This is an archived copy of a post written by Conflict Of Justice (conflictofjustice.com). Used with permission: Conflict Of Justice may not agree with any alterations made.
What sets the temple apart? Most people think “secular” buildings have nothing to do with belief, but actually all of our environment reinforces beliefs. The most mundane space affects belief. When we start to look at buildings and technology in terms of utility, we can see how our beliefs are affected. One thing I noticed going into the temple for the first time was that the doctrine of the gospel didn’t change to something different. Instead of mysterious secrets, my temple experiences germinated what I already believed through deeply powerful exercises and framing. Other kinds of buildings in our lives tell us what to believe, and most people think of temples as a source of esoteric or hidden truth, but a major benefit of our temple is that it facilitates development of faith we already have.
What is our basis for knowledge about our environment? We know that the sun will rise in the morning and that the moon will shine at night for two reasons: because we have always seen them do so and because the general consensus among our society is that they will. Even though you may not understand all of the mechanics and physics of air travel, you step onto airplanes because you trust society’s collective assumptions that air travel is safe. When you walk in a park at dusk you assume that the lamp posts will switch on to illuminate your way. Your expectation for the park lamp post to switch on did not develop until after you observed it and heard about it from others, and the park meant something different to you. Before then, the park had been a dark wild forest.
But sacred buildings are different. They do not impose what society agrees upon. The collective reasoning of society does not matter in the temple; it’s simply not part of the equation. Personal observation is what we utilize. If you were to personally observe airplanes crashing, society’s collective assumption probably wouldn’t matter; you wouldn’t get on one. Likewise, you have observed the park lamp post turn on at night and that experience is the primary basis for your beliefs about parks. Beliefs are chiefly based on personal experience. If the lamp posts don’t switch on at night, you feel uneasy about entering the park based on experience. Belief is therefore based primarily on personal repeated observations of the environment and how you use them to inform your behavior.
Patterns of events in our buildings alter expectations about the environment. What makes the temple so powerful is that it addresses existing and common patterns of events rather than make it all about esoteric new events. The “secular” building would have us just accept the way they present events, with little explanation or exploration. But the temple is different. It is not a movie theater or school classroom of passive receivers. Instead, the initiate become a scientist striding into the laboratory, introducing spiritual hypotheses that he brings with him, and testing them in a trial and error process. And he continues to test the spiritual hypotheses after he exits the temple, with tangible results day by day. As active agents in observation and hypothesizing, we can use sacred architecture as an instrument for developing faith.
I think maybe this is why the temple’s form is so ordinary. The temple building looks like an old European building–not strange and new like the the imposing temple in the Wizard of Oz. The design of our temples speak to this active participation… Well, the temple doesn’t look exactly ordinary, but I mean, it doesn’t look crazy.by davidwilson1949, creative commons license
The “Community of Christ” church’s temple in Independence Missouri, on the other hand, spirals in an enormous strange metallic form, as if it is providing something new, grand, and novel. It’s trying to be different and specific (as apostate splinter-sects tend to do.)
Imagine the impression cathedrals in Europe must have made on people when they were first built. Very different and outstanding. But the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints temple, does not do this. It is just a standard Neoclassical stone building, often just a fancier form of a typical Latter-Day Saint chapel building, with typical dressings of a fancy building. The form of our temple evokes the typical chapel buildings we use, but it also evokes our imagination. It invites people to bring their spiritual ideas, whatever they may be, and ponder those ideas–and study them out. With the Community of Christ temple, I want to sit down on the lawn in front of it and draw a portrait, while with the Latter-Day Saint temple I see it and want to sit down and design my own temple. To me, that is an important difference. The Latter-Day Saint temple building is a simple form, and it is easy to impress our own ideas and to build upon it to our individual satisfaction. The same goes for our practices inside the temple. We do not memorize or perform perfunctory mimetics–instead, we are taught how to receive individual inspirations and be creators. This is the highest form of design: to enable others to be designers themselves. The occupant becomes a scientist who is always testing.
