Altarspace 1-3


Assemblage








Sacrifice is nothing other than the production of sacred things.
― Georges Bataille






God attributes to place
No sanctity, if none be thither brought
By men who there frequent.
― John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book XI, line 836.






One day humanity will play with law just as children play with disused objects, not in order to restore them to their canonical use but to free them from it for good.
― Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception



Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor! Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold? And, Whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing; but whosoever sweareth by the gift that is upon it, he is guilty. Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift? Whoso therefore shall swear by the altar, sweareth by it, and by all things thereon. And whoso shall swear by the temple, sweareth by it, and by him that dwelleth therein. And he that shall swear by heaven, sweareth by the throne of God, and by him that sitteth thereon. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.
― Matthew 23:16–23 (KJV)



Where'er we tread 'tis haunted, .holy. ground.
― Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812)