What might it mean to be a religious place-maker — a sacristan — in the context of contemplative animism and polytheism?
The Sanctuary has been exploring that question in one form or another since its inception in 2011, when I first wrote about my calling to the duties of what I then called a monastic temple-keeper — a property caretaker who's tasked with building not only curated online spaces (e.g., Pinterest boards featuring ideas for shrines, temple spaces, and tented ceiling designs for incubation retreats), but also physical monastic spaces suitable for contemplative animists. Place-maker is a more broadly applicable term than temple-keeper. It lacks religious connotations, however, so we've decided to use sacristan, since that's the standard term for this role in Buddhist and Catholic contexts.
"If polytheistic monasticism were well-established with scripted roles," I wrote in Janet Munin’s anthology, "I'd serve as scribe and sacristan, holding responsibility for designing, creating, and documenting the atmosphere of the worship environment. I'd select, arrange, and maintain liturgical vessels, incense, shrine accoutrements, fabrics, curtains, lighting, furnishings, vestments, and other supplies. I'd also work closely with musicians and sound designers to customize the aural aspects of the worship space."
Of course, polytheistic monasticism is not well-established. But it's clear that there are enough contemplatives in the modern polytheist revival to call it a fledgling movement, however small it may be at this juncture. So it's not such a stretch to begin laying some basic groundwork for the day we'll have sacristans with more scripted roles who are called into place-making service work by specific Holy Powers.
The call to religious place-making gets freshly renewed in my mind whenever I attend solstice services at a church, such as the winter solstice ritual I attended in 2022 at the local Unitarian Universalist church.
Singing hymns and gathering together with an in-person group to honor the dark — especially in a candle-lit space — feeds my soul. I'm grateful for the UU church and glad I attended the service because UU churches are organized, while polytheism is much less so. That matters greatly to me, because it means there's a physical church where I can go to join with others in worship. I also love pipe organ music!
Yet as is usual for me with UU church services, I left with an acute awareness of my still-unfulfilled craving for religious specificity in church settings. I wanted to gather with others to sing organ hymns for Skaði, for Nótt,… for all of the Holy Powers that Black Stone Sanctuary serves. The generalized "spirit of life" UU approach just does not speak to me.
Though I felt more comfortable at the UU service than I did the time I attended an Episcopalian service, in the end I'm faced with the same ongoing unresolved issue: a monastic with a sacristan calling needs a physical church — a religious building to worship specific Powers. But it has proven far more difficult than I ever imagined to find a place to carry out this calling in full.
In an attempt to fill this gap, I sometimes listen to Christian pipe organ hymns on YouTube while making up decidedly non-Christian lyrics. Then I sing them in the same tune, but in honor of the Holy Powers of Yggdrasil instead, adapting them for the Black Stone Sanctuary liturgy.
I once had a vivid dream about building an "incubation healing chamber" in service to Mengloð and Her Court: the healing goddesses of Lyfjaberg. In the dream my task was to set up a subterranean incubation chamber with individual shrines for each of Them according to Their tastes — something I don't currently have room for at Black Stone Sanctuary, though not for lack of trying.
Yet the Sanctuary still has no church. No pipe organ hymns. No subterranean incubation healing chamber, except the one that lives in the imaginal realm. What else can a would-be sacristan do — that hasn't already been tried — within the constraints of a 550-sq-ft. live/work studio on an upper floor of a condo building?
Recently I discovered Nancy Kline's concept of a "thinking environment." While Kline's work focuses on business contexts, the components of this approach lend themselves quite nicely to the practice of religious place-making.
Kline's book Time To Think names place as one of the ten components of a thinking environment. (See this infographic by Lita Currie for a quick visual summary of all ten components).
At first this sounds pretty straightforward on the face of it: environment includes place. Well, sure. But here's what place means in the context of Kline's thinking environment:
"Producing a physical environment – the room, the listener, your body – that says, 'You matter.'"
What a brilliant articulation of an element that all too often goes missing in our built environment. You matter. Simple, yet profound.
Kline then goes on to say:
"When the physical environment affirms our importance, we think more clearly and boldly.
"When our bodies are cared for and respected, our thinking improves.
"Thinking Environments are places that say back to people, ‘You matter.’ People think at their best when they notice that the place reflects their value to the people there and to the event. […]
"In these ways, place is a silent form of appreciation."
Place is a silent form of appreciation.
That last line is repeated often at the Sanctuary. It's a kind of north star to help guide the work of a sacristan whose place-making tasks must somehow be shaped to serve human and non-human beings in contemplative animist contexts, but who does not have access to a church, incubation healing chamber, or any other religious building to carry out this calling.