Once you stop just accepting society’s assumptions and start actively testing your personal spiritual hypotheses, you find that you re-evaluate much of your surroundings. Should we really be concerned if the park street lamps don’t switch on at night? Does that really mean danger? Such small concerns actually have a big impact. A city in California was forced to reverse an upgrade of street lamps to cost-efficient LEDs because some local activists thought that they were too bright. The city spent all that money for the upgrade and then had to spend money to change it back to how it had been, and all because of some people’s stubborn beliefs about the park at night. This costly little controversy shows the value of questioning fundamental truths about our environment. Maybe we don’t need street lamps at all, or maybe we should illuminate our night-time cities a lot more than we already do so that they are as bright as day. The answer to these questions involve fundamental truths about natural time cycles, safety, and the role of government versus the individual. Street lamps are a small example of how our lifestyle is affected by questions which we can bring with us into the sacred setting of a temple and ponder. The affects of these questions can be tremendous.
Experiential Imaging
Our creative experience in the temple is similar to an architect designing a building. In order to create a building that affects people in the way he wants, the architect uses his imagination. The architect enters the building in his mind and goes through the building, undergoing events and experiences, and comes up with a form based on sensory imagination. Technological tools such as the computer are very limited because they only provide visual images, and though the renderings and printed models may look very detailed, they exlude much of what will actually exist in the final product. They exclude all the other senses in the experience—hearing, taste, feeling and smell. Even if the computer could analyze and predict other sensory results, such as audio renderings of accoustics, or give readings of what temperature the air will be, this is still very limited. The best experiential imaging is achieved will closed eyes and meditative contempation from a creative mind. The problem with tools such as the computer is that they remove the designer further from the actual experience of the space so that he relies on mere physical representations. The perfect form of higher truth cannot be well represented by a tangible abstract, and our vision of the future is spiritual rather than tangible. Tools are useful for gathering information, but innovative and creative form can only be understood in the human mind.
It is also like writing pages of a book. As an author types the words of his book, he reads it in his head as if he were the audience. The book is being written for an audience of readers, so the author will want to get a feel for what it will be like to read it. He imagines that experience. Pondering inside the temple is like writing pages of a book or creatively imagining space for an occupant, because we are imagining the experience of future creation. We are engaging in physical experiences which develop fundamental beliefs, and these beliefs involve much more than park lamps at night, more than the physical environment–it goes beyond to unseen realities. It becomes explorations of unseen truth.
These fundamental beliefs are built on daily events: waking up, eating breakfast, driving to work, ect. We explore the meaning of such common behavior, as well as uncommon and poignant events, such as getting married, having children and graduating from school. The temple explores why all life events occur, beyond physical prediction or mathematical measurement, and we use personal experience as a functional tool for control and personal creation.
Ritual From Daily Events – As Pharaoh the king of Egypt awoke and got ready for the day, the Egyptians ritualized each step. The morning rituals made up what is commonly called the “toilet ceremony” of Egypt’s Pharaoh. They took boring morning behaviors such as incense, bathing, “balls of natron to chew”, anointing, and dressing, and ritualized them. Why ritualize everyday habits? To use repetitive events of life for experiential imaging, to find eternal intangible truth.
According to Jeremy Naydler, the ritual washing represented the sun’s rise from the water of choas and the king’s future form as “Horus-of-the-Horizon.” The chewing represented the sun’s rise to the zenith of the noon sky. The movements through the temple followed the sun’s rise, and the moment the sun reached its noon position, Pharaoh reached the highest stair at the Temple of the Morning. Each part of the morning ritual very literally compared the king’s behavior to the movements of the sun in the sky, and to the gods. They not only aligned the king’s daily habits with the natural cycles of the physical universe, but also fit it into an unseen spiritual reality to affect future events. “Just as the sun was purified and reborn each morning in the Temple… so the king underwent the same daily ritual.”
