulag, near Las). Schooled on Thursday Island
and then Townsville, James was employed in a variety of roles span-
ning much of northern Australia. This included concreting house
foundations in Mackay, 20 years of work on railways around
Rockhampton, and road maintenance work as part of the
Rockhampton ‘bitumen patrol’. In 2011, he was recalled by his com-
munity to play football for Murray Islands and took part in the inau-
gural Island of Origin Cup. Following this, he worked at the Royal
Hotel on Thursday Island for two years before returning to Murray
to dive for trochus shell. Since this point, he has been actively involved
with the Meriam Council (Mer Gedkemle), including Dauareb represen-
tative between 2014 and 2018.
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Conical Rhyton from Zakros. (Source: Photo by Lourakis,

CC0 1.0 [https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/
zero/1.0/deed.en] and image copyright the Heraklion
Archaeological Museum - Hellenic Ministry of Culture and
Sports - Archaeological Receipts Fund) 14
Fig. 2.2 Detail of Peak Sanctuary Rhyton relief. Shaw 1978 14
Fig. 2.3 Gold ring HM 1700, from Knossos. (Source: Photo by
Jebulon, CC0 1.0 [https://creativecommons.org/
publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en] and image copyright of
Heraklion Archaeological Museum - Hellenic Ministry of
Culture and Sports - Archaeological Receipts Fund) 18
Fig. 2.4 Clay ring impression from Haghia Triadha. (Source: Courtesy
the CMS Heidelberg) 20
Fig. 2.5 Gold ring from Knossos. (Source: Courtesy the CMS Heidelberg) 22
Fig. 2.6 Gold ring from Mycenae. (Source: Courtesy the CMS
Heidelberg)25
Fig. 2.7 “Baetylic table of offering” from the Dictaean Cave. Evans 1901 26
Fig. 2.8 Fresco painting from Xeste 3 at Thera. Doumas 1992 29
Fig. 2.9 Stone seal from Naxos. (Source: Courtesy the CMS Heidelberg) 32
Fig. 2.10 Bronze plaque from the Psychro Cave. Evans 1921 33
Fig. 3.1 Trompe l’oeil effects after the narrator loses her right (drawing)
hand. Kōno Fumiyo, Kono sekai no katasumi ni (Tokyo:
Futabasha, 2006), 3:87 50

xxiii
xxiv List of Figures

Fig. 3.2 An example of the narrator’s chūkanzu 虫瞰図 (worm’s-eye

view). Kōno Fumiyo, Adrienne Beck, trans., In This Corner of
the World (Los Angeles: Seven Seas Entertainment, 2017), 3:10 52
Fig. 3.3 An example of the narrator’s chōkanzu 鳥瞰図 or fukanzu 俯瞰図
(aerial bird’s-eye view) 53
Fig. 3.4 The sacred school textbook showing the children’s doodles.
Kono Fumiyo, Kono sekai no katasumi ni, 2:130 60
Fig. 4.1 The Torres Strait Islands. Adapted from two bathymetric
maps of Torres Strait—http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/
mapsonline/base-maps/torres-strait-reefs and https://
ts.eatlas.org.au/ts/maphighlights68
Fig. 4.2 Ne viewed from the sea (with Sunny Passi) 76
Fig. 4.3 James Zaro at “Waiet’s fireplace” 79
Fig. 4.4 Drawings of Waiet and his funeral ceremonies collected by Mr
J.S. Bruce (Haddon, Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological
Expedition, Gen Ethnography, Vol. 1, 132, 400–401.) (Source:
courtesy of Anita Herle, Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology, University of Cambridge) 80
Fig. 4.5 The main excavation area (James Zaro, Glenn Van Der Kolk
and Sunny Passi—bottom to top and left to right) 81
Fig. 4.6 Cult hero pathways around Murray according to Pasi (Cited
A.O.C. Davies, Diary and notes: Murray Island Mer,
1924–25. Unpublished diary, Smithfield QLD. AIATSIS
Library), Mopwali and Pitt (Cited Lawrie, Myths and Legends
of the Torres Strait) and Alo Tapim (pers. comm. 2016) 84
Fig. 5.1 Ras-mancha 110
Fig. 5.2 Shyam-Rai Temple 112
Fig. 5.3 Ras-Chakra or Ras-Mandala 113
Fig. 5.4 Jor-Bangla or Kesta Rai Temple 115
Fig. 5.5 Performance of Putrakameshti sacrifice 117
Fig. 5.6 Legend of Andha muni’s son Sindhu 118
Fig. 5.7 Middle panel: Kumbhakarna was famous for his sleeping and
eating119
Fig. 5.8 Scenes of Kurukshetra War 120
Fig. 5.9 Bhı̄ṣhma on bed of arrows, and Arjuna shooting at earth to
quench the grandsire’s thirst 121
Fig. 5.10 Three arch gateways, Madan Mohan Temple 123
Fig. 6.1 The route of the Shikoku-henro142
Fig. 6.2 Today’s “Ohenrosan” 143
Fig. 6.3 Jiba in the Tenrikyo Main Sanctuary and its schematic view 148
Fig. 6.4 Prayer hall of the Main Sanctuary 154
Fig. 6.5 The Oyasato-yakata area surrounding the Main Sanctuary 155
 List of Figures  xxv

Fig. 7.1 Entering Joseph Smith’s Birthplace Memorial 172

Fig. 7.2 Joseph Smith Memorial 175
Fig. 7.3 UTS Assembly Hall 178
Fig. 7.4 Belvedere “Garage” 180
Fig. 8.1 Kokoro o arai192
Fig. 8.2 Pilgrim hat and staff 203
Fig. 8.3 Reasons for undertaking the Shikoku Henro (2011 survey
results)208
Fig. 8.4 kizu tsuite210
Fig. 8.5 jō jō yo yo 213
Fig. 8.6 ashi no mame215
Fig. 8.7 kaze mo, hikari mo (Sakamura Shinmin, “Work 1116,” in
Shinmin Museum. kaze mo hikari mo / hotoke no inochi) 218
Fig. 10.1 Tianen Mile Foyuan Budai at Emei Lake, Taiwan 285
Fig. 12.1 Features of Daesoon Jinrihoe Dojangs (Temple Complexes) 331
Fig. 12.2 The Shrine of Divine Beings (Yeongdae) 332
Fig. 12.3 Yeoju Headquarters Dojang looks like ume flower petals 335
Fig. 12.4 The mountain beside the Yeoju dojang resembles the
Seven Stars 336
 List of Tables

Table 4.1 Overview of Waiet ritual based on Davies and Haddon 75

Table 4.2 Radiocarbon dates from the Waiet sites in ETS 82
Table 11.1 Ideal types of theological locations of religious/spiritual
identities and their boundaries 308

xxvii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

David W. Kim

The contemporary society witnesses numerous travellers visiting the sacred

sites of different culture or custom in the twenty-first century. Their curi-
osity is expanded when they discover new historical facts through the
original stories of a particular tribe, region, or nation. The transmission of
oral tradition and myth carries on the significant meaning of those reli-
gious sites, such as temples, mountains, castles, churches, house, and ani-
mals. However, there are very few texts on the sociopolitical transformation
of sacred sites and stories, even though the number of global pilgrims has
gradually increased not only in Europe but also in Asia. The tourism pack-
ages in relation to those cultural places are also becoming popular among
young and old couples and families. Why do local people regularly wor-
ship (new and mystical) religious shrines? How were they built? Who is
their god or deity? What kind of sacred stories do they have? Why do many
people travel to them? How does it impact local history? Do sacred sites
have economic benefits? Such questions, within the anthropological con-
cept of Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Shintoism,
and Shamanism, have a great clue to comprehend the ethnographical pro-
cess of transculturation.

D. W. Kim (*)
Kookmin University, Seoul, South Korea
Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
e-mail: david.kim@anu.edu.au

© The Author(s) 2021 1

D. W. Kim (ed.), Sacred Sites and Sacred Stories Across Cultures,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56522-0_1
2 D. W. KIM

The subject of the edited book (Sacred Sites and Sacred Stories:
Transmissions of Oral Tradition, Myth, and Religiosity) is about the global
perspective of sacred spaces and its related narratives in the regional his-
tory of Mediterranean Sea, Asia, Australia, and North America. The man-
uscript comprises selected articles (out of 62 articles) from the second
Australian National University (ANU) Religion Conference, 5–7 April
2018, ANU, Canberra. There are introductory individual papers on the
tradition of major religious sites, such as Religious Sites by Robbie
B. H. Goh (2006); Designing and Managing Interpretive Experiences at
Religious Sites: Visitors’ Perceptions of Canterbury Cathedral by Karen
Hughes, Nigel Bond, and Roy Ballantyne (2007); Perception of Sacredness
at Heritage Religious Sites by Daniel Levi and Sara Kocher (2013); and
The Political Geographies of Religious Sites in Moscow’s Neighborhoods by
Meagan Todd (2017). However, the current book demonstrates the
unique meaning and its impact on the social and philosophical culture of
particular regions. The detailed knowledge of each religious community’s
transformation is explored in the context of cultural diversity in the devel-
opment of modernisation.
The Sacred Sites and Sacred Stories: Transmissions of Oral Tradition,
Myth, and Religiosity unveils multi-angle perspectives of symbolic and
mystical objects. The writings of 12 contributors will describe the religio-­
political environment of each regional case. This book also analyses the
religiosity of local people as a lens through which readers can re-examine
the concept of iconography, syncretism, and materialism. In addition, our
contributors interpret the growth of new religions as another viewpoint of
anti-traditional religions. The new approach offers significant insight to
comprehend the practical agony and sorrow of regional people in the
colonial context of contemporary history. The scope of the book covers
the identity, culture, and teachings of ethnic communities in the modern
society. The cultural influence of regional reliefs on local people will be the
primary focus, with less attention on scientific prospect. The critical
insights and innovative approaches of the book will help apprehend oral
history, ethnology, and traditional religions as the study of sacred sites is a
prominent feature in a number of disciplines. In particular, the new book
will be a useful source for the readers of sociology and philosophy of the
following regions: Greece, India (Malabar Coast), West Bengal, Vietnam,
Tibet, Taiwan, China, Korea, the United Kingdom, Japan, the United
States, and Australia.
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

