Susan Elizabeth Hale
Sacred Space, Sacred Sound
(Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 2007, 298pp.)

Now I have you
Now in a moment I know what I am for. I awake
And already a thousand singers, a thousand songs,
A thousand warbling echoes have started
to life within me, never to die.
Walt Whitman

Susan Hale has written an impressive book dealing with the setting, the sounds and the sense of sites considered sacred or holy. As she writes “a sacred space is a natural or created place where spiritual experiences are enhanced and ritual acts of worship are performed…A sacred space is a temenos, a Greek word meaning an enclosure that makes it possible to enter into a relationship with a greater reality.”

Sites may be chosen, as some believe, because there are natural power points where earth energy comes to the surface giving a sense of energy or awe to people reaching the site. There may also be a way in which buildings, such as churches or temples absorb the devotional energy of the many people who have gone there over the centuries to pray. Susan Hale gives moving accounts of her visits to the cathedrals at Chartres in France and Salisbury and Gloucester in England. At Chartres, she quotes a poem from a friend: “ Here we become the living cathedral — made not with the sound of hammers, but with the wonder and amazement of our singing.” In such cathedrals, religious song and chanting have existed from the start. As Susan Hale notes “Cathedral space is perfectly suited for chanting because the voice too, has immense space, great depths, and soaring heights. The voice can be a nave waiting to be filled with praise, a passageway for the Divine. The voice can be a reflector of silent interiors, a deep well of knowing, an altar to receive communion. Sound travels up through the body. The voice is the place where spirit and matter merge, where heaven is brought to earth.”

She stresses that what makes a place sacred is our sense of wonder and thanksgiving. Our deepest and highest emotional states send off energy, and others feel this energy when entering such a site. However we can not all live near great cathedrals or prehistoric caves which may have been used for magic rituals. The question thus arises ‘Can we create sacred sites for ourselves?’ One method is the creation of a labyrinth advocated by Dr Laurens Artress, author of Walking a Sacred Path (New York: Riverhead Books, 2006) quoted by Susan Hale. A labyrinth is a series of interconnecting circles, ultimately leading to an inner circle representing the Self. The path toward the center is obstructed, making it impossible to see the route ahead. One must follow it one step at a time. The labyrinth such as the famous one at Chartres was designed in medieval times to represent the journey of the Crusaders to Jerusalem. For those who did not actually take the journey, the maze was symbolic of the experience. For some, reaching Jerusalem was reaching the Self. The journey along the labyrinth is also an inward one.

Susan Hale gives some websites which show how one can build a labyrinth for oneself, often in a grove of trees — trees, with their roots in the earth and their branches reaching the sky can be conducive to creating sacred space. Readers will be enriched by Susan Hale’s travels and experiences and will become more sensitive to the sounds and energies of sites used for worship.

Rene Wadlow