BootsnAll Travel Community

What is the holiest place you have ever been to?

Interpret as you will....

Jerusalem.

Claimed to be a favorite of God...and I really dug it too!

Walking into the old city in 1969 felt just like you were going over 2000 years back in time.

I have very fond memories of my experience there, to this day.

Graceland.

No, actually, and I know it's cliche, but Vatican City is probably the most "holy" place I've been. Learning about the history, esp. the very early Popes.....wow. Not a Catholic, but it still impressed me.

...that depends on your definition of holy...

if it's how many times you said - OH MY GOD out loud...well then we would be talking about entirely different places altogether...

When I said holy, I meant it as a more personal experience. Let me try again....

Where have you been in the world where you have felt the most energy - any sort of spiritual connection. It could be haunted, it could be god, it could be artwork, it could be scenery, it could be a religious building.

Glencoe in Scotland felt that way for me. The air felt different and I could sense the experiences and suffering in the very rocks of the valley.

Rediscuss. If you please.

My personal 'power place' is Swayambhunath Stupa to the west of Kathmandu. I first visited 5 years ago. Although there are so many other holy sites in the valley, Swayambhu echoed most strongly with me, I think because of the dramatic location atop the highest hill in the valley, the lush, jungley feeling of the area itself, which reminded me of the windward side of O'ahu where I grew up, and the relative lack of commercialization, compared to Boudha on the other side of town, which I call 'Dharma Disneyland'-though Boudha has its good points too.(esp. if you are in the market for thangkas):-)

Another place, which affected me in a totally different way, is Dachau. I think everyone should visit it, especially the 'power brokers' who make decisions affecting the fates of peoples and nations... I felt as if the spirits of the people who suffered and died there were still there, telling me to 'never forget'.

The Connemara in Ireland was the most holy, Doolin and the Aran Islands were like coming home, and the site New Grange out side of Drogheda it felt like I had been there before even though I had not.

I've never felt more at peace than when I was in the Connemara. My career is in Theatre Managment, I thought I wouldn't give it up for anything. But I said to myself in while I was in the mountains 'I would give up theatre for this'.

Where I have found my biggest spiritual connection to date, Cathedral Grove upon Vancouver Island, walking among huge trees always does it for me...

Also, Copan Ruinas in Honduras, trying to visualize what must have been going on near the collapse was a pretty neat-o experience.

I've felt the most pure spiritual power from the site of Monte Alban near Oaxaca, though others have come close. I want to go to macchu Picchu, for I hear its also built on a power pulsepoint.

In the temple of the moon and sun in teotihuacan, I met Wiccans sitting on top charging their crystals. Why anyone would want to charge their spiritual batteries on a pyramid and people steeped in Human sacrifice and violence, I'm really not sure. The one person I talked to who did this worshipped the power more than the purity of it.

I also felt a strange spiritual surge from a place on Lago Atitlan, on an old abandoned maya temple site. Yes, they have them too, but no one has any money to restore them. Not quite sure where it is, really. Lousy sense of direction. I imagine any real archeological finds there have been taken by grave robbers long ago, in the form of the inhabitants. There was evidence of a lot of digging in the area. Still, the power in the place was palpable for some reason. I imagine natives still use it for some ceremonies.

Copan too, felt quite empowering in a strange way.

Tikal wins the most scenic award for me, once you climb the tallest pyramid, and watch over the entire jungle.

Holy Island, a little dot of an island off Aran Island in Scotland, takes my breath away. You come over the crest of a hill and there it is, swathed in mist, sitting smack in the ocean, waiting for you. I also love the energy in all the places where dolmens are: Poulnabrone, on the West coast of Ireland, is astonishing, but so are the little dolmens near Sligo and one in southern France near the city of St. Antonin. The cliff dwellings at Bandelier Monument, in New Mexico, feel quietly holy, as if they are waiting for their people to come home. The Buddhist Retreat Centre in Ixopo, South Africa, set among the steep green hills of Zululand, has a stillness and a power like nothing else I saw in Africa, although anywhere along the coast of the Indian Ocean feels holy to me, and the dolphins travel along the beaches there by the hundreds. Montsegur, the place where the last Cathares were captured in southern France, in the lower Pyrennees, is very much alive with energy: go into the ruin of the building at the top of the mountain and sit quietly for a moment, and the silence will talk to you. Palenque, in Chiapas, Mexico, is still full of power and secrets, especially the Temple of the Moon. I love the places people bring their own holiness to, like the Basilica of the Virgen de Guadalupe in Mexico City, Rocamadour in France, Lourdes, or any of a number of South African Hindu temples to the folk goddesses. The red dunes of the Namibian desert have a ferocious holiness. There is also a wonderful mountain near the town of Bulwer, in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, where the Zulu goddess Nomkhubulwane is said to live: she brings rain, fertility, and spiritual power to those who remember her. Just thinking of the redwood forest in northern California knocks me to my knees; and anywhere a person does something completely unnecessarily kind for any living being becomes a holy place. Come to think of it, maybe the whole planet is a holy place, and it's just a matter of us, tuning ourselves in to receive the holiness either in the place itself or in the people and animals who live there. Yeah. Like that. And I'm not even stoned.

Absolutely the Island of Iona in Scotland. It's been a holy place since prechristian times and I spent a week there with my chapel from school. I have never felt so much unbridled spiritual energy in my life. Completely amazing.

The banks of the Chobe river gives me a sense of peace more than any building I've ever entered.