The topics of enquiry range from the role of sacred sites in religious
traditions to how sacred sites form a part of the development of modern
tourist industries, the role of sacred sites in international relations and the
ways in which sacred sites can be the focus for disputes. As several sacred
sites and their stories face challenges due to economic development, envi-
ronmental change and the impact of mass pilgrimage and tourism, this
book offers an opportunity for wide-ranging understanding of the past,
present, and future of sacred sites and stories and their significance in the
world today.
Sacred Sites and Sacred Stories: Transmission of Oral Tradition, Myth,
and Religiosity offers a fresh view of the socio-religious phenomena of
various countries through examining the structure (arts and building) and
unique narratives of those spaces. The inquiry of religious persecution and
social apprehension under political and military influence will underline
the new cultural landscape of those areas. The book is not about casual
narratives of the regional culture, but adheres to high standards as an aca-
demic source, for it is the works of professional researchers in history,
philosophy, politics, diplomacy, gender studies, religion, education,
archaeology, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, and cultural studies. It
theoretically investigates the external and internal phenomena of each reli-
gious custom.
The manuscript comprises four parts (13 chapters in total including
introduction [Chap. 1]); namely, “Visual Arts and Architecture,”
“Pilgrimage and Tourism (Asia and New Age),” “Competition and
Contestation,” and “Theory and Method.” Part I (Visual Arts and
Architecture) describes the archaeological arts of regional sites in four
chapters. The topic of “Traces of Places: Sacred Sites in Miniature on
Minoan Gold Rings” (Chap. 2) explores the Glyptic arts of the Aegean
Bronze Age through engraved metal signet rings, stone seals, and the clay
impressions (sealings). The gold signet rings from the Cretan Neopalatial
period (1750–1490 BCE) represent various types of sacred sites, includ-
ing mountains, rural, caves, and urban sanctuaries. Caroline Jane Tully
differentiates the built structures depicted in cult scenes on Minoan gold
rings, correlates them to archaeological remains at Minoan sacred sites,
and proposes an explanation of ephemeral cult structures now only
recorded in the iconographic evidence. She argues that the representation
of Minoan cult structures that evoked the natural landscape within presti-
gious art forms was a method whereby Neopalatial elites naturalised their
authority by depicting themselves in special relationship with the animate
4 D. W. KIM

landscape. “Reimagining Sacrosanct Sites in the Graphic Art of Kō no

Fumiyo” (Chap. 3) visualises the post-war generation’s perspective on the
Asia-Pacific conflict through the graphic art of the atomic bombing sites
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What is the significance of this reimagined
discourse by a post-war-generation author born into the era of Japan’s
accelerated economic growth? Roman Rosenbaum regards the context of
Kō no’s visionary discourse on wartime Japan, during a time when the
neo-liberal politics of “overcoming the postwar regime” have become a
national imperative. Kō no’s exploration of Japan’s nuclear legacy decon-
structs the aura of Japan’s devastated sacred sites and dispels the rhetoric
of invigorated survivors rising such as phoenixes from the ashes.
“Consecrated Journeys: A Torres Strait Islander Space, Time Odyssey”
(Chap. 4) examines the ethnography and archaeology of Waiet markai, a
consecrated journey that involved initiation ceremonies spanning three
Eastern Torres Strait (henceforth, ETS) islands. Specifically, the research
regards on “Ne” on Waier, one stage of the “Waiet markai” and addresses
the following two questions: (i) can temporal change be isolated at impor-
tant ETS islander ritual places? (ii) Do echoes of the staged Waiet markai
process survive in the structure of ceremonies and site architecture? Wright,
Tapim, and Zaro argue that an integrated approach, drawing on ethnogra-
phy and archaeology, allows them to better understand ritual processes
within indigenous contexts. Performative models of ritual passage provide
intellectual knowledge to comprehensive archaeological and ethnographic
anomalies at Ne and move beyond the universal conceptions of sacred sites
as ritual isolates. “Art and Cultural Heritage of the Ramayana and the
Mahabharata” (Chap. 5) highlights the unique sculptures on the walls of
Bishnupur’s terracotta temples in West Bengal, depicting the culture in the
Indian epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata. While the walls are decorated
with terracotta plates narrating stories from the epics (similar to that of
Angkor-Wat) and Puranas, the artisans of these terracotta temples pre-
ferred to follow the legends of the Bengali Ramayana-Ramer Panchali by
Krittivas Ojha and Kashidasi Mahabharata by Kashiram Das, the Bengali
version of Mahabharata. Supriya Banik Pal attempts to answer the ques-
tions on why the artisans had chosen the ancient Indian literatures through
the form of visual illustrations, demonstrated the characteristic of terra-
cotta art and architecture, and what their influences on modern art are.
Part II (“Pilgrimage and Tourism: Asia and New Age”) regards Asian
cultural places in the context of pilgrimage and tourism in three chapters.
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

“Jiba: Returning Home for Tenrikyo Followers” (Chap. 6) introduces the

unique concept of “Jiba (Home of the Parent)” in a Japanese new religion.
While the word, with the terms of “yashiki” and “oyasato,” contains literal
meanings as “place,” “land,” and “location” to Tenrikyo followers, “Jiba,”
refers to the sacred spot at the centre of the main sanctuary in the church
headquarters. Therefore, it is described as “the object and centre of the
Tenrikyo faith.” The chapter depicts that those who come to see the
Foundress (Oyasama = Miki Nakayama) in Jiba have their hearts filled with
joy and brightness and become enveloped in an indescribable peace. For
such an internal transformation, Midori Horiuchi discusses the characteris-
tics of “Ojibagaeri,” the Tenrikyo pilgrimage directed towards the “sacred”
locus of Jiba. “Blurred Boundaries between Secular Memory and Sacred
Space in Religious Tourism” (Chap. 7) looks at the formation of com-
memorative sites of the Mormon and Unification faiths and finds it simi-
larly indicative of such blurring boundaries. Is the sacred being edged out
by secular rationality, or is it actually expanding into new, more subtle,
territory? For Alexa Blonner, the development of sacred sites is seen to have
begun as a highly practical act of historical preservation to which sacred
meaning and experience accrue over time rather than the other way around
as with the more traditional sacred sites. It is sustained that they intermesh
preservation, historical interest, educational value, secular and sacred pil-
grimage, moral story, and sacred experience. Blonner presumes that the
combined purpose is to be found at traditional sacred monuments and
landscapes; however, in these two American and Korean groups site pre-
sentations remain chiefly secular in focus with sacred reasoning more subtly
hovering. “The Poetry of the Shikoku O-Henro Pilgrimage” (Chap. 8)
talks about the relationship between poetry and pilgrimage through inves-
tigating the poetry written by pilgrims walking the 1200-­kilometre Shikoku
Henro no Michi (Pilgrim Way), the oldest Buddhist pilgrimage route in
Japan. Carol Hayes examines how such poetic expression stands at the
intersection between the spiritual and the mundane, pilgrimage and tour-
ism, and the unique role it plays in giving expression to the pilgrim rela-
tionship with space, belief, and cultural identity.
Part III (“Competition and Contestation”) contains the various studies
in the concept of competition and contestation in two chapters.
“Competition and Contestation at a Hindu-Muslim Shrine” (Chap. 9)
introduces Laldas, a 16th born saint, revered by both Hindus and Muslims.
Although the shrines of Laldas historically remained a peaceful centre of
popular devotion throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth
6 D. W. KIM

centuries, his shrines became disputed centres in the middle of the twenti-
eth century. Mukesh Kumar demonstrates how this religious transforma-
tion from an undisputed liminal cult to a more Hinduised cult has taken
place with regard to popular devotion to the saint Laldas. The two pri-
mary followers of the saint are a Muslim peasant class called the Meos and
a Hindu group of merchants known as the Baniyas. The author argues that
religious disputes at shared religious spaces are the reflections of changing
forms of religious cultures; they became prone to disputes when the
dynamics of social relations changed. Chapter 10, “The Religious
Implications of Maitreya Mega-Statues,” surveys Maitreya megastatue
projects in four culturally different regions: namely, Taiwan, northern
China, southern Vietnam, and the Tibetan refugee population in India.
According to Edward A. Irons, Maitreya is most widely recognisable in
the form of Budai, the laughing, overweight character watching (hardly
guarding) the approach to the Heavenly King Hall, the first hall encoun-
tered in most Chinese temples. He presumes that Maitreya retains an
allure that belies popular images. As the Buddha of the future, Maitreya is
intimately tied to the idea of a new age. The American Hong Kong scholar
sustains that this connects Maitreya to a powerful constellation of religious
emotions: hope, apocalyptic determinism, and trepidation.
Part IV (“Theory and Method”) begins with the interpretation of the-
ories and methods applied to the sacred sites of various (Eastern and
Western) religions in three chapters. Chapter 11 (“Contemporary
Creations and Re-cognitions of Sacred Sites”) looks at the role of beliefs
and practices of contemporary religions and spiritualities in the creation
and/or recognition of sacred sites. Are new sacred sites being created
and/or discovered today? Eileen Barker follows that sacred sites are com-
monly thought of as being relics of religious or spiritual happenings of the
past—Stonehenge, the Western Wall, The Church of the Holy Sepulchre,
Mecca, Varanasi, Mount Fuji, and natural localities for Native Americans
and other indigenous peoples.
“Is Sacred Site Discovered? Or Created?” (Chap. 12) interprets the
Yeoju Headquarters Temple Complex in the combined theories of Mircea
Eliade and David Chidester. The first perspective is that one cannot choose
a sacred site based on one’s will but can only discover it; for that space is
thought to have innately acquired its sacredness through hierophany. The
second perspective is that humankind actively creates sacred space, ascrib-
ing their own interests upon a place by occupying and activating the
sacredness of that location. In considering these issues, Seon-Keun Cha
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

proposes that the sacred space of Daesoon Jinrihoe in Korea can be inter-
preted as either discovered or created according to which perspective is
adopted. The chapter argues that compounding the two aforementioned
perspectives broadens possible explanations of the sacred space.
“Transformation of Admiral to the Sainthood and Sacred Stories of
Chinese Sanctum Sanctorum from Malabar Coast” (Chap. 13) inquires
the incredible process of famous Chinese Admiral Zheng He’s transforma-
tion to sainthood and mystical experience enjoyed by devotees in Indian
Ocean coastal line of Malabar. Admiral Zheng He is known to make seven
frequent voyages to Malabar between 1405 and 1433 with a marvellous
fleet of 317 ships and approximately 28,000 people. How did the admiral
become a reverent saint? How does the community enjoy the supernatural
power of the admiral turned Sheikh? Abbas Panakkal analyses the nature
of annual Nerchas in honour of Chinese Saint, a festival similar to the
temple festival of the region. He compares the nostalgic cultural legacies
of sacred stories with trajectories of early trading and political axis devel-
oped as shared heritage of Chinese Malabar relations.
Ultimately, each chapter of this volume (Sacred Sites and Sacred Stories:
Transmission of Oral Tradition, Myth, and Religiosity) delivers the unique-
ness and originality of cultural heritage. The hagiographic narratives of
indigenous people and pilgrims transmit the oral tradition of sacred sites
that is based on mystical imagination. The regular rituals and regional
festivals display the spontaneous religiosity of particular region or culture.
Similarly, this volume demonstrates that most of the ethnic communities
would have certain patterns of socio-religious symbolism by which their
identity is displayed in the formation of arts and architecture. Such
approaches of sacred sites and stories in contemporary society are an alter-
native method that can draw a conclusion that religious traditions can be
trans-historical regardless of the official recognition of government or
authority.
 PART I

