
SHRINES AND CULTS The building of temples was among the most fundamental human social acts.

Immersion in the details of cultic practice provides evidence to support these generalizations about mentality, and allows others to emerge. It is only secondarily, if at all, the pursuit of what we call “religious experience’, or of ethical progress.
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always how to deal correctly with, and exploit, divine power, in order to maintain personal and communal identity. But daily contact with the gods came to most people not, of course, through philosophy or theurgy, nor even the occult sciences, but through public and domestic cult, dreams, the rites of the dead, and so on. The late polytheist world-view, as formulated by intellectuals, affords the historian a first orientation amidst an exceptionally complex body of evidence. Throughout the book, house and home are critically examined to illustrate the perennial role and capacity of architecture to articulate the human condition, position it more meaningfully in the world, and assist in our collective homecoming. Turning to more recent topics, it discusses how writers often used simple huts as a means to address the essentials of existence modernist architects envisioned the capacity of house and home to improve society and the suburban house was positioned as a superior setting for culture and family. This book presents how the search for home in an unpredictable world led people to create myths about the origins of architecture, houses for their gods, and house tombs for eternal life. Consequently, house and home have performed numerous cultural and ontological roles, and have been assiduously represented in scripture, literature, art, and philosophy. This book challenges predominant definitions and argues that domesticity fundamentally satisfies the human need to create and inhabit a defined place in the world. House and home are words routinely used to describe where and how one lives.
