Imagining the "architecture" of the temple of Jerusalem


Jerusalem as a Symbolic Singularity (Part #5)

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Third Temple? Jerusalem is especially significant to the Abrahamic faiths in terms of its places of worship -- including that implied for Judaism by the possibility of constructing a Third Temple, as attempted at various times in the past. If Jerusalem is the spiritual nexus of Israel, a "temple" is that of Jerusalem for those faiths, whatever form it may take. Very considerable controversy surrounds those places of worship, whether between faiths or within them -- whether in historical terms or with respect to the future, most notably in the light of prophecies to which importance is variously attached (Tim McHyde, The Third Temple Prophecy: what's holding back its fulfillment? 2 June 2017). The latter notes the prophecies regarding two such temples, rather than one.

With respect to any reconstruction, some hold very strictly to the indications of scriptures with respect to its physical design and location (Ben Sales, Laying the groundwork for a Third Temple in Jerusalem, The Times of Israel, 16 July 2013; Architectural Plans for Third Temple Have Begun, Arutz Sheva, 26 July 2015; Jake Wallis Simons, The rabbi, the lost ark and the future of Temple Mount, The Telegraph, 12 September 2013). Others consider that it will only prove possible following prophesied events -- of which the current isolation of Israel is seen as part of that pattern. Others consider that the temple already exists in some psychospiritual form -- or that it is an emergent form, perhaps to be understood through metaphor. Others envisage the construction in virtual reality.

This multiplicity of conflicting frameworks lends itself to multiple interpretations, to questionable mystification, and to conspiracy theories of every kind -- a complex system reflecting the challenges only too evident in society. Especially problematic for some is the intention of rebuilding the Temple as an appropriate location for ritual animal sacrifice, as required by theological strictures. This is a feature of two of the Abrahamic religions, whereas the third could be said to have "outsourced" that process to secular society. Whilst assiduously claiming the contrary individually, together the Abrhamic religions can be recognized as having constituted a pattern for engendering violence and human sacrifice (Systemic Reliance of World Religions on Human Sacrifice: covert use of fatal conflict to ensure vital resource management, 2014). With the massive extinction of animal species now underway, outsourcing of animal sacrifice has effectively been taken to unsustainable extremes.

Such ritual sacrifice could however be understood as a subtle form of transcendence of dynamics by which forms of coherence are "bedevilled". In economic terms this is usefully recognized in terms of the "animal spirits" to which John Maynard Keynes drew attention in describing the instincts, proclivities and emotions that ostensibly influence and guide human behavior (The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, 1936). Understood otherwise, it suggests the fundamental cognitive challenge of how humanity might cognitively "embody" the natural environment in all its variety -- of which unconstrained consumption of non-renewable resources is a perversion.

Scriptural ambiguity: As summarized by Peggy Overstreet (Greek Words), two Greek different words are both translated by the one word temple. Each has a distinctive meaning and refers to a particular thing. Hieron comes from a word meaning holy, hallowed, consecrated, and was used of earthly things devoted or dedicated by man to a god. It was later used in the New Testament to designate the temple at Jerusalem. It includes the entire sacred enclosure with its porticos, courts, and other subordinate buildings. It is never used figuratively. Naos referred to the inner sanctuary, composed of the Holy of Holies and the Holy Place. Only priests could lawfully enter. Naos was used among heathen to denote a shrine containing the idol (Acts 17:24; 19:24). When referring to the Jerusalem temple, Josephus, Philo, the Septuagint, and the New Testament always distinguished hieron from naos. After describing the building of the naos by Solomon, Josephus wrote: Outside the temple (naos) he constructed a sacred enclosure (hieron) in the form of a square.

The ambiguity is relevant to any understanding of embodiment of insight, most notably the sense of the body as the temple of the spirit. The challenge of Jerusalem might be said to be how disparate insights, seemingly incommensurate, could be fruitfully embodied.

Temple as a form of container? As is evident with respect to the competing architectural claims of the Abrhamic faiths in Jerusalem, any "temple" is readily conceived as the ultimate container for truth of the greatest profundity. This has the unfortunate implication that truth must necessarily be contained and protected -- to the point of being "walled in", if not immured. Access must be highly controlled and potentially restricted to exclude those who do not subscribe to that truth or fail to comprehend it in some way.

This raises the question as to whether there are other kinds of container more appropriate to the most elusive truths. Especially interesting are the reflections which embody a degree of cognitive paradox, as suggested by the Möbius strip and the Klein bottle. These call into question the notions of boundedness and sidedness. There is no conventional distinction between one side and the other in the case of the Möbius strip, or between inside and outside in the case of the Klein bottle, The latter can be readily associated with the symbolism of the Ouroboros, as discussed separately (Complementary visual patterns: Ouroboros, Möbius strip, Klein bottle, 2017). Such containers recall the alchemical quest for a container for that which can dissolve everything. It is in this sense that the Temple can be seen as functioning cognitively as a Klein bottle -- as might be inferred from the phenomenological arguments of Steven Rosen (Topologies of the Flesh: a multidimensional exploration of the lifeworld, 2006).