Visual Arts and Architecture

 CHAPTER 2

Traces of Places: Sacred Sites in Miniature

on Minoan Gold Rings

Caroline Jane Tully

Introduction
Discovered at the beginning of the twentieth century by Sir Arthur Evans,
Minoan civilisation was named after the mythical King Minos, and initially
interpreted with reference to the well-known Classical mythological tales of
Pasiphae and the Bull, Ariadne and Theseus, and the latter’s killing of the
Minotaur in the Labyrinth. Ubiquitous bull imagery from the palatial site
of Knossos and the palace’s “labyrinthine” architecture appeared to con-
firm the myth—but what of the reality? Crete is the largest of the Greek
islands and is located in the Mediterranean on the ancient sea routes
between Europe, Asia, and Africa, a position contributing to its important
role in the network of trade and transmission of culture throughout the
ancient world. First inhabited in the Neolithic period (ca.7000–3500
BCE), small hamlets and villages remained the dominant feature of Crete
until the end of the Early Bronze Age (the Middle Minoan IA–IB ca. 2000
BCE). From the Middle Bronze Age onwards, a more complex society

C. J. Tully (*)
University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
e-mail: caroline.tully@unimelb.edu.au

© The Author(s) 2021 11

D. W. Kim (ed.), Sacred Sites and Sacred Stories Across Cultures,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56522-0_2
12 C. J. TULLY

emerged which culminated in the appearance of the first palaces, termed

the “Protopalatial period” (Middle Minoan IB–IIIB ca.2000–1750 BCE).
Destruction of the palaces, probably by an earthquake, and their subse-
quent rebuilding marked the beginning of the Neopalatial period (Late
Minoan IA–B) around 1700 BCE. The Minoan palaces formed the centre
of administration, storage, trade, and religion until their destruction by the
Mycenaeans in the Final Palatial period (Late Minoan IB–II) around
1490–1430 BCE, with Knossos itself finally destroyed around 1350 BC.1

Peak Sanctuaries
In the Early Minoan period, religion was focussed upon ancestor venera-
tion and ritual was enacted in the vicinity of monumental stone tombs.
Mountain peak and cave cults arose at the end of the Early Minoan period
(EM III ca. 2200–2000 BCE), possibly as a response to environmental
changes. Around this time, an aridity event affecting the wider eastern
Mediterranean dried up lowland pastures on Crete and may have been the
catalyst for the establishment of ritual sites on mountain tops and within
caves because they were close to the sources of rain and groundwater.2
Archaeological investigation has identified around forty Minoan moun-
tain peak and hill sanctuaries.3 During the Middle Minoan period, these
were distributed throughout eastern and east-central Crete and were
locations of popular cult focussed on agricultural and pastoral concerns.
Peak sanctuary sites of the Middle Minoan period are characterised by

1
Peter Tomkins, “Neolithic Antecedents,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age
Aegean, ed. Eric Cline (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 31–49; Sturt Manning,
“Chronology and Terminology,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean, ed. Eric
Cline (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 11–28.
2
Jennifer M. Moody, “Environmental Change and Minoan Sacred Landscapes,” in
Archaeologies of Cult: Essays on Ritual and Cult in Honour of Geraldine C. Gesell, eds. Anna
Lucia D’Agata and Aleydis van der Moortel (Princeton: American School of Classical Studies
at Athens, 2009), 241–249.
3
Alan Peatfield, “The Atispadhes Korakias Peak Sanctuary Project,” Classics Ireland 1
(1994): 90–95. DOI: 10.2307/25528268; Krzystof Nowicki, “Some Remarks on New
Peak Sanctuaries in Crete: The Topography of Ritual Areas and Their Relationship with
Settlements,” Jarbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 122: (2007): 1–31; Ibid.,
“Mobility of Deities? The Territorial and Ideological Expansion of Knossos During the
Proto-Palatial Period as Evidenced by the Peak Sanctuaries Distribution, Development, and
Decline,” Proceedings of the 12th International Congress of Cretan Studies, Heraklion, Greece
21–25 September 2016:1–15. 2016. 12iccs.proceedings.gr; Brent E. Davis, Minoan Stone
Vessels with Linear A Inscriptions (Leuven: Peeters, 2014).
 2 TRACES OF PLACES: SACRED SITES IN MINIATURE ON MINOAN GOLD… 13

large, open-air spaces suitable for gatherings, feasting remains, evidence of

fire, and terracotta and bronze votive animal and human figurines. Many
of the sites are intervisible and may have been used as beacons, and they
may have also been used for astronomical observation.4
During the Neopalatial period, the number of active peak sanctuaries
decreased to only eight which were widely dispersed and located near
urban centres and palaces.5 These sanctuaries were architecturally elabo-
rated and received high-quality offerings, suggesting that they came under
the control of palatial elites.6 Neopalatial peak sanctuaries feature single or
multiple roomed enclosures built roughly of local stone; cult furniture
such as altars, benches, rock tables; human and animal figurines, votive
limbs, hearths, ash, evidence of feasting, and objects inscribed with the
palatial writing script known as Linear A. Mount Jouktas near the palace
of Knossos is the oldest and most monumentalised peak sanctuary and has
produced the largest and most extensive assemblage.7 The peak sanctuary
depicted on a stone rhyton from Zakros in east Crete provides an impres-
sion of the appearance of such sites (Figs. 2.1 and 2.2).

4
Alan Peatfield, “The Topography of Minoan Peak Sanctuaries,” Annual of the British
School at Athens 78 (1983): 273–279. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245400019729;
Ibid., “Palace and Peak: The Political and Religious Relationship Between Palaces and Peak
Sanctuaries,” in The Function of Minoan Palaces. Proceedings of the Fourth International
Symposium at the Swedish Institute at Athens, 10–16 June, 1984, eds. Robin Hägg and Nanno
Marinatos (Stockholm: Svenska Institut I Athen, 1987), 89–93; Ibid., “Atispadhes Korakias”;
“The Topography of Minoan Peak Sanctuaries Revisited,” in Archaeologies of Cult: Essays on
Ritual and Cult in Crete in Honor of Geraldine C. Gesell, eds. Anna Lucia D’Agata and
Aleydis van der Moortel (Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2009),
251–259; Evangelos Kyriakidis, Ritual in the Bronze Age Aegean: The Minoan Peak
Sanctuaries (London: Duckworth, 2005), 52; Mary Blomberg and Göran Henriksson, “The
Discovery of Minoan Astronomy and its Debt to Robin Hägg,” Journal of Prehistoric
Religion 25 (2016): 64–77.
5
Peatfield, “Atispadhes Korakias,” 23; Kyriakidis, Ritual in the Bronze Age Aegean, 20;
Davis, Minoan Stone Vessels, 406, n.1624.
6
Peatfield, “Palace and Peak”; “Atispadhes Korakias”; Davis, Minoan Stone Vessels; Sam
Crooks, Caroline Tully and Louise A. Hitchcock, “Numinous Tree and Stone: Re-animating
the Minoan Sacred Landscape,” in Metaphysis: Ritual Myth and Symbolism in the Aegean
Bronze Age. Proceedings of the 15th International Aegean Conference, Vienna Institute for
Oriental and European Archaeology, Aegean and Anatolia Department, Austrian Academy of
Sciences and Institute of Classical Archaeology, University of Vienna, 22–25 April 2014
(Aegaeum 39), eds. Eva Alram-Stern, Fritz Blakolmer, Sigrid Deger-Jalkotzy, Robert
Laffineur, and Jorg Weilhartner (Leuven and Liège: Peeters, 2016), 157–164.
7
Alexandra Karetsou, “Ίερòν Κορυφής Γιούχτα,” Praktika tēs en Athēnais Archaiologikēs
Hetaireias (1974): 228–239; Alan Peatfield, “Minoan Peak Sanctuaries: History and
Society,” Opuscula Atheniensia 18 (1990): 122.
Fig. 2.1 Conical Rhyton from Zakros. (Source: Photo by Lourakis, CC0 1.0
[https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en] and image
copyright the Heraklion Archaeological Museum - Hellenic Ministry of Culture
and Sports - Archaeological Receipts Fund)

Fig. 2.2 Detail of Peak Sanctuary Rhyton relief. Shaw 1978

 2 TRACES OF PLACES: SACRED SITES IN MINIATURE ON MINOAN GOLD… 15

Rural Sanctuaries
Rural sanctuaries occur within the landscape at various types of topo-
graphical location such as on the slopes and summits of low hills, in forest
clearings, in the vicinity of rocky clumps, or on terraces close to the sea.8
They could be situated high in the mountains, but not on mountain peaks,
as in the example of Kato Syme which is located on a flat surface close to
a large spring.9 Rural sanctuaries incorporated landscape features such as
parts of the field, terrace, or grove in which they were situated, but were
deliberately set apart from the surrounding landscape by varying degrees
of architectural definition. This ranges from the extremely humble in
which a large stone or heap of pebbles was placed on the boundary line, to
the presence of built structures that were made of perishable materials
such as wood, to much more elaborate architectural construction as in the
case of Kato Syme with its stone walls and buildings.10 It is the more mod-
est of these categories that are consequently difficult to impossible to dis-
cern within the archaeological landscape and the category of rural
sanctuary has primarily been elucidated from iconography.11

Cave Sanctuaries
Of over two thousand caves in Crete, thirty-six have been identified as cult
sites with twelve of those dating to the Minoan period.12 From the Late
Neolithic to the Early Minoan I period, caves were used as burial places
and were the focus of ancestor veneration. During the Middle Minoan I,
the earliest sanctuaries were established at the Psychro, Kamares, Amnisos,
and Idaean caves.13 Minoan sacred caves tend to be large, deep, and damp,