This wasn’t something only ancients did. King Louis XIV in the Verseille palace performed the same kind of rituals. The entire royal palace had to be present for the solemn cermony of him waking up, grooming, and having breakfast, and then again in the evening when he went to bed. Still today, school classrooms perform a kind of morning ritual with the pledge of allegience (some are still allowed to, right?). Why? To look for meaning in human behavior beyond physical evidence and make it congruent to desired future outcomes.
We can see this kind of ritualistic purpose in Facsimile 1 of the Book of Abraham. Facsimile 1 shows an Egyptian breathing ritual of the king sleeping on his bed. A common daily behavior, but it all points to the rebirth and resurrection of the king at some future date. This scene in the Sed-festival implied the king’s right to rulership and authority. It tied together the tiniest details of the king’s behavior with his royal identity and his future right to eternal life, to bring total congruence to faith and works. Spiritual and physical reality became one.
But we see certain things flip between the Egyptian context of Facsimile 1 and Abraham’s context. Instead of reviving the king as a righteous guide, the Anubis priest becomes a wicked priest of death. Instead of being proxy sacrifice and symbolizing the defeat of the king’s enemies, Abraham turned out to be the one achieving life, glory, and kingship. And the truly remarkable thing about Facsimile 1 is how all of this emulates the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Instead of being righteous priests, the Pharisees delivered Christ to death, and instead of defeat Jesus rose again to bring life and salvation to the world. Thus, Facsimile 1 records a very real and tangible experience with enormous future consequence, and it fits this experience into the context of the atonement of Jesus Christ. In temple practices, common everyday behavior is likewise tied to important divine actions of creation and redemption, so that we can learn our place as children of God and align our behavior with the character of Christ. It is we, the children of God, learning from and emulating God the Creator of the universe.
Pharaoh’s rituals which were performed each morning for Pharoah were also performed for the common people in the temple. “The resemblance of the daily temple liturgy to the Pharaoh’s ceremonial toilet—A large part of the daily temple liturgy consists of a series of toilet episodes and closely resembles the ceremonial toilet of the Pharaoh in the House of the Morning. This resemblance is due to the fact that both are based upon the same performance, the supposed daily matutinal lustration of the sun-god undergoing lustration every day at dawn in the Heliopolitan sun-temple, as the god himself was conceived of as doing in the horizon. That the other toilet episodes of the rite of the House of the Morning, viz. robing, anointing, crowning, etc. had their equivalents in the daily temple liturgy is due to the sun-god being regarded as a king.” (James Hastings, Encyclopedia of religion and ethics 12, 1922, p.778)
The Egyptian officiator “awoke” the subject of the ritual from a sleep. This related the sunrise we see each morning with resurrection of the dead. Egyptians performed a great number of such rituals, performed on proxy human sacrifices (like Abraham), proxy idols of the gods, and on the king himself. Proxy statues went through each step of preparing for the day on behalf of the king. And these steps became quite detailed and involved. According to Albert C. Moore, the toilet ceremony often involved “sixty separate ceremonies performed each day.” These all were performed in the small, intimate, isolated rooms of the temple chambers. Before dawn, the priests were washed and prepared. The priests were then bursting the “door seals and repeating ritual phrases such as ‘I come and bring thee the eye of Horus’ and ‘The gates of heaven open’.” They worshiped at the throne, and then clothed the god and proceeded with all the other rituals of the toilet ceremony. The god was washed with water, anointed with oil, wrapped in clothing, and fed with food and drink. A complete daily maintenance.
Actions which were performed on the proxy idols affected not just the king but the entire community, inserting cosmic significance to routine behavior. It brought down the actions of the gods to a human level: they wash and dress just like mortal humans do. Each action also pointed to a real eternal event: resurrection and spiritual rebirth. They illustrate the meaning of everyday routines in an unseen but very real context.
