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Optional Friday night special event
Since prehistoric times sacred places have exerted a mysterious spiritual magnetism on billions of people around the world. Ancient legends and modern day reports tell of extraordinary experiences that people have had while visiting these places. Different sacred sites have the power to heal the body, increase creativity, enlighten the mind, and awaken the soul to a knowing of its true purpose in life. While contemporary science cannot explain the miraculous phenomena which occur at the holy places, they continue to be the most venerated and visited locations on planet earth. What is the key to the mystery of the sacred sites and how are we to explain their power? Explorer-anthropologist Martin Gray has spent 23 years as a wandering pilgrim on a quest to visit, study and photograph more than 1000 sacred sites in 80 countries around the world. He has participated in secret ceremonies, met shamans and sages, and deeply studied the arcane sciences of archaeoastronomy, geomancy and sacred geography. To share his insights and photographs with a wide audience, Martin has created the award winning web sites www.sacredsites.com and www.magicplanet.org which have been visited by more than eight million people since 1997. Martin also speaks at museums, universities and conferences throughout the US, Europe and Asia. Based upon extensive scholarly research and his own mystical experiences at the sacred sites, Martin offers a fascinating discussion of the mythology and anthropology of pilgrimage places and an explanation of the miraculous phenomena which occur at the sites. Featuring hundreds of beautiful photographs, the presentation is a magical blend of art, history and travel adventure, shamanism, inspiration and spiritual ecology. Martin's photographs have also been featured in National Geographic publications, in television documentaries, in newspapers, magazines and books around the world, and with the World Heritage Site department of UNESCO. About Martin Gray My career as a photographer of sacred architecture and pilgrimage sites began when I was a young boy. My father was in the US diplomatic service and because of this I was privileged to travel widely around the world. Archaeology and photography were my father's hobbies and my mother was highly educated in classical music and painting, thus from my earliest years I was immersed in the arts and antiquities of foreign cultures. When I was twelve years old our family moved to India for four years. During this period I went on frequent journeys, both alone and in the company of wandering holy men, to the temples, mosques and sacred caves of India, Nepal and Kashmir. Reading extensively in the fields of Buddhism and Hinduism, and fascinated with the mystery of the sacred places, I dreamed of one day producing an anthropological guidebook and photographic atlas of the great Asian pilgrimage shrines. After my family's return to the United States I entered the University of Arizona with the intention of studying Mesoamerican archaeology but soon left, drawn back to India by the call of the spiritual quest and the desire to become a mountain hermit in the tradition of Theravada Buddhism. While living in northern India I became a member of a monastic order and for the next ten years, both in India and the west, cultivated a deep practice of meditation. At the age of twenty-eight I left monastic life behind, returned to the US, and started two travel companies. Within three years these companies were moving thousands of people each year to the Caribbean and Mexico, and I was becoming a very successful businessman. Yet there was an emptiness in my heart and soul for I yearned to do something more aligned with my spiritual practices. My prayers were soon answered. On a journey to South America, visiting the archaeological sites of Easter Island and Machu Picchu, I experienced a powerful reawakening of my interest in ancient sacred places. So strong was this interest that I decided to pursue my earlier ambition of photographing the world's great sacred architecture. Returning to the US, I sold my lucrative companies and began a twenty-two year period of traveling as a wandering pilgrim to over 1200 sacred sites in more than 80 countries around the world. Traveling mostly by bicycle and living as a monk at hundreds of temples, monasteries and sacred mountains, I conducted exhaustive mythological and anthropological studies and extensive photographic documentation of the sites. There have been three primary motivations for my research and travels to the world's sacred sites. One motivation has been to gather evidence showing that pre-industrial cultures throughout the world recognized the Earth to be a sacred being worthy of deep respect and gentle treatment. Studying the development of sanctity at sacred sites, it is clear that many ancient peoples had a reverential relationship with the living earth. If such a relationship can be reawakened and encouraged in our own culture, we will be better able to address the crisis of worldwide ecological degradation. A second motivation has been to photographically document the world's great sacred architecture before it is forever lost to the ravages of modernization and industrial pollution. Sacred architecture represents the greatest concentration and the most sublime example of humanity's artistic expression. Due to their outdoor locations, however, these great art pieces do not receive the protection which paintings and sculpture receive in environmentally-controlled museums. It is my hope, through the frequent and wide presentation of my slide shows, to stimulate an increased public awareness of both the value and fragility of these wondrous works of art. A third motivation has been to study the miraculous phenomena frequently reported at sacred sites. A growing body of evidence indicates that there is indeed a density of holiness that saturates the locality of the pilgrimage places and that this holiness, or field of energy, contributes to a wide variety of beneficial human experiences. The living earth has much to teach us human beings and the ancient sacred sites are classrooms where this instruction is abundantly given. Since 1983, I have traveled the world gathering knowledge that I believe is highly significant to the well being of the planet and humanity as we enter the new millennium. During the past 20 years I have begun to communicate this knowledge by presenting slide shows and classes to more than 125,000 people in the United States, Latin America, Europe and Asia. These presentations are highly respected and attended due to their reputation for social and environmental relevance, spiritual inspiration and artistic beauty. These slide shows have been the main evening event at such prestigious conferences as: Earth and Spirit Conference, Portland; Oregon, February, 1993 Choices for the Future Symposium; Aspen, Colorado, August, 1995 Return to the Source Conference; University of Delaware, September, 1996 Second International Feng-Shui Conference; Palm Springs, California, October, 1997 Fourth Annual Festival of Faiths; Louisville, Kentucky, November, 1999 Science and Consciousness Conference; Albuquerque, New Mexico, May, 2000 American Society of Dowsers, National Convention; Danville, Vermont; June, 2001 Society of the Anthropology of Consciousness; Tucson, Arizona; April 2002 American Academy of Religion; Atlanta, Georgia; November, 2003 Conference on Sacred Geometry; Sedona, Arizona; January, 2004 Experience Festival; Varadyapalayam, India; February, 2004 International Association of Rock Art; Boario, Italy; September 2004 In 1997, I placed the web site, WWW.SACREDSITES.COM, on the Internet. Since that time, over eight million people have visited the site, often spending an hour or more viewing the photographs and reading the detailed text. The web site has received over a dozen awards for artistic beauty and scholarly content. Additionally, my work has been featured on documentaries, on the Arts & Entertainment channel and in dozens of newspapers and magazines around the world. In 2004 National Geographic published a large book, The Geography of Religion, and I was the principal photographer. |