8
Bogdan Rutkowski, The Cult Places of the Aegean (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1986), 204, 247, n.3, n.4.
9
Bogdan Rutkowski, “Cretan Open-Air Shrines,” Archaeologia 39 (1988): 26.
10
Angeliki Lebessi, “Ίερόν τού Ѐρμού κα Αφροδίτης είς Σύμηυ βιάννου.” Praktika tēs en
Athēnais Archaiologikēs Hetaireias (1972): 193–203; Angeliki Lebessi and Polymnia Muhly,
“Aspects of Minoan Cult. Sacred Enclosures. The Evidence from the Syme Sanctuary
(Crete),” Archäologischer Anzeiger (1990): 313–36.
11
Rutkowski, “Cretan Open-Air Shrines,” 24; Cult Places, 99, 103, 248, n.16; Elissa
Z. Faro, Ritual Activity and Regional Dynamics: Towards a Reinterpretation of Minoan
Extra-Urban Ritual Space (University of Michigan, 2008), 195, 207, 216–8, 212, 234.
12
Richard Bradley, An Archaeology of Natural Places (London: Routledge, 2000), 98;
Loeta Tyree, Cretan Sacred Caves: Archaeological Evidence (Columbia: University of Missouri
and Arbor: University Microfilms, 1974).
13
Loeta Tyree, “Diachronic Changes in Minoan Cave Cult,” in Potnia: Deities and
Religion in the Aegean Bronze Age. Proceedings of the 8th International Aegean Conference.
16 C. J. TULLY

and feature pools of water, various chambers, and stalagmites and stalac-
tites that can evoke human and animal forms.14 Sacred caves are often
located at prominent positions within the landscape and have entrances
visible from the surrounding area, as in the case of the Kamares Cave near
the palace of Phaistos.15 Cave cult was probably directed towards the pro-
motion of fertility. Votive objects including metal figurines and double
axes were submerged in the pools, while double axes, knives, and pins
were lodged into the stalagmites, crevices, and fissures within the rock.16
Feasting remains are apparent but evidence of fire is rare. The high quality
of many of the objects deposited within cave sanctuaries, in addition to the
naturally restricted access to the caves, suggest elite participation.17 The
presence of mountain, rural, and cave sanctuaries imply that the Minoans
envisioned a tripartite division of the cosmos.18

Landscape Features in Palatial Architecture

The Minoan sacred landscape was also incorporated into palatial design
where it appears both as naturalistic decorations and in more abstracted
architectonic form.19 Palatial ceramics were decorated with floral and
marine themes, and rooms were adorned with fresco paintings depicting
plants and animals. Sunken and basement architectural spaces termed

Goteborg University [12–15 April 2000] (Aegaeum 22), eds. Robert Laffineur and Wolf-
Dietrich Niemeier (Liège: Université de Liège, 2001), 40.
14
Livingston V. Watrous, The Cave Sanctuary of Zeus at Psychro: A Study of Extra-Urban
Sanctuaries in Minoan and Early Iron Age Crete (Liège Université de Liege, 1996), 51;
Rutkowski, Cult Places, 51; Sam Crooks, “Natural Landscapes,” A Companion to Aegean
Art and Architecture, ed. Louise Hitchcock (Hoboken: Blackwell).
15
Tyree, “Diachronic Changes,” 40.
16
David G. Hogarth, “The Dictaean Cave,” Annual of the British School at Athens 6
(1899–1900): 94–116. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245400001945.
17
Joseph Hatzidakis, “An Early Minoan Sacred Cave at Arkalochori in Crete,” Annual of
the British School at Athens 19 (1912–13): 35–47. https://doi.org/10.1017/
S0068245400009072; Crooks, “Natural Landscapes.”
18
Nanno Marinatos, Minoan Kingship and the Solar Goddess. A Near Eastern Koine
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 110–111; Caroline J. Tully and Sam Crooks,
“Dropping Ecstasy? Minoan Cult and the Tropes of Shamanism,” Time and Mind: The
Journal for Archaeology Consciousness and Culture 8 (2015): 129–158. https://doi.org/1
0.1080/1751696X.2015.1026029.
19
Louise A. Hitchcock, “Naturalising the Cultural: Architectonicised Landscape as
Ideology in Minoan Crete,” Building Communities: House, Settlement and Society in the
Aegean and Beyond, Cardiff University, April 17–21, 2001, eds. Ruth Westgate, Nick Fisher
and James Whitely (London: British School at Athens, 2007), 91–97.
 2 TRACES OF PLACES: SACRED SITES IN MINIATURE ON MINOAN GOLD… 17

“Lustral Basins” and “Pillar Crypts” may have been architectonic rendi-
tions of sacred caves; the stone pillar in a pillar crypt referencing stalag-
mites and stalactites characteristic of Minoan caves.20 Wooden columns
situated directly above pillar crypts in so-called column shrines may have
evoked trees or groves at rural sanctuaries.21 The throne in the palace of
Knossos features a baetylic or mountain-shaped back, similar in outline to
that depicted between antithetic goats upon the Peak Sanctuary Rhyton
from Zakros (Fig. 2.2).22 The Central Courts of palatial buildings were
oriented between true north and a sacred mountain, and the buildings
grouped around the Central Court may have evoked mountains around a
plain.23 Thus, the architectural design of Minoan palaces instantiated the
Minoan tripartite cosmology, consisting of sacred mountains, terrestrial
plains, and subterranean caves.24

Sacred Sites in Iconography

Evidence for Minoan sacred sites is also found in the two-dimensional art
forms of fresco painting, carved stone vases, carved ivory, and glyptic. Glyptic
art is the most extensive body of Aegean Bronze Age representational art and
consists of carved seals in the form of seal stones, engraved metal signet rings,
and the clay impressions (sealings) that the seals were used to produce. Seals
were part of the palatial administrative system and were used to secure and
identify property, to designate ownership, and as a symbol of office or author-
ity. Approximately 11,000 seals and sealings are known from the Aegean
Bronze Age.25 Usually, under 3 centimetres in size, the primary purpose of

20
Louise A. Hitchcock, Minoan Architecture: A Contextual Analysis (Jonsered: Paul
Åströms Förlag, 2000), 150–154; “Naturalising the Cultural,” 94.
21
Nanno Marinatos, Minoan Religion: Ritual, Image and Symbol (Colombia: University of
South Carolina Press, 1993), 87–98.
22
Caroline J. Tully and Sam Crooks, “Enthroned Upon Mountains: Iconography and the
Construction of Power in the Aegean Bronze Age,” in The Ancient Throne: The Mediterranean,
the Near East, and Beyond. From the 3rd Millennium BCE to the 14th Century CE. Proceedings
of the Workshop held at 10th ICAANE in Vienna, eds. Liat Naeh and Dana B. Gilboa (Vienna:
OREA, 2020).
23
Jan Driessen, “The Central Court of the Palace at Knossos,” in Knossos: Palace, City,
State, eds. Gerald Cadogan, Eleni Hatzaki and Adonis Vasilakis (London: British School at
Athens, 2004), 77; Hitchcock, “Naturalising the Cultural.”
24
Caroline Tully and Sam Crooks, “Power Ranges: Identity and Terrain in Minoan Crete,”
Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture (2019).
25
The seals and sealings are published with bibliography in the Corpus der Minoischen und
Mykenischen Siegel (CMS) series.
18 C. J. TULLY

seals was identification of their owner; however, because of their decorative

aspects they also functioned as jewellery. Stone seals were worn on the body
as bracelets, necklaces, pendants, or pins. The small hoops of the metal signet
rings suggest that they may have belonged to people with very small fingers,
have been worn further along the finger between the first and second knuck-
les, or been strung upon necklaces.26 Evidence from the clay sealings stamped
by gold rings show that they mainly authenticated documents.27 Around 340
signet rings have been identified; a little over 100 of which are actual rings
while the remainder are preserved only through their impressions on clay
sealings (Fig. 2.3).

Fig. 2.3 Gold ring HM 1700, from Knossos. (Source: Photo by Jebulon, CC0
1.0 [https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en] and
image copyright of Heraklion Archaeological Museum - Hellenic Ministry of
Culture and Sports - Archaeological Receipts Fund)

26
Mervyn Popham and Hector Catling, “Sellopoulo Tombs 3 and 4, Two Late Minoan
Graves Near Knossos,” Annual of the British School at Athens 69 (1974): 223. https://doi.
org/10.1017/S0068245400005542
27
Olga Krzyszkowska, Aegean Seals (London: University of London Press, 2005),
155–156, 192; Judith Weingarten, “The Use of the Zakro Sealings,” Kadmos 22 (1983):
8–13. https://doi.org/10.1515/kadm. 1983.22.1.8; Erik Hallager, The Minoan Roundel
and Other Sealed Documents in the Neopalatial Linear A Administration (Aegaeum 14)
(Liège: Université de Liège, 1996).
 2 TRACES OF PLACES: SACRED SITES IN MINIATURE ON MINOAN GOLD… 19

Cult in Glyptic
The metal signet rings feature the most complex and spectacular figurative
scenes in the glyptic repertoire and mainly consist of human and divine fig-
ures engaged in ritual activities.28 These events occur in locations ­ranging
from natural landscapes characterised by the presence of trees and rocks and
the absence of architecture, perhaps indicating a sacred grove or cave; to the
outside of sanctuary walls; in the vicinity of various types of altars; as well as
in, or near, boats and the sea.29 All the examples of cult activity occurring
within the natural landscape involve epiphany; the appearance of a divine
being either as a vision or as a human acting as the divinity. The occurrence
of epiphany within the natural landscape emphasises the fact that the
Minoans understood the landscape to be a sacred place.30

Trees in Rocky Ground

Glyptic images of ritual activity occurring amidst trees and rocks, without
any architectural structures, portray ephemeral cult places that are difficult
to identify archaeologically within the actual landscape. Trees and rocks,
along with the human activity depicted in these images including epiph-
anic ritual, tree shaking, baetyl hugging, and dancing would not have left
a material culture signature in the archaeological record.31 These images
may depict informal, occasional, or spontaneous encounters with the
numinous landscape, or the initial discovery of such a place.32 While the
entirety of the landscape is not depicted because of the constraints of the
glyptic medium, selected features such as trees and rocks imply a wider
landscape, traces of which can be assumed to exist outside the glyptic
frame. As a result of the miniaturisation and editing involved in glyptic
composition, landscape elements such as trees and rocks may be short-
hand for larger features such as groves and mountains, as is the case in
28
John G. Younger, The Iconography of Late Minoan and Mycenaean Sealstones and Finger
Rings (Bristol: Bristol Classic Press, 1988), x; John Boardman, Greek Gems and Finger Rings:
Early Bronze Age to Late Classical (London: Thames and Hudson, 2001), 16; Krzyszkowska,
Aegean Seals, 127, 137.
29
Caroline J. Tully, The Cultic Life of Trees in the Prehistoric Aegean, Levant, Egypt and
Cyprus (Peeters: Leuven, 2018).
30
Caroline J. Tully, “Virtual Reality: Tree Cult and Epiphanic Ritual in Aegean Glyptic
Iconography,” Journal of Prehistoric Religion 25 (2016): 35–46.
31
Faro, Ritual Activity, 207.
32
Tully, Cultic Life of Trees, 36.
20 C. J. TULLY

