Numinous Santorini
Today I posted a few photographs I brought back from my recent trip to Greece. Most of them are photographs of stairs from Santorini. It became a surprise even for me when later I looked at the collection: I’m not sure where the theme of stairs came from. I guess it is the way these little villages in Santorini are built: perched on the high cliff above the sea, paths and stairs, dome shaped structures growing on each other. It feels natural as natural world: Santorini is one few places where you feel not aliened by perfect straight lines and forms of modern architecture.
I immediately turned to my bookshelf and found book of legendary Christopher Alexander “The Luminous Ground: The Nature of Order” and turned to the page which offered me an explanation:
Human beings have, in the past, recognized such places as numinous. They are places which carry the spirit. They are places which carry the soul. This language may or may not useful. But what I want to insist on, is only the one thing: some places, some things, are of such a nature that we feel more intensely related to them, we feel a relationship with them, a direct relationship between our self and that thing, that place. We feel it most strongly, and when we feel it we feel that we are connected with all things, with the universe.