About

[Note: for information about the owner, please see the Contact section.]

It is my hope that this site will present an otherwise obscure subject in an accessible manner.

The material for this website evolved over a period of several years. When I first began researching this material, I didn't even know I had started "researching".

It began with a few cursory remarks I read about the use of the square in Greek temple architecture, and the cube in religious contexts. At that point, I felt that I was "onto something". The result of that hunch is what you see before you now.

The title for this site is taken from an instance in Buddhism where the cube appears harmoniously beside a dome, in the form of the stupa and harmika. At the point where the dome of the stupa ascends toward the heavens, a cube-shaped harmika sits marking the point of transition between the world of form and that of formlessness, or in other words, the point where the two worlds meet and merge. 

In Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese name for harmika is sivuras-kotuva, “four-cornered enclosure'” or devata-kotuwa, “citadel of the gods”.

To my mind, calling the space said to contain the spirit of the Buddha the “citadel of the gods” can be applied more generally to almost all instances of the cube in religious architecture.  As much as it is true for the harmika, it is true for the Hebrew Holy of Holies, the Christian City of New Jerusalem, the Babylonian ark (built on a “divine plan” to protect the contents inside), the Zoroastrian fire temple, the Islamic Ka’bah shrine and others.  It is the form that best expresses balance and perfect harmony among its parts.