Temple
A temple (from the Latin templum) is a place of worship, a building used for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice.
The form and function of temples are thus very variable, though they are often considered by believers to be, in some sense, the "house" of one or more deities.
Typically, offerings of some sort are made to the deity, and other rituals are enacted, and a special group of clergy maintain and operate the temple.
The word comes from Ancient Rome, where a templum constituted a sacred precinct as defined by a priest, or augur.
Hindu temples are known by many different names, varying on region and language, including Alayam,[2] Mandir, Mandira, Ambalam, Gudi, Kavu, Koil, Kovil, Déul, Raul, Devasthana, Devalaya, Devayatan, Devakula, Devagiriha, Degul, Deva Mandiraya, and Devalayam.
The most essential feature is the inner sanctuary, the garbhagriha or womb-chamber, where the primary murti or cult image of a deity is housed in a simple bare cell.
[4] Outside of the Indian subcontinent (India, Bangladesh and Nepal), Hindu temples have been built in various countries around the world.
Great Britain), North America (the United States and Canada), as well as Australia, Malaysia and Singapore, Mauritius and South Africa.
Buddhist temples include the structures called stupa, wat and pagoda in different regions and languages.
[5] Three types of structures are associated with the religious architecture of early Buddhism: monasteries (viharas), places to venerate relics (stupas), and shrines or prayer halls (chaityas, also called chaitya grihas), which later came to be called temples in some places.
They were, therefore, a key part of the maintenance of maat, the ideal order of nature and of human society in Egyptian belief.
The temples stored and redistributed grain and came to own large portions of the nation's arable land (some estimate as much as 33% by the New Kingdom period).
[13] In addition, many of these Egyptian temples utilized the Tripartite Floor Plan in order to draw visitors to the center room.
Schwaller de Lubicz suggests that these temples reflect the cosmic and spiritual order through their proportions and design.
The author argues that the ancient Egyptians embedded knowledge of sacred geometry and spiritual awakening into their architecture, and that the human body itself is a temple that mirrors the harmony of the universe.
The work connects the metaphysical symbolism of the temples to esoteric concepts, showing how the architecture reflects human anatomy and cosmic laws.
Chthonic altars, called bothros, were pits dug into the earth for liquid libations of animal sacrifices, milk, honey, and wine.
Most were built on sites associated with myths or a place a god had been believed to have performed a feat, or founded a town or city.
Medieval Latin writers also sometimes used the word templum, previously reserved for temples of the ancient Roman religion.
In the Zoroastrian religion, fire (Atar), together with clean water (Aban), are agents of ritual purity.
Typical Chinese temples have curved overhanging eaves and complicated carpentry of stacked roof construction.
Before the rise of Islam, between the 5th to 15th centuries, Dharmic faiths (Hinduism and Buddhism) were the majority in the Indonesian archipelago, especially in Java and Sumatra.
A single or several flight(s) of steep steps from the base lead to the temple that stood on the plateau on top of the pyramid.
The stone temple might be a square or a rounded structure with a door opening leading to a cella or inner sanctum.
Since the 18th century, Jews in Western and Central Europe began to apply the name temple, borrowed from the French where it was used to denote all non-Catholic prayer houses, to synagogues.
[20] The principal words typically used to distinguish houses of worship in Western Christian architecture are abbey, basilica, cathedral, chapel and church.
Beginning in the late eighteenth century, following the Enlightenment, some Protestant denominations in France and elsewhere began to use the word temple to distinguish these spaces from Catholic churches.
According to Latter Day Saints, in 1832, Joseph Smith received a revelation to restore the practice of temple worship, in a "house of the Lord".
[25][26] Latter-day Saint temples are reserved for performing and undertaking only the most holy and sacred of covenants and special of ordinances.
[28] Freemasonry is a fraternal organization with its origins in the eighteenth century whose membership is held together by a shared set of moral and metaphysical ideals based on short role play narratives concerning the construction of King Solomon's Temple.
