Cathedrals of the Spirit

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

Cathedrals of the Spirit is a sober and moving anthology of
comparatively short extracts devoted to the sense of the numinous to be
felt in the natural world. It ranges widely in space and time, from
Eastern writings dating back several centuries BC to contemporary North
American writers. Age-old stories of Australian Aboriginals are
juxtaposed with the meditations of medieval mystics and the pleas of
20th-century conservationists.

The volume is generously illustrated with photographs by Eliot Bowen,
mainly of tree-forms and ancient megaliths. These are evocative and
blend happily with the verbal extracts, though I wish they had not been
given titles that suggest cute resemblances to natural forms
(“Languorous Nude,” “Pregnant Wolf Howling,” etc.). These are
intended to indicate a primal unity, but risk sentimental reductiveness
embarrassingly close to the patter of the average tour guide.

In some respects, this book can be regarded as a spinoff from the same
compiler’s The Way of the Earth (1994). T.C. McLuhan (daughter of
Marshall McLuhan) argues convincingly that “Cathedrals of the Spirit
offers a cross-cultural mapping of human consciousness as it plumbs the
significance of a multitude of sacred sites through the revelations of
those who have experienced and imagined them.” Stone circles, sacred
trees, holy mountains, the primeval equivalents of more modern shrines,
temples, and churches all testify to the idea of the holy; for many,
they link us meaningfully with our primeval origins.

A book to be read slowly and returned to often.