Hi Nort,

The sacred center is a common reference point for a people and provides an umbrella of trust under which safe and secure social interactions can occur. As I mentioned earlier the axis mundi acts as an antenna for goodness or love. One way to destroy a people, break apart their trust for one another, and instill fear, is to destroy the center. The Romans did it with the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD. A similar attack on a sacred center occurred at the turn of the last century, when the British bombed a large earthen mound that the famous Nuer prophet Ngundeng (d.1906) had constructed. All the Nuer clans were asked to participate in the building of the mound. In constructing the mound, Ngundeng was constructing a new cosmology. The mound represented a new hierarchy of gods with the free-deity, Deng, at the top. Ngundeng's effort served to consolidate the Nuer clans in resistance against British incursions in the region, although the RAF finally triumphed in the end. The British also destroyed the sacred center, or kaya, of the Giriama in south coastal Kenya. It was supposed to be a show of force in order to break the back of the Giriama 1914 uprising. Although destroyed, the the idea of the kaya has lived on among the Giriama in myth and ritual, and continues to support, I would argue, their sharing economy which has survived alongside a global capitalist economy in which they also participate.

Tad