Near Eastern seal iconography. Comparative ethnographic examples of art

and literature from the Levant and Egypt suggest a symbolic association
between these aspects of the natural world and ruler ideology. Trees and
stones are the natural forms and attributes of deities associated with fertil-
ity, power, and rulership.33 The tree and stone dyad is also associated with
communication between heaven and earth, secret divine language, and
prophecy.34 The depiction of epiphany occurring in natural locations char-
acterised by the presence of trees and rocks signifies that the Minoan elites
who owned and were depicted in these rings wanted to promote their
special relationship with the sentient landscape which naturalised their
authority (Fig. 2.4).35

Fig. 2.4 Clay ring impression from Haghia Triadha. (Source: Courtesy the CMS
Heidelberg)

33
William Dever, Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel
(Grand Rapids: Erdmans, 2005); Susan Ackerman, Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen:
Women in Judges and Biblical Israel (New York: Doubleday, 1998), 142, 154.
34
Nicholas Wyatt, Word of Tree and Whisper of Stone, and Other Papers on Ugaritic Thought
(Piscataway: Gorgias Press); Nanno Marinatos, “The Minoan Mother Goddess and Her Son:
Reflections on a Theocracy and its Deities,” Bilder Als Quellen Images as Sources: Studies on
Ancient Near Eastern Artifacts and the Bible Inspired by the Work of Othmar Keel, eds.
Susanne Bickel, Silvia Schroer, René Schurte and Christoph Uehlinger (Göttingen: Academic
Press Fribourg, 2007), 349–363.
35
Crooks, Tully and Hitchcock, “Numinous Tree and Stone.”
 2 TRACES OF PLACES: SACRED SITES IN MINIATURE ON MINOAN GOLD… 21

Cult Structures
The majority of glyptic images of Minoan ritual include architectural
structures and man-made objects. In the past, these have been conflated
with each other; earlier scholarship tended to misidentify different types of
built structures which resulted in blanket descriptions whereby they were
identified as all being “walls,” “shrines,” or so-called “portal shrines”. In
fact, cult structures and objects depicted in glyptic should be separated
into clearly defined categories consisting of walls, gateways, and paving;
columnar, ashlar, and tripartite shrines; constructed openwork platforms,
horned altars, incurved altars, and table altars. Structures made of stone,
such as sanctuary walls, ashlar altars, tripartite shrines, parts of constructed
openwork platforms, incurved altars and horned altars, have been identi-
fied at sacred sites within the landscape and at architecturally monumen-
talised urban locations. Those made of perishable materials like wood,
such as columnar shrines and table altars on the other hand, are only
known from the iconographic record.36

Sanctuary Walls
Images of straight-sided rectangular ashlar masonry walls, sometimes with
gateways, over which trees project, can be considered to depict hypaethral
sacred enclosures. The walls are represented by courses of isodomic
masonry and a gateway consisting of a cornice above an opening, framed
by two uprights with a horizontal lintel. The structure is often situated in
conjunction with paved ground.37 Masonry appears in three different
forms in Minoan art: rectangular, checkerboard, and rough stone mason-
ry.38 Rectangular masonry, as depicted here, is the most common type and
appears in almost all media including glyptic, fresco, and architectural
models.39 In glyptic images, rectangular masonry is found in representa-
tions of walls, vertical, and stepped altars, and possibly some gateways

36
Tully, Cultic Life of Trees.
37
Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, “Space in Late Minoan Religious Scenes in Glyptic—
Some Remarks,” Corpus der Minoischen und Mykenischen Siegel. Beiheft 3. Fragen und
Probleme der Bronzezeitlichen Ägäischen Glyptik. Beiträge zum 3. Internationalen Marburger
Siegel-Symposium 5.–7. September 1985, ed. Ingo Pini (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1989), 253.
38
Kathleen Krattenmaker, Minoan Architectural Representation (Bryn Mawr College,
1991), 45.
39
Ibid.
22 C. J. TULLY

Fig. 2.5 Gold ring from Knossos. (Source: Courtesy the CMS Heidelberg)

(Fig. 2.5). Such images depict stone blocks rather than mudbrick because
the latter is always plastered and thus does not show the individual bricks.40
While rectangular masonry is characterised by blocks arranged in rows in
a staggered format, the joints of one row appearing as positioned over the
middle of the stone blocks of other rows, some structures in glyptic cult
scenes appear to be made of a grid-like “latticework” where the lines indi-
cating mortar between the blocks are continuously vertical and horizontal
rather than alternating. This may be an abbreviated way of depicting ashlar
masonry or in some cases suggest another material and form of construc-
tion such as wattle-and-daub or wickerwork.41
The restriction of the image within a small frame and the subsequent
curtailed depiction of the architectural structures imply traces that have
been excluded and thus left outside the frame.42 Walled cult sites are evi-
dent in other forms of iconography such as the Zakro Rhyton (Figs. 2.1
and 2.2), fragments of rhyta from Gypsadhes, and the gate with horns on

40
Clairy Palyvou, “Architecture in Aegean Bronze Age Art: Façades With No Interiors,”
Aegean Wall Painting. A Tribute to Mark Cameron, ed. Lyvia Morgan (London: British
School at Athens, 2005), 189–190. Although at the palace of Malia a rubble wall was cov-
ered in plaster and horizontal and vertical lines were incised to imitate ashlar.
41
Tully, Cultic Life of Trees, 56.
42
Jacques Derrida, The Truth in Painting (University of Chicago Press, 1987).
 2 TRACES OF PLACES: SACRED SITES IN MINIATURE ON MINOAN GOLD… 23

the eastern wall of the first level of the building Xeste 3 on Thera.43 The
Zakro Rhyton depicts a peak sanctuary with walls constructed of very reg-
ular isodomic ashlar masonry topped by triple stepped cornices44 and the
Xeste 3 fresco, which may also be a peak sanctuary, depicts a wall con-
structed of ashlar masonry in the middle of which is a gate topped with
monumental horns, over which leans a tree. These images may help clarify
what it is that the more cursorily executed glyptic examples are intended
to represent. If the ashlar structures in glyptic cult scenes represent the
same type of structure as on the stone rhyta and Theran fresco, then they
may depict a peak sanctuary, particularly the outside thereof.45 However,
archaeological examples of sanctuary walls tend to be constructed of semi-­
ashlar, polygonal, or cyclopean masonry, and archaeological correlations
for the peak sanctuaries constructed of ashlar blocks depicted on the Zakro
Rhyton and in the Thera fresco have never been found.46 This suggests
that Minoan artwork portrayed idealised or generic versions of sanctuar-
ies. In the case of glyptic art, because of their tiny size precision may not
have been a major factor and what was being communicated in such scenes
may have merely been the suggestion of a sacred enclosure. The type of
sacred enclosure wall represented in these images must refer to one that is
situated at one of the peak or rural sanctuaries that were architecturally
elaborated in the Neopalatial period, however, because only those sanctu-
aries had masonry walls.47 It is proposed therefore that these images depict
cult events occurring outside sacred enclosures situated in mountainous or
rural locations where elite female figures demonstrate their special rela-
tionship with tree and mountain numina associated with rulership.

43
Andreas Vlachopoulos, “Mythos, Logos and Eikon. Motifs of Early Greek Poetry in the
Wall Paintings of Xeste 3,” in EPOS: Reconsidering Greek Epic and Aegean Bronze Age
Archaeology. Proceedings of the 11th International Aegean Conference / 11e Recontre Égéenne
International. Los Angeles, UCLA—The J. Paul Getty Villa, 20–23 April 2006 (Aegaeum 28),
eds. Sarah Morris and Robert Laffineur (University of Texas 2007); 107–118; Peter Warren,
Minoan Stone Vases (London: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 84–90.
44
Krattenmaker, Minoan Architectural Representation, 46.
45
Ibid.; Kathleen Krattenmaker, “Architecture in Glyptic Cult Scenes: The Minoan
Examples,” in Corpus Der Minoischen und Mykenischen Siegel. Beiheft 6. Minoisch-Mykenische
Glyptik Stil, Ikonographie, Funktion. V. International Siegel-Symposium Marburg, 23–25
September 1999, eds. Ingo Pini and Jean-Claude Poursat, (Berlin: Gebr. Mann., 1995),
117–33; Sourvinou-Inwood, “Space,” 255–256.
46
Although Lebessi and Muhly (“Aspects of Minoan Cult”) and Donald Preziosi and
Louise A. Hitchcock (Aegean Art and Architecture [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999,
140]) have identified similarities between the sanctuary on the Zakro Rhyton and Kato Syme.
47
Peatfield, “Minoan Peak Sanctuaries”; Tully, Cultic Life of Trees, 58.
24 C. J. TULLY

Columnar Shrines
The most ambiguous type of cult structure depicted in Minoan glyptic
iconography is the “columnar shrine.”48 These are known only from ico-
nography and can be confusing because they also look like gateways, and
because there are no archaeological remnants of them to confirm their
construction or use. Columnar shrines are characterised by a simple post
and lintel format consisting of columns, posts, or piers supporting a hori-
zontal element such as a cornice or entablature. The columnar construc-
tion results in openings between the columns which are usually empty but
which may contain additional vertical elements, sometimes interpreted as
tree trunks or baetyls. Some columnar structures are more elaborate with
two columns rather than single ones forming the major vertical supports
of the structure. They are often surmounted by trees or other vegetation,
or else have simple flat unadorned tops.49
Columnar shrines can be subdivided into two types: those constructed
from ambiguous, possibly wooden, material and those apparently made
from stone blocks. The smooth vertical columns with single or double
cornices or entablatures, executed by the engraver in single strokes, give
the impression of a singular piece of material such as wood. That it is not
stone is suggested by the complete lack of any remnants found archaeo-
logically. Other examples, although having a similar overall shape, appear
to be made of stacked blocks evident by short horizontal marks within the
vertical supports. These might be better termed “piers” (Fig. 2.6).50
Both of these types of columnar structure have been termed “portal
shrines” and thought to represent gateways.51 While some examples may

