Study Architecture 
ProPEL 
Author(s): Christopher Barboza
Dwelling, as Martin Heidegger defines it, requires a “primal” oneness among man, his environment, and his divinities, as well as man’s active participation to preserve this unity. Dwelling is explained through mythology that seeks to orient man in his natural setting, and to define his relationship to the supernatural. In many traditional societies, this orientation is established through the definition of a sacred Center. This mythical Center can be both physical and spiritual, and is established through the practice of public ritual. Ritual is the physical expression of myth, and the means by which man engages himself within the natural and sacred environment. Dwelling occurs when the integral relationship of myth and ritual is expressed in sacred space. For the inhabitants of San Juan Chamula, a Mayan indigenous group in the Chiapas highlands, the myths that place them at the center of their universe are the basis of how they define their sacred spaces and place themselves in their physical environment. During the Festival of Games, their largest annual ritual performance, the Chamula actively engage their landscape and seek to preserve a cosmological order defined at the time of their creation. Their mythology of Center, based primarily on movement of the sun across the sky, reflects elements of both their ancestral Mayan and contemporary cosmological structures, and defines their ritual movements and perceptions of sacred space.
Volume Editors
David Covo & Gabriel Mérigo Basurto
ISBN
0-935502-57-2