Place is a silent form of appreciation.
A sacristan could revisit those words a thousand times in lectio divina practice, yet still barely be scratching the surface.
Because I'm so acutely aware of the shortcomings of the built environment in the United States, however, I often alter the text slightly: place can be a silent form of appreciation. Many, many places (most?) in the US fail to live up to that standard. After a visit to Sweden in 2017, I returned to the US feeling utterly overwhelmed by the inescapable specter of normalized ugliness, architectural hostility, lack of affordability, and scores of freakishly large "single-family" homes that I dearly wish could be torn down and turned into hermit-friendly cottage clusters or tiny house villages.
Yet an animist approach to places as beings with agency can still serve as a silent form of appreciation even in the belly of the beast. Caring attention to place-making in the animist sense, no matter how small, honors reciprocity and affirms the soul's need for beauty that's not just skin deep. This work can be especially restorative in locations that provide few experiences of this kind of beauty.
When it's done well, place-as-silent-appreciation exudes powerful magic. Visitors pick up on this kind of carefully tuned ambient environment immediately, whether or not they can articulate it. (Sometimes I'd prefer that they not articulate it. Case in point: a serviceman who was working on the HVAC system in my studio ogled my lavishly draped purple-and-black canopy bed and enthusiastically proclaimed: "Nice bed!" Kinda creepy, although it did remind me that the caring attention I devote to the Sanctuary is noticed even by strangers, and even in the confines of a tiny space).
For aspiring sacristans curious about what their role entails in Catholic contexts, the comprehensive Sacristy Manual by Thomas Ryan, which is used for liturgy training, is available for your leisurely perusal at the Internet Archive.
Even a quick skim of the table of contents of The Sacristy Manual hints at a wealth of generalizable ideas, including furnishing and decorating worship spaces, selecting thuribles for incense, and equipping the sacristy itself properly. (Did you know, for example, that a "sacrarium" is a sink with a pipe that drains directly into the earth, so the contents of the sacred vessels don’t end up in the sewer? That practice might be adopted for an animist sacristy, too). Of course, it’s up to us to design sacristy practices that are theologically appropriate for the specific Holy Powers we venerate.
While sorting through old blog writings, I've been editing something that started out as a "Black Tent Temple Guidebook" and is slowly turning into a more in-depth handbook tailored toward sacristans.
I can't help but wish that such a guide already existed, so I could simply use it as a reference and get right back to my place-making work. But this is one of the perils of being an early entrant to the fledgling monastic movement in the modern polytheist revival: it falls to us to build the necessary infrastructure ourselves. At times it can be a painstaking process. In the meantime, I see no harm in making the best possible use of what's already been written on the topic.
I wonder what my religious life might have been like if Pagan sacristans working in temples and churches had been an actual thing that existed in the world when I was growing up? Perhaps it might have helped me make sense of my life-long "homebody" tendencies, or given me more pride in my goth nesting instinct outside of humble "homemaker" contexts.
In any case, here's my message to any other would-be polytheist sacristans and caretakers out there who yearn to tend shrines, select textiles, make holy water, clean offering bowls, polish incense thuribles, set tables for tea, arrange liturgical vessels, maintain contemplative enclosed gardens, and sing hymns for the Holy Powers in organized brick-and-mortar spaces:
You are not alone. Keep doing what you are called to do, wherever and in whatever form you can. Someday — maybe sooner than you think — monastics in the modern polytheist-animist revival will have our own brick-and-mortar spaces.
In the meantime, no matter how humble it may seem, you can work with what you've already got to design and arrange physical religious spaces that say 'you matter.' We need those spaces. Beings who enter those spaces feel the caring that goes into them.
Please document the work in writing and photos for future reference if you're able. Sacristan work is important! Atmosphere matters! The monastic movement is in its infancy. We need you.
Place-making is a silent form of appreciation.
NOTES
The Sanctuary started a new Farcaster channel this week (/blxstonesnctuary) so that /slowcore-hq could better serve the growing Farcaster-seeded slowcore movement.
Sister Patience of The Monastery of Annwn cited the Sanctuary's sacristan work, defining a sacristan as "someone who tends sacred spaces."
Main photo: a divination table and fully-lit shrines at the Sanctuary (formerly known as The Black Stone Hermitage), circa 2016. Photo by Ilana Hamilton.
The Wayback Machine hosts the original version of this post, first published on Dec. 23, 2022.