48
Krattenmaker, Minoan Architectural Representation, 249, 293; Ilse Schoep (“‘Home
Sweet Home’ Some Comments on the so-called House Models from the Prehellenic
Aegean,” Opuscula Atheniensia 20 [1994]: 204) terms this type of structure the
“Gateway Type.”
49
Tully, Cultic Life of Trees, 76–79.
50
A mass of masonry, as distinct from a column. Banister Fletcher, A History of Architecture
(London: Athlone Press, 1963), 1269.
51
Arthur J. Evans, “Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult and Its Mediterranean Relations”
Journal of Hellenic Studies 21 (1901), 170. https://doi.org/10.2307/623870; Martin.
P. Nilsson, The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion and its Survival in Greek Religion (Lund:
Gleerup, 1950), 268; Rutkowski, Cult Places, 105–6; Nanno Marinatos, “The Tree as a
Focus of Ritual Action in Minoan Glyptic Art,” Fragen Und Probleme Der Bronzezeitlichen
Agaischen Glyptik. Corpus Der Minoischen Und Mykenischen Siegel, ed. Ingo Pini (Berlin:
Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1989), 140.
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know that our Constitution is both federal and national—
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North of 1775 and Calhoun and summons the latter to prove that
the American people did not make their Constitution and its
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people of 1776 accomplished their successful Revolution
against government, may it not be the thought of Sheppard and
other Tories that the Eighteenth Amendment has been
established by a successful revolution of government against
the people—Marshall again tells us of the American day when
the legal necessity “was felt and acknowledged by all,” that
every power to interfere with human liberty must be derived from
the people in their “conventions”—Acting on the Congress
proposal of 1917, governments of state citizens command the
American citizen and create a new government power to
interfere with his individual liberty—But no statesman has yet
told us how or when, prior to 1917, we became “subjects.”
XIX. Are We Citizens? Page 298
Hamilton thinks it a prodigy that Americans, in “conventions,”
voluntarily constitute the enumerated First Article government
powers to interfere with their individual liberty—Marshall, in
Supreme Court, declares “conventions” to be the only manner in
which they can act “safely, wisely and effectively” in constituting
government of themselves, by making such grants—When
proposed 1917 first new grant of that kind is supposedly made,
American people and their “conventions” are completely ignored
—The proposers have a Fifth Article which does not mention
“conventions”—The proposers have the old Tory concept, that
the people are the assets of the state and that government is the
state—Still trying to find out how and when we became
“subjects,” we expect to get information from the litigations of
1920—We expect great counsel, on one side, to urge the facts
we know—We fear that other great counsel will urge, in reply,
some fact or facts which we have not been able to ascertain—
We are certain that there is no Eighteenth Amendment, if the
facts we have learned are all the facts—That we may listen
intelligently to all the great counsel, we review some of the facts
we have learned.
XX. Lest We Forget Page 307
“The important distinction so well understood in America,
between a constitution established by the people and
unalterable by the government and a law established by the
government and alterable by the government”—Our first glance
at briefs of 1920 gives us hope that some modern leaders have
acquired the knowledge of Hamilton and his generation—We
find, in one brief, in Marshall’s words, the Supreme Court
statement of the fact that “conventions” of the people, not states
or their governments, made the Constitution with its First Article
grants of power to interfere with human liberty—But this brief, to
our amazement, is that of the foremost champion of the only
other grant of that kind, the Eighteenth Amendment, a grant
made entirely by government to government—In 1920, seven
litigations argued and reported under the one title “The National
Prohibition Cases”—Distinguished counsel appear for many
clients, for the claimed omnipotent Parliament of America, for
the American government which we used to know as our
supreme government, for a few state governments who did not
wish to be part of the omnipotent Parliament, for those engaged
in the lawful business of manufacturing, etc., the commodities
named in the Eighteenth Amendment—Like the human right to
breathe, such manufacture, etc., was not the privilege of a
citizen—Both rights are among the human rights men have
before they create nations and give governments power to
interfere with some or all of their human rights—Citizens of
America, giving their only American government its enumerated
powers, gave it no power to interfere with the human right
mentioned in the new Amendment—Human rights never are
privileges of citizens—Citizens establish government to protect
existing human rights—Only “subjects” get any rights or
privileges from government—All early Americans knew these
primal truths—Neither the French aristocrats, before French
Revolution, nor Tories of 1776 in England or America knew them
—Eighteenth Amendment Tories do not know them—Madison
(in 1789) and Supreme Court (in 1890) knew that commodities
named in new Amendment are among those in which a human
right “of traffic exists”—In litigations of 1920, no counsel appear
on behalf of the human rights of American citizens—But we
know that no decision of our own Supreme Court, established to
secure our human rights, although the decision may settle
disputes between other litigants, can change us from “citizens”
into “subjects.”
XXI. Briefs Ignore the American Page 325
Citizen
No counsel knows all are discussing whether Americans, twelve
years after 1776, voluntarily became “subjects”—Common
concept of all that Fifth Article a “grant” of power to state
governments (of state citizens) making them attorneys-in-fact for
citizens of America—Discussion entirely as to extent of power
“granted”—Eighteenth Amendment concept that Fifth Article
“grant” made some governments of state citizens a supreme
American Parliament, unrestrained master of every human right
of all American citizens—Opposing concept that the Fifth Article
“grant” made those state governments a Parliament whose one
limit is that it cannot interfere with the sovereignty of any political
entity which is a state—Both concepts ignore supremacy of
nation of men over federation of states—Both ignore dual nature
of “one national and federal Constitution”—Both ignore
“conventions” in Seventh and Fifth Articles as the citizens of the
American nation—Both ignore that each state “legislature” is
attorney-in-fact for the citizens of its own state and that no
legislatures are (except Congress in enumerated matters)
attorneys-in-fact for the citizens of America in any matter—Our
facts, brought from our education with the early Americans, all
ignored by all counsel in the litigations—The Virginia Convention
itself and Lee, Pinckney, Hamilton, Madison, Wilson, Iredell and
others state what all counsel of 1920 entirely ignore.
XXII. No Challenge to the Tory Page 335
Concept
Eighteenth Amendment rests on imaginary Fifth Article “grant”
making the state governments of state citizens attorneys-in-fact
for the citizens of America, empowered to give away all human
rights of the citizens of America—“Grant” assumed in every brief
—No brief recognizes that one supposed “grantee” is supposed
“grantor”—Or that each of two supposed “grantees” was a
competent maker of Articles (as proposed Articles were
respectively federal or national) before and when the
“conventions” made the Fifth Article—Or that Philadelphia
Convention knew and held “conventions” existing ability
competent to make any Article and state legislatures, existing
ability incompetent ever to make Articles like First Article or
Eighteenth Amendment—Or that Tenth Amendment declares no
power given to state “legislatures,” while all ability to make
national Articles “reserved” to “conventions” of “the people” of
America—No brief challenges sheer assumption of Fifth Article
“grant” or supports assumption by any fact—Every brief, for or
against Amendment, is based on the sheer assumption—No
brief knows that enumerated powers of only American
government to interfere with human freedom can be changed by
no one save the citizens of America themselves in their
“conventions”—Madison’s tribute to these “conventions” in which
“free inhabitants” constitute new government power over
themselves—Hamilton explains great danger to human liberty if
“legislatures” or permanent government bodies could create
such new government power—That knowledge of his generation
confirmed by story of government-made supposed Eighteenth
Amendment—Our gratitude to that generation of men who
(1776) made it and (1788) left it impossible that governments
could create new government power to interfere with American
human liberty—Our regret that modern leaders have not known
this great and immutable protection to American liberty.
XXIII. The Challenges That Failed Page 350
Supreme Court wisely writes no opinion in “National Prohibition
Cases”—In each of four numbered paragraphs, Court states its
own negation of one challenge made to new Amendment—All
four challenges are negatived in seventeen lines of statement—
First two challenges trifling and purely technical—Third
challenge based on rights of the citizens of some particular state
—Fourth challenge to “extent” of Fifth Article “grant” of power by
“conventions” to “conventions” and “legislatures”—This
challenge asserts “grant” which advocates of Eighteenth
Amendment must and cannot prove—Court negative amazingly
accurate—All counsel have argued incessantly about “extent” of
power “granted” by Fifth Article—Court negatives in statement
which speaks of power “reserved” in Fifth Article—Concept of
“grant” disappears—Court knows what “conventions” knew,
when they made Fifth Article, when they insisted on Tenth
Amendment Declaration expressly stating the distinct reservees
of the two existing powers “reserved” in Fifth Article—Supreme
Court of Marshall’s day knows it and Supreme Court of 1907
knows it—“Citizen or Subject?”—Eighteenth Amendment
answers “Subject”—Real Constitution answers
“Citizen”—“Conventions” insisted on plain statement of correct
answer—Counsel of 1920 do not know it—Their four challenges
make plain that fact—All challenges based on error that
governments of state citizens are attorneys-in-fact for citizens of
America—In Virginia Convention and in Supreme Court,
Marshall explains that powers of state governments “proceed
not from the people of America” but from the citizens of each
respective state—No counsel of 1920 knows this important fact.
XXIV. Governments Claim Americans as Page 371
Subjects
Patrick Henry, opposing Constitution in the “conventions,” knows
that it takes power from the state legislatures and gives them no
power—All modern leaders “know” that it gives those
legislatures great power as attorneys-in-fact for the citizens of
America—Many modern leaders “know” that it makes those
legislatures an omnipotent Parliament over the citizens of
America—No modern leaders remember 1781 and 1787
existing ability of the state legislatures to make federal Articles
or Articles not creating government power to interfere with
human liberty—Common modern concept that Fifth Article is
“grant” to these “legislatures” and to the very “conventions”
which made the Fifth Article—Leading brief, against
Amendment, more than fifty times admits or asserts this
imaginary and remarkable “grant”—Some extraordinary
concepts of our American institutions in briefs—In a famous
opinion, Marshall explains a fact and on it bases the entire
decision of the Supreme Court—The fact itself is that the
Constitution granted no power of any kind to the state
legislatures—No brief knows or urges this fact or any of the facts
we learned in the “conventions,” the facts on which we base our
challenge to the Eighteenth Amendment concept that we are
“subjects”—Briefs for the Amendment examined to find out why
we are supposed to be “subjects”—Amazing claim that, when
governments alone change the national part of the Constitution,
Supreme Court has no power even to consider whether
governments in America can make a change in the enumerated
powers given to their own government by the citizens of America
—Remarkable Tory concept that the number of Senators from
each state is the only thing in America immune from government
invasion, if enough governments combine—Indignation of
American citizen changes to mirth when he realizes this concept
to be only basis of thought that he is a “subject” or that there is
an Eighteenth Amendment—American citizen, seeking to find (in
the briefs for the Amendment) what happened, between 1907
and 1917, to make him a “subject,” startled to hear the answer,
“Nothing”—Citizen’s amusement increased on learning, in same
briefs, that whole American people, in Constitution which
expressly declares it gives no power to state governments,
made those governments of state citizens irrevocable and
omnipotent attorneys-in-fact for the citizens of America—
Amusement increased by finding that main champion of Tory
concept quotes Marshall’s Supreme Court story of the making of
the Constitution, but omits, from the quotation, the paragraph in
which Marshall points out that everyone knew why the
“legislatures” could not make and only the “conventions” could
make the national First Article, with its grant of enumerated
power to interfere with human liberty—Curiosity added to mirth
on finding this brief echo Madison’s own knowledge that his Fifth
Article contains nothing but “procedural provisions,” while brief
bases its entire contention on mere assertion that Fifth Article is
greatest grant of power ever made by free men to government.
XXV. Citizen or “Eighteenth Page 397
Amendment”?
Congress is only legislature with any power of attorney from the
citizens of America—At very beginning and very end of original
Constitution, citizens of America expressly so state—All briefs of
1920 based on asserted assumption denying those two
statements and insisting Fifth Article is “grant” to governments of
state citizens—Briefs for new Amendment assert “grant” made
governments of state citizens omnipotent master of everything in
America (including all human rights) save number of Senators
from each state—On this Tory concept depends entirely
existence of Eighteenth Amendment—Tory concept being
absolute myth, Amendment disappears—Amusing to find Tory
briefs for Amendment with American citations and quotations
which annihilate Tory concept—Unconscious humor of Wheeler
surpasses “Comic Blackstone”—Tory legions, fighting under
crescent of Mohammet, claim to be American and Christian
crusaders—Americans would have remained “subjects” if
Parliament, passing the Stamp Act, had said: “You subjects
must obey this command we make but, making it, we do not
legislate”—“Statement” that citizens of America universally
demanded this sole Amendment which attempts to change the
First Article enumerated powers—“Proof” that 4742 Tory
members of governments of state citizens said “Yes” to the
change—Jefferson and Madison tell us that concentration of all
power in legislatures “is precisely the definition of despotic
government,” that 173 “despots would surely be as oppressive
as one,” and that “an elective despotism was not the
government we fought for”—Calhoun contended one state might
defy supreme will of citizens of America—Tories for Amendment
go far beyond doctrine finally repudiated by Gettysburg—On
Tory concept that we are “subjects” of omnipotent government,
assert that some governments of state citizens may dictate, in
all matters of human right, what the citizens of America may and
may not do—Echo from “conventions” which made Fifth Article,
“How comes it, sir, that these state governments dictate to their
superiors, to the majesty of the people?”
XXVI. The American Citizen Will Remain Page 416
Supreme Court holds American people, “for most important
purposes,” chose to be one nation, with only one government of
the First Article enumerated powers to interfere with human
liberty—America, the nation of men, and United States, the
subordinate federation of states—Tories for new Amendment
must prove that American people, as one “important” purpose,
meant that governments of state citizens could interfere with
every human right of American citizens—Reserved rights and
powers of American citizens are entirely at their own direct
disposal, for exercise or grant, “despite their legislatures,
whether representing the states or the federal government”—
American citizen must know this of his own knowledge or his
human freedom will disappear—Emmett and Webster and their
generation knew it—Madison writes Fifth Article and states
exactly what it is to the “conventions” which made it—Hughes
unable to begin his Tory argument for new Amendment without
adding to that Madison statement what Madison pointedly did
not say—Senate now about to repeat 1917 blunder that
governments of state citizens have aught to do with altering the
national part of the American Constitution, which part is within
the exclusive control of the citizens of America themselves
—“Conventions” are the people—“Legislatures” are
governments—“Citizen or Subject?”—Supreme Court answer
certain—Court’s history and traditions show American concept
of Hamilton that this Court bulwark of American citizen against
government usurpation of power to interfere with human liberty
—Webster forecast Court decision on new and Tory
Amendment, answering “Citizen or Subject?”—All Americans
once knew same correct answer to same question by Pendleton
in Virginia Convention of 1788, “Who but the people can
delegate power? What have the state governments to do with
it?”
APPENDICES
I. The Original Constitution of the Page 445
United States
II. The Resolution Which Proposed Page 458
the Constitution to the
Conventions of the People of
America
III. The First Seventeen Amendments Page 460
to the Constitution
IV. The Alleged Eighteenth Page 465
Amendment
V. The Nineteenth Amendment Page 466
CITIZEN OR SUBJECT?
 CHAPTER I
SUBJECTS BECOME CITIZENS

