The Burning Man Temple

The Burning Man Temple is different each year.
This is 2011's Temple.

New Atheist Sam Harris says that if we all magically forgot our religious traditions, we would find no use for our churches, mosques, and other places of worship. In his mind, we would go about our lives without whatever it is that happens in churches and never miss it. It's easy to find fault with organized religion, but I suspect that there is something of value going on in a church or other sacred space. The story of the Temple at Burning Man is an interesting case in point, in which a sacred space insinuated itself into a raucous festival.

In 2000, artist David Best lost a close friend just two weeks before he was scheduled to erect a wooden “Temple of the Mind” at Burning Man. Instead of cancelling their plans in grief, Best and his friends turned their temple into a memorial to their friend. In true burner fashion, they encouraged other people to use the temple to memorialize their own dearly departed, and since then the Temple has been a fixture at Burning Man, rivaling the Man itself in its power. Best is a professional artist with work in museums, but his “Temple” built of waste wood touched people in a way that none of his previous works ever had. To this day, burners gather at the Temple to write messages of loss on the surfaces of the wooden Temple. The Temple and the memorials left in it go up in smoke one day after the Man itself burns. The Temple is a beautiful place where a full-on atheist like me can leave a memorial alongside someone who expects to be reunited with their lost loved ones on the astral plane. It seems as though a spiritual place like the Temple is serving such an important role that it appeared spontaneously in the middle of a wild festival and immediately became part of the culture.

Most people are surprised to hear about Burning Man’s spiritual side, but there are many sides to Burning Man.

Here’s a story about a memorial by law enforcement officers at 2013’s Temple (click).

And here is an online paper that describes the Burning Man Temple (click).

A previous post about my own experience with grief (click).