Ritual Bathing, Feasts & Coronations
The modern man slogs out of bed in the morning, enters the shower, and wonders what all this is for. Why get up in the morning? Why eat, dress, battle through traffic to work? The modern worker asks himself this question every day sitting blankly before the computer screen, just as ancient people did.
Egyptian rituals provided an answer. Ordinances were a testing ground of faith. With each washing and dressing, the Egyptian priests explored the questions of life, much like children playing with dolls. The temple was the doll house, and these games explored the doll’s relationship to the world. The unknown environs in nature were better understood if put in a human context. Their statues were like toys in these learning games, and then these same rituals were explicitly applied to the king. The king’s leadership meant taking on this role as experiment for the faith of the people. The king explored what it meant to get out of bed each morning in an eternal context. He acted as human test-subject. The rituals with the statues connected him to the gods, and he connected the people to the gods, in a hierarchical process. Like the statue, he was awoken, washed, anointed, scented, mouth-washed, dressed, jeweled, crowned, and given breakfast, providing conclusions for how human actions echo with eternal significance.
The morning rituals included a bathing and dressing: “I have washed myself in this water in which Thoth bathed when he officiated as Vizier of Horus. I have anointed myself with aga-oil; (then) I put on my ds ds garment.” (See Book of the Dead 145 as quoted in Nibley, The message of the Joseph Smith papyri…, p. 199) The presentation of a crown followed the dressing, and an anointing with oil, and then a breakfast meal: “Receive your dazzling garment, receive your bleached garment, and get dressed… you will acquire the crown through through it with Horus, lord of the elite…. Greetings, first-class oil! Greetings, you on Horus’ forehead, whom Horus has put on his father Osiris’ brow… Isis has taken your arm that she might induct you inside the pavilion that arrays the earth, as your watchers mourn you. The offering that Anubis, foremost of westerners, will give your thousands of bread, your thousands of beer, your thousands of ointment, your thousands of linen…” (The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, James P. Allen, p.86)
How did the king’s private temple experience intersect with community behavior? The daily rituals were performed behind closed doors at the Egyptian temple on behalf of the community, though some rituals were also performed publicly. The meaning of daily rituals, such as washing and anointing, were often applied to public events. While ritual feasts were privately performed in a personal journey of the sun across the sky and to explore the journey of the human in the afterlife, Karol Mysliwiec points to a “second kind of ritual” that was performed publicly. Community feasts were held on certain holidays throughout the year, and they were all “dedicated to particular gods” for events that applied to the community as a whole, such as anniversaries of great battles, natural events that occurred on certain days, or “geographical phenomena.” In Egypt, as well as Palenque in Maxico, in China, and in other ancient sites, these feasts commemorated the coronation of a new king. These rituals connected the king to the natural order and to the community.
The kingdom’s grand feast was proceeded by a litinay of rituals, which can also be seen in the Bible. A public anointing and physical embrace: “Then Samuel took a vial of oil, and poured it upon his head, and kissed him, and said, Is it not because the Lord hath anointed thee to be captain over his inheritance?” (1 Samuel 10:) John Kitto remarks: this anointing “was probably of that kind which is indicated by kissing the forehead, and which implies respectful consideration mingled with esteem. Such as Antar’s salutation of Prince Mailk: ‘Antar kissed the prince’s head and prayed for continuance of his glory.” Not just the forehead, but each part of the body was anointed in other Egyptian rituals, with important symbolic meaning. The body was explored as a single object made up of its various parts, because the body needs all parts to be holy: “One was anointed on the mouth, eyes, ears, and different parts of the reconstituted body… Thus the mouth, eyes, and ears can breathe, speak, and eat; see; and hear; the arms can act, and the legs can walk.” (Alexandre Moret, Mysteres egyptiens, Paris: Colin, 1913, p. 30)