The average American of this generation does not understand

what it means to be a citizen of America. He does not know the
relation of such a citizen to all governments in America. He does not
know the relations of those governments to one another. If this
ignorance should continue, the citizen of America would disappear.
The American would become again a subject, as he was when the
year 1776 opened.
The supposed Eighteenth Amendment is not in the Constitution
unless the American already is a subject.
It is vital to every individual interest of the average American that
he should know these things which he does not know. Happily for
him, his ignorance is not as that of the public leaders of his
generation. Their concept of the American and his relation to
governments in America is one which contradicts the most definitely
settled and clearly stated American law. On the other hand, the
average American merely has a mind which is a blank page in these
matters. As a result, it is the greatest danger to his individual interest
that their concept largely guides his attitude in public affairs of the
utmost moment to him.
The Americans of an earlier generation, who created the American
nation of men and all governments in America, accurately knew the
status of the American citizen and his relation to all governments.
Their accurate knowledge was an insistent thing which guided their
every act as a people in the period between 1775 and 1790, in which
latter year the last of the Americans became citizens of America.
Their knowledge came to them from their own personal experience
in those fifteen years. They were a people, born subjects of
government, who died citizens of a great nation and whose every
government, in America, was their servant. This great miracle they
themselves had wrought in the fifteen years between 1775 and
1790. Their greatest achievement, as the discerning mind has
always realized, is what they did in the last four of those momentous
years. They brought to its doing their valuable experience and
training of the previous eleven years. That is why they succeeded,
so far as human effort can secure human liberty by means of written
constitutions of government, in securing to themselves and their
posterity the utmost measure of protected enjoyment of human life
and happiness. That we, their posterity, may keep their legacy intact
and transmit it to the generations to come, it is necessary that we,
the average Americans, should share somewhat with them their
amazingly accurate knowledge of the simple but vital facts which
enabled them to create a nation and, by its American Constitution, to
secure to themselves, its citizens, protected enjoyment of life, liberty
and happiness.
When they were actually engaged in this work of creation, it was
truthfully said of them that “The American people are better
acquainted with the science of government than any other people in
the world.” For over a hundred years the history of America attested
the truth of that statement. As they were a simple people, their
knowledge of the science of government was derived from their
accurate understanding of a few simple facts. It is a certainty that we
can keep their legacy by learning those same facts. Let us quickly
learn them. The accurate knowledge of them may best be acquired
by briefly living again, with those simple Americans of an earlier
generation, through their days from 1775 to 1790.
The individual Americans of that generation were all born subjects
of the British government. We do not understand the meaning of that
statement until we accurately grasp the vital distinction between a
“subject” of a government and a “citizen” of a nation.
It is hardly necessary to point out, but it is amazingly important to
remember, that a “subject,” as well as a “citizen,” is first of all a
human being, created by an omnipotent Creator and endowed with
human rights. All would be well with the world, if each human being
always accurately knew the difference between right and wrong and
if his accurate knowledge invariably controlled his exercise of his
human freedom of will. In that case, no human government would be
needed to prescribe and to enforce rules of personal conduct for the
individual. As such is not the case, human government must exist.
Its sole reason for existence, therefore, is that it may prescribe and
enforce rules for those whom it can compel to obey its commands
and that it may thus secure the utmost measure of protected
enjoyment of human rights for those human beings whose
government it is.
Time does not permit and necessity does not require that we dwell
upon the various types of government which have existed or which
have been created supposedly to meet this human need. It is
sufficient to grasp the simple and important fact that government
ability to say what men may or may not do, in any matter which is
exercise of human freedom, is the very essence of government.
Where a government has no ability of that kind, except what the men
of its nation grant to it, where those men limit and determine the
extent of that ability in their government, the men themselves are
citizens. Where a government claims or exercises any ability of that
kind, and has not received the grant of it directly from the men of the
nation, where a government claims or exercises any ability of that
kind, without any grant of it, or by grant from government to
government, the men of that nation are subjects.
In the year 1775, under the British law, the Parliament at
Westminster claimed the unqualified right to determine in what
matters and to what extent laws should be made which would
interfere with individual freedom. From such decision of the
legislative part of the British Government there was no appeal save
by force or revolution. For this reason, that every human being under
that Government must submit to any interference with individual
freedom commanded by that Legislature, all British human beings
were “subjects.” And, as all Americans were then under that British
Government, all Americans were then “subjects.” Such was their
legal status under the so-called British Constitution. Curiously
enough, however, until a comparatively short time prior to 1775, such
had not been the actual status of the Americans. In this sharp
contrast between their legal and their actual status, there will be
found both the cause of their Revolution and the source of their great
and accurate knowledge of the sound principles of republican
government which they later made the fundamental law of America.
From the day their ancestors had first been British colonists in
America their legal status had been that of subjects of the British
Government. But, so long as they remained merely a few widely
scattered sets of human beings in a new world, struggling to get a
bare existence from day to day, they offered no temptation to the
omnipotent British Government to oppress them, its subjects. They
still had to show the signs of acquiring that community wealth which
has always been the temptation of government to unjust exaction
from the human beings it governs. For that reason, their legal
government concerned itself very little about them or their welfare. It
thus became their necessity to govern themselves for all the
purposes for which they locally needed government as security to
their individual welfare.
Only thirteen years after the first permanent English settlement in
Virginia, “Sir George Yeardley, then the Governor of the colony, in
1619 called a general assembly, composed of representatives from
the various plantations in the colony, and permitted them to assume
and exercise the high functions of legislation. Thus was formed and
established the first representative legislature that ever sat in
America. And this example of a domestic parliament, to regulate all
the internal concerns of the country, was never lost sight of, but was
ever afterwards cherished [until 1917] throughout America, as the
dearest birthright of freemen.” (1 Ell. Deb. 22.)
“On the 11th of November, 1620, those humble but fearless
adventurers, the Plymouth colonists, before their landing, drew up
and signed an original compact, in which, after acknowledging
themselves subjects of the crown of England, they proceed to
declare: ‘Having undertaken, for the glory of God, and the
advancement of the Christian faith, and the honor of our king and
country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of
Virginia, we do, by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the
presence of God and of one another, covenant and combine
ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and
preservation, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid. And by virtue
hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal laws,
ordinances, acts, constitutions, and officers, from time to time, as
shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of
the colony; unto which we promise all due submission and
obedience.’ This is the whole of the compact, and it was signed by
forty-one persons.
“It is, in its very essence, a pure democracy; and, in pursuance of
it, the colonists proceeded soon afterwards to organize the colonial
government, under the name of the Colony of New Plymouth, to
appoint a Governor and other officers and to enact laws. The
Governor was chosen annually by the freemen, and had at first one
assistant to aid him in the discharge of his trust. Four others were
soon afterwards added, and finally the number was increased to
seven. The supreme legislative power resided in, and was exercised
by, the whole body of the male inhabitants, every freeman, who was
a member of the church, being admitted to vote in all public affairs.
The number of settlements having increased, and being at a
considerable distance from each other, a house of representatives
was established in 1639, the members of which, as well as all other
officers, were annually chosen.” (1 Ell. Deb. 25.)
These are two examples typical of the way in which the English
colonists, for the first hundred years, largely governed themselves by
legislators chosen from among themselves. In this manner, while
legally “subjects” of their European government, these Americans
were actually “citizens” of their respective communities, actually
governed in their individual lives and liberties by governments which
derived all their powers of government from these “citizens.” In this
manner, through the best teacher in the world, personal experience,
they learned the vital difference between the relation of “subject” and
“citizen” to governments. Later, the echo of that education was heard
from Lincoln when he pleaded that government of the people, by the
people and for them should not perish from the earth.
As early as 1754 these Americans began to feel the first real
burden of their legal status as “subjects.” Their community wealth
was beginning to attract the attention of the world. As a result, the
legal Government awoke to the fact of their existence and of its own
omnipotent ability to levy upon that wealth. The Americans, for more
than a century educated in actual self-government, quickly showed
the result of that education to the accurate knowledge that no
government can have any just power except by the consent or grant