The issue can be presented in terms of openneness in contrast with closure -- now played out with respect to their extremes in organizations and information systems, exemplified by issues of secrecy and confidentiality (Orrin Klapp, Opening and Closing: strategies of information adaptation in society, 1978). The issue features in the language by which the Holy of Holies is presented by Tzvi Freeman (The Temple Mount as Sacred Space: at the threshold of reality, Chabad, December 2016):

In halachah (Torah law), there is much discussion on the status of twilight -- the gray area between when day stops and night begins. A gateway is one of the most common metaphors of Torah: a place where you are neither in nor out, but part of both.... Read that as "the origin of something from nothing, and the place where the two meet". What happened in that space? It met with anti-space.... Space and non-space met, but neither canceled out the other.... But at the essence of everything is something that is beyond all of them. Something that cannot be defined as the perfection of them, nor as the absence of them. Something that cannot be defined at all.... But we could go even further: Is space a static thing? Or is it an event which is continually being renewed out of the void?

How are these extremes to be embodied in the design of a temple where closure is readily called into question and openness results in loss of fundamental coherence? How indeed do these relate to "two-state" thinking which features so significantly in discourse in relation to Israel-Palestine? The paradoxical vulnerability of delicate integrity can be usefully explored through the metaphor of a bubble and its hyperdimensional possibilities (Pricking the Bubble of Global Complacent Complicity, 2017).

Temple design frames the question as to what process the temple design is framing -- beyond questioning itself. The mystery of a "twilight" zone, as a form of gateway, can be explored in terms of liminality (Living as an Imaginal Bridge between Worlds: global implications of "betwixt and between" and liminality, 2011). As with the fascination of tales for children, the gateway can be understood as a magical mirror (Stepping into, or through, the Mirror: embodying alternative scenario patterns, 2008).

A pointer is offered by the work of Arthur Koestler (The Act of Creation, 1964) with its emphasis on bisociation, as summarized by Maria Popova (How Creativity in Humor, Art, and Science Works: Arthur Koestler's Theory of Bisociation, Brain Pickings, 20 May 2013):

The pattern underlying [the creative act] is the perceiving of a situation or idea, L, in two self-consistent but habitually incompatible frames of reference, M1 and M2. The event L, in which the two intersect, is made to vibrate simultaneously on two different wavelengths, as it were. While this unusual situation lasts, L is not merely linked to one associative context, but bisociated with two. I have coined the term 'bisociation' in order to make a distinction between the routine skills of thinking on a single "plane,", as it were, and the creative act -- which always operates on more than one plane. The former can be called single-minded, the latter double-minded, transitory state of unstable equilibrium where the balance of both emotion and thought is disturbed.

Modes of imagining "temple design": Rather than a restrictive traditional architectural approach, the nature of any design can be explored in the light of the method introduced by Gareth Morgan (Images of Organization, 1986). He distinguished perceptions of organizations using the metaphors of a machine, an organism, the brain, a culture, a political system, a psychic prison, flux and transformation, and a domineering entity. Appropriately, the 2006 edition edition is reviewed in Complicity: an international journal of complexity and education.

In that spirit a temple for humanity could imply all of the following "mentalities", and none of them -- with the aspirations of each potentially seen as a surrogate for constructing the "Temple" and the quest of "Next Year in Jerusalem":

Functionally, and in terms of the behaviours engendered, each invites recognition as an "Israel" (with its exclusively protective closure), centered on a "Jerusalem", a "Temple" and an "Ark of the Covenent" -- namely degrees of the sacrosanct with which the "Ultra-Orthodox" and the "Zionists" are preoccupied. Each has its disruptive "Palestinians", carefully "walled off" as an unresolved fundamental contradiction -- a voice that cannot be heard, or reconciled with an understanding of the "sacrosanct". In the quest for a superordinate expression of the "spirit" of its initiaitive, each may have some form of symbolic mandala or merkabah used as a focal symbol (Framing Global Transformation through the Polyhedral Merkabah, 2017; Cognitive Implications in 3D of Triadic Symbols Valued in 2D, 2017).

Each however "partakes" of the other, as might be presented in systemic terms as follows:

Interconnectivity of Temple design "mentalities" ?
Interconnectivity of Temple design "mentalities" ?

Rather than taking definite form, the Temple could be designed to imply degrees of insight and the sense of indwelling intelligence, enabling and ordering a variety of modalities such as those variously distingished above. The indefiniteness of its form could be usefully clarified in terms of a dynamic between a variety of patterns, whether 8-fold (as above), 10-fold, 6-fold, or 12-fold, or otherwise (Systems of Categories Distinguishing Cultural Biases, 1993). An aesthetically appreciable mode of framing this is that of Keith Critchlow (The Hidden Geometry of Flowers: living rhythms form and number, 2011), especially in the light of his earlier work (Islamic Art and Architecture: system of geometric design, 1999). In this light, ironically, civilization and its collapse can be framed in floral terms (Flowering of Civilization -- Deflowering of Culture, 2014). As "floral" patterns these are necessarily intended to function as attractors -- in anticipation of "pollination".

Especially intriguing is the ability to embody the paradox of locality and non-locality in a global context -- and to give comprehensible form to these extremes. This is especially evident in the traditional sense of a sanctum sanctorum and its architectrural forms -- together with what is engendered thereby as suggested by the ambiguity of the term enceinte with its connotations of fortification and pregnancy (more evident in French, from which it is derived).

In addition to the contrasting insights from each such modality, there is the further dimension of the behaviours associated with grasping cognitively a particular modality assertively, with a degree of comprehension, and condemning all others as wrong and misguided (if not evil). How extremely wrong is it possible to be -- in being totally right? Or conversely, how extremely right is is it possible to be -- in being totally wrong?

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