It connected the physical body with spiritual ability and future events: “O thou oil upon the brow of this Horus!… Thou shalt be placed by me on the brow of the chief Her-heb… and the possession thereof shall make him to become an akh. Grant that he may have power over his body, that his eyes may be open to see.” (Book of the Opening of the Mouth 2:188)
The words of the Egyptian ritual are very simple, a simple description of the utility of each body part. But the implication is of the relationship between physical and spiritual, and how the actions wrought by the body affect future goals: “Thou seest with thine eye, thou hearest with thy two ears, thou speakest with thy mouth, thou walkest with thy two legs.” (Papyrus Louvre N. 3284: 36-37) “[The priest] pressed with his fingers, or touched with ritual instruments, the mouth, the eyes, the ears, the various parts of the body, imitating the movement proper to each organ, restoring to Osiris the use of his eyes to see with, his ears to hear with, his mouth to talk with, his hands to work with, and his legs to walk with.” (“Kings and Gods of Egypt”, Alexandre Moret, 1912, p.88)
It symbolized a healing or restoration. A ritual instrument was used to touch the various body parts in the morning rituals and funerary rituals, which could also be seen in Orthodox baptism practices of the later apostate church: “Baptism is markedly a double anointing: the first as healing, and the second as the seal of the Spirit. In the second anointing, the priest dips a feather into a small bottle of holy oil… and signs the child in the form of the cross on the brow, eyes, nostrils, ears, lips, breast, hands, and feet…” (J.M. Campbell, Notes on the spirit basis of belief and custom, Indian antiquary 25, March 1896, p. 84) 
by cormaggio, creative commons license
The various Egyptian washing rituals are also associated with baptism. On New Year day, the priests could be seen “going down with the gods into the cool waters… standing clad in their garments with white sandals upon their feet.” (see Pyramid Text 518:1195-8 as quoted in Nibley, The message of the Joseph Smith papyri…, p. 96) The purifying washing ritual was very similar all across the ancient world, from washing rituals in Hinduism to the iyoom washing ceremony in Mayan America. Ritual bathing basins can be seen in Karnak, Alhambra, Angkor Wat, Qumran, and Cherokee sweatlodges.
The Egyptian initiate “drinks the water” and washes not just the body but also clothing: “The polluted Egyptian baptizes himself, with his very clothes, that he might purify his clothes, which he considered to be defiled as well as himself.” (Alexander Carson, Baptism in its mode and subjects, Philadelphia: American Baptist Publ. 1850, p.100)
It was not just a ritual of cleaning, but “also one of identification.” In ancient America, this was the time a baby was given its name. Ritual washing often determined a person’s identity and associated them with a god. The Egyptian initiate declared: “I have washed myself in the water wherin the god Ra washeth himself when he leaveth the eastern part of the sky.”
Vitrivius described a ritual for bringing vases of water into the temple to prepare them for use in spiritual cleansing: “Hence, too, those who are clothed in priesthoods of the Egyptian orders declare that all things depend upon the power of the liquid element. So, when the waterpot is brought back to precinct and temple with water, in accordance with the holy rite, they throw themselves upon the ground and, raising their hands to heaven, thank the divine benevolence for its invention.” (Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture Book VIII, Intro, v. 4)
Permanent Physicality
Of all artistic mediums, isn’t the building is the most appropriate to facilitate faith? It is tangible and substantial (as opposed to music or the spoken word). It is something in which we immerse ourselves and become fully engaged in. It is strong and permanent, and yet physical nature of it is eventually subject to decay with time. We use it to unite physical nature with spiritual nature. The word of God as contained in the holy scriptures, the creative imaginings of eternity, and the movement of our spirits are all spiritual things, but the temple is a physical place for them to dwell and be carefully considered. As the gold plates found their home in a stone box on Hill Cumorah, the Spirit finds a home in the stone walls of the temple. Our faith reflects appropriately on the physical word and our knowledge of godly things becomes substantial, as our eternal nature is fully understood in the highest degree of knowledge, and our eternal future becomes subject to holy and glorious design.