of those to be governed by the exercise of such power. As far back
as 1754, deputies of the various American colonies, where human
beings had educated themselves to be free men, assembled at
Albany in an endeavor to propose some compromise by which the
American people would be enabled to preserve their human freedom
against unjust interference by the Westminster Legislature. We are
all familiar with the failure of that endeavor. We are all familiar with
the successive steps of the continuing struggle between “subjects,”
educated to be “citizens,” and an omnipotent government, unshaken
in its purpose to make their actual status the same as their legal one.
When the year 1776 dawned, these Americans were still
“subjects” under the law of the British Empire. They were, however,
“subjects” in open rebellion against their government, justifying their
rebellion on the basic American legal principle that every just power,
even of a lawful government, must be derived from the consent or
grant of the human beings themselves who are to be governed. On
the memorable day in July of that year, despairing of any success in
getting the British Government to recognize that basic principle, and
asserting, for the first time in history, that they themselves were
collectively the possessors of the supreme human will in and for
America, they enacted the immortal Statute which we know as the
Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration of Independence, which was the first
political act of the American people in their independent
sovereign capacity, lays the foundation of our national
existence upon this broad proposition: “That all men are
created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.” (Justice Bradley’s opinion in
Slaughter House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, at page 115.)
 In this Statute, the American people clearly stated and definitely
settled for all time the basic legal principle on which rests the validity
of every constitutional article or statute law, which either directly
interferes or vests ability in governments to interfere with an
American in the exercise of his human freedom. There is nothing
vague or ambiguous in their statement. The legal principle, so clearly
stated and so definitely settled, is that no government in America can
have any just power of direct interference with individual freedom
unless such power be derived by direct grant from the Americans to
be governed by the exercise of that power.
That Statute has never been repealed. The Americans of that
generation, throughout all the momentous political battles of the next
thirteen years, when they were making and unmaking nations and
creating a federation of nations, and later subordinating it to a union
of human beings, never failed to obey that Statute and to act in strict
conformity to its basic American principle.
From the moment when that Statute was enacted by the supreme
will in America, every American ceased forever to be a “subject” of
any government or governments in the world. It was not until 1917
that any government or governments dared to act as if the American
were still a “subject.”
In that summer of 1776, as the Americans were engaged with their
former Government in a bitter and protracted war, they had little time
or thought to give, as one people, to the constitution of a government
best designed to secure to themselves the utmost possible measure
of protected enjoyment of individual human freedom. In their
rebellion, they had delegated the management of their common
interests to a committee of deputies from each former colony, which
committee was called the Congress. By the declared supreme will of
the whole American people, the Americans in each former colony
now constituted an independent nation, whose human members
were now the “citizens” of that nation. Under the declared basic
American legal principle, it was imperative that any government
should get its every valid power from its own citizens. Knowing this,
the Congress, almost immediately after the Declaration of July, made
the formal suggestion to the citizens in each nation that they
constitute a government for themselves and that they grant to such
government ability to interfere with their own human freedom in such
matters and to such extent as they deemed wise. The manner in
which the citizens of each nation acted upon this suggestion should
have stamped itself so irrevocably upon the mind of America as
never to have been forgotten by any later generation of Americans.
The citizens of those nations were of the “people who were better
acquainted with the science of government than any other people in
the world.” In each nation they were creating the very essence of
security for a free people, namely, a government with limited ability
to interfere with individual freedom, in some matters, so as to secure
the greatest possible protected enjoyment of human liberty. They
knew, as only human beings could know who were then offering their
very lives to uphold the basic law of America, that such ability could
never be validly given to any government by government itself,
acting in any manner, but only by direct action and grant of those
later to be governed by the exercise of that ability. What method did
those citizens, so thoroughly educated in the basic principles of
republican government, employ to secure the direct action of the
human beings themselves in giving that ability of that kind to their
respective governments? They acted upon the suggestion from the
Congress of 1776, as Marshall later expressed it from the Bench of
the Supreme Court, “in the only manner in which they can act safely,
effectively and wisely on such a subject, by assembling in
convention” in their respective states. Long before Marshall voiced
judicial approval of this American method of direct action by the
people themselves, in matters in which only the people themselves
can validly act at all, Madison, in the famous Virginia convention of
1788, paid his tribute to these conventions of the people in each of
the thirteen nations. This was the tribute of Madison: “Mr. Chairman,
nothing has excited more admiration in the world than the manner in
which free governments have been established in America; for it was
the first instance, from the creation of the world to the American
Revolution, that free inhabitants have been seen deliberating on a
form of government, and selecting such of their citizens as
possessed their confidence, to determine upon and give effect to it.”
(3 Ell. Deb. 616.)
 Later herein there will be occasion to speak at greater length of
this American method of direct action by the people themselves,
through the deliberative conventions of deputies chosen by the
people and from the people for that one purpose, giving to
governments a limited ability to interfere with individual freedom. At
this point, it is sufficient to say that, since 1789 and until 1917, no
government in America ever claimed to have acquired ability of that
kind except through the action of such a convention or conventions
or through the direct voting of its citizens themselves for or against
the grant of such ability.
If we again turn our minds upon those later days of 1776, we find
that the Americans, through the direct action of the people in each
independent nation, had become respectively citizens of what we
now know as their respective states, each of which was then a free
nation. Those thirteen nations were then allied in war. There did not
yet exist even that political entity, later created and known as a
federation of those nations. At that time and until quite some years
after the Revolution had ended, there was no such thing as a
“citizen” of America, because the America we know, the organized
human membership society which is the American nation, did not yet
exist. At that time and until the American nation did actually exist, as
a political entity, there was no government in the world and no
collection of governments in the world, which, on any subject or to
any extent, could interfere generally with the individual freedom of
Americans, as Americans. In each of the thirteen American nations,
the citizens of that nation had vested their own government with
some ability of that kind.
At this point, it is well to digress for a moment in order that we may
well understand that in none of these thirteen nations did its citizens
vest in its government an unlimited ability to interfere with individual
freedom. All the citizens of those respective nations were then
battling with a mighty Government which claimed such unlimited
ability over all of them, as subjects, and they were battling to
establish forever in America the basic doctrine that no government of
free men could ever have unlimited ability of that kind. In each of the
thirteen nations, its citizens vested its government with ability of that
kind only to a limited extent. They did this in strict conformity to
republican principles.
For the many who do not know, it is well to state clearly the
distinction between a pure democracy and a republic. In both, the
human beings constitute the nation or the state and are its citizens.
In both, the citizens themselves limit the matters and the extent in
which they shall be governed at all in restraint of their individual
freedom. In both, therefore, it is accurate and truthful to state that the
people govern themselves. The actual difference lies in one fact. In a
democracy the people themselves assemble and themselves enact
each specific rule of conduct or law interfering with individual
freedom. In a republic, it is always possible that the citizens may
assemble, as in a pure democracy, and enact any specific rule of
conduct or law. But, in a republic, its citizens generally prefer to act,
in such matters, through attorneys in fact or representatives, chosen
by themselves for the special purpose of exercising a wise discretion
in making such laws. In a true republic, however, where the citizens
are to remain free men, they secure to themselves absolute control
of their representative lawmakers through two most effective means.
In the first place, they ordain that their attorneys in fact for the
purpose of law-making, generally called their legislators, shall be
selected by themselves from time to time, at comparatively short
intervals. This precaution enables the people, through new attorneys
in fact, quickly to repeal a law of which they do not approve. In the
second place, the people, in constituting their government, limit the
law-making ability of these temporary attorneys in fact or legislators.
This is the most important fact in a free republic. Later herein there
will be explained the marvelous and effective manner in which this
particular security for human freedom was later achieved by the
citizens of the Republic which we know as America, when they
constituted their government. At present, there is to be mentioned
the general method which the citizens of each of those thirteen
nations, in 1776, employed to achieve this particular security.
In each nation the citizens constituted a legislature to be their only
attorney in fact for the purpose of making valid laws. In this
legislative department they did not vest enumerated powers to