During class, Professor Albert kept coming back to Pallasmaa’s quote: “Thus, religious sacredness implies the encounter of a space, object, or ritual which has been specifically named or designated sacred beforehand. The spirituality invoked by a secular artistic work is a personal and individual existential experience which obtains its aura and impact through the inherent nature of human experience itself without any explicit religious symbolization, connotation, or designation.” This quote implies a separation between religion and spirituality. I think what Pallasmaa misunderstands is that the spirituality that he is describing as being entirely secular would be interpreted, by many religious people, as religious experiences. Pallasmaa mentions that these secular artistic works that invoke spirituality lack any explicit religious symbols, and that is what makes the experience a secular spirituality. However, many people do not need a symbol to be explicitly religious in order to interpret it through that lens. Take light, for example. It is not an explicitly religious phenomenon. However, if someone understands light as the presence of the divine, or a sign from a god, a beacon or a guide, or even just an example of divine creation, then their experience of light is both spiritual and religious. The fault in Pallasmaa’s words lies in his assumption that religious sacredness relies on things that are specifically designated as religiously sacred. Religious sacredness does not rely on specific naming as such, but through individual’s interpretation of a space, object, or ritual.
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