Browsing by Author "Badenhorst, Ursula"

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    The eschatological garden : sacred space, time and experience in the monastic cloister garden
    (2009) Badenhorst, Ursula; Chidester, David
    The argument of this dissertation is that the garden can be considered a proleptic eschatological landscape outside of time. To prove this argument I pull together strands of philosophical reflections on death, history of religions analysis concerning sacred space and time and monastic spirituality. I develop this argument by focusing on the enclosed garden, which has connected with it, in myth and metaphor, abundant meanings concerning life after death in a paradisiacal state of bliss. These meanings also become evident in the physical layout of the garden, which, when analyzing it in terms of substantial and situational definitions of sacred space, becomes a prime example of a sacred space, linked physically and symbolically to an eschatological space. The enclosed garden plays a very important role in monastic spirituality as it is not only associated with the cloister, but also with the Virgin Mary, which both offer the monk a gateway to eternity in Paradise. Physically the enclosed garden becomes the very center of the monastic precinct, offering through a ritual-sensory experience of its spatial qualities an experience which allows the monk a moment of spiritual transcendence. It is also, thus, in this moment, when the monk’s physical experience of the garden is woven together with ideas of paradise as an abode of eternity, that the garden becomes a sacred space which can lift him outside of time to experience paradisiacal happiness. This requires a process of hermeneutical interpretation from the monk and the theorist reflecting on this encounter. It is a dialogue between the garden and its interpreters, which leads to the conclusion that an encounter with the sacred never stands in isolation.
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    The language of gardens: Ibn al-‘Arabi’s barzakh, the courtyard gardens of the Alhambra, and the production of sacred space
    (2014) Badenhorst, Ursula; Chidester, David; Shaikh, Sa'diyya
    The aim of this thesis is to propose a multi-layered and interdisciplinary understanding of space by focussing on the courtyard gardens of the Alhambra. By presenting a theoretical conversation on the Sufi notion of the barzakh (an intermediary and relational space) between the premodern Muslim mystic Ibn al-Arabi and contemporary western theorists concerned with space, movement and aesthetics, such as Louis Marin, Henri Lefebvre, Tim Ingold and Martin Seel, this thesis offers an original contribution to the spatial analysis of religion as embodied in the architecture, gardens, and imagination of the Alhambra. Emphasising the barzakh’s role in the interplay between presence and meaning this thesis also draws attention to the dialogue between self as spectator and the garden as spectacle. Through this dialogue, Ibn al-Arabi‘s concept of the barzakh , which he developed in terms of ontology, epistemology and hermeneutics, is investigated and analysed in order to identify a theory of knowledge that relies on the synthesis between experience and imagination. The union of meaning and presence afforded by the intermediary quality of the barzakh is further demonstrated in the physical, imaginative and virtual worlds of the courtyard gardens of the Alhambra. Viewing the Alhambra palaces and gardens in terms of Ibn al-Arabi‘s barzakh, they produce their own language, a showing ‖ of their outer and inner movements, which prompts and provokes the spectator to participate in a poetical and creative encounter. Seen as a barzakh, these gardens put space into movement.