Tag: shrine

The Japanese Shinto Faith

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The Japanese Shinto religion translates to mean “way of the gods” in Japanese and primarily focuses upon ancestors and nature, with practitioners believing that every aspect of the universe has a deity (e.g. rivers have a god, mountains have a god, soil has a god etc.) with ancestors believed to have created the world for the current generation living within it. Japanese architecture is an excellent example of Shintoism as Shinto shrines are left in a minimalist state of color and simplicity, unlike contemporary Chinese architecture which is highly colorful and decorative. Shinto shrines never depict imagery of deities as the wood of the architecture itself is representative of nature, and from that simplicity and minimalism. This is also because it is believed that so many gods exist within nature that it would be foolish to only highlight a few in particular. Practitioners of Shinto observe festivals and holidays but no particular day of prayer, unlike monotheistic religions (e.g. Sunday for Christianity, Friday for Islam and Judaism etc.). There is no mainstay scripture of morality or ethical system attached to Shintoism. In Shintoism, old shrines are dismantled and moved for new shrines to be erected every 20 years. The 3 main elements of Shintoism are the mirror, precious stones, and wood

The Building and Keeping of the Arc of the Covenant

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The Hebrew term for “ark” translates to “closet” or “cupboard” when taken literally. It’s estimated that it took 60 kilograms of gold to build the Ark of the Covenant, a feat which would require nearly 20,000 wedding rings to provide a modern perspective. The ark was measured in cubits which was a biblical measurement approximately the length of an adult male forearm, with the ark itself being 4 cubits in length by 1.5 cubits height and 1.5 cubits wide. The ark is described within the Bible as the “throne of God”. This symbolism was most likely borrowed from the Egyptians as a similar shrine was found within the tomb of Tutankhamun, guarded by the Egyptian god Anubis, remarkably similar to the way in which it is described to be guarded by God in the Bible. Portable shrines were incredibly common in ancient Egypt and although the Bible states that the Ark of the Covenant was instructed by God, it clearly was manufactured using borrowed ideas, religious motifs, and building techniques. Although Ethiopia vehemently protests that the Ark of the Covenant resides within a single temple in Ethiopia, most experts believe that it was destroyed by the Babylonians during the destroying of the temple in which the Ark of the Covenant was held, in 586 A.D.. The alternate theory is that the Ark of the Covenant has simply fallen apart due to the ravages of time and therefore no longer exists anywhere in the world